What happens when a dictator wins absolute power and isolates a nation from the outside world? In a nightmare of political theory stretched to madness, North Korea's Kim Jong Il made himself into a living god, surrounded by lies and flattery and beyond criticism. As over two million of his subjects starved to death, Kim Jong Il roamed between palaces staffed by the most beautiful girls in the country and stocked with the most expensive delicacies from around the world. Outside, the steel mills shut down, the trains stopped running, the power went out, and the hospitals ran out of medicine. When the population threatened to revolt, Kim imposed a reign of terror across the country, deceived the United Nations, and plundered the country's dwindling resources to become a nuclear power. Now tiny bankrupt North Korea is using her nuclear capability to blackmail the United States.

Veteran correspondent Jasper Becker takes us inside one of the most secretive countries in the world, exposing the internal chaos, blind faith, rampant corruption, and terrifying cruelty of its rulers. Becker details the vain efforts to change North Korea by actors inside and outside the country and the dangers this highly volatile country continues to pose. Small, podgy and easily overlooked, Kim Jong Il has emerged from the shadow of his father to lead the most successful and dangerous rogue state of our times.

This unique land, ruled by one family's megalomania and paranoia, seems destined to survive and linger on for some time, a menace to its own people and to the rest of the world. But should the nations of the world allow this regime to survive? That's the question with which this book concludes.

JASPER BECKER has worked as a foreign correspondent for twenty years, including eleven years based in Beijing. He has written four books on the region, which have been translated into seven languages. His most recent work is The Chinese.