Recent years have seen the dramatic rise of a young woman called Kim Yo Jong in North Korea. Emerging onto the world stage from the shadows of her secretive state, she is creating headlines and fevered speculation about her role and her future. She is the sister of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and, as her regime’s chief propagandist, internal administrator and foreign policymaker, she is the most powerful woman in North Korea’s history. One moment she is disarming foreign leaders, the next she is threatening and insulting them with sardonic wit. A princess by birth with great expectations for her hermit kingdom, she was brought up to believe it is her mission to reunite North Korea with the South, or die trying. In 2022 she even threatened a nuclear attack . . . The Sister, written by Sung-Yoon Lee, a scholar of Korean and East Asian studies and a specialist on North Korea, is a fascinating, authoritative account of the mysterious world of North Korea and its ruling dynasty.

 

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