Joseph Ferris, who took the most breathtaking and evocative pictures of North Korea I’ve seen — see them on Flickr (I recommend watching the whole slide show) — reviewed my book, Understanding North Korea: Demystifying the World’s Most Misunderstood Country, in his blog, An American in North Korea. He wrote
I admit that I was quite skeptical to learn that on his return he wrote a book on North Korea, it’s a country that requires a career of study and dedication to research to understand – at least from a historian’s viewpoint. Instead, Joshua took his considerable business and entrepreneur experiences, along with his ability as a physicist to break down complex systems into easily understandable parts, and applied these talents to write a book that presents a simple, clear, and nonjudgmental understating of modern North Korea’s motivations. He accomplishes this by explaining the business concepts of strategy and sustainable competitive advantage, and how these concepts apply to, and help simplify an understanding of not only North Korea, but to each of the relevant players (countries) concerned with the North Korea situation.
This book battles the mainstream idea that North Korea’s leaders are crazy and act irrationally, and firmly proves that there is an easily understandable and well developed strategy behind modern North Korea’s actions and motivations.
I should point out that Joseph and I toured together. He addresses how that affected his reading of the book in his post.
Now you have more reasons to read the book.