How to make sense of North Korea? It is not only the world’s loosest nuclear cannon, but a hereditary communist dictatorship, a patch of darkness in east Asia’s night‑time sea of light, one-third of George W Bush’s “axis of evil”, a state little larger than Ohio with the world’s fourth-largest military, a so-called hermit kingdom where less than 1% of its exploited and terrorised population has access to the internet. The west has often gone for the easiest answer: to mock it. It’s hard to imagine another human rights-abusing, nuclear-enabled regime being the backdrop for crass Hollywood comedies. But the ruling Kim dynasty has provided a reliable laughing stock for big-budget films from Team America: World Police, in which a screaming alien cockroach bursts from the corpse of a puppet Kim Jong-il, to The Interview, where hapless journalist James Franco is sent on a CIA mission to assassinate Kim Jong-un but ends up partying with him to a Katy Perry CD.
The Sister, a detailed, insightful study by the US-based scholar Sung‑Yoon Lee, sets out to debunk this “profound condescension bordering on racism”. It uses the rise of the newest star in the Kim family business – the current supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Kim Yo-jong – to parse her country’s strange present and possible future, beyond the grotesque headlines. Over the past decade, Kim Yo-jong, now in her mid-30s, has become second only to her brother in terms of power and influence, and – controversially in a rigidly patriarchal society – his possible successor. As the head of the regime’s propaganda arm and a highly visible lead on its foreign policy, the “princess” has inevitably been portrayed with sexist overtones as somewhere between a charming, charismatic pop star and a sadistic power behind the throne.
