The Kim family of North Korea is the most successful political dynasty of the twentieth century, and it shows no signs of loosening its grip on power. A communist dictatorship formed in the embers of the Second World War, it heads one of the most repressive regimes in the world with human rights abuses and the sophisticated surveillance of its population deployed as tools of state control. Deliberately isolated from the world, North Korea is an anomaly in the international system. It survives through the sale of weapons, while its people often starve because of the refusal to take in international trade or aid.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo offers insight and first-hand experience of North Korea today. In seeking to explore the threat North Korea might pose to global security, he shows how the regime has been shaped by its own sense of insecurity and animosity towards the United States. As the regime continues to develop its own nuclear capabilities and export arms to Russia, Iran and Syria, Pacheco Pardo considers its tense relations with the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as its more ambiguous relationship with China.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo, one of Europe’s leading and most prolific of Korea experts has written an indispensable guide for understanding the Kim dynasty’s iron control over North Korea and how the country’s new strategic (especially its nuclear) capabilities and geopolitical ambitions pose a critical threat to international order in the twenty-first century.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo goes beyond the cliché of North Korea as an 'isolated' country to explore its tempestuous relations with friends and enemies alike. A fantastic primer for anyone interested in understanding how the country’s complex history and political system inform its foreign policy.

In this short volume Pacheco-Pardo methodically unlocks the history, drama, and motives behind North Korea’s nuclear quest and its troubled relationships with South Korea and the United States with clarity, concision, and deep insight.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo is Professor of International Relations at King’s College London and the KF-VUB Korea Chair at the Brussels School of Governance. His books include Korea: A New History of South and North (with Victor D. Cha) and Shrimp to Whale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop.