The Guerrilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea by Adrian BuzoReview by: Lucian W. PyeForeign Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1999), p. 149Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20049429 .

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Recent Books

pages with interesting anecdotal informa

tion, but Weston also verges on excessive

awe of the Japanese, especially in economic

matters. He balances that approach with

personal accounts exposing the warts of

individuals and Japanese politics alike?

with former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei as one good example.

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writers such as Molefi Asante of Temple University. Howe enters the fray with

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One chapter critiques Martin Bernal's

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blazing to deride the contemporary

purveyors of the myths of afrocentrism.

Bogus as historians and fraudulent as

Africanists ("Their Africa is an imagi nary place"), they advance "something akin to a new religion" that dispenses

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vantaged" along the way. Worst of

all, he says, afrocentrism offers no

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people need accurate information, not fantasy, about the world in order

to change it. A serious introduction

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The Guerrilla Dynasty: Politics and

Leadership in North Korea, by adri?n

buzo. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999,

323 pp. $26.00 (paper). A thoughtful and well-researched book at a time when North Korea's missile

and nuclear development increasingly dominates Washington's diplomatic

agenda. Buzo, an Australian diplomat

scholar, finds the enigmatic state's ori

gins in the life and personality of Kim II

Sung. First a teenage guerrilla who never

finished middle school, Kim came of age as a true Stalinist. Having spent his early life trapped in a Leninist organization that was literally fighting for day-to day survival, it is not surprising that

he developed into a secretive, paranoid leader. In turn, his son (and successor)

was brought up in the pervasive aura of

Kim's cult of personality. Buzo traces

with keen interpretation the skillful

ways in which Kim blended communism and nationalism at home and manipulated

Moscow and Beijing for diplomatic advantages abroad?all while American

officials saw only Korean weaknesses.

He carries the story through the current

negotiations between Pyongyang,

Washington, Beijing, and Seoul, but does not make predictions, being

wisely committed to the principle that

prophesy is voluntary folly.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 1999 [l4?]

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