Yet, what’s sorely missing from this picture, argues Cumings in his most recent book, North Korea: Another Country (New Press, 2003), is the context of history that illuminates why North Korea is the way it is and why it acts the way it does. Criticizing media pundits who depict North Korea as psychotic, unstable and unpredictable, Cumings takes the position that North Korea’s policies have, in fact, been quite predictable and the regime remarkably stable. Despite numerous reports of its imminent collapse, Cumings makes the argument that North Korea is here to stay. “The leaders of North Korea are formidable people; they should not be underestimated,” he writes.

North Korea: Another Country by Bruce Cumings (New Press, 160 pages)

From reading this book, the underlying problem seems to be the American public’s apathy and ignorance. Cumings cites a North Korean official who visited New York in the 1980s, only to find that Americans could barely recall the Korean War and that cab drivers thought that South Korea was run by communists — which is why this book is so needed.

Other works on North Korea tend to focus solely on the macro-level of U.S. foreign policy and international diplomacy. In a word, boring. What makes this work different is that in six pithy and focused chapters, Cumings eschews the dull, academic approach (despite being a professor at the University of Chicago) and instead opts for engaging, insightful and even humorous looks at both North Korea and the United States. He examines the important histories of Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, Kim Jong Il (the former analysis focuses on the elder Kim’s guerilla experience in Manchuria, while the latter makes use of fascinating information from a forthcoming memoir by Kim Jong Il’s adopted daughter). In addition, he also explores the neo-Confucian values that underpin the North Korean state and interesting aspects of daily life in the country. To boot, Cumings has visited North Korea, something few writers can claim. During a tour of a North Korean museum, Cumings describes how he collapses with laughter at the hyperbolic propaganda of an earnest tour guide singing the praises of the Great Leader.

At the same time, he addresses North Korea’s human rights abuses and acknowledges the self-defeating policies that make the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea the butt of jokes. “I have no sympathy for the North, which is the author of most of its own troubles,” he writes. The DPRK indulges in “stereotypical hero worship, grandiose exaggeration and wretched excess as to make even a scholar of East Asia reach for dusty old tomes with titles like Oriental Despotism.”

But the question, Cumings insists, is not whether North Korea has been governed by people we like or respect. Rather, the question is: Has the United States lived up to its own ideals? In this, Cumings states, we have consistently failed. While he is scathing in his criticism of the U.S. media and of the Bush administration, an entire half-century of American policy toward North Korea is called into question — whether it has been led by Democrats or Republicans. Quoting Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Cumings writes: “We have come full circle a half-century later, as if nothing was learned, back to the Quiet American — ‘impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.’”

The writing and analysis in North Korea: Another Country are excellent; some of the material has been expounded upon, expanded and reworked from Cumings’ earlier works, but the result is still refreshing and insightful. While there is a slight disconnect to some of the chapters, nonetheless, it makes for a better and easier read than a dull, history textbook approach (though admittedly, that’s important, too). The bottom line is clear: This book powerfully challenges us to question American assumptions about ourselves and our relationships to other countries. If North Korea is indeed our long-standing and much hated enemy, then all Cumings is suggesting is that it is high time for Americans to follow one of the first rules of war: Know your enemy. That, at least, would be a step above from the dangerously sweet ignorance that bathes most of us, the well-intentioned quiet Americans.