Review: 'The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot,' by Blaine Harden

A charming man clambered up a two-story heap of chalky chemical fertilizer. His gray suit was buttoned tight and his hair cropped short. Speaking to a group of factory workers, the man extolled the virtues of Stalinism and previewed the bright future he envisioned for North Korea.

That man was Kim Il Sung, who would later become one of the most malicious and effective dictators the world has ever endured. That day his boots were coated with ammonium sulfate. Everyone gets his start somewhere.

As does every country, North Korea was built on foundations as precipitous as the stage from which Kim spoke, and the country's unpromising beginnings are told with great insight and breadth in Blaine Harden's "The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot." But more than a mere geopolitical history, Harden's book also profiles two remarkable men. By juxtaposing the lives of Kim and a young fighter pilot named No Kum Suk, he contrasts different ways people confront looming tyranny.

No Kum Suk was in Kim's audience at the fertilizer factory, and the speech had a lingering effect on him. He developed an intense longing to escape his homeland by any means possible. Unfortunately, the Korean War came along first.

During the war, No trained to fly Russian MiG-15 fighter jets. MiGs were fearsome planes, equally threatening to U.S. aircraft as to their own pilots. Their wings were often asymmetrical, their cockpits foggy at high speeds and altitudes and their steering controls so rigid that many pilots weren't strong enough to use them. As Harden darkly summarized, "when all else failed on the MiG-15, the ejection seat occasionally failed as well." Despite its failings, the MiG embodied hope for No. It was his ticket to freedom.

Five years of combat missions, Communist grandstanding and sheer luck passed before No could escape. On a clear day in September, he ascended off the tarmac for a drill, reversed course and landed the stolen MiG on an airstrip in South Korea.

The American propaganda machine made No Kum Suk a global household name overnight. "Never before and never since has one North Korean defector stirred up such a global hoo-ha," writes Harden.

No eventually changed his name to Kenneth and settled in California. Kim Il Sung is long dead. But the fact remains that one person's act of desperation can't topple another's legacy of brutality. There's something for every reader in this book — accessible military history, archival research, political intrigue, media sensationalism and human interest — but most important it adds crucial context to a dark and dangerous spot on our globe.

With roots in our past and implications for our future, these are important stories well told.

Will Wlizlo is a writer living in Minneapolis.