Pyongyang on the Brink

A briskly written primer on the North Korean decisions, foreign interventions and accidents of fate which have both threatened and, ultimately, preserved the country's dictatorship.

This nimble tour through North Korea's history revisits sixteen knife-edge moments when collapse, reform or war nearly shattered the Kim dynasty. Structured in four acts from the peninsula's partition in 1945 to Kim Jong-un's 2020 health scare, each chapter reconstructs a crisis and asks, what if?

Regime change has come within reach far more often than we realise: defeat in the Korean War, leadership challenges in 1956, aborted coups, unrest during a currency crisis, even an armed clash with the US in the 1990s. Kim Il-sung's acclaimed biographer, Fyodor Tertitskiy, guides readers through these events, and explores why change failed to materialise on each occasion. His narrative blends the twists and turns of palace intrigue and battlefield drama with crystal-clear dissections of ideology, institutions and great-power competition.

Drawing on Korean, Russian, Chinese and Japanese sources, Tertitskiy offers nuance without special pleading. By tracing the decisions, miscalculations and foreign interventions that locked the peninsula into stalemate, Pyongyang on the Brink offers a swift, fresh look at deterrence, engagement and the future of millions living under the Kims' yoke. Is North Korea truly doomed to never-ending tyranny?