Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State Book

A decent primer on the broad history/structure of the DPRK, but full of Orientalist tropes, American exceptionalism, and smug condescension (I guess that should be expected coming from the Brookings Institution, one of America's foremost military and foreign policy think tanks). Loaded, subjective terms like "totalitarian" and "Confucian" are applied whenever possible in an effort to paint even the most mundane, reasonable activities as sinister, backwards, or irrational (trying to grow corn and potatoes? Diabolical!)

The Korean War and South Korea's military dictatorship, not to mention the massacres and political persecutions carried out with U.S. approval, are whitewashed or omitted completely. Paeans to capitalism and shallow critiques of socialism familiar to any YouTube comment section are sprinkled throughout, along with some offensive, ahistorical commentary ("...Chinese peasants arguably enjoyed more independence than most Korean peasants, who labored under the efficient security system of the Japanese." Who is arguing this??? Chinese landlords forced people to sell their own children.)

Anyways it's a decent primer and to their credit they do admit U.S. faults occasionally, even remarking that North Korea is surprisingly a more rational actor than the U.S. at times. But for a book aiming to deconstruct North Korean propaganda, the authors built a substantial propaganda piece of their own.