The Kim family of North Korea is the most successful political dynasty of the twentieth century, and it shows no signs of loosening its grip on power. A communist dictatorship formed in the embers of the Second World War, it heads one of the most repressive regimes in the world with human rights abuses and the sophisticated surveillance of its population deployed as tools of state control. Deliberately isolated from the world, North Korea is an anomaly in the international system. It survives through the sale of weapons, while its people often starve because of the refusal to take in international trade or aid.

Ramon Pacheco Pardo offers insight and first-hand experience of North Korea today. In seeking to explore the threat North Korea might pose to global security, he shows how the regime has been shaped by its own sense of insecurity and animosity towards the United States. As the regime continues to develop its own nuclear capabilities and export arms to Russia, Iran and Syria, Pardo considers its tense relations with the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as its more ambiguous relationship with China.