‘Accidental Tyrant' Review: The Unlikely Rise of Kim Il Sung

Wall Street Journal

28-03-2025

'There can be little doubt,' writes Fyodor Tertitskiy, that Kim Il Sung 'is the darkest figure in all of Korea's history.' If this Lord of Darkness has any competition at all, it comes from his son and grandson.
Mr. Tertitskiy, a South Korea-based historian, has pulled off a rare and impressive biographical feat—his 'Accidental Tyrant' is a book-length account of the life of Kim, the founder of North Korea, who ascended to power in 1945 at the end of World War II. Biographies abound of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, but those of Kim are hard to come by: 'Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader,' by Suh Dae-sook, was the last good one, published in 1988, six years before Kim's death. Mr. Tertitskiy's book appears 37 years later. Yet for all the passage of time, Kim would surely give present-day North Korea his seal of approval, recognizing it to be the place of his own demonic conception. The Kimist regime—now led by his grandson Kim Jong Un—'remains unyielding in the face of all challenges,' Mr. Tertitskiy writes, 'dominating the lives of over 20 million North Koreans, with no apparent end in sight.'
The country Kim created is, Mr. Tertitskiy tells us, 'a nation so closed it defies comprehension.' How closed? He gives us examples: North Korean citizens are prohibited from reading books that haven't been approved by the state; cannot access the internet without being 'personally approved by the Supreme Leader'; cannot speak to foreigners on the telephone without risking harsh imprisonment; must display portraits of Kim Il Sung and his successors in every home; and can be put to death for defacing these portraits. Not being able to leave the country seems a trivial hardship by comparison. That so few attempt to do so is proof of the incarceration of an entire population.
Readers will find it startling, therefore, that Mr. Tertitskiy tells us 'it would be wrong' to say that Kim 'was a man of pure evil' or that he was 'completely incapable of kindness, forgiveness and mercy.' After all, the book is a detailed portrayal of the man who 'instigated the most destructive war Korea has ever seen,' one in which at least 2.5 million people died, and created one of the most suffocatingly coercive societies in human history. Mass famine was a constant feature of Kim's rule, so much so that the multigenerational deprivation of food has led to the physical stunting of North Koreans, who are on average several inches shorter than their genetically identical brethren in South Korea. In truth, the only well-fed North Koreans we have seen (in the flesh or in photographs) have been the overweight members of the Kim dynasty.