North Korea never ceases to amaze. The current unfolding succession saga from the second-generation leader, 69-year-old Chairman Jong-il Kim, to his 27-year-old third son, Jung-un Kim, puts the nation in an international spotlight. Despotic power successions among family members in modern times have had cases in contemporary political scene: most of them were toppled either by citizen discontent or by challenging rivals. The irreversible global trend of democratization and increasing respect for human rights seems to evade the world's one and only neo-Confucian socialist country. North Korea's uniqueness lies within its idiosyncratic capacity to normalize the peculiar. A combination of secrecy, peculiarity and its unbending persistence explains fetish voyeurism often expressed through awe-struck curiosity and value-laden judgments. 

The latest release of two wonderful books adds very much to the North Korea scholarship. The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom by Hassig and Oh, veteran North Korea observers, and Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea by Suk-Young Kim, a scholar in theater, suggest not only continuity of valuable scholarly tradition, but also a widened scope in North Korea studies. The usual security and defense perspective, a dominant mode of analysis given North Korea's nuclear reality, is gradually balanced by the active and often ambitious approaches in cultural studies. This is a very welcome phenomenon. Their works prove that common criticisms towards the field (i.e., lack of rigorous analysis, under-theorizing, poor generalizability, and perceptual biases among others) and equally convincing excuses (i.e., lack of reliable data, shortage of comparable cases, limited accessibility to the site among others) may be not as valid. Hassig and Oh, and Kim have superbly proven that the constraints can be overcome in very solid and persuasive manner. 

The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom is an extension of the authors’ 2000 intellectual endeavor, North Korea Through the Looking Glass (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2000). The primary focus of the previous work was on the power elite; where they eloquently outline Kim Il Sung's ascendance to power and Kim Jong-il's succession. The current book, however, focuses on an often-overlooked facet of the North Korean story: the people. As the authors note, the persistence of defectors in the last fifteen years has cracked open the secretive society, and the observers now have unique access to the inner workings of the Hermit Kingdom. Given the general difficulty associated with coding the testimonies of a self-selected group, Hassig and Oh actively and judiciously introduce other very rich data sources to complete their picture. They look at newspapers, Communist Party propaganda materials, various learning materials such as textbooks, and radio and television broadcasting as complementary sources to individual testimony. This comprehensive and careful work analyzing almost every aspect of North Korean society (therefore each chapter is worthwhile to digest thoroughly, deserving careful attention) is not only very informative, but also turns out to be a surprisingly pleasurable read. Overall, the lucid, precise and prosaic writing makes this work an even more significant landmark contribution to the field.

Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea is a brilliant example of tenacious academic pursuit. Kim's rigorous analysis of the challenging topic holds the reader in unceasing fascination, and the combination of the two components of addressing relatively esoteric subject matter and staying engaged with audience is not necessarily an easy task. Kim's presentation of North Korea's propaganda schemata in a crisp, solid and engaging manner is highly commendable. The chapters demystify and dissect the social construction of the “Confucian-family state” through the cultural lens of mass-media production and consumption. It continues to analyze the gendered dynamics of state power, familial hierarchy, and socialist state building. A specific aspect of this remarkable book lies within the creative reversal of analytical angle where the author positions herself as the audience, reader, listener, and mass game performer. Through this analytical reversal, the book transcends the creation, production, and staging of the world's most thorough propaganda machine. It also addresses certain feelings and instilled emotions not only on the part of receiving end, but also the creators and stage performers. The book as a whole deserves careful reading and appreciation. However, for those readers with time constraints, of particular interest are Chapter 1, on the technical fusion of film and theater in the North Korean cinema industry, and Chapter 6, on paradoxes of revealing the hidden and harsh reality through the staged reality by means of controlled tourism and international festivals as the showcase. 

Hassig and Oh's The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom would make a wonderful briefing material not only for the lay readers about North Korea, but also as introductory reading for undergraduate as well as graduate level courses on North Korea and the Korean peninsula. Kim's interdisciplinary Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea can be used as primary material for North Korea area studies, and supplementary reading for social psychology, performance and theater, film and cultural studies. Thanks to these comprehensively brilliant works, everyday life of the hidden people of North Korea is becoming less opaque and more limpidly interesting to observers. These two works are not only important contributions in this light, but are bound to be timeless classics.