The Sister

July 31, 2023
Tufts University law professor Lee debuts with an informative if overwrought portrait of Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Lee contends that, even among her ruthless family, Yo Jong is uniquely sinister (as evidenced by her vitriolic anti-Western statements, made from her increasing positions of power within the government) and on the cusp of attaining even greater authority (evinced not only by her continued promotions and public appearances, but by reading between the lines of symbolic gestures made in official pageantry, including a procession wherein Yo Jong and her brother had the same dynastic insignia embroidered on their horses’ decorative headgear). While Lee successfully makes his case for Yo Jong’s signifiance (his theory that she is currently next in line for succession appears well-founded), as well as her worrying zealousness, the analysis is undermined by off-putting snark and flowery scaremongering (“men twice her age tremble and grovel before her”) and uncritical repackaging of combative takes on North Korean history and current geopolitics. (Lee rehashes a propagandistic Cold War narrative that calls into question the WWII-era guerrilla fighter bona fides of Kim Il Sung, the dynasty’s founder, and unpersuasively dismisses the idea that food shortages in contemporary North Korea are caused even in part by U.S. sanctions.) Readers looking for a measured take on the undeniably brutal regime will be left wanting.