Valutazione: 0 su 5 stelle
0 valutazioni
Caricamento
SH![]()
author
Steve Hammond
Only a brief background of Brother J is available.
Brother J was born in 1962 as the third and youngest child to intelligentsia parents in Pyongyang, North Korea. His father was an army reporter a...visualizza altroOnly a brief background of Brother J is available.
Brother J was born in 1962 as the third and youngest child to intelligentsia parents in Pyongyang, North Korea. His father was an army reporter and his mother was a history teacher. His mother’s grandfather fought very closely with Kim Il-Sung, the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), against the Japanese in Manchuria. Therefore, Brother J’s family enjoyed the special, privileged political status of living in the capital, Pyongyang, during Kim Il-Sung’s reign. Only an elite group of DPRK citizens are allowed to live in Pyongyang.
Kim Jong-Il succeeded his father, Kim Il-Sung, following his death, and became the Supreme Leader of the DPRK in 1994. Kim Jong-Il immediately formed his own coterie, and Brother J’s family were pushed out of the mainstream. From then on, Brother J’s family began to encounter political persecution and was branded as anti-party. That was one of the reasons why Brother J was eventually expelled to a remote area of RyangKangDo, formerly North HamKyung Province, the most northern part of the DPRK and far away from Pyongyang.
Initially, Brother J wanted to major in Korean literature and become a reporter, but the Workers’ Party steered his career to medicine. Medicine was far from his interest and character, and he quit medical school within a year. We know from Chapter 1 in this book that he finished college, but do not know what his major was. As noted in the preface to this book, Brother J was well schooled in DPRK politics, economy, culture, and military affairs while he was trained as a member of the special forces.
Right before he was expelled from the Workers’ Party as a cadre to a rural farming community to work as a farmhand after being found guilty of noncompliance with government agricultural policy, Brother J worked on a team at the Local Committee’s Organization Department of the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang.
Brother J was tragically killed in October 2012 in China near the North Korean border.visualizza meno