Necessary background for our understadning of this mystic leader and the regime that he built...a major conribution to scholarship and essential reading for anyuone intersted in contemporary Korea. Journal of Asian Studies Dae-Sook Suh... has to be commended for a thoroughly-researched study of the first North Korean president Il Sum King. Suh has produced a first rate historical study of the North Korean leader, his life and his politics. Korean Quarterly