A novel look at North Korea

A novel by a former Western intelligence officer using the pseudonym James Church features a protagonist struggling to keep his humanity in an authoritarian and increasingly corrupt society. Peter Hayes of the Ploughshares-funded Nautilus Institute wrote in the group's newsletter that Church's first book is the "best unclassified account of how North Korea works and why it has survived all these years when the rest of the communist world capitulated to the global market a decade ago." The novel features struggles between the protagonist’s, Inspector O, Ministry of Public Security (basically the police) and Big Brother-like agencies wielding political power.