By calling attention to relations with the Third World as a critical component of North Korea's developing national identity, Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader offers a significant and refreshing contribution to understanding the historical development of North Korea that moves beyond the familiar narrative of an emerging state situated amongst China and the Soviet Union in the Cold War context.
-Hanmee Kim, Wheaton College
Benjamin R. Young's book is beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and absolutely eye-opening. Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader provides an unprecedented look into the causes and consequences of North Korea's struggle for international influence.
-Mitchell Lerner, Ohio State University
North Korea has been an isolated nation since the 1990s, but interestingly Young points out odd relics of a time the so-called Hermit Kingdom reached out to the world, such as Kim Il Sung Avenue in Mozambique's capital Maputo. For the casual Korea watcher this book is a surprise: it shows the country's story hasn't been all bad.-Frank Beyer, Asian Review of Books
This is a serious work of history, not a light read, but it's really well researched. More importantly, it manages to say something new and interesting about North Korea, which frankly is rare. Young shows how North Korea was once extremely active in the Third World, building movements against western imperialism that today look militantly quixotic but at the time had revolutionary potential. The dense networks of exchange and patronage that North Korea forged, across the Third World but in Africa especially, added to its own sense of purpose and informed its vision of unification of the Korean Peninsula.-Van Jackson, The Duck of Minerva
Today, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, is widely viewed as a dangerous rogue state that is irrationally pursuing nuclear weapons despite international condemnation and the crushing poverty of its own people... Benjamin Young's Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader turns this picture on its head by taking the reader back to a time when North Korea was competing with the world's superpowers by presenting itself as an alternative model of development for Third World audiences.-Daniel Connolly, The Middle Ground Journal
Guns, Guerrillas and the Great Leader rightly underlines the North as the Cold War success story. In the long post war liberation struggles and the aftermath with the sweet success of victory there were appreciations for solidarity and quests for new maps. The North had provided the first home and away.-Glyn Ford, Asian Affairs
[Young's] monograph is a valuable contribution to North Korean, Cold War, and Third World studies, as it provides detailed factual information on Pyongyang's interactions with over twenty Third World states. Its colourful description of the heavy-handed methods of North Korean diplomacy makes it easier to understand why many non-aligned countries, having initially embraced the DPRK, soon became disillusioned with its behaviour. At the same time, the author also demonstrates that North Korea did manage to retain a foothold in certain developing countries even after a series of regime changes, precisely because of the same opportunistic pragmatism that repulsed some other Third World leaders.-Balazs Szalontai, Pacific Affairs
Guns, Guerillas, and the Great Leader is a gem among several new books on North Korean diplomacy and leadership. The book is also very accessible to a wider general audience. Despite the book's weighty subject matter, its title alludes to some of the fascinating anecdotes that fill its pages, thus making Young's first monograph a thoroughly enjoyable read.-Andrew Yeo, H-Diplo
The book is fascinating as it sets out in readable form that inter-Korean legitimacy battle in the early decades of the two states, an era when literally any sovereign territorywith a vote in the UNbecame a sought-after target for both North and South, all the way down to small island chains in the waters of the Caribbean and Pacific.-Christopher Green, H-Diplo
Young has written a compelling and thoughtful book on a subject that has received little attention until now. Given readers' seemingly inexhaustible curiosity about all things North Korea, this is no small feat for a first book. I look forward to reading what comes next.-Bridget Coggins, H-Diplo
