The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: Escaping Tyranny in North Korea

He had to make an irrevocable decision. If he made another left, he would complete his training loop and could land on schedule at Sunan. If he turned right and flew south over the thirty-eighth parallel, he would be a traitor . . .

In September 1953, North Korea's youngest fighter pilot, No Kum Sok, stole a Soviet MiG-15 fighter plane and flew it towards a US airbase. With no means to communicate with the Americans on the ground and no way of predicting their reaction to his arrival, No took the greatest risk of his life in attempting to escape to freedom.

Set against the shadowy rise of Kim Il Sung and the history of the world's most secretive country, this is the story of one man's astonishing escape from the longest-lasting totalitarian state, and how that state came to be.

'Riveting' Wall Street Journal

'Reads like a thriller' Financial Times