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Charles Clover

Where am I?

North Korea is as absolute a tyranny as the human imagination can devise. But its totalitarianism, quasi-religious veneration of personality and literal necrocracy (Kim Il Sung, the head of state, died in 1994) are not just outlandish aspects of an impenetrable state. They are part of a permanent humanitarian catastrophe that threatens to become unimaginably worse. Calls for international diplomacy to alleviate the plight of a threatened, maltreated and starving people are routine and rarely observed. This one must be, and the chances of its succeeding depend on the one state that has potential leverage: China.

Of all the atrocities of modern...