Anna Fifield Interviewed by Alec Russell

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Journalist and leading authority on North Korea Anna Fifield gives a fascinating insight into the secretive and bizarre dictatorship of Kim Jong Un and explains how he came to lead a bankrupt country that can possess nuclear weapons and summon a US president.

Fifield has been writing about North Korea for 15 years and visited the country a dozen times. She had access to Kim’s aunt and uncle, who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, and was befriended by Kim’s Japanese sushi chef. Fifield throws light on the myths and the dark stories – from the tale that his ankles supposedly gave way because he ate too much cheese to the rival family members killed at his command.

“Superb . . . a detailed account of a regime and a personality that are normally shrouded in mystery.”  – Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

Fifield began covering North Korea in 2004 when she was the Financial Times Seoul correspondent. She returned to the region in 2014 as the Washington Post correspondent for Japan and the Koreas. She won the Shorenstein Journalism Award for her outstanding reporting on Asia. Here she talks to Alec Russell, editor of FT Weekend.

An FT Weekend at the Bodleian event.