The sun tyrant

the long version

When, in the spring of 2016, Londoner JP Floru tagged along with three friends running the Pyongyang Marathon, he discovered a place second only to the Moon in other-worldliness. During their nine-day trip they were shown by two minders what the regime wanted them to see. The group was astounded when witnessing people bowing before their leaders' statues, being told not to take photos of the leader's feet, and hearing the hushed reverence with which people recite the history invented by the regime to keep itself in power. Often the group of friends did not understand what they were seeing - from the empty five-lane motorway to the missing fifth floor of their janggakdo Hotel on an island in the Pudong River. Many of the answers came through piecing together the clues, others from extensive research of the few sources that exist about this hermit country. Shocking and scary, and combining the diary he kept during his North Korea visit with extensive research about the idiosyncrasies of that famously enigmatic country, The Sun Tyrant shows what happens when a population is reduced to near-slavery in the twenty-first century.