The author of an “unauthorized autobiography” of Kim Jong Il chose the late Dear Leader because Kim remains easily identified, but not actually well-known, he told NK News.

Michael Malice has authored, co-authored or contributed to several books, but admits he knew little about Kim, or North Korea more broadly, before he began writing his latest.

Still, in Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, Malice writes a coherent historyof the North Korean regime – albeit from the Dear Leader’s viewpoint – drawing on documented but not popularly known incidents from the formation of the