North Korea has always puzzled, partly because its extreme isolation means we know so little about it. Former US vice-president Walter Mondale once said that anyone claiming to be an expert on the country was either a liar or a fool. Many times, Pyongyang appears to have craved dialogue with the west, particularly Washington. Yet at the same time it has pursued policies of extreme rhetorical and even physical antagonism, such as when it tried to blow up the South Korean cabinet in Rangoon in 1983 as it was seeking talks. Its twin desires to be isolated and to be engaged has left the west baffled about how to deal with it.

Paul French’s useful, if overlong, book portrays North Korea as a nation born through guerrilla activity and still psychologically in a state of war. Its paranoia has given birth to what he calls a “warrior communism”. That partially explains the seeming passivity of a people who have suffered humiliation, deprivation and, at times, starvation without any visible attempt to overthrow the regime. If much reporting on North Korea is hysterical, even at times grotesquely comical, French has gone the other way. His book is dry, serious and filled with acronyms, though it is written with a brisk confidence. He also manages to have the occasional bit of fun as with his description of the three-generation Kim dynasty throughout as Kim1, Kim2 and Kim3.

The US has stumbled badly in its dealings with North Korea, oscillating between engagement and sanctions, often with perverse results. President Bill Clinton’s 1994 Agreed Framework – in which Pyongyang promised to suspend its nuclear weapons programme in return for proliferation-resistant civil nuclear technology – was cynically exploited. Kim Jong Il milked the US of cash and expertise while continuing to enrich uranium. President George?W Bush’s hardline approach, epitomised by his “axis of evil” speech, fared no better. Predicated on the mistaken belief that North Korea faced imminent collapse, talk of regime change merely pushed Pyongyang to accelerate its plans for a nuclear bomb. Even Mr Bush did not squeeze North Korea to the extent that the US has consistently blockaded Cuba. Throughout, the regime in Pyongyang has been kept alive by a drip-feed of humanitarian aid.