In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, New York Times bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how Kim Il Sung grabbed power and plunged his country into war against the United States while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception—and escape. As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok noisily pretended to love his Great Leader. That is, until he swiped a Soviet MiG-15 and delivered it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a $100,000 bounty for the warplane (the equivalent of nearly one million dollars today). The theft—just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953—electrified the world and incited Kim’s bloody vengeance. During the Korean War the United States brutally carpet bombed the North, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and giving the Kim dynasty, as Harden reveals, the fact-based narrative it would use to this day to sell paranoia and hatred of Americans. Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives about the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim’s shadowy rise, as well as from never-before-released U.S. intelligence and interrogation files, Harden gives us a heart-pounding escape adventure and an entirely new way to understand the world’s longest-lasting totalitarian state.

《紐約時報》暢銷書作家布萊恩‧哈登推出最新力作！在本書中，布萊恩娓娓道來金日成如何走向權力巔峰並將北韓帶入反抗美國的戰爭，而其空軍裡最年輕的戰鬥機飛行員卻冒險犯下欺騙的罪名成為了脫北者。盧今錫在金日成脫離蘇聯傀儡政權的掌握後，假裝景仰這位神般的偉大領袖。直到他將蘇聯的 MiG-15戰鬥機交付給美國人，才顯露逃出北韓的動機，不過他聲稱自己不曉得此戰機值 10 萬美元的賞金（將近現今的一百萬美元）。此竊機事件在 1953 年七月韓戰結束後幾週震驚了全世界，也掀起金正日的血腥報復。韓戰期間，美國殘忍地以地毯式轟炸攻擊北韓，殺害成千上萬的民眾，就哈登所透露，此舉給予金氏王朝事實佐證，讓北韓時至今日仍可以操弄仇美的偏執情緒。哈登截取中國和俄羅斯檔案館中的文件，內容有關毛澤東和史達林在金正日的崛起中所扮演的角色，以及從未公佈的美國情報和審訊文件，為讀者呈現一個精彩刺激的冒險故事，提供一種全新的方式來認識這個世界上持續時間最長的極權主義國家。