Sun Tyrant: A Nightmare Called North Korea

Using extensive research, interviews, and his own experiences, JP Floru uncovers the oddities and tragedies at the heart of the world’s most secretive regime. In the spring of 2016, Londoner JP Floru tagged along with three friends running the Pyongyang Marathon, what he discovered is a place second only to the moon in other-worldliness. During their nine-day trip the group were shown by two minders what the regime wanted them to see. They were astounded when witnessing people bowing before their leaders’ statues, being told not to take photos of the leaders’ 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. 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.