Nae Chingu Kim Jong-Un

Award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim demystifies the inscrutable North Korean leader

A woman falls over a thin black line, slicing her in two—half becoming North Korea, the other half becoming South. From the Island of Ganghwa, a seemingly idyllic rural paradise just an hour outside of Seoul, North Korea sits mere miles away, visible from cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s home and studio. It looms over her while she walks her dogs through the rice paddies. Artillery fire, helicopters, and sirens from a nearby military base paint her acoustic landscape. Gendry-Kim has written extensively about the pain and heartbreak experienced throughout Korea’s recent history in her award-winning books Grass and The Wai...