In The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot , international bestselling author Blaine Harden tells the riveting story of how North Korea's Kim Il Sung seized power, plunging his country into war, while the youngest fighter pilot in his air force was playing a high-risk game of deception - and of escape. As Kim ascended from Soviet puppet to godlike ruler, No Kum Sok pretended to love his Great Leader, until one day he stole a Soviet MiG-15, flying it across the border with South Korea and delivering it to the Americans, not knowing they were offering a huge bounty on the warplane. This feat - just weeks after the Korean War ended in July 1953 - electrified the world and incited Kim's bloody vengeance. Drawing on documents from Chinese and Russian archives that record the role of Mao and Stalin in Kim's shadowy rise, as well as from never before released US intelligence and interrogation files, Blaine Harden, lauded author of Escape From Camp 14 , presents a gripping and ambitious non-fiction thriller. At once a heart-pounding escape story and an entirely new way of understanding the longest lasting totalitarian state, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot is an enthralling exploration of the world's most secretive country, through the intertwined lives of two very different North Koreans.