The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia - Andrei Lankov

A well-written, interesting account of the rise and nature of the North Korean State.  Lankov lived there as a foreign exchange student at some point and still seems to maintain contacts there, as well as in other diplomatic circles that share their views of North Korea with him.  Both a factual and personal account from what I would think is one of the better placed people to discuss this secretive regime.
Lankov explains the crazy international relations that Korea follows - attempts to bribe unsupervised aid from other countries that it can use to reward and maintain the Kim family support system within the country.
He also looks at their crazy economic system - or complete lack thereof currently.  Most of the country seems to survive in some kind of economic anarchic state without rules or supervision - anarchic in the sense where everything is negotiable and has its price, both objects, services and dispensations from "rules".
The last two chapters look at various scenarios and issues around what he sees as the inevitable collapse of the current regime.

As an aside, there are also some interesting little bits of information and observation around the fall of communism in Russia and other satellite states from an insider's perspective.

The Long Road Home - KIm Yong

The story of an escapee from North Korea.  Kim Yong starts off as an orphan, but ends up as part of the elite of North Korea.  He lives in Pyong Yang and is part of the shadow pirate economy that collects foreign exchange through illegal cash trading on international markets to finance the elite's life style.  He is completely swallowed up in the machine.  Through some counterrevolutionary family connections that come out at one point, he ends up in the work camp/death camp system that operated some of the basic economy, such as coal mining.  He then escapes to China, and eventually South Korea.

A surprising story.  You get a look at the Land of Oz that is Pyong Yang in an otherwise desperate country.  You get a look at the desperate conditions of the work camp system.  What you don't get is any view, any understanding of the life of the average peasant or worker outside of Pyong Yang.  It is as if he never even saw the rest of the country - and yet there are stories of him driving all over the country to procure items for export.  As if he is completely blinded by the ideology, the privileges, the social gulf between rulers and ruled.
Another thing is, in spite of the harsh end to his life in North Korea, he emerges with all his inculcated propaganda intact, even in prison never having questioned the nature of the state and its messages.  Strange.