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The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Kindle Edition
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, New York Times betselling novel of North Korea: an epic journey into the heart of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship.
“Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which [Adam] Johnson is painting here.”—The Washington Post
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”
Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • WINNER OF THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
Named ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by more than a dozen publications, including The Washington Post • Entertainment Weekly • The Wall Street Journal • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle
Praise for The Orphan Master’s Son
“An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”—Pulitzer Prize citation
“Mr. Johnson has written a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Rich with a sense of discovery . . . The Orphan Master’s Son has an early lead on novel of [the year].”—The Daily Beast
“This is a novel worth getting excited about.”—The Washington Post
“[A] ripping piece of fiction that is also an astute commentary on the nature of freedom, sacrifice, and glory.”—Elle
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House
- Publication dateJanuary 10, 2012
- File size2502 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2012: It is only January, but Adam Johnson’s astonishing novel is destined to cast a long shadow over the year in books. Jun Do is The Orphan Master’s Son, a North Korean citizen with a rough past who is working as a government-sanctioned kidnapper when we first meet him. He is hardly a sympathetic character, but sympathy is not author Johnson’s aim. In a totalitarian nation of random violence and bewildering caprice—a poor, gray place that nonetheless refers to itself as “the most glorious nation on earth”—an unnatural tension exists between a citizen’s national identity and his private life. Through Jun Do’s story we realize that beneath the weight of oppression and lies beats a heart not much different from our own—one that thirsts for love, acceptance, and hope—and that realization is at the heart of this shockingly believable, immersive, and thrilling novel. --Chris Schluep
Adam Johnson on The Orphan Master's Son
When I arrived at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport a few years ago, my head was still spinning from a landing on a runway lined with cattle, electric fences and the fuselages of other jets whose landings hadn't gone so well. Even though I'd spent three years writing and researching The Orphan Master's Son, I was unprepared for what I was about to encounter in “the most glorious nation in the world.”
I'd started writing about North Korea because of a fascination with propaganda and the way it prescribes an official narrative to an entire people. In Pyongyang, that narrative begins with the founding of a glorious nation under the fatherly guidance of Kim Il Sung, is followed by years of industry and sacrifice among its citizenry, so that when Kim Jong Il comes to power, all is strength, happiness and prosperity. It didn't matter that the story was a complete fiction--every citizen was forced to become a character whose motivations, desires and fears were dictated by this script. The labor camps were filled with those who hadn't played their parts, who'd spoken of deprivation instead of plenitude and the purest democracy.
When I visited places like Pyongyang, Kaesong City, Panmunjom and Myohyangsan, I understood that a genuine interaction with a North Korean citizen was unlikely, since contact with foreigners was illegal. As I walked the streets, not one person would risk a glance, a smile, even a pause in their daily routine. In the Puhung Metro Station, I wondered what happened to personal desires when they came into conflict with a national story. Was it possible to retain a personal identity in such conditions, and under what circumstances would a person reveal his or her true nature? These mysteries--of subsumed selves, of hidden lives, of rewritten longings--are the fuel of novels, and I felt a powerful desire to help reveal what a dynastic dictatorship had forced these people to conceal.
Of course, I could only speculate on those lives, filling the voids with research and imagination. Back home, I continued to read books and seek out personal accounts. Testimonies of gulag survivors like Kang Chol Hwan proved invaluable. But I found that most scholarship on the DPRK was dedicated to military, political and economic theory. Fewer were the books that focused directly on the people who daily endured such circumstances. Rarer were the narratives that tallied the personal cost of hidden emotions, abandoned relationships, forgotten identities. These stories I felt a personal duty to tell. Traveling to North Korea filled me with a sense that every person there, from the lowliest laborer to military leaders, had to surrender a rich private life in order to enact one pre-written by the Party. To capture this on the page, I created characters across all levels of society, from the orphan soldier to the Party leaders. And since Kim Jong Il had written the script for all of North Korea, my novel didn't make sense without writing his role as well.
Featured Photographs
Anti-tank devices seen while traveling south from Pyongyang toward PanmunjDPRK soldier
Air raid sirens
Revelutionary Martyr's Cemetery on Mount Taesong
Review
“An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.” —Pulitzer Prize citation
“All of these elements—stylistic panache, technical daring, moral weight and an uncanny sense of the current moment—combine in Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son, the single best work of fiction published in 2012. . . . The book's cunning, flair and pathos are testaments to the still-formidable power of the written word.” —The Wall Street Journal
“The Orphan Master’s Son performs an unusual form of sorcery, taking a frankly cruel and absurd reality and somehow converting it into a humane and believable fiction. It’s an epic feat of story-telling. It’s thrillingly written, and it's just thrilling period.” —Zadie Smith, Los Angeles Times
“A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That’s the genius of The Orphan Master’s Son. Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mâché creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable. This is a novel worth getting excited about, one which more than delivers on its pre-publication buzz… I haven’t liked a new novel this much in years, and I want to share the simple pleasure of reading the book. But I also think it’s an instructive lesson in how to paint a fictional world against a background of fact: The secret is research…It’s this process of re-imagination that makes the fictional locale so real and gives the novel an impact you could never achieve with a thousand newspaper stories. Johnson has painted in indelible colors the nightmare of Kim’s North Korea. When English readers want to understand what it was about — how people lived and died inside a cult of personality that committed unspeakable crimes against its citizens — I hope they will turn to this carefully documented story. The happy surprise is that they will find it such a page turner.” —The Washington Post
“Adam Johnson's remarkable novel The Orphan Master’s Son is set in North Korea, an entire nation that has conformed to the fictions spun by a dictator and his inner circle…Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity…We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel.” —Wall Street Journal
"A harrowing, clever, incomparable riff on life in Kim Jong Il's North Korea” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Magnificently accomplished…Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel, part romance, The Orphan Master’s Son is made sturdy by research…but what makes it so absorbing isn’t its documentary realism but the dark flight of the author's imagination…rich with a sense of discovery…The year is young, but The Orphan Master’s Son has an early lead on novel of 2012” —The Daily Beast
"Providing a rare glimpse into one of the world’s least known countries, Adam Johnson weaves a tale of hardship, romance, and redemption in North Korea in The Orphan Master’s Son." —National Geographic Traveler
“An incredibly vivid page-turner of a novel…Romance, coming-of-age tale, adventure and thriller all in one, this book is singular and not to be missed.” —The Huffington Post, 10 Best January Must-Reads
"The death of Kim Jong Il couldn't have come at a better time for novelist Adam Johnson. The Orphan Master’s Son is a richly textured political thriller about the hidden world of North Korea with all of its misery, violence and defiant acts of love under impossible circumstances. Stunning and evocative imagery abounds on every page.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Startling…Johnson's carefully layered story feels authentic...[He] writes light-footed prose, barely allowing harrowing glimpses of atrocity to register before accelerating onward. He resists the temptation to turn his subject matter into comic fodder, but never ignores the absurdity, provoking laughter with jagged edges that tends to die in your throat.” —Newsday
“Johnson’s novel accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an American writer has masterfully rendered the mysterious world of North Korea with the soul and savvy of a native, from its orphanages and its fishing boats to the kitchens of its high-ranking commanders. While oppressive propaganda echoes throughout, the tone never slides into caricature; if anything, the story unfolds with astounding empathy for those living in constant fear of imprisonment—or worse—but who manage to maintain their humanity against all odds. . . . Johnson juxtaposes the vicious atrocities of the regime with the tenderness of beauty, love, and hope.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[A] fantastical, careening tale…Informed by extensive research and travel to perhaps the most secretive nation on earth, Johnson has created a remarkable novel that encourages the willing suspension of disbelief.…Johnson winningly employs different voices, with the propagandizing national radio station serving as a mad Greek chorus. Part adventure, part coming-of-age tale, and part romance, The Orphan Master's Son is a triumph on every level.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Readers who enjoy a fast-paced political thriller will welcome this wild ride through the amazingly conflicted world that exists within the heavily guarded confines of North Korea. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] vivid, violent portrait of a nation…[a] macabrely realistic, politically savvy, satirically spot-on saga. Johnson’s metathriller, spiked with gory intrigues and romantic subplots, is a ripping piece of fiction that is also an astute commentary on the nature of freedom, sacrifice, and glory in a world where everyone’s “a survivor who has nothing to live for.” —Elle
“Ambitious, violent, audacious—and stunningly good.” —O Magazine
“Adam Johnson has pulled off literary alchemy, first by setting his novel in North Korea, a country that few of us can imagine, then by producing such compelling characters whose lives unfold at breakneck speed. I was engrossed right to the amazing conclusion. The result is pure gold, a terrific novel.” —Abraham Verghese
“An addictive novel of daring ingenuity; a study of sacrifice and freedom in a citizen-eating dynasty; and a timely reminder that anonymous victims of oppression are also human beings who love. A brave and impressive book.” —David Mitchell
“I've never read anything like it. This is truly an amazing reading experience, a tremendous accomplishment. I could spend days talking about how much I love this book. It sounds like overstatement, but no. The Orphan Master's Son is a masterpiece.” —Charles Bock
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
As the oldest boy at Long Tomorrows, Jun Do had responsibilities- portioning the food, assigning bunks, renaming the new boys from the list of the 114 Grand Martyrs of the Revolution. Even so, the Orphan Master was serious about showing no favoritism to his son, the only boy at Long Tomorrows who wasn't an orphan. When the rabbit warren was dirty, it was Jun Do who spent the night locked in it. When boys wet their bunks, it was Jun Do who chipped the frozen piss off the floor. Jun Do didn't brag to the other boys that he was the son of the Orphan Master, rather than some kid dropped off by parents on their way to a 9-27 camp. If someone wanted to figure it out, it was pretty obvious- Jun Do had been there before all of them, and the reason he'd never been adopted was because his father would never let someone take his only son. And it made sense that after his mother was stolen to Pyongyang, his father had applied for the one position that would allow him to both earn a living and watch over his son.
The surest evidence that the woman in the photo was Jun Do's mother was the unrelenting way the Orphan Master singled him out for punishment. It could only mean that in Jun Do's face, the Orphan Master saw the woman in the picture, a daily reminder of the eternal hurt he felt from losing her. Only a father in that kind of pain could take a boy's shoes in winter. Only a true father, flesh and bone, could burn a son with the smoking end of a coal shovel.
Occasionally, a factory would adopt a group of kids, and in the spring, men with Chinese accents would come to make their picks. Other than that, anyone who could feed the boys and provide a bottle for the Orphan Master could have them for the day. In summer they filled sandbags and in winter they used metal bars to break sheets of ice from the docks. On the machining floors, for bowls of cold chap chai, they would shovel the coils of oily metal that sprayed from the industrial lathes. The railyard fed them best, though, spicy yukejang. One time, shoveling out boxcars, they swept up a powder that looked like salt. It wasn't until they started sweating that they turned red, their hands and faces, their teeth. The train had been filled with chemicals for the paint factory. For weeks, they were red.
And then in the year Juche 85, the floods came. Three weeks of rain, yet the loudspeakers said nothing of terraces collapsing, earth dams giving, villages cascading into one another. The Army was busy trying to save the Sungli 58 factory from the rising water, so the Long Tomorrows boys were given ropes and long-handled gaffs to try to snare people from the Chongjin River before they were washed into the harbor. The water was a roil of timber, petroleum tanks, and latrine barrels. A tractor tire turned in the water, a Soviet refrigerator. They heard the deep booms of boxcars tumbling along the river bottom. The canopy of a troop carrier spun past, a screaming family clinging to it. Then a young woman rose from the water, mouth wide but silent, and the orphan called Bo Song gaffed her arm-right away he was jerked into the current. Bo Song had come to the orphanage a frail boy, and when they discovered he had no hearing, Jun Do gave him the name Un Bo Song, after the 37th Martyr of the Revolution, who'd famously put mud in his ears so he couldn't hear the bullets as he charged the Japanese.
Still, the boys shouted "Bo Song, Bo Song" as they ran the riverbanks, racing beside the patch of river where Bo Song should have been. They ran past the outfall pipes of the Unification Steelworks and along the muddy berms of the Ryongsong's leach ponds, but Bo Song was never seen again. The boys stopped at the harbor, its dark waters ropy with corpses, thousands of them in the throes of the waves, looking like curds of sticky millet that start to flop and toss when the pan heats.
Though they didn't know it, this was the beginning of the famine-first went the power, then the train service. When the shock-work whistles stopped blowing, Jun Do knew it was bad. One day the fishing fleet went out and didn't come back. With winter came blackfinger and the old people went to sleep. These were just the first months, long before the bark-eaters. The loudspeakers called the famine an Arduous March, but that voice was piped in from Pyongyang. Jun Do had never heard anyone in Chongjin call it that. What was happening to them didn't need a name-it was everything, every fingernail you chewed and swallowed, every lift of an eyelid, every trip to the latrine where you tried to shit out wads of balled sawdust. When all hope was gone, the Orphan Master burned the bunks, the boys sleeping around a pot stove that glowed on their last night. In the morning, he flagged down a Soviet Tsir, the military truck they called "the crow" because of its black canvas canopy on the back. There were only a dozen boys left, a perfect fit in the back of the crow. All orphans are destined for the Army eventually. But this was how Jun Do, at fourteen, became a tunnel soldier, trained in the art of zero-light combat.
And that's where Officer So found him, eight years later. The old man actually came underground to get a look at Jun Do, who'd spent an overnighter with his team inside a tunnel that went ten kilometers under the DMZ, almost to the suburbs of Seoul. When exiting a tunnel, they'd always walk out backward, to let their eyes adjust, and he almost ran into Officer So, whose shoulders and big rib cage spoke of a person who'd come of age in the good times, before the Chollima campaigns.
"Are you Pak Jun Do?" he asked.
When Jun Do turned, a circle of light glowed behind the man's close- cropped white hair. The skin on his face was darker than his scalp or jaw, making it look like the man had just shaved off a beard and thick, wild hair. "That's me," Jun Do said.
"That's a Martyr's name," Officer So said. "Is this an orphan detail?"
Jun Do nodded his head. "It is," he said. "But I'm not an orphan."
Officer So's eyes fell upon the red taekwondo badge on Jun Do's chest.
"Fair enough," Officer So said and tossed him a sack.
In it were blue jeans, a yellow shirt with a polo pony, and shoes called Nikes that Jun Do recognized from long ago, when the orphanage was used to welcome ferry-loads of Koreans who had been lured back from Japan with promises of Party jobs and apartments in Pyongyang. The orphans would wave welcome banners and sing Party songs so that the Japanese Koreans would descend the gangway, despite the horrible state of Chongjin and the crows that were waiting to transport them all to kwan li so labor camps. It was like yesterday, watching those perfect boys with their new sneakers, finally coming home.
Jun Do held up the yellow shirt. "What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked.
"It's your new uniform," Officer So said. "You don't get seasick, do you?"
*
He didn't. They took a train to the eastern port of Cholhwang, where Officer So commandeered a fishing boat, the crew so frightened of their military guests that they wore their Kim Il Sung pins all the way across the sea to the coast of Japan. Upon the water, Jun Do saw small fish with wings and late morning fog so thick it took the words from your mouth. There were no loudspeakers blaring all day, and all the fishermen had portraits of their wives tattooed on their chests. The sea was spontaneous in a way he'd never seen before-it kept your body uncertain as to how you'd lean next, and yet you could become comfortable with that. The wind in the rigging seemed in communication with the waves shouldering the hull, and lying atop the wheelhouse under the stars at night, it seemed to Jun Do that this was a place a man could close his eyes and exhale.
Officer So had also brought along a man named Gil as their translator. Gil read Japanese novels on the deck and listened to headphones attached to a small cassette player. Only once did Jun Do try to speak to Gil, approaching him to ask what he was listening to. But before Jun Do could open his mouth, Gil stopped the player and said the word "Opera."
They were going to get someone-someone on a beach-and bring that someone home with them. That's all Officer So would say about their trip.
On the second day, darkness falling, they could see the distant lights of a town, but the Captain would take the boat no closer.
"This is Japan," he said. "I don't have charts for these waters."
"I'll tell you how close we get," Officer So said to the Captain, and with a fisherman sounding for the bottom, they made for the shore.
Jun Do got dressed, cinching the belt to keep the stiff jeans on.
"Are these the clothes of the last guy you kidnapped?" Jun Do asked.
Officer So said, "I haven't kidnapped anyone in years."
Jun Do felt his face muscles tighten, a sense of dread running through him.
"Relax," Officer So said. "I've done this a hundred times."
"Seriously?"
"Well, twenty-seven times."
Officer So had brought a little skiff along, and when they were close to the shore, he directed the fishermen to lower it. To the west, the sun was setting over North Korea, and it was cooling now, the wind shifting directions. The skiff was tiny, Jun Do thought, barely big enough for one person, let alone three and a struggling kidnap victim. With a pair of binoculars and a thermos, Officer So climbed down into the skiff. Gil followed. When Jun Do took his place next to Gil, black water lapped over the sides, and right away his shoes soaked through. He debated revealing that he couldn't swim.
Gil kept trying to get Jun Do to repeat phrases in Japanese. Good evening-Konban wa. Excuse me, I am lost-Chotto sumimasen, michi ni mayoimashita. Can you help me find my cat?-Watashi no neko ga maigo ni narimashita?
Officer So pointed their nose toward shore, the old man pushing the outboard motor, a tired Soviet Vpresna, way too hard. Turning north and running with the coast, the boat would lean shoreward as a swell lifted, then rock back toward open water as the wave set it down again.
Gil took the binoculars, but instead of training them on the beach, he studied the tall buildings, the way the downtown neon came to life.
"I tell you," Gil said. "There was no Arduous March in this place."
Jun Do and Officer So exchanged a look.
Officer So said to Gil, "Tell him what 'how are you' was again."
"Ogenki desu ka," Gil said.
"Ogenki desu ka," Jun Do repeated. "Ogenki desu ka."
"Say it like 'How are you, my fellow citizen?' Ogenki desu ka," Officer So said. "Not like how are you, I'm about to pluck you off this fucking beach."
Jun Do asked, "Is that what you call it, plucking?"
"A long time ago, that's what we called it." He put on a fake smile. "Just say it nice."
Jun Do said, "Why not send Gil? He's the one who speaks Japanese."
Officer So returned his eyes to the water. "You know why you're here."
Gil asked, "Why's he here?"
Officer So said, "Because he fights in the dark."
Gil turned to Jun Do. "You mean that's what you do, that's your career?" he asked.
"I lead an incursion team," Jun Do said. "Mostly we run in the dark, but yeah, there's fighting, too."
Gil said, "I thought my job was fucked up."
"What was your job?" Jun Do asked.
"Before I went to language school?" Gil asked. "Land mines."
"What, like defusing them?"
"I wish," Gil said.
They closed within a couple hundred meters of shore, then trolled along the beaches of Kagoshima Prefecture. The more the light faded, the more intricately Jun Do could see it reflected in the architecture of each wave that rolled them.
Gil lifted his hand. "There," he said. "There's somebody on the beach. A woman."
Officer So backed off the throttle and took the field glasses. He held them steady and fine-tuned them, his bushy white eyebrows lifting and falling as he focused. "No," he said, handing the binoculars back to Gil. "Look closer, it's two women. They're walking together."
Jun Do said, "I thought you were looking for a guy?"
"It doesn't matter," the old man said. "As long as the person's alone."
"What, we're supposed to grab just anybody?"
Officer So didn't answer. For a while, there was nothing but the sound of the Vpresna. Then Officer So said, "In my time, we had a whole division, a budget. I'm talking about a speedboat, a tranquilizing gun. We'd surveil, infiltrate, cherry-pick. We didn't pluck family types, and we never took children. I retired with a perfect record. Now look at me. I must be the only one left. I'll bet I'm the only one they could find who remembers this business."
Gil fixed on something on the beach. He wiped the lenses of the binoculars, but really it was too dark to see anything. He handed them to Jun Do. "What do you make out?" he asked.
When Jun Do lifted the binoculars, he could barely discern a male figure moving along the beach, near the water-he was just a lighter blur against a darker blur, really. Then some motion caught Jun Do's eye. An animal was racing down the beach toward the man-a dog it must've been, but it was big, the size of a wolf. The man did something and the dog ran away.
Jun Do turned to Officer So. "There's a man. He's got a dog with him."
Officer So sat up and put a hand on the outboard engine. "Is he alone?"
Jun Do nodded.
"Is the dog an akita?"
Jun Do didn't know his breeds. Once a week, the orphans had cleaned out a local dog farm. Dogs were filthy animals that would lunge for you at any opportunity-you could see where they'd attacked the posts of their pens, chewing through the wood with their fangs. That's all Jun Do needed to know about dogs.
Officer So said, "As long as the thing wags its tail. That's all you got to worry about."
Gil said, "The Japanese train their dogs to do little tricks. Say to the dog, Nice doggie, sit. Yoshi Yoshi. Osuwari Kawaii desu ne."
Jun Do said, "Will you shut up with the Japanese?"
Product details
- ASIN : B004X6PRO6
- Publisher : Random House; 1st edition (January 10, 2012)
- Publication date : January 10, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 2502 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 459 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0857520563
- Best Sellers Rank: #118,381 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Adam Johnson lives in Minnesota with his wife and children. His first poetry collection, What Are You Doing Out Here Alone, Away From Everyone?, was published by HASH Press.
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Some readers may be aware of countries that broadcast information loudly and frequently throughout the day by means of public loudspeakers. The truth as the government sees it is impossible to avoid, paying attention is demanded of the citizenry and critical analysis or questioning of facts presented is strongly discouraged and may be life threatening. A visitor from a Western nation after being exposed to this system would never criticize elevator music again. In this novel, we look at North Korea. I have seen the same system in China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. North Koreas efforts as presented in this book are unique in the extremes reached that defy belief.
Immediately after the table of contents, before we are introduced to our hero and protagonist Jun Do, we get a chance to read one of these broadcasts. According to Johnson, many of these ridiculous claims typically broadcast as news were lifted from actual news articles published in a popular North Korean newspaper. A few examples:
(1) While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Reverend General some much needed shade on a hot day. (p. 3)
(2) The shark has an ancient camaraderie with the Korean people. In the year 1592, did sharks not offer fish from their own mouths to help sustain Admiral Yi’s sailors during the siege of Okpo Harbor? Our national actress Sun Moon capsized in Inchon Bay while trying to prevent the American sneak attack (Korean War). It was a scary moment for all of us as the sharks began to circle her, helpless amid the waves. But did the sharks not recognize Sun Moon’s Korean modesty? Did they not smell the hot blood of her patriotism and lift her upon their fins to carry her safely to shore, where she could join the raging battle to repel the imperialist invaders? (p 5-6)
Our public information narrator in (1) above is referring to Kim Jong-il but the same could be (and probably is) said about the current leader, Kim Jong-un. In (2) above, reference is made to Sun Moon who will have an important part in this story as she is the love interest of Jun Do. She is possibly the love interest of the entire Korean male population much the same as American males were in love with Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and on and on in the fantasy world. But Jun Do will never meet Sun Moon in his Jun Do persona. He will meet her as Commander Ga and how that comes about is as fascinating in its fictional creation as is the information we learn about North Korea.
Jun Do might be an orphan. We first meet him as a child in an orphanage. But Jun Do will never accept the label “orphan.” He presents his rationale of why he is not an orphan; the orphan master of the orphanage “Long Tomorrows” would never give him so much responsibility for and over other orphans if he were not, in fact, the son of the orphan master. But Jun Do also acknowledges that what is true in reality may conflict with the reality as prescribed by the government. And the Dear Leader, whether Kim il-Sung, Kim Jong-il, or Kim Jong-un is never wrong.
During a famine, labeled by the government as “The Arduous March”, the orphan master gave into the reality of no food and no way to survive other than distributing the orphans to other places, especially places with a government connection. Jun Do, at 14, went to the Army and became a tunnel rat. He learned skills enabling him to fight and survive in total darkness. He worked in tunnels that crossed borders where members of Jun Do’s team would surface to steal goods that could not be found in North Korea. Eight years later he was discovered by a man who would turn him into a kidnapper and a thief of other goods from Japan. During this job, he would learn seafaring skills. Jun Do also attracted the attention of intelligence officials. They noted that during his kidnapping adventures, he developed an interest in learning Japanese. Just as with the label “Orphan,” Jun Do refused to accept the label “Spy.” Again the government reality prevailed and while on a fishing boat Jun Do was tasked to listen for broadcasts from US and South Korean vessels. After an unfortunate incident with a US Navy ship and a South Korean officer, Jun Do was rewarded as a hero. As a form of reward, he was sent to the US as part of a diplomatic initiative.
Returning from the US, the team was deemed corrupted by western values. They had also failed to return with an item desired by the Dear Leader. The entire team was disciplined. Jun Do lost his hero status and was sent to the mines as punishment. Jun Do disappeared and was not heard from again.
Commander Ga was the Minister of Mines. He had to make frequent inspections of mines in a quest for certain rocks that made certain measuring meters click at a high rate of speed. The trips were lengthy and wife Sun Moon always expectantly awaited his return. Not with joy and love, but with fear, hate, and disgust. When he returned from his latest trip, she did not greet him with joy and love, but the fear, hate, and disgust were gone. It was as if he were a different man. And the love story begins. This is also where we meet our third narrator, an interrogator. A reader who also has familiarity with interrogation will discover a lot of points of comparison with western interrogation methods.
The improbability and coincidences in the fictional story are as amazing as the unreality that is depicted as North Korea. They are at the same level and are why the book works so well. There are many stories told that are woven together as skillfully as the quilt of the Senator’s wife (told during Jun Do’s visit to Texas).
This is a remarkable book told by an author with limited access to a closed society. There is a narcissistic cult leader, a totalitarian government, and a repressed people (physically) who have to deal with an inherent evolution (mentally). How they succeed and fail in their struggles invites our emotional attachment and reflection. This is a great book not to be read quickly.
From modern psychology perspective, the Author was using the usual tricks to impress journalists and critics: exaggerations noble art, combined with everything that is disgusting for human beings. Lots of blood, mucus, eating moths, eating sperm of animals to survive, also drain blood, and all the things we humans instinctively reject. It's the only way you can wake up a Journalist, from their daily stories about misery and violence. The Pulitzer prize was for sure by this move. There are so many aspects, this why the novel is not leaving the head at once.
This novel shows the surrealistic everyday of people in a dictatorship. It's written from several perspectives - with associated language patterns from every perspective. Some times it fits to the normal communistic rhetoric, sometimes it is easy identifiable as exaggerated western propaganda. Western propaganda is not better - just slightly more subtle. American cars declared as the best of the world, is just american propaganda. If it was true, Detroit was not in deep trouble now... The propaganda on both sites about who is the most democratic country is also part of the everyday life, around the world. Who defines this highly subjective matter? In the Airport today, I feel we have lost all our human rights - also in the west. We have a constant stream of propaganda in our speaker too. The safety of our country and alleged terrorist threats justifying all the new laws. A slow curtailment of civil liberties occur slowly every day.
No one in uniform is wiser or better educated, than the people they rule over or feel beyond. It is perhaps a part of feeling like a little person and finally getting some power and finally being seen and heard.
The novel shows us, how every single human is creating a map of the world, from the random knowledge he or she has collected during the lifetime. So when North-korean people are truly wondering about, why cities in America don't even have rationing offices, ration stamps, whilst we are wondering, why they do not have all the luxury, what is normal here in the West...
In the end it's all about some humans think they are much more then others. Different rules for the guys who control others. In Noth-Korea, nobody is save. In the western countries all the secret services can be sure getting good pensions - no matter what they have done.
Who controls the controller in our countries? We use different methods. There are many free services on internet today, collecting data about: who is connected to who and why, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, meeting calendars, clouds - all this collected data is centralized and easy to monitor by who ever is interested from the government. Free services spending billions $ collecting our data. Where comes the money from, to buy all this servers ? A much more subtle way to control the western countries and citizens today. Just one mad man like Hitler can today rule the world on a much more comprehensive, but brutal way - and nobody can hide anymore, because we have shown our complete network to the world, show what we like and buy and our complete life pattern.
This novel shows, what we can expect, when we stop fighting for democracy. It has always being tempting for small people with an huge Ego like Kim Il ..., to rule a country with a only a little group of supporters, by only using propaganda, terror and fear. It really doesn't matter whether we have a workers paradise in the east, pointing at the misery in the west, or we have a consume paradise in the west, pointing at the misery in the east. it is just the surface. Under the surface it can be rotten on both sides....
This book holds up a mirror of human vanity, weaknesses and strengths and shows us also, when we focusing on the faults of others, we are free to see our own in the West...
And all of this and much more wrapped into a super exciting novel, with many funny passages and is a must to read and discuss in 2013.
No matter what political view, color, religious beliefs or gender. Perhaps we can create a better word together, instead of this hopeless madness of a North-korean nightmare,
where a few man keeping an entire population locked in, as their own personal property - as their private livestock - and still think in 2013, they are a sovereign country, where no one should interfere ...
I thing the time is over for this guys... people are longing for the same values and love today, all over the world.
Top reviews from other countries
The tale of Jun Do is that of a slow sorrowful rise tinged with self sacrifice. Basically a kind of crazed adventure story inside North Korea during the time of Kim Il-Sung, complete with thoughtful insights into the human condition.
Highly recommended.
This book left a deep impression on me ; of Hurt, sacrifice, brutality and sadness. I'm haunted even in my dreams!
The protagonist here, is a man, truthful, innocent and Prisoner, his whole life, except when he was on waters for short duration. Himself a prisoner, never knew what freedom was, helped another person to free herself and escape from the brutal and oppressive land of North Korea.
What more could I say ? Its a Fiction but the truth in this book is not. North Korea, after some research of mine, has turned out to be land of executions of people and family and defections.
I'm thankful to Mr Adam for writing this Novel. I'm glad I grabbed this one.