Finished: The Orphan Master's Son (Johnson) The Pulitzer Prize winning novel that gives a shocking look into the life of a boy, Jun Do, born in North Korea during the leadership of Kim Jong-il. The story is still deeply resonating in me. The writing was very good, and the book was as well. I think I'm just still reeling from wondering if this is how things really are in North Korea. The author spent time in North Korea researching for the book, so I have to think that much of it is true. The book has several eerie chapters that begin with "Citizens! Gather around...". What follows are then the daily announcements from the loud speakers that are required in every home and every work place in North Korea. The announcements are complete propaganda, telling such untruths about how glorious day to day life in Korea is, and how terrible it is everywhere else. They also spin a fanciful tale about their most famous actress, Sun-moon. Sun-moon is a beautiful actress who has been the star of all of their films, and she has been the play toy of Kim Jong-il. However, when the famous Commander Ga, a worshipped hero in the North Korean military, comes home and declares that his reward shall be marrying Sun-moon, he not only takes her from the leader, but becomes a hated rival to Kim Jong-il....only in private. In public, Kim Jong-il must, of course, sing the praises of Commander Ga, who has known no rival in strength or cunning.

The main character of the story, Jun Do, is the son of a man who runs an orphanage in North Korea. As a baby, his mother had been "taken away", where beautiful women of North Korea were often taken...to be used by someone with power. By the time he is ten, Jun Do is responsible for deciding which of the orphans he lives with gets to have the better food, the warmer bed, and the less treacherous work details each day. His own father treats him worse than he does any of the other orphans because he doesn't want to show favoritism. Jun Do does not even get to carry his father's surname, which leads to everyone believing he is an orphan himself. After the orphanage closes down, and he is uncertain what becomes of his own father, Jun Do is assigned to the team of people who sneak over to the coast of Japan in boats and kidnap people from the beaches! Jun Do has great moral struggles with this, since his own mother had been taken, but he tows the party line and does what is expected of him. He is then sent to be a tunnel rat...meaning he learns to do warfare in the complete dark in the tunnels under North Korea that run all the way to the DMZ zone. Though a war is not currently going on, it is still a stressful assignment, but his ability to fight in the dark will come back to aid him in later years. After both of these assignments, Jun Do is rewarded by going to language school, learning English, and being assigned to a fishing boat as a secret spy radio operator. He actually likes this job, as he gets to hear all kinds of broadcasts, including the broadcasts of two female American kayakers who are trying to circumnavigate the world. Occasionally he hears suspicious military talk that he reports back to his superiors. While on the boat, as a sort of rite of passage into the sailor's life, the crew holds him down and tattoos an image of Sun-moon on his chest, over his heart. All of the sailors have tattoos of their wives closest to their hearts, so since Jun Do is not married, they tattoo the famous actress over his heart. A series of events leads Jun Do to be considered a hero, and he's then taken on a mission to Texas in America! Apparently the American military has boarded a North Korean boat and stolen an implied nuclear gadget from them. Kim Jong-il sends a delegation of Jun Do, and two higher ups to meet with a senator from Texas and get back the "package". While in Texas, Jun Do experiences a bit of American life, and he also meets the very compassionate wife of the senator, and a female government official who gives Jun Do a camera that she tells him to use anytime he wants to send her any kind of private information, or if he needs some kind of help. Both of the women try to convince Jun Do to defect, but he refuses to do that, knowing that his defection would mean the death of the other two in the delegation. Of course, the delegation fails to get the Americans to give back the nuclear device, so when they arrive back in North Korea, the leader of the delegation is never seen again, and Jun Do is taken to work in the prison mines. He spends several years there, barely surviving, barely clothed, mostly malnourished, doing hard labor. One day Commander Ga comes to visit the prison mine. When he sees the tattoo of his wife on Jun Do's chest, he laughs it off on the outside, but he is seething on the inside. He takes Jun Do down into a tunnel and plans to do away with him, but Jun Do gets the better of him when he knocks out the only light! That training in the complete dark comes back to save the day, and Jun Do actually kills Commander Ga. Jun Do puts on Ga's uniform, which is much to big for him, and declares himself to be Commander Ga. The prison warden is so overwhelmed, mostly because Ga has always been torturous to him, that he lets Jun Do walk out of the prison and be driven off by Commander Ga's driver! That is the last that we see of who we have come to know, and sympathize with, as Jun Do.

In the next part of the book, Jun Do assumes the identity of Commander Ga. Of course, everyone from Sun-moon, her two children with Ga, Ga's best friend, and especially Kim Jong-il all KNOW that he is not Commander Ga, but in their way of spewing out propaganda, Kim Jong-il announces that Commander Ga has returned home from another successful mission. Commander Ga goes straight to Sun-moon's house, and sees how beautiful she is, yet how she has been mistreated by Kim Jong-il because she married Ga. As punishment, she has been given no movie rolls in years, even though it wasn't her choice to marry. She does love her children, though, a young boy and a young girl. She doesn't know what is happening at first, and thinks that the new Commander Ga is just a trick by her husband to get her to be unfaithful. However, in time, she comes to believe that Commander Ga killed the old Commander Ga, and she finds him to be a kind person who actually adores spending time with her, and cares for her and her children very deeply. When it becomes apparent that Kim Jong-il has decided that Commander Ga has almost outlived his usefulness to him, Ga and Sun-moon concoct a wild and dangerous scheme to defect to the U.S. You see, Kim Jong-il has been holding one of the American kayaking women for over a year in a bunker beneath his palace! The North Koreans killed one of the rowers, and took the other hostage when they rowed into North Korean waters. Ga (really Jun Do, remember) is able to send a picture on the secret phone to the military woman in America to show her that North Korea is holding the presumed dead American kayaker. The U.S. strikes a deal with Kim Jong-il that they will bring a plane to take the woman home, and in return, bring back the leader's nuclear package...which the U.S. has determined isn't workable in any event. Kim Jong-il treats the upcoming meeting as a gala, and plans a bigger, better Texas hoe down than the Americans planned for the North Korean delegation when they went. He even plans for famous actress, Sun-moon, to be there to sing a song for the Americans. Ga and Sun-moon, however, plan their escape. Ga again uses the secret phone to send his plan to his contact in the U.S., asking her for help. When Ga realizes that it will be imperative for him to distract Kim Jong-il and his men while getting Sun-moon and the two children safely aboard the plane, he sacrifices himself for them and doesn't board the plane himself. :-( He knows that they will be taken to and aided by the Texas senator's wife. He is still heartbroken, though, as are we, because he and Sun-moon and the children too, had all come to love and respect each other as a family. The Americans park their plane ready to take right back off. They are having none of the gala. To them, this was a trip to come and retrieve a hostage! Just when they've taken off, Kim Jong-il wonders why Sun-moon never did come out of her changing room to sing. His men look everywhere for her, and when he realizes that she escaped on the plane, Ga is taken into custody and taken to the harsh interrogation center. Not able to admit that North Korea's most famous actress defected, to save face, the concocted story that Commander Ga has fallen from grace because he has killed his wife and children and disposed of their bodies, is broadcast to the public. Even the interrogators believe this lie, and spend weeks trying to torture the truth from Ga about where the bodies are. Finally, in the end, when they have hooked him up to a machine that will send enough volts of electricity through his body to lobotomize him, Ga manages to loosen his strap and turn the dial higher, giving himself a lethal dose. So, Ga aka Jun Do aka the orphan master's son, finally finds purpose in his life by sacrificing his own for a short-lived familial love which he had never experienced in his own life. This recap, as usual, doesn't do the book justice! This was a very, very good one!