The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 so I expected it to be at least great. I was not disappointed. My reason for reading it was selfish; it is preparation reading for a writer-reader conference in Bali during the last week of October 2016. I will attend at least one meeting with an author who writes about North Korea and I would like to be informed with enough background information to ask questions. This book, although a work of fiction, presents some mind-boggling truths about the Hermit Kingdom. There is a reader’s guide at the end of the book as well as an interview with the author. Johnson informs the reader about his sources of information and inspiration. That is a good thing because from the beginning of the book information the reader receives defies belief.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.

So I wanted to like this book. I really, really tried. And after having studied Korean culture for a long time, and dating Korean girls (though that doesn't qualify me to know the minds of all Koreans, believe me, I'm well aware of this), I will say that, for the most part, Adam really, really disappointed me with this book. I am only giving it two stars because it's written beautifully, and I mean that. The book, as a piece of fiction, is engrossing and a great page turner, even considering the horrendous parts about torture and draining blood from the infirmed. I did, at times, believe in the world that Adam had created, this North Korea that so few people know nothing about. So props to Adam for even trying to write about something like this and not being Korean, or from South Korea, or North Korea, or seemingly having any connection to Korea other than looking up articles on the internet, and visiting North Korea on a trip that, in his own words, he wasn't able to produce much from, at least in terms of the truth about what it's really like to live there. He did put some of what he seen in the book from his trip, but visiting a place once or twice and then writing a Pulitzer Prize winning recollection of it is.. well, hard to fathom. I think many people have commented that this is comparable to somebody from another country coming to the US on a visit and then crafting a whole fiction novel around what he or see had seen on their vacation or visit here, plus adding in some stuff they read about Americans on the internet. And that's slowly, by the end of the book, what it kind of felt like I was reading: A contrived story that doesn't do justice to what Koreans and in particular, North Koreans, are really like, both in how they talk to and relate to each other, and how they respond to tragedy, and death, and living in oppression.So you can look at this book one of two ways, I suppose. You can see this as the modern day Red Badge of Courage, or a book that is the North Korean version of Forrest Gump. More on that in a moment. I think in terms of seeing this as The Red Badge of Courage, I draw the comparison simply because Stephen Crane hadn't even been born at the time the Civil War happened, and yet his book reads like a first person, actual account of what it might have been like to fight as a soldier in the Civil War, albeit a cowardly one at first. But Crane did his research and homework on the Civil War, and he got it right, despite never once even setting foot on a battlefield. So you can say that perhaps Adam attempted to do the same thing here with The Orphan Master's Son, and maybe he did? Maybe he didn't? Like I mentioned earlier, I did find the world, at times, engrossing, but then again, I have no reference point of North Korea to know if he was basing anything I was reading on the truth of what North Korea is really like. That question kept pounding so hard in my head that it eventually eclipsed my ability to enjoy this novel, and when I read the interview at the end of my copy of the book, in which Adam addresses how and why he wrote what he wrote, I was kind of relieved that he did base it on some stuff he had researched, but also bummed out to the point where I was upset because he didn't do ENOUGH research. He mentioned how he based so much of this story on one person's account of being made prisoner in North Korea, and that person wasn't even North Korean. I think that says volumes about the singular vision Adam had which ends up being too distracting, especially when you consider looking at the book not as a Red Badge of Courage Wannabe, but as the North Korean Version of Forrest Gump.Jun Do, who is our protagonist (or antagonist, I guess, being that he kidnaps innocent Japanese people and doesn't seem to have a problem at all doing it, at least at the beginning of the novel), goes from being an orphan to a tunnel rat who specializes in fighting in the dark, to a globe hopping representative of North Korea, to an imposter of a great commander in the North Korean regime, to a husband of one of the most beautiful woman in all of North Korea, and finally a prisoner. I mean, it's fiction, sure, but it felt like Jun Do was just assuming all these roles so Adam could show off what he researched online about North Korea. And really, it began to be almost comical, especially when the Dear Leader entered into the narrative. I mean, the book went from being Forrest Gump to Seth Rogen's The Interview. And the final scene of the book was borderline parody. I dunno what was more shocking, the fact that the book devolved into something I would see in a comedy movie, or the fact that this book won a Pulitzer Prize for something that didn't follow thru with the story it presented to us with a believable narrative at its end. And of course, the research being so singular in scope... I mean, isn't the Pulitzer meant for books that are great works of accomplishment? Was anyone who voted or took care of the voting process for the Pulitzer even Korean? Maybe these things should be asked, but more to the point, as an author myself who has written a horror book based on Japan, and being a white person myself, I made sure for FIVE YEARS to check, recheck, and immerse myself in the story and culture I was writing about. I gave up everything to do this, and sometimes took MONTHS to write even a single sentence, all because I didn't want to betray the people I was writing about. And yet, Adam can write something that any Korean probably would read and laugh out loud at, and yet he's given a Pulitzer for it?I guess at the end of the day, fiction is just that: FICTION. It doesn't matter if it's true or not, I suppose, so much as if it tells a good story. And I think Adam set out to write this book with the very best of intentions and not to win any awards but to tell a story that he felt was close to his heart. I can respect that, honestly I can, but I think he did a great injustice to those who have survived North Korea, and those who continue to live in that isolated nation, by not really expanding on his research even a bit more. I think his brand of fiction would've been so much more believable, had he done so, and up until the second half of the book, I was pretty much okay with his treatment of North Korea. It's when he actually started to write about things like the Dear Leader, and Sun Moon, and our nameless sometimes narrator of the second half of the book and how he relates to telling stories about those he's put in charge of torturing, that I just kind of lost my momentum to believe anything else about the North Korea Adam was writing about. And you know what's kind of ironic about this? The parts that I DID believe the most, were the parts that Adam had specifically said he put into the book because he saw it on his trip to North Korea (e.g., the chrome guns, families stealing chestnuts, etc.). My point in saying this is that if Adam had actually spent a LOT more time not just seeing more of North Korea, but of LIVING North Korea, I think his story would've resonated so much deeper than it did with me by the time I was finished. And not going to give anything away, but the ending to this book is such a clunker, mystifying conclusion to such a huge story, that I almost felt like there should've been a postscript from Adam saying "GOTCHA!" Because I almost felt like I had been had in some way.Good writing, but bad storytelling, if that makes sense. And this is made even worse by the fact that distinguished writers and those who live in the world of writing honored it with one of the absolute greatest prizes any author could ever receive. All the more proof to me that real authors who write great stories will forever go unnoticed because those in power in the publishing industry simply live for the hype, and not cater to the truth. How sad.

I loved this book from beginning to end, the characters are well developed and the story is excellent, full of plot twists and comments on the absurdity and sorrow of life in North Korea and the cultural clashes with the US.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.

Fantastic story that took me by surprise. It takes a good 200 pages before you really get the gist of what is happening but it feels great when it all fits into place. Also I think Adam Johnson deserves an enormous amount of praise for tackling this incredibly difficult, yet often ignored, problem that is N.Korea. American audiences no doubt hear a great deal about N.Korea but here in the UK we only hear about it when there is another missile test. It's incredibly disturbing to think a regime as backward as this has lasted so long. I was too young to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall, I'm optimistic though that I will live to see the end of the DMZ.Bearing in mind this is fiction, the narrative still projects a powerful real life message - something I an unlikely to forget anytime in the future.

I took this book on holiday and it is better to read it in long sessions than my normal way of reading before I go to sleep at night. It is a large book (although I read it on Kindle so it wasn't heavy!) and covers a lot of ground in great detail. It is a good read and I enjoyed it all the way through but it was only when I read the second part that I realized how clever it was - nothing, not even the smallest detail of what is in the book at the beginning is forgotten in the second part. Threads and people are interwoven in the continuing story (OK maybe a little too coincidental in parts, N. Korea can't be that small a country surely) and overall I found it a satisfying and intriguing read.I question how much information it gives you about life in North Korea as the author only spent a week there as far as I am aware but this is a novel and as such it is clever and enjoyable. If you want fact then read 'Nothing To Envy' by Barbara Demick, another excellent read but about the lives of real people who had lived in North Korea.

I found this book a hard read, as I hate ultra violent stories about torture and pain. That said, it was an interesting and multi-faceted view of life in North Korea under the watchful eyes of The Great Leader and his team of informants. The parts set in the orphanage, on the ship and in prison 33 were illuminating. I felt the story went seriously awry at the stage when our character impersonated another famous Commander, as to me this was just too ridiculous to be believable. In short, I felt that the book could have ended 100 pages before it did...

Not an easy read. However I was gripped and although I haven't read any other books by Adam Johnson I sort of enjoyed it, although perhaps enjoy is not the best word to use. It has certainly made me find out more about North Korea and as I was reading it the half brother of the current President was 'assassinated '. It will be very interesting to hear what my bookclub girls think when we meet shortly.