Final thoughts on A Corpse in the Koryo

Whew, maybe not an ideal pick for holiday reading. A novel about North Korea not being a pick me up. Who could have predicted that besides anyone who watches the news ever.

This is the first book in a series about Inspector O, a policeman in North Korea. His parents died in the war (Korean War?) and his Grandfather was a WWII hero who hated the Communist regime. It broke his grandfather's heart when his older grandson went off to "School" (really the Kim Re-education facilities for youth which they still operate) and came back dedicated to the Great Leader. His grandfather was a carpenter which explains O's obsession with wood. He carries different pieces of wood to sit and fidget with. His boss Pak tells him that people wanted to turn him in for having a subversive habit. Let's take a moment and think about how wack North Korea is.

He also rhapsodizes about sandpaper and how hard it is to get. His grandfather hated sandpaper. Who does carpentry without sandpaper? Apparently it was invented by an American in the 19th century according to the book (Yahoo answers tells me the sanding technique may have been invented by the Chinese but an American first patented the production process. Interesting.)

He is used to having his home and office random searched by the DPRK's shadow security forces.

The story, as I mentioned, is confusing in the beginning. O is asked to take a picture of a car on the highway outside of Pyongyang (come to think of it, since Kim turns out to be connected to it, I'm not sure why he was asked. Or was this Kang's idea? I still don't totally understand this story.)  The camera has no batteries. Also, their office teakettle was stolen (O's inability to ever get a cup of tea is one of the few pieces of humor in the story.) This camera thing turns into an incident which the reader understands less than O even. His boss sends him to Kanggye, then Manpo where he meets Kang who wants him to break into what turns out to be a Military Security base. Why? Also don't totally understand. But then a murdered foreigner (a Finn as it turns out) is found in a room at the Koryo and Kang tells O that Pak wants him to return to Pyongyang.

It's at this point in the book where I really started warming up to O. The interviews with MI6 (I am guessing) were kind of confusing (I really don't understand how or why O would be allowed out of the country if he is a lowly Pyongyang detective but maybe that's explained in a future book) but by the end, they helped illuminate O's personality and dry humor. I really like how O keeps "forgetting" to wear his Dear Leader pin. I still don't understand why he wouldn't defect even more than Renko. North Korea give new meaning to shithole.

The dead guy in the Koryo, at any rate, turns out to have been a Finn who is working with Kang on his smuggling information. Kim, the psychotic Military Security leader, also has a car smuggling information. But he hates Kang and his whole department. Kang is trying to sneak his people out. He stays behind so he can get Lena, the Chinese/Finnish operative (or prostitute?), to leave with him. Military Security killed the Finn to send a message to Kang by putting him in the room he had just stayed in with Lena. There's also something about Japan but I didn't totally understand that either. My Asian history is pretty poor like most Westerners. The author mentions most Asians hate Japanese. That's kind of interesting.

By the end, lots of people are dead: Kang, Pak, poor Lena (bludgeoned in the Temple at Hyangsan by...Military Security?), the security officer who was a friend of O's and knew about the smuggling, the desk clerk in Manpo (choked by having his despooled Western porn video shoved down his throat), and maybe Grandma Pak and Kang's daughter, who if not dead is in a labor camp and wishes she were. Who isn't dead is Kim, the man who directly or indirectly killed them all. But, O has set him up to appear he is collaborating with the West by giving them a copy of his passport. Again, what the hell was O doing in Prague?

And the part at the very end after the shootout about O finding a corpse that isn't Kang--does that mean he got away? I think that is what it means. 

The end of the book is dated January, 2003 so this all takes place in 2002 I assume.

I complain about not getting the story but I did like it. Very well put together. Besides what I mentioned above, I don't understand why some people chose to help O. Were they all operatives of Kang? That's hinted at but the desk clerk giving him the bus schedule meant for Kang, I don't really get why he did that. It could also seem like a strange coincidence that everyone O ran into in the mountains seemed to know and have something built by his grandfather but that is where his family lived when O was young I think. The more you know about Korea and its history, the more you'll get out of this.