First thoughts on A Corpse in the Koryo

So, I finished The Devil You Know but with the holiday, I haven't been able to post yet. If I'm not too lazy after I work out, I'll do so tonight.

I'm now reading A Corpse in the Koryo which is James Church's first book about a policeman named Inspector O in Pygongyang, North Korea. After I started reading, it belatedly occurred to me that I might not enjoy reading something from a North Korean policeman's perspective (because working for that regime, the ratio of things done for the good of your fellow man has to be low to zilch.) It also was hard to fall into the rhythm of the book but I think it will make much more sense by the end. North Korea is such a wack country that I've had to approach it like I was reading a sci-fi space opera.

There is no corpse yet. The book starts out with Inspector O being asked to take a picture of a car on a road outside of Pyongyang in the early morning. He sees the car speeding thru the countryside sans license plates but can't take a picture because the camera battery is dead (a recurring theme of North Korea living in a strange limbo of a society with 20th century technology but lacking the resources to consistently power it.) This leads to some kind of vague trouble for Inspector O with Military Security and someone named Kang from the Investigations Department (this seems to have something to do with the Party.) The book is disorienting as you are joining a conspiracy already in progress. I suppose that is the intention.

I like the little touches like Inspector O complaining that the Police don't have their own thermos anymore so he can take tea with him on stakeout. They don't have a thermos? I wonder what Kang is up to and if he and Pak are both really dead (the story is alternated with an after the fact interview O has with MI6 somewhere in Eastern Europe. How the hell does he end up there? I guess I'll find out. And more to the point, since he doesn't seem to have a family, why does he even go back to Pyongyang?)

Several things I've had to look up:

• The Koryo is a hotel in Pyongyang. It is a luxury hotel, particularly by North Korean standards, but from what I've read you won't be confusing a stay there with the Ritz. Several reviewers on a travel site made a point of noting how weirdly thin and small the towels there are. Also, guests are not of course allowed to wander the grounds. It is a 45 story twin tower and probably is a striking landmark on the Soviet era-style crumbling Pyongyang skyline. Here are some more pictures of it, showing its best sides. BTW, I was curious about what they charge so I tried to investigate rates on Trip Advisor. For any style room and a variety of dates, they told me nothing is available. Perhaps due to recent Korean Peninsula hostilities there are no rooms at the inn for Americans. 
• Totally beside the point, but one reviewer made a point of saying they didn't recommend getting a massage in the hotel facility but they didn't elaborate. I'm really curious now. Why??
• There is also a Koryo Museum in Kaesong. Koryo refers to a dynasty that ruled Korea during the Middle Ages.
• Kaesong is right on the 38th parallel almost. You can't help feeling extra sorry for the people who live there. They just barely missed escaping the shit-tastic Kim regime.
• Inspector O meets Kang at the Juche Tower. Here are some more Google images of it. It's kind of pretty when it's lit up at night except for the tacky top. It is kind of ass ugly during the daytime. Kim Jong-Il is credited officially as its designer so perhaps that makes sense. 
• Juche refers to the ideology of Korea-centric isolationism that the DPRK ascribes to. It was originally put forth by Kim-Il Sung. 
• Inspector O mentions asking for a transfer to Kanggye and then fleeing there to escape whatever the hell is happening in Pyongyang. He also goes to Manpo later. They are both located in the mountainous Chagang Province on the border with China.  There is little information about it online however you can find a Wiki map of the military base there. 
• As an aside, this area was considered part of the legendary MIG alley
• The border with China is partially demarcated here by the Yalu River. Yalu is a Chinese word meaning "the boundary between two countries." Here is a great picture of the broken bridge across the river, taken on the Chinese side.
• Oh, this is interesting. The Chinese offered to rebuild the bridge if Pyongyang would open their economy instead of being freaks. Not much luck on that, yet. Interesting the Chinese are leading the way in diplomacy with North Korea though, favoring economic aid over sanctions.

North Korea is of course famous among other things for a famine in the 90's where possibly millions died. The tacky monuments everywhere.....I wonder if anyone there is bothered by it. Every show I've seen on North Korea reflects back a brainwashed, robotic populace who was taught that the Great Leader made the sun rise every morning. Curiously, it still rises without fail although he died in 1994. Of course not everyone can be that content because people clearly try and do defect. There would probably be more except for the fact that the defector's families are thrown into concentration work camps. 

I also remember when I was in Syria and we visited the Quneitra Memorial in Damascus. Quneitra being a town in the Golan that was destroyed in the two wars with Israel (1967 and 1973.) It is now in a DMZ occupied by the UN. When we got to the Memorial, one of my classmates pointed out that a North Korean flag was flying there (double props to him for being able to identify that. I need to work on learning my world flags one day.) We asked our guide about it who was a friend of ours. I wish I could remember his name. He was carrying out his mandatory military service by working as a guard at the Memorial (pretty lucky draw for him.) He said that the North Korean people were so moved by the plight of Syria and the Golan they helped pay for the Memorial. It's a pretty elaborate setup with a diorama and a building that looked like it could have been a Smithsonian annex. Now, the North Korean government obviously doesn't give a shit about the Golan Heights and surely doesn't have money to spare. I wonder what the story is about that.  I have a certain affection for Syria having studied there and I really wish they wouldn't join hands with possibly the most vile regime on the planet (it's a tie between that and Iran-oh wait, they cozy up to Iran too.) Sigh, get it together Assad.

Britisms from Exile

There have been several words and miscellany I didn't recognize from Exile so I've looked them up.

Maureen mentions an Aga warming her London friend Sarah's kitchen. Aga is a Scandinavian made stove that is sold throughout Britain-but curiously not in Ireland outside of Northern Ireland. They have a cute, distinctive multi-paneled front to them.

Sarah brings Maureen a plate of kedgeree to eat. It's a dish of boiled rice, fish, parsley, eggs and curry. I do love curry but, frankly, this sounds kinda like ass.

The London Met police tell Leslie they have to take Jimmy to Carlisle to be interviewed since they aren't Scottish. So it makes sense that Carlisle would be close to the Scottish border and it is: about 10 miles. It's in the county of Cumbria. According to WikiAnswers, Carlisle is about 110 miles from Glasgow though. Quite a drive.

(Incidentally, Cumbria just came up on a PRI Geo Quiz. It's where Stan Laurel was born, in the town of Ulverston. He was born Stan Patterson but changed his name, supposedly because he was superstitious and didn't like the 13 letters. There was a recent row in England when a tourism agency in Durham mistakenly printed 50,000 brochures saying Stan was born there.  Ulverston is much farther South than Carlisle though so even if Jimmy weren't being escorted by police who think he's killed his wife, he wouldn't be inclined to swing by there and visit the Laurel and Hardy Museum. Anyways..)

Sarah makes a face when Maureen tells her she has business in Brixton. Brixton is a neighborhood in the South of London. Apparently it's somewhat hip and gentrified now but there are still dangerous areas (Wikipedia helpfully informs me that you should never buy marijuana or cocaine from the dealers at the tube station. You'll either be buying overpriced oregano or get arrested. Helpful safety tip!) It seems like it's a mix of upscale housing, renovated Victorian buildings, music clubs and high crime areas which you should studiously avoid after dark. It's sometimes called the drug (and oregano?) capital of London. It's also a multi-ethnic neighborhood where you can get cuisines ranging from Jamaican to Eritrean. Some asshat set off a nail bomb near the market there in 1999 to ignite a race war. Luckily, it looks like no one was killed and he's now serving a bundle of consecutive life sentences.

Brixton is also the home of The Electric Avenue (the one Eddy Grant sang about.)

Maureen's mother Winnie mentions her estranged perv father Michael is living in a council flat. I gather from the context this is government housing and it appears to be. Evidently, there is a housing shortage in Glasgow. A Glasgow website says if you are low on money, you can apply for Council or Housing Association accomodations but there is a wait and if you are lucky enough to attain this low cost and assured tenancy housing (meaning your landlord has to get a court order to remove you if you don't want to leave), you may not find yourself in the most "salubrious" of areas. I love the Brits and their positive, tasteful spin on the mother tongue. It's not a crime-ridden shithole, it's just not salubrious.

Final thoughts on The Monkey House

Just finished Fullerton's The Monkey House and I'm really torn trying to figure out the rating. I loved the descriptions of war and the unforgettable images of the population of Sarajevo, terminally hungry and exhausted and sudden experts on differentiating small arms fire. The last 30-40 pages when Rosso first discovers Tanja is in the hospital, he makes a dash during the night in a flurry of sniper fire and mortar shells, his conversation with poor decent Serbian Dr. Misic who says she will lose her other leg if she remains in Sarajevo and finally his exchanging himself with the journalist Flett to the Serbs so Tanja, Mahmud and Noor could be flown out of the country. He knows the Serbs will almost definitely kill him just for being a Rosso as his father was a Nazi sympathizer and war criminal (the Serbs were targets of Nazi ethnic cleansing.)

What I didn't like was Fullerton takes too much for granted of his reader. I expected and of course didn't mind researching for this book but I wasn't clear on so many things. I still don't think I understood everything at the end. I realize it's a stupid hangup of mine but I think the author should have mentioned what year this takes place as clearly that is significant. The back of the book says 1996 but the Dayton Agreement was signed in December 1995. As I said before I am assuming this is taking place in late 1995 as it seems the war is over in Croatia. Also, as locations are key to the story I think the book could at minimum really have used a map of Sarajevo, if not the Bosnian coast (since that plays a key in the drug smuggling story.)

Maps and dates just tend to be weird peeves of mine. A more general complaint is the story felt a little too insider. I really had trouble understanding some characters' actions, particularly why was Tanja in that cemetary where she got her leg blown off in the first place? It was fairly nonsensical.

Fullerton apparently has done a lot of war reporting and lived in Peshawar (can you imagine after covering the Bosnian War he consented to live in Pakistan?) He has since written 3 other novels. If I were him, I'd be snuggling up to a fire in jolly old England with some biscuits and a cricket match.


Some words he used at the end that I didn't understand:

Roulement is a term used the the British Army for major combat units deployed on short-term duty (usually less than six months)

When Rosso is talking to the Minister after he has arrested Luka (as per their plan as it turns out), he says to him "Hvala" (thank you) to which the Minister replies "Nema na cemu" (you're welcome.) Fullerton prints the English next to the Bosnian but since that's redundant, I thought it must have meant something else.

I like the touch that Anil drives poor, doomed Rosso to the place where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in June, 1914 for the hostage exchange. Because of the mosques, churches and temples, apparently Sarajevo is referred to as the European Jerusalem. No wonder it has such a sad history.

Finally, I liked Tanja and Rosso's final conversation where she asks him to forgive himself for being his father's son. The end clearly shows that he couldn't.