The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

In Adam Johnson’s novel The Orphan Master’s Son, prepare to learn about the brutal and extraordinary effects on ordinary people of living under the dictatorship of Kim Jong Il in North Korea. Is the propaganda and brainwashing believable? Comforting? Beatable? The author conveys the utter poverty and deprivation of the ordinary N. Korean people. The subjugation of the country by the dictator- prison camps, kidnapping of women for the pleasure of powerful men, total submission by the people to the demands of the state- all are described matter-of-factly.

Johnson creates a surreal story where readers understand not only, the western, and perhaps more realistic, interpretation of N. Korea’s situation but also what the citizens  themselves hear- that they are in the land of plenty surrounded by aggressors who want to attack N. Korea. As one official Dr. Song says, “Where we are from, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music maestro by the state, everyone had better start calling him a maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano (121).  Reality is in the hands of the dictator to name.

Accordingly the stark hunger of the citizens and lack of self-determination is unremarkable to Koreans. One privileged character, a movie actress, witnesses a starving family in a park. “Their fingernails were white with malnutrition, and even the girl’s teeth had gone grey. The boy’s shirt hung on him as from a wire hanger. Both women had lost much hair, and the father was nothing but cords under taut skin (300). They have been surprised with a dead squirrel which is a grave offense considered stealing from the state.

With Jun Do, Johnson creates a protagonist that we don’t understand or always like. “My file perhaps suggests I’m an expert kidnapper, and it’s true. I led a lot of missions, and only a couple of targets died on my watch (120). It takes the whole novel to understand the creative genius of Jun Do. He subverts for his own purpose the reality of his existence thereby mirroring Dear Leader Kim Jong Il’s fictional benevolence in the story and real world.  “ ‘ I don’t understand who you are,’ the Dear Leader said to him, “You killed my nemesis. You escaped Prison 33. You could have gotten away for good. But you came here. What kind of person would do that? Who would make their way to me, who would throw away his own life, just to spoil mine?’”(438).

Within this bleak environment, Jun Do’s, or Commander Ga as he is known in the second half of the book, infatuation and love for the movie star Sun Moon seems all the more romantic and fantastical. That he achieves his impossible goal of being with her shows an irrepressible imagination in human nature. His is a story of survival against incredible forces guided by techniques one of his teachers taught him during training. "Never let pain push you into darkness, Kim San said. There you are nobody and you are alone. Once you turn from the flame, it is over"(86).

The writing in Orphan Master’s Son is challenging and in a first read, the tricks of narration and twists in the plot are probably not all understood. Varying levels of reality told through different points of view, brutal detail, and political espionage all require alertness on the reader’s part. The reward is a reaffirmation of the human desire to not only survive but to determine the story that will unfold for each of our lives. This 2013 Pulitzer prize winner for fiction gives us a convincing view inside a secretive country through an amazing narrative that surprises at every turn.