The Orphan Master's Son

The national broadcast begins to tell the incredible Best North Korean Story, which is a version of the story the imposter Ga is reliving during his interrogation. In this retelling, Ga ogles Sun Moon’s body and tells her he is now her husband. Sun Moon sets aside her doubts because he is dressed in the uniform of a minister. The new Ga lives with the “filthy” dog in a tunnel under her house until he receives orders to go to Pyongyang to see the Dear Leader. According to the broadcast, the new Ga also commits acts of treason on this visit, removing a Geiger counter and giving it to a woman on the street for food. He passes Comrade Buc and gives him a “thumbs up”—the sign American soldiers are said to have given before dropping napalm on Pyongyang. Back in the office building, the new Ga takes an elevator to meet the Dear Leader, who greets him warmly, saying he has “a delicious bit of mischief planned for our American friends” (224).

Imposter Ga’s story continues in the same place where the broadcast finished, meeting the Dear Leader. On his way, he had actually passed Comrade Buc, which “had opened a void in Commander Ga between the person he used to be and the person he’d become” (225). He is greeted by the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, who chastises Ga for his wrongdoings—the prison fire, an “episode at that bathhouse in Shenyang” (226), and putting his driver into a coma—and then asks if Ga will accept a new mission.

They travel further into the bowels of the building, with the Dear Leader explaining that he has a new plan to humiliate the Americans and retrieve what he wants. The Dear Leader asks if Ga knows of an inmate in Prison 33, “a soldier from an orphan unit” (227). The new Ga replies that he knew him, and they often spoke. The Dear Leader shows him a forty-six caliber rifle, which will show the Americans “that we can make their guns, only bigger and more powerful” (229). The engineers are producing bullets for it, one at a time. The Dear Leader brings Ga to a locked room where a tall, thin woman is transcribing the Selected Works of Kim Jong Il by hand. Ga notices her hands, which “were thick with gray, pitted calluses, rows of them, right to the pads of her fingertips” (231) and recognizes her as the American rower, whose broadcasts he used to intercept when he was on the Junma. The Dear Leader says she killed her companion and set her boat on fire, but was rescued by North Koreans. The woman tells Ga in English that her friend was shot and she was taken prisoner. The new Ga takes her picture with the satellite camera.

The interrogators at Division 42 go down into the torture wing to visit Comrade Buc. Wearing only a dress shirt, underwear and sock suspenders, Buc is chained to a metal bar. Q-Kee, the interrogation intern, uses a cattle prod to electrify the water Buc is standing in, getting his attention. They ask him to tell how he got the scar that splits his eyebrow, and in return they say they will answer one question for him.

He tells them about his job in procurement, ordering supplies for camps and prisons. One night while he was working late, he spotted Commander Ga reading an illegal magazine. Ga challenged Buc to fight him, but Buc refused to change into a dobok. Then Ga began to instruct him about fighting off a “man attack,” which refers to a homosexual advance. Under the guise of this demonstration, it appeared that Ga attempted to rape Buc. However, when Buc split his head open on the corner of a desk Ga stopped his assault; instead, laughing, he took Buc’s picture.

In return for telling his story, Buc gets to ask a question. He asks if his family is alive, and they tell him they are not. The narrator knows that Buc’s file has a picture of his family in the dining room, all apparently dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Comrade Buc asks if his daughters were wearing white dresses, but the interrogators refuse to answer any more questions.

Buc tells him that there are two Commander Gas—the one who attacked him and who later died in a mine in Prison 33, and the man who killed the real commander Ga. He insists that the imposter Ga didn’t harm Sun Moon or her children, but that “they flew away toward sunset, to a place where you’ll never find them” (239).

The interrogators remove Buc’s gold wedding band before they leave. He warns them to prepare themselves for the prisons, since in eleven years of working in procurement, no bandages, ingredients, shoes or soap were ever requested by the prisons.