The Orphan Master's Son

The Best North Korean Story continues with Ga and Sun Moon leaving the state dinner and driving through Pyongyang as the electricity is being extinguished for the night. Unlike in America, where the cities never really sleep, in North Korea there’s “just eye-closing satisfaction and then deep, powerful dreams of work quotas fulfilled and the embrace of reunification” (260).

Ga and Sun Moon talk on the ride home, with the announcer’s commentary twisting the meaning of their words. When Ga says he will miss the car, the announcer reflects that “life is transient and subject to hardships” (261). Sun Moon replies that she will pass those words along “to the next man who finds himself driving it” (261).

The broadcaster warns that the next installment of the story contains an “adult situation… as the actress Sun Moon decides whether she will open herself fully to her new husband Commander Ga, as is required by law of a wife, or whether she will make a misguided declaration of chastity” (262). 

Back at their home, Sun Moon examines the new Ga’s knuckles, which were hurt when he punched the Dear Leader’s driver. Ga goes down into the tunnel to bring up some wine and notices that none of Sun Moon’s movies are kept amongst the stockpile of DVDs. He wonders how her husband watched the movies, since there is no player, and Sun Moon confirms that he had a laptop, although she hasn’t seen it in a while.

For the first time, Sun Moon invites Commander Ga into her bed, but she has very definite rules: that he complete the tunnel, that it would be up to the children to reveal their real names to him, that he cannot use taekwondo on the children, and that he cannot touch her. In response, Ga tells Sun Moon how he met her husband, the real Commander Ga, in Prison 33. During an inspection, the commander held an electronic machine to the prisoner’s chests to determine which mines contained uranium. The machine registered traces of uranium on the prisoner formerly known as Jun Do, and the commander noticed his tattoo of Sun Moon and the scars on his arm from pain training. The commander prepared a taekwondo kick, but the prisoner blocked him. Satisfied, the real Commander Ga said that he would return in a month and that this prisoner was to be treated very well and would act as his own eyes and ears in the mine. He gave the Warden a large stone to hold and proceeded to beat him—and at this point, Sun Moon stops the story, conceding that it is indeed about her husband.

She touches the new Ga’s chest to see his tattoo and asks if her husband did something to hurt him when he returned a month later. Ga nods and says, “But I was stronger” (269).

The interrogator’s parents appear to be completely blind, although he wonders if his mother still has some eyesight remaining. Whenever he tries to talk to his parents, they refuse to engage him in anything other than state-sanctioned conversation. The interrogator goes down to an area of Pyongyang where he can find an illegal night market and trades a Pubyok badge for a cell phone charger, so he can use the imposter Ga’s phone.

He is prevented from going to work for a few days due to the Grass into Meat campaign, which requires him to haul dirt and goats, to the rooftop of his building. Electricity is spotty, so it takes a while for the phone to charge. When it does, the interrogator is disappointed that there is no reception, and also that he has no one he can call. This prompts him to ask his parents about the friends from their youth, but they deny they ever had any friends and ask why he is questioning their loyalty. The interrogator remembers his father teaching him a lesson about how they might have to prove their loyalty, but they would still always love each other as a family.

In the middle of the night, the imposter Ga’s phone beeps with an incoming photo. The photo is of a star on a sidewalk with the words “Ingrid Bergman.” His parents hear the sound, too, but he does not tell them about the phone. Unable to sleep, he looks at Comrade Buc’s file and finds the picture of his family sitting at the dining table in their white dresses, dead. For the first time he notices the open can of peaches and realizes the significance of the question the imposter Ga asked about the peaches by his bed. He hurries to the imposter Ga’s room in Division 42, but the peaches are gone. He asks Ga about Ingrid Bergman, but Ga says he does not know those words. The interrogator wants to know how he convinced Sun Moon to love him, and Ga explains the concept of intimacy to the interrogator.

Q-Kee, the intern, hurries past with a device to pump a man’s stomach. She says she has made a mistake. They find Comrade Buc dying on the floor next to an open can of peaches. It is too late to save him. Q-Kee says that he told her he would talk in the morning if he could have peaches tonight.

Before heading home, the interrogator visits the property locker and finds a can of peaches from Fruit Factory 49 among Comrade Buc’s belongings. He takes the can home.