The Orphan Master's Son

On his way home from Division 42, the interrogator is stopped by the Minister of Mass Mobilization and made to “volunteer” to dig irrigation dams. A peasant woman tells him her stories “but because she lacked teeth, I could not understand them” (334). One of the women from the city is bitten by a snake.

The interrogator returns home, but the door to his apartment is locked and barricaded. He calls for his parents, but they do not come, so he spends the night sleeping in the hallway. During the night, the imposter Ga’s cell phone receives a picture of two Korean children.

In the morning, his parents let him in to his apartment, and he sees that their files have been disturbed. He asks his parents if they are afraid of him, and if that is why they blocked the door. His father says the broadcast told them the Americans were conducting military exercises off the coast.

As they talk further, his father explains that the file fell to the floor, but they picked it up. “We were just showing concern for the unlucky souls in your files” (336), his mother says. The interrogator asks again if she can see him, and she replies, “We do not need sight to see what you have become” (337). 

Commander Ga and Sun Moon take a walk. She refuses to let him tell the children what happened to their father, insisting that she wants them to believe he was a hero. Ga asks her if it is possible for a woman to fall in love with her captor—referring to the American rower and the Dear Leader. She replies by asking if the woman depended on her captor for food and clothes, and if she had children by him.

Ga broaches the possibility that he may not be able to escape to America with them. She insists she cannot go alone. She asks, “What good’s a captive without a captor?” (342). And then she kisses him, but Ga recognizes the kiss as a bit of acting, having seen her perform the same kiss on a South Korean border guard in one of her movies. 

The broadcast continues with the story of a crow flying low over Pyongyang, “hunting for any hint of capitalist sympathizers” (343). It comes across the imposter Ga and Sun Moon on their walk and notes that they are making a plan—a clear violation of the law as “tomorrow is a concern of the state… the business of your leaders, and you must leave what’s to come in their hands” (344). Then a black Mercedes appears and takes Sun Moon off to see the Dear Leader. The announcer says, “It was almost as if she knew she would never see these sights again, as if she had some kind of premonition of what the savage, remorseless Americans had in store for her” (345).

The Dear Leader embraces Sun Moon and gives her a guitar, which he wants her to learn to play for the American’s visit. He reminisces about how they used to spend time together reviewing movie scripts. When Sun Moon asks about the American girl, the Dear Leader gives her a bar of soap, a comb and a choson-ot and sends Sun Moon in to her.

Sun Moon finds the girl, not in “some sort of a prison cell with lamp-blacked walls and rust-colored puddles on the floor” but in “a large white tub fitted with golden lion’s feet” (348). Sun Moon bathes her and tells the story of her grandmother, who was imprisoned as a “comfort woman” by Emperor Taisho during the Japanese invasion. She is sad for the poor girl who must return to America, where there is “no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do” (350). In response, the American rower begins speaking quickly and frantically, but Sun Moon cannot understand her. 

The interrogator dreams of dark snakes and of the picture on the imposter Ga’s phone. In his dream, he imagines the picture is of his own wife and children, the family he was meant to have. At work, he finds that Q-Kee has cut her hair and has donned the official uniform of the Pubyok. The board with the interrogator’s remaining cases has been cleared, except for Ga. Q-Kee gives him a map that she found in the imposter Ga’s boots, which she is now wearing.

The interrogator, Q-Kee and Jujack follow the map to the former site of the Texas ranch before it was relocated to the airport. The weather is stormy and the ground is flooded and muddy, but they attempt to locate Sun Moon’s body with shovels, since the interrogator believes she must be buried here. Jujack tells them they are probably wasting their time, adding, “What if they moved it at the last minute?” (359). Q-Kee becomes convinced that Jujack knows something he is not telling. Back at Division 42, she turns Jujack over to the Pubyok. As evidence that he is a traitor, she offers the look in his eyes and the feeling in her heart.

Hoping to save Jujack, the interrogator races to the imposter Ga’s holding room. Ga is in a reflective mood, noting that he should have had Sun Moon’s image tattooed on him in reverse because “back then, I thought it was for others to see. When really, the whole time, she was for me” (362). To get him to talk, the interrogator shows Ga the picture of Ingrid Bergman’s star, and Ga tells him that the Texas village was moved to the airport. The interrogator tries to stop the Jujack torture with this information, but it is too late. Proving her loyalty to the Pubyok, Q-Kee strikes her hand against the doorframe. Sarge pronounces her “one of us now…. You no longer have use for a name” (364).