The Orphan Master's Son

Pak Jun Do is raised in a North Korean state orphanage whose master is his father. Conscripted at fourteen, he fights in underground tunnels and is later made a kidnapper of Japanese citizens. After his military service he becomes a signal operator on a fishing boat, intercepting and translating radio transmissions, and what he hears there leads him to realise that much of what he has been told about the outside world is untrue. The novel deals with propaganda, identity and state power in North Korea.