20 Flashlight Susan Choi Audible
I massively wished I'd read this account rather than listen to it, because sometimes I think I missed relevant facts relating to a subject I knew nothing about. Both disturbing and riveting, but on Googling one of the main facets of the book, notably the unexplained disappearances of both Japanese and Korean individuals, some selected for specialist skills but also ordinary fishermen who operated around the Japanese archipelago, predominantly during the '70s and '80s and spirited away to North Korea. It does seem that Susan Choi a Korean/American herself had done her research as she weaved some of these incidents into her book.
Serk Kang is of Japanese/Korean ancestry born in Japan at the end of the 2nd WW at a time when like many of his fellow countrymen didn't have Japanese citizenship. There was a wave of Koreans encouraged to go back to the newly found communist state of North Korea, when the country is divided to reflect the power shifts in the region and some are duped into thinking their loyalties will lie with the communist regime. Most of his family are part of those who will return, just leaving him and one sister behind in Japan. Where being of Korean ethnicity they are treated as 2nd class citizens. However, he is given an opportunity to study in the US with the hope, in due course, of becoming a permanent resident there. Meanwhile, his yet to be encountered, American wife- to -be, Anne, has her own struggles, when she gives birth out of wedlock to her first child who she gives up to be raised by the father. At a later stage she will reconnect with him and he becomes a pivotal person in assisting his half sister in her quest to find her missing father but that is years down the line. Before that Anne and Serk are to meet and marry and they have that daughter Louisa. Towards the end of the '70s, Serk is to take up a secondment in Japan as an electrical engineering professor and the family leave the US to live there for a year, where Louisa, a precocious clever nine year old is to become reasonably proficient in the language. Meanwhile, Anne is unfortunately experiencing the early onset of Multiple Sclerosis and seldom leaves the house. One evening father and daughter take a walk on a nearby beach, where Serk disappears and Louisa is found barely alive on the shore, it is assumed that Serk has drowned although there is no evidence of this. Mother and daughter return to the US. Louisa is to suffer memory loss as to what happened that fateful night. It is revealed that Serk is still alive, abducted by North Korean government agents with a view to imbuing prospective undercover spies on how to blend in in Japanese society. All the while labours in dire conditions under the false belief that his daughter is also being held in North Korea and in that his co-operation is vital to her safety.
There are umpteen facets to the book, most notably North Korean re-education camps, lost memory and trauma, identity and exile, family separation, and survival. I can see why it was short listed for the Booker Prize last year, quite a standout.
It gave me a proper fright, but it looks like the oven has survived.