Outta North Korea – a Fantaleon in Gangwondo Inje

A newspaper delivery man In 80s in Seoul-he has reportedly had his one led and one arm amputated during the Korean War.

We started to represent Kim Hyun Sik, the novelist from Gangwondo. He wrote a satirical fiction titled Outta From North Korea in 2018. I would dare to compare him to the great Vargas Llyosa in that he turned this little Inje village into a very Terry Guilliamish farcical theatre where so many absurd but also very real characters play. In short, it’s an improbable success story of a young good man named Go Sung Gil. A lonely orphan who works in a seedy Shaolin restaurant in exchange for room and board in Ganwondo Inje in 1960s. 

A ‘BOYS BE AMBITIOUS’ poster is taped proudly on the wall of his tiny room he shares with the only chef of the restaurant Jang So Pal, who is also a war veteran. The HDI, the Korean CIA at those times are also part of this comedy.Their job? To catch spies from North Korea. However they are impossibly bored in this rural province since nothing happens. They just wander around mountains and see what these ignorant rural villagers are up to. One time they sneaked a glance at a local barbershop’s windows when Sung Gil was kissing Sun-Mi, a girl who works there as a hairdresser and the other times, they beat the crab out of vagrants who Go Sung Gil falsely reported as spies from North Korea. The bald lieutenant commander Jeon, who is reminiscent of president Jeon Doo Whan who later became a notorious dictator during 80 freely fools around with the owner of the shop at a secret place at the mountain hill as a pastime.

Go Sung Gil dreams of his parents he never even had a chance to see. In his dream, his father is a war hero who killed hundreds of Japanese soldiers during the Occupation and he dearly hopes his father would one day come for him. 

However, he stopped fantasizing about his parents and lying to his playmates at school when the headmaster of the orphanage reprimanded him to stop talking nonsense because he was an orphan from the beginning. So now he is determined to be successful and go to college in Seoul one day. How? By catching spies from North Korea. Any South Korean citizen who reported a spy from North Korea could get reward money as much as 2,000USD and it was a huge sum of money enough to change one’s life forever in 60s. 

So he reports every suspicious men in the town and put the lives of local policemen and the HDI agents who happened to station at a nearby mountain to a great trial; they have to act up immediately no matter how trivial report they get might be and Sung Gil’s enthusiasm for catching spies from NK seems inexorable. So the sly lieutenant commander Jeon came up with this brilliant idea; faking up a spy out of his men. His seemingly ingenious solution puts them into deeper predicament however.

It’s a very classic hero story-a young honest man kills the dragon, inherits the kingdom after many personal ordeals and gets married to a princess as a legitimate new king.

We all want to read good stories as the news we’re fed on the internet are so tainted and doomed. We want a hero whose heart is simple and good as Sung-Gil’s. We want a girl who is satisfied with her little ways of making a living and has a pure love. It’s no news that we see politicians and those who have power trample down the weak and the poor in real life but that is probably why we want to see them win them over by some heavenly providence in a fiction like this. It is a story with a happy ending.

No more glossing over-you will see why we need Sung Gil and Sun Mi back to our very hearts to stop these mad warmongers of the world if you grab this small gem of a fiction.

And who knows? You might want to come visit Gangwon-do and have a hearty bowl of the black soy sauce noodle(짜장면) at a local Chinese restaurant, which no genuine Chinese people know of but still the nation’s most favored food of all time.