Seoul, 2005. Kim Gi-yeong is a North Korean spy who has been living in the south for twenty years. He was dispatched there in 1985, but when his supervisor was ousted ten years later, he was forgotten. Now he makes a living as a foreign film importer and has become completely accustomed to South Korea’s capitalist society. A family man with a wife and daughter, he is an aficionado of Heineken, Quentin Tarantino films, and sushi.

One day, he receives an email from Pyongyang, telling him that he has one day to pack up and return north. Suspicious of the veracity of the order and uncertain whether he should follow it, he wanders aimlessly around Seoul. Unable to open up to anyone and talk about his worries, Gi-yeoung confronts his past in various parts of Seoul, reflecting on his Pyongyang childhood and his younger days as a spy.

The return order decreed to North Korean spies is essentially a death sentence. Like the uncertainty faced by ordinary folk, who do not know what awaits them after death, spies don’t know what will become of them once they return home. Sometimes they are sent back south after a meeting, but other times they are executed. They are called back for their own safety just as often as they are to be awarded a medal. But if a spy doesn’t heed the order, it is a sure signal that he has betrayed his country, and his existence becomes more precarious. 

While Gi-yeong wrestles with the problem of his survival, his wife, who has no idea of her husband’s true identity, is mired in a risky affair with a younger man. A college student, her lover has been trying to persuade her for a couple of months to fulfill his kinky sexual fantasy. Now forty years old, she is torn between her lover’s insistent demands and her own pride. Despite her past as a student activist, following the ideology of Kim Il Sung, her biggest concern at this point is her diminishing youth and beauty.

Similarly unaware of Gi-Yeong’s dilemma, their young teenage daughter, a model student, is cocooned in her own world. She betrays her best friend by attending her boyfriend’s birthday party, embarking on an adventure of a lifetime.

Empire of Light, a tense, haunting novel addressing the crisis of identity and morals spans the length of one day, from when Gi-Yeong wakes up at 7:00 A.M. to the next morning. At the same time, it encompasses the dizzying political and cultural transformations of Korean society that has taken place since the eighties. This novel is also a story about the sad fate of middle-aged men in Korea, who are suddenly rendered useless through corporate restructuring. Empire of Lightis an intimate study of human weakness and baseness.

more articles

_list

Amazon.com Germany

Neue Zurcher Zeitung Interview(German)

Le Figaro(French)

Liberation(French)

Asahi(Japanese)