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Book Description

This autobiographical novel narrated by the author’s eponymous character candidly shares the story of his birth, childhood as a sensitive boy, school years marked by infatuations with a male friend and teacher, military service as superiors’ favorite, agony as a newlywed realizing that he is unfit for marriage, roving through China as a North Korean defector, and tumultuous experience as a sexual minority settled in South Korea-episodes too multifarious and eclectic to have happened to one person.

Publisher’s Review

“The author, as a North Korean diaspora and sexual minority in South Korea,
finally opens up to the world.”

“An autobiographical full-length novel by a true liberalist who chose to declare unity
between his identity and body than to declaim the existing political systems and ideology.”

How could all of this have happened to a single person?
The book follows the trajectory of a life too eventful to be that of one man.

This autobiographical novel narrated by the author’s eponymous character candidly shares the story of his birth, childhood as a sensitive boy, school years marked by infatuations with a male friend and teacher, military service as superiors’ favorite, agony as a newlywed realizing that he is unfit for marriage, roving through China as a North Korean defector, and tumultuous experience as a sexual minority settled in South Korea-episodes too multifarious and eclectic to have happened to one person.
Perhaps the only novel by a North Korean defector that does not expatiate on the political systems and ideology-an intimate and harrowing story that freely navigates through sorrow, laughter, wit, and twists.
Marked by a purely literary perspective and sensitivity, A Mark of Red Honor distinctly draws a line from most books by North Korean defectors that take non-fiction approaches to the political systems and ideology.
The North Korean society as portrayed by this natural storyteller feels almost familiar-somewhat similar to South Korean society in the 1970s. The nitty-gritty details of the utterly ordinary life in which exasperating antagonism and jealousy underly neighborly warmth and passion and envy intersect with the sweetest and dearest form of friendship are largely reminiscent of the South Korean community of common people at the time.
The strong and weak, the shrewd and naive all make up a community. Grasping the author’s message that “Humanity blooms in any tough society ridden with tears and animosity for people to eventually smile and embrace each other,” readers will find their eyes tearing up and hearts stuffed full.

HOPE FOR RED HONOR
LIMPIE THE SHEEP
FATHER
SONG OF LIFE
EARLY MEMORIES
HUNGER
MY THREE FRIENDS
SERVING THE GREAT LEADER
BROKEN WING
FAREWELL
DO OR DIE
PIANO

Epilogue