Summary

The book opens with a poem written by Bandi that denounces communism and its false promises of a better world.

The first story, “Record of a Defection,” unfolds as a letter a man named Lee Il-cheol is writing to his friend Sangki. Il-cheol reminds Sangki, who is a doctor, of a visit he made to his office with some pills he found in his wife's closet. The pills turned out to be contraceptives. Il-cheol explains that his own family has a checkered past within the Communist Party, whereas his wife Nam Myung-ok's family has impeccable Party credentials. Il-cheol's father was accused of sabotaging his own crops after the collectivization of farming began (just after the Korean War). His father was executed and the family exiled far away in the area near the Chinese border. His mother...