Something bright was shining in his eyes. A face he didn’t recognize was leaning over him. Jun-su felt wetness under his head. He was lying down in the paddy field. Two of his classmates helped him sit up. Armed with the letter from Dr. Park, Jun-su was able to get an appointment at the hospital in Wonsan. Jun-su climbed the echoing stairwell. The door of Teacher Kang’s apartment was open. Jun-su peered inside. He glimpsed a skinny shirtless figure lying at full stretch on a thin mattress. Jun-su coughed. There was no response. He tapped on the opened door and said:“Teacher, I’ve brought you something.” Still no reply. He slipped off his shoes and boldly entered the apartment.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones

I’m trying to think what’s best,” said Jun-su. Sententiously, he added: “The Great Leader says the best course of action is clear to the man who is practical.” The trouble with this story,” said Teacher Kang thoughtfully, laying the book aside, “is that we know exactly what is going to happen. Whereas in real life, everything is uncertain.” Kang Yeong-nam has done many things. He’s had a complicated life. But he knows a lot and he says he can help make you better. He says it’s important to do something…” Han-na trailed off. At the side of the classroom, Jun-su’s mother stood in pained silence, her eyes gleaming with tears, her features frozen in a mask of shame. Your classmates said you were ill last autumn for a long time,” said the medical officer. She was wearing a white coat adorned with one of the newest and most desirable badges: a joint portrait of the Dear Leader and the Great Leader.The best thing is for him to be a magic-user or sorcerer,” said Teacher Kang. “He can learn spells and do conjuring. But first you have to decide whether he is good or evil.” People were eager for diversion of any kind. The nineties were years of famine in North Korea. It was a period of collective suffering that would come to be known as the Arduous March. Jun-su and Teacher Kang resumed their old relationship, the relationship of pupil and teacher, which in Korean culture is marked with respect and great formality. But even though, outwardly, Jun-su had returned to normal life, he knew that his long absence and protracted isolation had altered him.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang - Marcel Theroux - Google Books The Sorcerer of Pyongyang - Marcel Theroux - Google Books

The teachers suffered too. During a math class one day, Kang Yeong-nam, a dapper man in his fifties with a reputation as a disciplinarian, sat down suddenly in the middle of the room and turned pale. He gazed stupidly around him until the lesson ended and the baffled pupils filed out of class. Later, Jun-su saw Teacher Kang being helped to the sanatorium. Jun-su bowed happily in reply and began a speech of thanks for the card and flowers they had sent him. As the wave of relaxation calmed the twitching in Jun-su’s body, he felt his eyes close as usual. His breathing slowed and he slipped into the threshold state of consciousness where the boundary between his skin and the universe seemed to dissolve. Dark waves of purple, orange, and red moved across the inside of his eyelids.Later that evening, Jun-su’s mother sat beside him. “Teacher Kang says you’re suffering from rheumatic fever,” she said. “That’s the reason for the twitching.” Tae-il inclined his head casually to Jun-su. He was fond of retelling the story on which his legendary status depended. And in truth, both the danger he’d faced and his resourcefulness had increased in subsequent tellings. Jun-su climbed the echoing stairwell. The door of Teacher Kang’s apartment was open. Jun-su peered inside. He glimpsed a skinny shirtless figure lying at full stretch on a thin mattress. Jun-su coughed. There was no response. He tapped on the opened door and said: “Teacher, I’ve brought you something.” Still no reply. He slipped off his shoes and boldly entered the apartment. Dusk was falling on the low wooded hills that surrounded the airport. The stillness was strangely oppressive. An unsettling silence enveloped the visitors as they shuffled into the arrivals hall, which was austere and cavernous, and smelled faintly of detergent.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Goodreads The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Goodreads

That evening, seated under the precious single bulb that had been a personal gift from the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, Jun-su asked his mother if he could bring some extra food to school for Kang Yeong-nam. “Teacher Kang is hungry,” he said. The interest in North Korea is unsurprising in an era of rising totalitarian states and growing threats to basic freedoms in democratic countries. The latest addition to the catalogue of books about this little understood place is Marcel Theroux’s The Sorcerer of Pyongyang, which sets out to narrate the story of a nation, beginning in the 1990s, through the life of its main character, Cho Jun-su. Days passed. Jun-su’s health did not improve. Eventually Han-na bribed a doctor to pay a home visit. He said that what Jun-su needed were antibiotics, but there weren’t any available. In fact, there were plenty of antibiotics: Chinese-made ones that had been shipped into the country as part of the international aid effort. The doctor was probably lying in the hope of another bribe; he must have been hungry too. Over the subsequent week and a half, the delegation was shown around model farms, a granite quarry, a sewing-machine factory, a youth center containing many preternaturally talented child performers, the Pyongyang Children’s Foodstuffs Factory, and Kim Il-sung University.Teacher Kang closed the book he was marking and added it to the pile, which he squared up on the desk in front of him, then cleared his throat. Now he looked Jun-su in the eye. He let his gaze rest on the boy for an uncomfortably long time. Finally he spoke. “The House of Possibility is not something that everyone can understand,” he said quietly. On the day chosen for the visit, Jun-su and his mother walked to the school building after lunch. As they entered the premises, Jun-su felt a precocious nostalgia for the familiar surroundings. There was the Kimilsungism Study Hall for which special overshoes were required; there was the painted square in the playground where the children assembled for air raid drills; there was the spot where he had raced with his friend Ri Sok-chung and slipped and sprained his wrist. He was snapped out of his reverie by the sound of his mother’s voice. She was shouting at him.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux review — playing

After the business with the pajama cord, Jun-su wondered whether he’d see Teacher Kang again. He rather suspected not. But then, a few days later, the old man turned up as usual with his case of needles as though nothing had happened. Jun-su knew that if he told his parents a word of what had happened, that would spell the end of the game. But it was clear to the class that Jun-su was clowning. His performance was entirely out of character, which only made it funnier still. Jun-su was rolling his head, flapping his arms, and making hilarious spastic movements with his jelly legs.Here the chief of the People’s Unit was a man who was studying an old copy of the Rodong Sinmun through a pair of reading glasses held together with old tape. When Jun-su hailed him as “Comrade Superintendent,” he raised his watery eyes. Jun-su explained why he had come and the man waved him up to the third floor. That’s right,” said the medical officer. “But sometimes, when I listen to your heart through the stethoscope, I hear a whooshing sound after the boom-boom.” Kang Yeong-nam has done many things. He’s had a complicated life. But he knows a lot and he says he can help make you better. He says it’s important to do something...” Han-na trailed off.