Agree with others here, a very captivating read. Couldn't stop reading once I started.
The personality of the protagonist is interesting to think about. Disturbed individual or hero? Both? We are presented with his actions, wonder what was going on in his head. Left his wife and kids to live for 3 years in a strange country. Did it again for 10 years. Remarried there to someone who doesn't speak his language. Had other kids. Left them.
A hero because, I guess there are few who would do that. Provided an interesting insight into the inner circle (but I don't the sacrifice for humanity's lack of information on Kim's family is what drove him). Very disturbed person as well. The childhood probably left some pretty large scars on him. Abandoning his family many times over is disgusting to think about, the scars it will leave on his children are no less harsh than those left on him by his father.
No, just yet another human being with contradictions, light-heartedness, courage, blindness, dreams, and sins.
Just a unique destiny. One should refrain from judging him. Who are we to judge a Japanese old man who crossed unadvertently the path of an ugly dictator, and managed to survive, and became half-addicted?
I have a hard time calling anybody who could leave his family like that a hero. He wasn't doing it to better their circumstances; he was doing it to satisfy himself.
Leaving your family is _nothing_ compared to providing emotional support for someone running concentration camps, abducting sex slaves, and all the other stuff.
It's hard to understand the full cultural implications though, at least for me. In some places marriage is a very different thing than it is here. In many places, love isn't even a factor (e.g. in places where spouses are chosen by parents).
Maybe a hero is the wrong word, and I personally don't consider him that, but I left that possibility as I can see how others can see him that way. Maybe in the same category as having someone wanting to climb the Everest and then almost dying up there. They didn't have to do it, but they did it, put their lives at risk, seemingly for the sense of accomplishment / fame, even though at home they might have their friends and loved ones waiting for them.
I'm sorry but how the hell is this guy a hero in any way? Undeterred by sex slavery, assassination, execution, and forced labor he neglects his first batch of children and allows the second to be interned, and he says he can't wait to get back to the DPRK. He only informed the Japanese because they were holding him.
The thing that made him so interesting to Kim Jung Il is his innocence. He didn't know about these things - sex slavery, concentration camps, and the like - he was just a guy making sushi and partying with the leader of a country.
Maybe not a hero - but he's certainly an innocent bystander for the first few years of the story. He's not aware of all the evil that surrounds him which makes him so interesting.
Not aware, or simply indifferent? After being educated in what really goes on in NK, he still chooses to return, and besides talking to the police and providing valuable intel on the NK government's insides, he didn't - at least not in this article - do anything to improve the situation.
Or at least, not directly. He introduced Jong-Un to basketball and both him and his father to a lot of western culture, influencing to the point to where Jong-Il's burial is modeled after a movie they once watched.
Which is why I said "the first few years". At some point, he realized people in his apartment building were disappearing, and he began to understand his life was in danger if he pissed Dear Leader off too much.
The personality of the protagonist is interesting to think about. Disturbed individual or hero? Both? We are presented with his actions, wonder what was going on in his head. Left his wife and kids to live for 3 years in a strange country. Did it again for 10 years. Remarried there to someone who doesn't speak his language. Had other kids. Left them.
A hero because, I guess there are few who would do that. Provided an interesting insight into the inner circle (but I don't the sacrifice for humanity's lack of information on Kim's family is what drove him). Very disturbed person as well. The childhood probably left some pretty large scars on him. Abandoning his family many times over is disgusting to think about, the scars it will leave on his children are no less harsh than those left on him by his father.