The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
CITIZENS, gather ’round your loudspeakers, for we bring important updates! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors—wherever your loudspeaker is located, turn up the volume!
In local news, our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was seen offering on-the-spot guidance to the engineers deepening the Taedong River channel. While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Reverend General some much needed shade on a hot day. Also to report is a request from Pyongyang’s Minister of Public Safety, who asks that while pigeon-snaring season is in full swing, trip wires and snatch loops be placed out of the reach of our youngest comrades. And don’t forget, citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect.
Later in the broadcast, we’ll reveal the winning recipe for this month’s cooking contest. Hundreds of recipes were entered, but only one can be declared the best way to prepare—Pumpkin Rind Soup! But first comes grave news from the East Sea, where American aggressors flirt with acts of all-out war after stopping and looting a North Korean fishing vessel. Once again, the Yankees have violated Korean waters to steal the precious contents of a sovereign ship, all the while accusing us of everything from banditry to kidnapping to cruelty to sharks. First off, it is the Americans and their puppets who are the pirates of the sea. Secondly, did an American woman not recently row around the entire world to defect to our great nation, a worker’s paradise where citizens want for nothing? That alone should be proof enough that these persistent accusations of kidnapping are ludicrous.
But cruelty to sharks? This charge must be addressed. Known as the fisherman’s friend, the shark has an ancient camaraderie with the Korean people. In the year 1592, did sharks not offer fish from their own mouths to help sustain Admiral Yi’s sailors during the siege of Okpo Harbor? Have sharks not developed cancer-preventing powers in order to help their human friends live longer and healthier? Does our own Commander Ga, winner of the Golden Belt, not have a soothing bowl of shark-fin soup before each triumphant taekwondo match? And citizens, did you not see with your own eyes a movie entitled A True Daughter of the Country, right here in Pyongyang’s own Moranbong Theater? Then certainly you remember the scene in which our national actress Sun Moon capsized in Inchon Bay while trying to prevent the American sneak attack. It was a scary moment for all of us as the sharks began to circle her, helpless amid the waves. But did the sharks not recognize Sun Moon’s Korean modesty? Did they not smell the hot blood of her patriotism and lift her upon their fins to carry her safely to shore, where she could join the raging battle to repel the imperialist invaders?
By these deeds alone, citizens, you must know that the rumors swirling around Pyongyang—that Commander Ga and Sun Moon are anything less than utterly in love—are baseless lies! Baseless as the boarding of our innocent fishing vessels by foreign powers, baseless as the outlandish allegations of kidnapping leveled at us by the Japanese. Do the Japanese think we forget it is they who once enslaved our husbands and made comfort women of our wives? Baseless to think that any woman loves her husband more than Sun Moon. Did the citizens not behold how Sun Moon bestowed the Golden Belt upon her new husband, her cheeks flushed with modesty and love? Were you not assembled in Kim Il Sung Square to witness it firsthand?
What are you going to believe, citizens? Rumors and lies, or your very own eyes?
But let us return to the rest of today’s programming, which includes a rebroadcast of Kim Il Sung’s glorious speech of April Fifteenth, Juche 71, and a public-service announcement from the Minister of Procurement Comrade Buc on the topic of prolonging the life of compact fluorescent lightbulbs. But first, citizens, a treat: it is our pleasure to announce that Pyongyang has a new opera singer. The Dear Leader has dubbed her the Lovely Visitor. And here she is, to sing for your patriotic pleasure the arias from Sea of Blood. So return to your industrial lathes and vinalon looms, citizens, and double your output quotas as you listen to this Lovely Visitor sing the story of the greatest nation in the world, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!