Some time in 1992 the teenage son of an American academic on a trip to North Korea misplaced a certain book. The book was found by a maid who found the cover art alarming and passed it to the hotel manager for safe keeping. The book ended up in the lost property cupboard, the contents of which were distributed amongst the staff after the manager suffered a heart attack. A junior chef took the book home where it would eventually be discovered by his son Cho Jun-Su, with life changing consequences.
The book was a copy of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Masters Guide, a collection of arcane rules and fantastic illustrations written in a strange version of English best described as High Gygaxian. With the aid of rather odd teacher who was tutoring him while was off school, Jun-Su began to play a faltering version of the game that they called The House of Possibility.
North Korea at this time was in the grip of a desperate famine, made worse by the brutal, totalitarian regime in thrall to the despotic 'Dear Leader'. Any questioning of the regime is unthinkable, so a game that promotes the idea that you can imagine a fantastical world of your own with its own rules is a dangerous thing indeed.
The story explores different aspects of Jun-Su's life from school, to a comparatively privileged life at university and then on to a horrific gulag as a punishment for thought crimes against the state. How Jun-Su eventually escapes is as fantastical as any game, and based on the experiences of North Korean refugees living in London that the author Marcel Theroux talked to as part of his research.
We read this book as part of the Grognard Files Bookclub and I found it an interesting read. There wasn't quite as much about the game of D&D as I was expecting, but the details of life in North Korea were fascinating and horrific.
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