ON A COLD SEPTEMBER afternoon, I was in Officer Yeong’s office, polishing his framed photographs of various higher-up officials from Pyongyang. Officer Yeong was an ambitious, not yet middle-aged politician, who looked toward a future in Pyongyang as a high-ranking government executive. I learned from Mee-Kyong that our respective employers were political rivals, both competing for the same position as Camp 22’s Chief Officer of Productivity, an obvious catalyst into a Pyongyang career. I knew nothing of Officer Yeong’s family life, though I guessed he was probably married. While Mee-Kyong’s Agent Pang was charming and flirtatious, my Officer Yeong rarely displayed any emotion whatsoever. If he did have a wife, I imagined she must be bored married to a man whose only passion was for the Pa
