Mystery buffs are always looking for a new plot twist or setting to enliven their whodunits. Few recent books oblige as fully as A Corpse in the Koryo, a murder mystery novel set entirely in North Korea. Written under the pseudonym James Church by a veteran Western intelligence official with years of experience with the DPRK, A Corpse in the Koryo is a rare glimpse into a society that most Americans know only through stereotypes.

The Korea Society gathered a panel of three experts with years of experience in the DPRK, as former officials of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, between them: Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy; Choi Young-jin, the Republic of Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations; and Lucy Reed, a partner at the international law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. They assessed the novel's realism and parsed the policy issues it raises.
   
A Corpse in the Koryo follows the travails of Inspector O, an investigator in North Korea's internal security bureau, who unwittingly finds himself wrapped up in a murder case. In order to solve it, Oh has to peer into the shadowy places that exist between North Korea's security establishment and its criminal underworld.
   
The panel was unanimous in its praise for the book. Representative Choi compared it to spy classics like Gorky Park and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in its ability to convey the suffocating atmosphere of a totalitarian state. Citing the "show, don't tell" standard of good fiction, Reed added that Church manages to create an ambiance of surveillance around O without ever telling the reader that O is being followed constantly.
   
The audience was curious to know whether the places and people Church had created were true to the realities of North Korea. Bosworth said they were, adding that Church had captured the essence of North Korea, in that it's "a society of ordinary people forced to act in very bizarre ways."
  
Though it's ultimately a work of fiction, the panel was also unanimous in the opinion that A Corpse in the Koryo provides a glimpse into the DPRK that could be of real use to policymakers. Inspector O's superiors, for example, embody the central dilemma of North Korea's elite: they know the system is dysfunctional, but because their status affords them great privilege, they have little interest in acting against it.

It might even suggest a way towards more productive U.S.-DPRK negotiations. "We should negotiate with North Korea as it is," said Bosworth, referring to A Corpse in the Koryo's realistic portrait of a troubled but stable society, "not as we imagine it to be." 


Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Stephen W. Bosworth
Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

Choi Young-jin
Permanent Representative of the ROK to the UN

Lucy Reed
Partner, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

A Corpse in the Koryo, published by St. Martin's Press, was named one of Publisher Weekly's best books of 2006 and nominated for a Gumshoe Award-Best First Novel.  Already published in Japanese, it is slated for Korean, French, German, and Greek translations.  James Church has been interviewed on CNN, NPR's All Things Considered and Voice of America. 

Lucy Reed

Lucy Reed, a partner in the New York office of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, is a member of the firm's international arbitration and public international law groups and a specialist in investor-state disputes.  She represents private and public clients and sits as arbitrator in international arbitrations. Reed is a member of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Claims Commission and has served as co-director of the Claims Resolution Tribunal for Dormant Accounts in Switzerland. 

While with the U.S. Department of State from 1985 to 1992, Reed served as the U.S. agent to the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague and the deputy assistant legal adviser for International Claims and Investment Disputes.  As the first general counsel of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, from 1995 to 1998, she led multinational negotiations with North Korea. 

Reed received her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where she worked on the Law Review, and her BA magna cum laude from Brown University.

Stephen W. Bosworth

Stephen W. Bosworth is the dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a position he assumed in February 2001. Prior to his appointment at The Fletcher School, he served as the United States ambassador to the Republic of Korea from November 1997 to February 2001.

From 1995 to 1997, Bosworth was the executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), an inter-governmental organization established by the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Japan to deal with North Korea. Before joining KEDO, he served seven years as president of the U.S.-Japan Foundation, a private American grant-making institution. During that period, he co-authored several studies on public policy issues for the Carnegie Endowment and the Century Fund. He also taught International Relations as an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs from 1990 to 1994. In 1993, he was the Sol Linowitz Visiting Professor at Hamilton College.

Dean Bosworth has had an extensive career in the United States Foreign Service, including service as ambassador to Tunisia from 1979 to 1981 and ambassador to the Philippines from 1984 to 1987. He also served in a number of senior positions in the Department of State, including director of policy planning, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and deputy assistant secretary for economic affairs. Bosworth currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Japan Society of Boston. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the International Board of Advisers for the President of the Republic of the Philippines.

Bosworth is a graduate of Dartmouth College.

Ambassador Choi Young-jin

Ambassador Choi Young-jin assumed the role of permanent representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations in June 2005. Prior to serving as permanent representative, Choi served in a variety of roles related to international affairs, including vice foreign minister from 2004 to 2005 and chancellor of the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2003 to 2004.

In 2002, Choi represented the Republic of Korea at several international organizations in Vienna, while simultaneously serving as ambassador to Austria and Slovenia. In 2001 he served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT) as deputy minister for policy planning and international organizations, where his brief included foreign policy planning, North Korean affairs and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Choi held the post of deputy executive director of KEDO in New York from 1995 to 1997, where he oversaw the $5 billion construction of two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea. Choi led extensive negotiations, both with the DPRK and within KEDO, and visited North Korea six times.

Choi holds master's and Ph.D. degrees in international relations from the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne). He received his BA in international relations from Yonsei University.