Your Republic Is Calling You

About

Kim Ki-yong has lived in Seoul for twenty-one years as a sleeper agent for North Korea. He has a wife, a daughter, a job importing foreign films, and a life so thoroughly ordinary that he's almost forgotten the other one. Then headquarters calls — after two decades of silence — and gives him twenty-four hours to decide: return to Pyongyang or face the consequences. Kim Young-ha writes the spy thriller as existential comedy, using the premise to explore questions about identity, loyalty, and whether the self you've performed for twenty years is any less real than the one you started with. The novel is fast, funny, and philosophically sharp. A spy novel about a man who's been undercover so long he's become his own cover — and the phone call that makes him choose which life is real.