The Shadow of Arms

About

A Korean soldier serves as a self-described mercenary alongside the South Vietnamese in Da Nang during the Vietnam War — and discovers that the black markets running beneath the conflict are as complex, brutal, and profitable as the war itself. The economy of occupation operates by its own rules, and understanding those rules matters more to survival than understanding the enemy. Hwang Sok-yong drew on his own experience as a Korean soldier in Vietnam to write a war novel unlike any other — one where the real battlefield is commerce, and the casualties are measured in moral compromises rather than body counts. A Vietnam War novel from the perspective no one expected — the Korean conscript who saw everything and was supposed to say nothing.