Min Jin Lee

Sunja looked up and saw the new man in the light-colored Western suit and white leather shoes.

“You must swear that you’ll be faithful to this man. If you’re not, you’ll bring far greater shame on your mother and your dead father than what you’ve already done. You must ask the Lord for forgiveness, child, and ask Him for faith and courage as you make your new home in Japan. Be perfect, child. Every Korean must be on his best behavior over there. They think so little of us already. You cannot give them any room to think worse of us. One bad Korean ruins it for thousands of others. And one bad Christian hurts tens of thousands of Christians everywhere, especially in a nation of unbelievers. Do you understand my meaning?”

Hansu could say with confidence that the Japanese were pathologically intractable when they wanted to be. In this, they were exactly like the Koreans except their stubbornness was quieter, harder to detect.

Hansu preferred Kim to do the collection because Kim was effective and unfailingly polite; he was the clean wrapper for a filthy deed.

Changho-ya, you’ve worked for me, you’ve had enough food and money, so you’ve started to think about ideas—that’s normal. Patriotism is just an idea, so is capitalism or communism. But ideas can make men forget their own interests. And the guys in charge will exploit men who believe in ideas too much. You can’t fix Korea. Not even a hundred of you or a hundred of me can fix Korea.

“Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you

“Eliot is wrong,” Akiko said, undeterred. “Maybe the Jews have a right to have their own state, but I see no need for Mirah and Daniel to have to leave England. I think this nobility argument or a greater nation for a persecuted people is a pretext to eject all the unwanted foreigners.”

At this point in the course, everyone in the room despised Akiko, but suddenly he admired her courage to think so differently and to suggest such a difficult truth.

Goro’s employees were an extension of himself, he believed, and Goro was strict about their personal hygiene as well.

Sliding paper doors divided the interior into three snug rooms, and the fisherman himself had replaced its leaky grass roof with reddish clay tiles to the benefit of his landlord, who lived in splendor in a mansion in Busan.