Kim's 2014 fiction 'THAAD' rediscovered
.jpg?w=728)
Cover of Kim Jin-myung’s 2014 fiction “THAAD”
By Kim Jae-heun
The deployment of the United States missile defense system, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in Korea is currently a hot potato. It even gave a stir among Asian countries such as China and perhaps in the rest of the world too -- some people believe it might trigger the next devastating World War III.
When Korean novelist Kim Jin-myung published his book “THAAD” in August 2014, the advanced U.S. defense system was not well-known to the public. It was only two months after then-USFK Commander Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti first raised the necessity to deploy THAAD in Korea against North Korea’s military aggression, or to be particular, against a nuclear attack.
But the author seems to have been well aware of the indispensable position of the U.S. to allocate the radar machine in Korea to complete its Military Defense (MD) system as Kim’s fiction charts the conspiracy that has to be based on a thorough understanding of the U.S. Army’s military scheme.
The story is fictional. However, most readers do not perceive it as fiction and the author ― to some extent ― wants his readers to believe it is real.
In the novel, Kim uses the real names of high-profile figures involved in the THAAD deployment project for his characters such as former Eighth U.S. Army Commander Bernard Champoux, World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim and the 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft. Washington’s urging to deploy the advanced missile defense system described in the book also accords with the valid arguments of the opposition parties currently disagreeing with the THAAD deployment.
Kim uses Taft’s name in the book to create the “Taft Report” inserted between chapters to describe actual figures on the Korean political scene such as incumbent president Park Geun-hye and presidential candidates Moon Jae-in and Kim Moon-soo as well as the incidents happening around them that could affect Taft’s plan to ultimately deploy the THAAD system in Korea.
It all starts from the fictional character Richard Kim, a genius researcher at the World Bank, who finds an untalented lawyer Choi Eo-jin in Korea to take care of his mother for 30 million won ($26,852). Not-so-smart but kind-hearted Choi promises Kim that he will take good care of his mother. But shortly after his first visit to Kim’s mother at a sanitarium in the countryside, he receives a call from her early in the morning that Kim has been shot dead.
Despite his colleague’s dissuasion to travel to America to dig into the mysterious murder, Choi takes Kim’s mother’s compassionate request to find her son’s murderer as his first-ever domestic and international case.
Choi has never been outside the country but immediately books a first class flight to New York on the recommendation by another mysterious character, lawyer Kim Yoon-woo, who provided him an expensive office in front of the Supreme Court for free only by the request of a small restaurant lady.
In the book, Taft is described as a giant shadow controlling all the mysterious events from the murders of a prominent researcher at the World Bank and a New York City police officer, to the plan of a war between America and its rival China to save the U.S. from falling into default after long depreciating the value of the dollar.