E.J. Koh

At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come.

From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol ferry accident, E. J. Koh’s exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.

The Liberators

Lindsay

I understood the urge to dig a tunnel and go underground and live in the perpetual dark. Like a children’s game where hiding was equally motivated by the desire to be found. To pass through a tunnel was to one day be seen. To be a spy was to one day be known. Even the dead, in the grips of dying, were as close as possible to feeling alive.

“Every country has a right to a civil war,” he said. “It’s not death that I fear but the denial of an end.”

The Liberators quotes

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