“Father died. Slammed his head into a telephone pole. A very serious man had seriously come to the end of a seriously lived life by seriously slamming his head against a telephone pole. [...] Goddamn it.”

Following her father’s sudden death (bumping himself onto a telephone pole), Ari Ko returns to her hometown to host a three-day funeral.

 Ari was once close to her father, but as she grew older, she found it increasingly difficult to understand him. Her father, a former communist partisan who fought in the Korean War, lived by the principle of "Serve the People," a belief that only brought troubles to their doorstep.

However, as friends and comrades recounts her father’s life during the funeral—his glorious days as a partisan, his fake treachery to protect his people, his tangled relationship with his family—Ari realizes that there are a lot about her father she didn’t know. 

Ten years in the making, this semi-autobiographical novel has sold over 300,000 copies and received praise from the former Korean president, Moon. Jeong Ji-A, in honor of her partisan parents, brings to light Korea's overlooked history and the unsung partisan fighters.

"My parents were socialists. After South Korea forcibly established a government ruling only the South with the support of the United States, they both cried out for national unification and class liberation, infiltrating Jirisan to start an armed struggle. Ultimately failing, they served long prison sentences before returning to farm in the capitalist society of South Korea. Did my parents ever feel wronged? I believe they never felt wronged or defeated. They simply did what they could at the time, quietly living through their destined days.
They never let frustration, anger, or sadness dominate their lives. " -- Jeong Ji-A, from exclusive preface for Complex Chinese edition