Six-year-old Hiroshi learns he is Korean when US soldiers announce Japan's surrender, shattering his imperial idealism.

Seok's parents announce their plan to repatriate to North Korea, and Seok bids them a bitter farewell.

Seok applies for a graduate program in the United States and plans to seek permanent residency there.

Anne meets doctoral student Serk Kang through her employer's academic network and they begin a passionate relationship.

Serk and Anne marry; Anne stops asking about his family after he reacts with anger to the question.

Louisa is born; Serk later rebukes Anne for enrolling Louisa in swimming lessons, revealing he cannot swim.

Korean graduate student Tae-Min Lee mysteriously disappears, and weeks later his wife vanishes as well.

Serk accepts a faculty exchange program to Japan, seeing it as an opportunity to help his sister Soonja.

The Kang family moves to Japan for the academic exchange; Louisa enrolls at a local Japanese school.

Louisa is found barely alive on the shore after an evening walk with Serk; he is presumed dead.

Walt identifies cassette tapes Anne recorded in Japan as a broadcast used by North Korean intelligence agents.

Tobias discovers a protest for a missing girl named Yumi and joins the group advocating for abduction victims.

Louisa visits Hawaii with her second husband and realizes she has been to the island before as a child.

Tobias visits Louisa and reveals his belief that Serk is still alive, showing her a photo of an Asian woman.

Louisa travels to Seoul, reunites with Serk at a hospital, and lies that Anne is alive before he dies.

The novel opens with the disappearance of Serk Kang during an evening walk along the Japanese coastline, leaving his daughter Louisa as the sole witness with only fragmented memories. Serk's story begins in postwar Japan, where his discovery of his Korean heritage sets him on a lifelong journey across borders — from Japan to the United States, where he meets and marries Anne and has Louisa. The suspicious vanishing of a fellow Korean academic named Tae-Min foreshadows the dangers awaiting Serk when the family relocates to Japan on a faculty exchange program. After Serk's disappearance and presumed death, Anne and Louisa return to the United States and begin their separate grieving lives. Decades later, new revelations — including the identification of a North Korean spy broadcast and a protest for abduction victims — gradually push the family toward the truth of what really happened. The novel closes with Louisa reuniting with her father in a Seoul hospital, where she tells him a final lie to give him peace before he dies.

The headline events of the Kang family's fractured history.

Six-year-old Hiroshi fails to recognize the Korean liberation flag and is shamed for not knowing his own heritage.

Hiroshi's parents enroll him in a Korean school, which American authorities shut down on suspicion of Communist ties.

Seok accepts his parents' request to use his Korean birth name as a compromise for declining to transfer schools.

After an unplanned pregnancy, Anne gives birth to a boy named Tobias and surrenders him to be raised by Adrian.

Anne takes Louisa and a teenager named Tobias to a strawberry farm; Tobias reaches for a horse and is electrocuted.

Tobias's hospitalization reveals a brain tumor; he undergoes surgery and his formerly brooding personality transforms completely.

During visits to Japan's coast, Serk introduces his sister Soonja to Louisa only as his friend Mrs. Ishida.

Living nearby in Japan, Tobias writes to Anne and begins secretly visiting her every Thursday while Serk and Louisa are away.

On a Thursday visit, Tobias explicitly tells Louisa they are half-siblings, shocking her with the revelation.

After the Kangs leave Japan, Tobias finds a torn diary entry written by Louisa in their abandoned apartment.

Anne meets her neighbor Walt after he helps her when she falls from her car; they eventually marry.

At Dover immigration, Louisa is falsely suspected of smuggling and subjected to an intrusive cavity search, missing her bus.

Louisa meets a man named Roman on an overnight bus to London; they eventually marry and have a son named Julian.

Anne rediscovers a photo of Serk and Louisa in her old purse; calling Louisa, she learns Soonja took it.

Tobias faints at an abduction advocacy event and learns the distressed woman who approached him is Serk's sister Soonja.

While the main plot follows Serk's fate, Pool 2 charts the quieter but equally consequential events shaping the Kang family's relationships. Serk's childhood in Japan is marked by the forced closure of Korean schools and his reluctant acceptance of his birth name, revealing the layers of identity he tries to shed. Anne's secret history — giving birth to Tobias and surrendering him to be raised by his father — resurfaces when Tobias appears in Japan as a young man and shocks Louisa with the truth of their sibling bond. The family's time in Japan is further complicated by Serk's ongoing visits to his sister Soonja, whose identity he keeps carefully hidden from Louisa. After Serk's disappearance, Anne's isolated domestic life is unexpectedly transformed by her persistent neighbor Walt, while Louisa navigates a turbulent European trip that leads her to Roman and motherhood. The truth about Serk ultimately breaks open when Tobias collapses at an abduction advocacy event and realizes the distressed woman approaching him is Serk's own sister Soonja.

The hidden family ties and formative moments behind the main story.

Before emigrating to America, Seok visits his sister Soonja and urges her to continue correspondence with their family.

Soonja elopes with her Japanese boyfriend rather than repatriating to North Korea alongside the rest of her family.

Anne discovers she is pregnant while traveling with a man named Adrian and returns alone to the United States.

Serk reacts with anger when Anne asks about inviting his family to the wedding, revealing the depth of his secrecy.

After Tobias is hospitalized, Anne asks Louisa to keep his existence secret from Serk; Louisa agrees and holds firm.

Soonja writes urgently to Serk requesting he return to Japan to finance their ailing father's medical travel.

Louisa arrives home early to find Anne with a stranger named Tobias, who immediately greets Louisa as his sister.

Serk takes Louisa to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind; she lies that she enjoyed it to keep going to movies with him.

Using her improving Japanese, Louisa eavesdrops on Serk and Soonja at the pier discussing a mysterious Organization ferry.

Anne finds a photo of Serk and Louisa at the summer house beach that she cannot remember taking.

It is revealed that Serk is alive and held captive by North Korea, forced to train agents in Japanese customs.

Serk's student Byung Ho accuses him of being an American spy, and Serk is transferred to a reeducation camp.

Serk escapes North Korea by stowing away on trains and crossing a dangerous border river into China.

Louisa finds the diary entry in her old college duffel bag and realizes it describes her childhood visit to Hawaii.

Serk calls Louisa by her name in the hospital; she suddenly recalls being thrown off the boat and swimming to shore.

Pool 3 focuses on the pivotal choices and hidden truths that drive the novel's central mystery and its emotional stakes. From Soonja's decision to elope rather than follow her family to North Korea, to Anne's secret pregnancy and Serk's furious refusal to discuss his relatives, the Kang family's story is built on a foundation of carefully maintained concealment. In Japan, a web of secrets tightens around Louisa as she discovers Tobias's connection to Anne, eavesdrops on Serk and Soonja discussing a suspicious Organization ferry, and watches her father weep at a question about his loyalties. The novel's most shocking revelation — that Serk was abducted and held captive by North Korea — reframes everything that came before, and Serk's betrayal by his student Byung Ho explains how he ended up in a reeducation camp for years before escaping. The final turning points arrive when Louisa decodes the true meaning of her old diary entry and, reunited with Serk in a hospital, finally recovers her buried memory of surviving the night of his abduction.