The Martyred

Set during the first year of the Korean War (1950–1951), the novel follows Captain Lee, a former university instructor turned South Korean Army intelligence officer, as he investigates the execution of Christian ministers by Communist forces in occupied North Korea. The story raises questions about truth, faith, propaganda, and the human need for meaning amid suffering.

When the war begins in June 1950, Lee and his close friend Park, both university instructors, join the military. Lee is transferred to Army Political Intelligence, and Park joins the Marine Corps. After United Nations forces capture Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in October, Lee's unit occupies a building across from the ruined Central Presbyterian Church, which Park's father led for twenty years. Park and his father are estranged: Park became an atheist after studying in Tokyo, and his father publicly disowned him from the pulpit.

Lee's commanding officer, Colonel Chang, the enigmatic Chief of Army Political Intelligence, assigns Lee to investigate the disappearance of Christian ministers arrested by the Communist secret police. The Army's Counterintelligence Corps has learned that the ministers were shot on the day the war started. Of fourteen arrested, twelve were killed. Two ministers, Shin and Hann, are living in Pyongyang after being freed from prison. Chang instructs Lee to question them, framing the case as potential propaganda: a story of Christian martyrdom with international significance. He also suggests that the ministers' survival is suspicious.

Lee visits the ministers' house on a hilltop. Shin is a gaunt, feverish man of forty-seven with a racking cough. He confirms that all fourteen were arrested together, that he believes the twelve were executed, and that he and Hann were separated from the others. When Lee asks why they survived, Shin declares it was "through divine intervention." As Lee leaves, he poses a question that recurs throughout the novel: "Your god, is he aware of the suffering of his people?" Shin turns away without answering.

Chang theorizes that Shin and Hann survived by betraying their fellow ministers under interrogation. Lee defends Shin, but Chang insists he wants a confession, promising to protect Shin and use the situation for propaganda. Lee warns Shin about Chang's suspicions; Shin responds with equanimity, noting that a clergyman is also capable of succumbing to torture. As Lee leaves, Chaplain Koh arrives, a tall Army chaplain and Shin's former seminary classmate. Shin reacts with fury, refusing to see him. Lee later learns that Koh once had a church in Pyongyang but fled while serving as an intelligence operative for Chang; after his departure, members of his congregation were arrested and killed.

The situation escalates when the local newspaper publishes an announcement for a memorial service for the twelve martyred ministers, stating that Shin and Hann "witnessed the tragic last moments" of the executions. This contradicts what Shin told his congregation. Confronted, Shin admits plainly that he lied but offers no justification, telling Lee: "Has it ever occurred to you that they may not want the truth?" Park arrives in Pyongyang, refusing to participate in the memorial service but revealing a private obsession: He wants to know whether his father died as a fanatic or whether he experienced doubt at the end. Enraged Christians storm Shin's house, chanting "Judas!" Chaplain Koh takes Shin and Hann to a military post in the port city of Chinnampo.

Chang reveals information from a captured North Korean secret police major: The ministers were meant to be hostages, not killed. A drunken commandant murdered them without authorization and was himself executed the next day. Shin and Hann survived only because the prisoner contacted his superiors in time. When the captured major, Jung, is brought before the ministers on the preparation committee, he refuses to follow Chang's script. He declares the ministers "died like dogs," begging for mercy. He spared Hann because Hann had lost his grip on reality, and spared Shin because Shin fought back and spat in his face. Chaplain Koh punches Jung to the floor and delivers Shin's message: Shin wishes to resign from his ministry. Chang then discloses a truth he has withheld: Among the twelve, some ministers broke under torture and denounced the others. Park's father, however, was "the bravest man of them all." A fierce debate erupts. Chang insists all twelve must be presented as glorious martyrs; Koh calls manufactured martyrs "the most despicable blasphemy"; Lee insists truth must be told for its own sake.

Before Shin returns to Pyongyang, Chaplain Koh delivers a letter Shin wrote to Park revealing the ministers' final hours. On the night of the execution, when a fellow minister recited from the Book of Job, Park's father cried: "Stop! No more!" At the riverbank where they were shot, he declared: "I cannot pray! . . . I do not want to pray to an unjust God!" He died without praying, in utter solitude. Park reads the letter and, for the first time, his eyes glisten with tears.

Shin returns and addresses the assembled ministers at headquarters. He declares: "Gentlemen, I am guilty. It was I who betrayed our martyrs." A young minister calls him Judas and storms out, but the remaining ministers rush to embrace Shin, blessing him and confessing their own complacency. They accept his false confession as a sacrifice. That night, angry Christians attack Shin's house again. In the chaos, Hann escapes into the dark. Lee and Park find him beaten and unconscious at the ruined Central Church. Hann dies at the dispensary. Shin whispers: "I have killed him."

Shin conducts revival meetings across the city, delivering an elaborate, fabricated sermon in which the twelve ministers resisted heroically, forgave him, and died gloriously. The memorial service takes place on November 21. Park reads from the Book of Job before the congregation; Shin places his hand on Park's shoulder. Lee, now acting commanding officer after Chang's departure for an underground intelligence assignment, receives secret orders to prepare for evacuation. The Chinese have intervened, and the army will not defend Pyongyang.

In a climactic scene, Shin breaks down and reveals to Lee his deepest secret: He does not believe in God. "All my life I have searched for God, Captain," he whispers, "but I found only man with all his sufferings . . . and death, inexorable death!" After death, he says, there is nothing. Yet he gives people the illusion of hope because without it, despair destroys them. He confesses that he once told his dying wife there was no afterlife, and she died in despair. Lee weeps uncontrollably. Shin tells him: "We must hope against hopelessness. We must dare to hope against despair because we are men."

The general retreat begins. Shin refuses to leave, standing among refugees in his church: "My place is at their side." Lee crosses the bridge over the Taedong River and watches Pyongyang burn behind him. In the months that follow, Lee learns the fates of those he left behind. Shin was arrested by the returning Communists; Chang fears he is dead. Chang himself is killed during a guerrilla raid on the Manchurian coast, sacrificing himself so his men can escape; he leaves money for Koh to buy Bibles for his refugee church. Park dies of wounds at a naval hospital. His last dictated words are: "I have been clinging onto the precipice of History, but I give up."

In the novel's final scene, Lee visits Koh on Tent Island, a refugee camp in Pusan harbor. Koh reports that refugees claim to have seen Shin alive across North Korea, though one insists he was executed. Lee attends an evening service in Koh's tent church, then walks to the beach, where refugees hum a song of homage to their homeland. With "a wondrous lightness of heart hitherto unknown" to him, Lee joins them.