Kim

The Plotters by Un-su Kim (2010)

In South Korea, Reseng, an assassin-for-hire, brings back the body of his latest kill for disposal but he changed the method of the job and now his employers aren’t happy. This isn’t the first time he has disobeyed specific orders either. Fortunately for Reseng, he’s one of the best in the business and enjoys immunity from the consequences. Then one day, he finds a bomb in his apartment. The patience of “the Plotters” may finally be running out. The story that Un-su Kim tells takes the reader on a fascinating tour of the Korean criminal underground and the minds of those who inhabit it.

The world of The Plotters is dark and depressing. This isn’t some dystopian vision of the future. It’s a bleak view of a present society from the point of view of criminals. Morality and virtue don’t exist here. A cloud of fate and doom hangs over everything, and Kim puts the reader right in the middle. There is no relief. Even the seemingly normal aspects, such as scenes of Reseng caring for his beloved cats, feel ominous.

The criminal underworld created by Kim is complex. It is well-constructed and highly organized with a strict social hierarchy. At the very top are the plotters who control everything. They take the kill orders and create the contracts with the customers. They also plan the murders and send instructions to the brokers at branch offices who parcel out the jobs to trained killers like Reseng. The job is clean, professional, and secret. Trackers, cleaners, and disposal units are the janitors and other staff. These are the aristocrats of this world and are involved in assassinations involving the rich and powerful.

The peasants are in the Meat Market, where every corrupted pleasure or need could be bought for a price. Located in the city slum, Reseng describes it as a “home for those who had hit rock bottom so hard that you wished there were a gentle way to say, ‘Hey, maybe in your case suicide isn’t the worst idea?’”[i] One of the best scenes in the book occurs here when Reseng visits to get information. While sitting in the waiting room of an informant’s office, we overhear this man and an assistant trying to convince a woman to hire them to kill her husband. It’s slick and fantastically written, and, for me, defines the novel.

Reseng is a complex character. He is a celebrity among killers, excellent at his job and in demand. He’s a murderer but no psychopath. Reseng is an orphan who was adopted by his eventual manager and trained to kill. He hates his job and understands that it would be truly strange for someone to like this life but it’s the only world he’s ever known. He feels remorse after every kill and goes on a weeklong drunken bender as a form of penance.

Throughout the book, Reseng reminisces on his life and choices. He was once at the top of his game but botching the killing of the old man and his dog ruined his reputation. Now fill of regret, he becomes increasingly fatalistic as the novel progresses. Kim uses these memories to compare Reseng’s dark world to “normal” life. Reseng remembers a chance to escape this underworld for good but how he ultimately rejected it. While drunk, he “dunked his head under the water and started adding up the number of people he’d killed so far. As he did so, he was overcome with a sense of ruin.”[ii] Reseng is lost and he knows it.

The Plotters takes its time to develop. Information is revealed slowly over the course of the narrative with details carefully dropped as a scene plays out. This saves time and space while creating a sense of mystery. My favorite example of this is when Reseng and a colleague are on a stakeout. At first, I pictured them sitting in a car as they discussed their target. It is slowly revealed, however, that they are sitting at a sidewalk café across the street from the target’s place of business. It’s a small thing, but I thought this method of set-building kept me focused on their conversation while adding tension.

I don’t know how I feel about The Plotters. It’s filled with bad people, has cynical philosophies, and a pessimistic outlook but I couldn’t stop reading. It’s advertised as a mystery/thriller, but I don’t think so. In my opinion, it’s a deep study of the criminal mind broken up by excellent dialog and action. There’s a superbly brutal knife fight in a barber shop, for example. In the end though, The Plotters is a long essay examining fate, choices, and the power of uncontrollable circumstances in one’s life.

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[i] Un-Su Kim, The Plotters, (New York: Doubleday, 2019) 135.

[ii] Ibid, 180.