Nuclear Family

Thanks to the Mayor of Flavortown, Cho's Delicatessens are thriving in Honolulu. Or at least they were. When the Cho's eldest Jacob heads to South Korea to teach English he manages to get himself possessed by the ghost of his dead grandfather who uses his body to faceplant himself trying to run across the DMZ into North Korea. Viewed worldwide, people stop coming to the deli, the Chos tainted by the mere whiff of a connection to Kim Jong-un and North Korea. Grace meanwhile is barely dealing beneath a persistent cloud of weed. All this before the 2018 false missile alert that sent the island into panic.

Amidst all that, this is an exploration into second generation immigrant isolation, questioning one's own sexuality, notions of community, reunification, nations subjugated by outsiders, separation and reconciliation. At least I think so - I felt unbalanced throughout as if I couldn't quite get a solid footing - as discombobulated as Jacob reeling under the thrall of Baik Tae-woo, the King Fool.