“Please take a seat,” says Mister Ri. “No, there…” It's slowly getting annoying. Even the seat in the Kaesŏng tea house is included in my itinerary, I am not allowed to choose anything in this paradise, free will is taboo.
Kees fought as a volunteer in Korea in 1953. He brings a trauma home with him, which festers and turns into an obsession. When Kees discovers that his distant ancestor Jan Janse Weltevree stranded in Korea in 1627 and had descendants there, he sends his cousin to North Korea for further research. But how do you investigate family ties in a completely closed country where 'impure blood' is a sin and falsification of history is the rule rather than the exception?
Thinner than Water is compelling and at times absurdist. Coincidence rules the world, but North Korea hates coincidence, with all the tragic and hilarious consequences that entails.
Henk Weltevreden:
Henk is a descendant of Jan Janse Weltevree, who is himself a descendant of Nam Il, the North Korean general who signed the armistice in 1953 and, with a little more coincidence, could have been the Great Leader. The Netherlands as VOC producer of a North Korean dictator. These are just parliamentary questions.
