ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the 'baffling' North Korea that one want to demystify must primarily be understood as an effect of the attempts to solve international problems like North Korea. It is divided into three sections: argues that mystery fiction and graphic travelogues converge on how they privilege a particular kind of seeing; examines the mode of detection in two different genres that share much in common: the 'Inspector O' mystery series that takes place in North Korea written by a former Western intelligence officer, James Church, and a graphic novel, Pyongyang: Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle; focuses on how shifts away from this fixation on demystifying North Korea through detective work can and do occur in more heterogeneous modes and narratives. The chapter explores what is interesting, how the novel couches the 'North Korea problem', and more specifically the 'resettler or defector problem', in a confusing mix of seemingly unrelated contexts, events and characters.
