"Once they had been simply dressed...help you understand what the nation really was."
pg. 17-18
Global Issue: Nationalism
Through the multi-perspective nature of the novel and the exploration of the concept of a 'nation' and its constituents, Kang explores the nationalistic pride that most people seem to hold, to question if the nation is actually holding people together of separating them.
Kang’s use of a limited narrator (the narrator relates only their own thoughts, feelings, and knowledge about various situations and the other characters) is perhaps the most salient aspect of the novel because through Dong Ho, Kang sensitively explores the internal conflict that may have risen in the minds of countless young people trying to ascertain if it was “the nation that had murdered” its citizens. The “one stage… you couldn’t quite get your head around was the singing of the national anthem” and “Why would you sing the national anthem for people who’d been killed by soldiers?” Dong Ho found the usage of the symbols of a nation to commemorate the dead quite insulting to them because these people had died for the nation. Perhaps, if they had not sought to fight to make the nation better, they might have still been alive. This is quite similar to the internalized guilt in Dong Ho for the death of Jeong Dae. The two incidents are not like each other in any aspect, but perhaps, in Dong Ho’s mind, he compares his inability to save Jeong Dae with the nation not being able to save its citizens, holding it responsible for their death, just like he holds himself responsible for his friend’s.
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