Oxford Soju Club

The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean.

When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protégé, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha's last breath: "Soju Club, Dr. Ryu." In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination. At the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph.

Oxford Soju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves.

Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's in creative writing at the University of Oxford. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. He is also a literary translator and received the LTI Korea Translation Award for Aspiring Translators in 2023. Oxford Soju Club is his debut novel.

ISBN: 9781459755109
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: September 02, 2025

On top of crafting a clever spy thriller, Park uses its vernacular of shifting alliances, donned masks, and the training one undergoes to assimilate to deftly probe questions of diasporic identity and how we decide where we belong.Wildly inventive, fast-paced, and glowing with heart, Oxford Soju Club is an unforgettable debut. A spy thriller interlacing the paths of three individuals embroiled in what threatens to become an international incident, with a breakneck plot and a poignant way of describing trying to exist between worlds and to carve a place of your own in between.