A 3-bit story by Grant Koo for the Summer 2026 issue
“You ask how the North Koreans can be okay with such a system. The answer is that they don’t know of any other. North Koreans have been living under the same system for three generations. A North Korean man or woman would have to be over 75 years old to remember things being any different. They don’t have access to newspapers, television, radio, or the internet except for whatever the government propaganda machine churns out so they have been led to believe that the standard of living in other countries is worse than their own. With no reliable evidence to disprove that information, they believe what they’re told. And even if they don’t, they stay quiet about it. People disappear in North Korea for some pretty small things.”
—Yahoo Answers, https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20131109041952AAtgJDC. Accessed 1/20/21.“Solitude is the place of purification.”
—Martin Buber, I and Thou.
Opening Bit
“So the doctor picks the baby up off the floor and holds it out to the young couple, who are just flabbergasted with horror, and jokes, ‘Just messing with you. It was stillborn.’”
The audience reaction is mixed. The scattered groans and gasps of disapproval resolve themselves into a singularly uncomfortable silence. The room itself seems to reel backwards, unable to recover and move on. It’s been a polite crowd so far, so I reach for a smile, but grimace into the mic instead.
“Sorry. That was just…awful, and I’m totally with you there. You were so right not to laugh at that one.”
I take a long swig of somek and start to feel a fuzzy warmth developing near the crown of my head like some kind of halo effect. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, light a cigarette, then deliver my transition.
“So when I’m not on stage doing standup, I’m in the classroom teaching English.” I air quote ‘teaching’. “Anybody ever take an English class?” I figure most of them have, but one of the girls at the table to my right fortunately self-identifies. She’s cute.
“And what’s your name?”
Something inaudible.
“Excuse me? I didn’t catch that.”
“Stella.”
“How lovely! Like star, right? As in constellations?”
She nods and looks nervously to her drinking comrades. Her eyes sparkle like a pair of diamond dice tossed carelessly across green felt.
“So Stella, tell me, was your daddy a thief?”
“Yes! But how did you know? Not a very good one though. Caught and executed within a week,” she adds with a pinch of wistfulness that sabotages both my punch and pickup lines.
Snake eyes.
…
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone die quite so spectacularly on stage before. And I’m including all of Shakespeare.”
I picture a live mic gripped by stiffened fingers next to a toppled stool on a darkened stage and wait for either a joke or poetry to emerge from the details, spontaneously as it were, then just shrug it off. I snub dying.
“You want another somek, buddy?”
Koreans and their portmanteaus.
“Sure, why not? I can sleep it off. Don’t have class till after noon.”
“Anything to eat?”
“I’ll have the fried chicken again…thanks. It was pretty good last time.”
TJ pulls 500cc of OB Lager, drops a shot of soju into the glass, and conveys an order of the fried chicken to the new waitress, on the house, in lieu of payment till my routine proved profitable. In the meantime, I was still performing for late night snacks and someks. Tips were not part of the culture here.
“You showed pretty good control over the audience until you started in with that crowd work. It’s always a risky business engaging a live audience, isn’t it?”
“Live and learn.”
“You said it, bruh. Be right back.”
He wipes his hands on a towel behind the bar and leisurely makes his way across the floor, stopping to check on each table to see if they needed anything, exchanging bows and smiles with the regulars, and spreading just enough Korean-Aussie bonhomie throughout the carcinogen-clouded room to reach the bottom of two shallow steps off stage left, where he waits for the current standup’s round of applause to subside before stepping to the mic and keeping the crowd warm for the next comedian.
…
All my jokes start in a folder on my phone called The Junkyard and have to prove themselves worthy of getting out. That the stillborn baby joke had crawled out of the junkyard and onto the stage was just no good. It demonstrated poor judgement and, simply put, that’s why I died.
The next time I die might be for real. Who knows? Then they may say of me in lieu of eulogy, “There goes the kind of guy who didn’t mind wearing the same outfit two days in a row and hated haircuts.” Not in any derogatory sense I don’t think, but as the simple restatement of unremarkable biographical facts peculiarly dislodged from the brain in funereal settings.
I edited the stillborn joke thinking it’d benefit from certain lasso-like motions and whirling sound effects to convey the doctor’s mishandling of the infant corpse, but still dissatisfied, swiped out of the junkyard folder with enough time for a smoke before class.
…
The topic of conversation that day, as I’ve proposed in other months, was live performance and stage fright in a lesson loosely organized around the language used to describe emotions. Using scared as opposed to scary, say, or I’m bored as opposed to I’m boring. My two o’clock level three conversation class was a mix of mostly university students preparing to study abroad and middle-aged housewives meticulously planning out their next family trips.
Following a fifteen-minute review of grammar and vocabulary, I broke the class up into smaller conversational groups of four and spent the next thirty-five minutes jumping in and out of random contexts: a small town high school drama club’s racy production of Romeo and Juliet with full frontal nudity; a daughter’s magnificent third grade winter pageant, the stage glitter thrown into the air streams of industrial fans pointed at the rafters to suggest magical snow, neither cold nor wet, as seen seated front row center by a proud mother brought to tears by the memory; summoning down a fiery speech before the gates of higher education surrounded by other outraged student protestors and hemmed in by conscripts no older than themselves, pressed into service and riot police gear for the other side. Sometimes I even contributed an anecdote of my own, but mostly I’d interject a question here and there just to keep the conversation going and offer corrections or suggest alternative phrasings as unobtrusively as possible. I don’t know if any of this actually helped to improve anyone’s English, but that’s more or less how each class went—like a party at a bar minus any food and alcohol.
My evening classes consisted mostly of office workers, so the conversations there tended to revolve around situations where English was required for official business and often involved a lot of tongue-in-cheek role playing.
“My client would now like to take a tour of the facilities,” said Dong-suk.
“Yes, of course. Follow me, please,” replied Young-bum.
“If we could build out just a single tactic, holding off on the rest of the ad campaign until we receive final client-approved assets, that will help mitigate our exposure to risk,” said Se-min.
“Uh…just a moment please. One more time. More slowly,” smiled Seok-mi.
Seok-mi’s proficiency in English was at its highest when he was stalling for time or, ironically, when he was apologizing for his very lack of linguistic facility. He couldn’t tell you the plot of his favorite movie in language, but could explain why his English sucked twenty different ways fairly fluently. He took it upon himself to memorize jokes that he’d found on the Internet and would follow me outside during smoke breaks to tell them, knowing I did a little standup on the side. Here’s the most recent one he recited, incidentally, in perfect English:
“So I asked my North Korean buddy how his life was going, and he said ‘Can’t complain!’”
Which wasn’t bad really, but I couldn’t quite see it working on stage.
The last class of the day ended at nine. This subset of students typically registered with the express intent of cajoling the teacher, in this case me, to go out drinking afterwards, which sure, I’d join them if I had nothing better to do, which happened often enough, considering the extra hours together at the very least pro bono English lessons, as did the teachers they’d had the month before. Usually we stuck around near the neighborhood, but sometimes took taxis to the dance clubs in Hongdae or the pricier night clubs in Itaewon if one of the students happened to have an expense account or a crush on another student. Sleeping with students was frowned upon, but widely practiced, and if things ended up in marriage and maybe a newborn less than nine months later, well, that seemed to make everything “a-okay!” as they say in pig latin and sitcoms from the turn of the millennia.
…
TJ’s Basement was up the hill in Itaewon two doors down from a brothel popular among US soldiers. TJ didn’t mind prostitutes sitting at the bar as long as they were off the clock. Hosting one of the only regular standup comedy nights in the neighborhood, if not the entire country, he carved out a fairly brisk business in a culturally niche market. It also helped that the food and drink specials were good.
“How long have I been coming here, TJ?” Exhaling a plume of smoke.
“I don’t know. Must be what, nine, ten months now.” Re-examining a glass he had just wiped down.
“It’s been nearly three years.”
“Really? That long? Huh.”
“Think I’m about ready to move on.”
“Oh yeah? Where to?” Wiping down another glass.
“Back home.” Exhaling another plume of smoke. “All my friends are getting married and having kids now, and it’s beginning to feel like life’s passing me by. Like all I’ve been doing these past few years was constructing an elaborate alibi.”
We sat there trying to see the life passing us by as we served double life sentences or lived out imperfect alibis shot through with holes by a prosecution that never rests. Now. Here. Nowhere. The difference was a space.
“What’ll you do for work?”
I shrugged. I had absolutely no clue, so decided to change the subject. “Something’ll work out. I’m not too picky. Maybe become a famous comedian selling out theaters in New York. You never know. You ever been married?”
“Yeah. Once. For three good years. But haven’t seen her for…must be at least twice as many now. We were young and only pretended to know what we were doing. Anyway, in hindsight, it was good we never had any kids.”
…
“Thank you. Thanks so much. Yes. That’s uncomfortably nice of you. Thank you-ham-ni-da.”
I wait for the introductory applause, which feels like a kind of high-interest, advanced payment I’ve been forced to accept by the mob, to die down. I scan the audience for familiar faces then lift the mic to my mouth.
“So I just turned thirty last month. Yep, that’s right, dirty thirty. Now by the time you hit thirty, if you haven’t done at least ten things that you never, ever want people finding out, then I think you haven’t really lived. You know what I mean. You haven’t really explored the depths of your degradation. And you seriously need to contend with that shit by the time you’re thirty. You see what happens with these people who get left back in their twenties. Having to do them over. Like repeating third grade except an entire decade.”
I briefly lost track of which direction I’d wanted to take things, and decided to slow the spinning room down by lighting a cigarette. Oh, fucking shitballs.
“Anybody got a light? Ma’am, mind if I bum yours?”
I cup the flame above her dexterous hand. I don’t always remember a name, but I couldn’t forget hers. As in constellations. Everyone faded into the background and was just going to have to wait for the lovely moment to pass. Inhale, a perfumed wrist, the nicotine spike, and exhale, the mouth already moving through some expression of gratitude. Ready, reset, go.
“Excuse the double entendre earlier. I did just turn thirty. Can we all just take this moment now…here, nowhere in particular, to check in on each other? There are clearly people in the room, who’ve been left back, yeah? You have eyes. There’s just something about their face, the way they dress and style their hair. See anything you like by the way? Yes, no? Maybe after a few more someks? Everyone identify the creeps you wanna avoid the rest of your life?”
I perform ironically surreptitious gestures pointing out the most harmless looking guy in the room. He’s got a handsome face in that shackled artist kind of way. He’s even a good sport about all the sudden, unsolicited attention as the butt of a groundless joke, shrugs charmingly, indicating himself, and mouths, “Who me?” Handsome standing by the bar, but short, in sum. The first thumb-rule of comedy that everyone learns way back in the schoolyard is to never target anyone bigger than you.
“Good. Anyway, I pray to god no one in my family ever gets wind of what really happened on my thirtieth birthday. Because the sordid details would just break my poor mother’s heart. And she does not need to hear about me blacking out and waking up on a boat next to twins. But y’all gonna hear about it, fo’ sho’ because twins, am I right!”
I shift gears and make a hard right into a pure fiction that just kills everyone in the room. Stella rolls her eyes when she catches me looking her way, but I caught her laughing the moment before and follow up with backfills and flashbacks.
“So this club in Gangnam, where the evening started out, was one of those real authentic Korean nightclubs. You know what I mean. Whiskey by the bottle, overpriced anju, ‘booking’ waiters.”
I smile politely, as if the partially formed booking bit crawling out of the junkyard had nothing to do with me.
“I was raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, so ‘booking’ was new to me. It took me a while to figure out that basically, you’re tipping the waiter to drag women back to your table for a drink, right? Which would make the waiters what in America some people might call ‘pimps’. Basically.”
I cough and clear my throat.
“Some of the women though…they were so over the top sexy. And probably professionals, come to think of it. I mean at least a couple must’ve accepted cash payments. Even the legit clubs turn a blind eye to that sort of practice, right TJ? It’s too good for business.”
I could feel the tension in the room rise and pivoted.
“But I figure even the amateurs must all be into it, otherwise, they wouldn’t have shown up in the first place, right? Now what I liked best about ‘booking’ was that you skip the pickup line and jump straight into the punchline. No ‘Your daddy must’ve been a thief to steal the stars from the skies and put them in your eyes’ pretense. Just straight into ‘Hope the waiter wasn’t too pushy, but you can relax now. Here let me pour you a drink.’”
My goodness, I thought to myself, not panicking quite yet. There ought to be a real punchline here somewhere.
“So my friends and I are all having a fantastic time, drinking and dancing and rotating through half the club’s female cohort, getting drunker and drunker, and stumbling back onto the dance floor, where we’d work up the nerve to approach a group of girls we’d been ‘booked’ with earlier, not to rub up against them per se, though trust me, we were more than willing to oblige them there, but only to forget the oppressive sense of loneliness we’d managed to ignore throughout the day, if only for another night.”
I pause to ponder just where I thought I was for a moment. Right…onstage.
“One of these guys, by the way, if you ever go to this club in Gangnam, whose name I can’t remember right now because it was in Korean, but also kind of because, for all you care concerning this story, I could be making it all up. I mean, who cares if a story’s real as long as it’s told halfway well and packs a decent punchline. Anyway, he caused this sign to come into existence and enter the visual parlance. You’ll see on one of the pillars near the stage that they had to put up a no dry humping sign on the dance floor because of this Romeo. The signs must’ve caught on at some point. Or the dry humping dance did. Have you seen these no dry humping signs? They’re fantastic. Google it. Gangnam club no humping sign. They’re popping up in all the hottest clubs apparently. Did you find it? No? Just picture the men’s bathroom figure pressed against a rather triangulated woman from behind in a big red circle with a line through it. So if you’ve ever come across one of those signs, not literally of course because eww, and wondered what the deal was, well, now you know. It’s a way better sign to have pressed into service than those ‘Employees must wash hands before returning to work’ signs you see in public toilets. Who wants to be the cook that gives an entire restaurant salmonella by taking a shit and returning to the kitchen without having washed his hands? It’s like US law now to have these signs prominently displayed in bathrooms. Isn’t it terrible that such signs even have to exist? Doesn’t it make you never want to eat out again? I mean, how filthy are these cooks that we need a sign telling them to wash their hands after a shit and before handling our food? Can we blindly trust that these laws are being adhered to? They’re laws, not fucking suggestions, you dirty shit-stained, left-handed chef!”
Chef Kwon, with a sight line to the stage from the open kitchen, sticks his head up on cue and sends me a don’t-bother-me-kid brush off with both hands. There’s a sashimi blade in one, and he goes back to using it. I exchange smiles with Stella. How long had she been sitting there? For a brief period right before she left for Melbourne, we’d started seeing quite a bit of each other. It turned out we lived in the same neighborhood, and this one time, we just happened to bump into one another at the grocery store. Then dinner then drinks then some time alone sequestered away from a million spying eyes and eavesdropping ears.
“I’m sorry Chef Kwon. I don’t know why I said that…I wasn’t referring to you. And it’s not even true. He’s not left-handed, folks. Anyway, actual penetration they have no sign for because 1) you’re going to need a pretty graphic sign for that, and 2) apparently the club owners have no problem with hot coitus on the dance floor. No. Exchanging bodily fluids was entirely acceptable. Because my crazy drunk friend did that too, but no sign!”
Got more laughs than the last one, so I figured it was best to quit while I was ahead because a comedian is exactly two jokes—the one he just told and the one he’s going to have to tell next to recover.
“Okay! That’s it from me tonight. Again, I’m Grant Rhee. Hope to see all your beautiful smiles again here next week. Thank you so much and have a good night.”
…
“Hey, Stella. Thought you’d gone down under.” An erotic thought flickered from the phrasing. Harmless enough. I doubt she even knew what “going down” meant in colloquial English.
“I did. And now I’m back. It’s been three months.”
“Really? That long? Huh.”
I stopped again to think where all that time could’ve gone, and into the expansion of what airtight alibis.
“It’s fantastic to see you anyway. You look fantastic. Love the blouse with that skirt…and the necklace with that blouse. It’s been a little lonely around here without you. It’s the truth. The crowd’s changed… So when did you get back?”
“Just this past Sunday.”
It made me happy to secretly think that one of the first things she did in the city after three months in Melbourne was to come down to TJ’s Basement on a Wednesday night and find me here.
“Do you have some time to talk now? I have kind of a weird proposition for you.”
I was more than mildly intrigued by a weird proposition coming from her, but she instead spoke at length in a very detached and rehearsed manner, delivering her entire life’s story on the border between disbelief and boredom, while trying not to seem as if she were minutely studying my every reaction with surreptitious glances. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me and ordered another pair of someks. She fell silent again when the waiter returned. It was absurd, yet I knew somehow that she hadn’t been pulling my leg either.
“So? What do you think?” she asks finally at the end of her long soliloquy.
“Yeah, but as North Korean spies?” 🏁
To be continued…
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