Night Walk, Last Words

Louisa and her father, Seok, walk the breakwater at dusk, a rare moment of closeness in a summer marked by her mother's illness and her father's distance. The walk is both a fulfillment of Louisa's persistent requests and a symbolic crossing away from childhood. Her father's last words—about gratitude and the importance of swimming—are ambiguous, possibly the last she ever hears from him, or the last she can remember. The moment is suffused with the tension of things unsaid, the weight of parental expectation, and the child's longing for connection. This memory, both vivid and uncertain, becomes the hinge on which Louisa's life turns, as her father soon disappears, leaving her with questions that will haunt her for decades.

The Unwelcome Appointment

After her father's disappearance, Louisa is uprooted and taken to live with relatives she barely knows. She is subjected to a psychological evaluation under the pretense of a school placement test. The session with Dr. Brickner is a battle of wits, with Louisa refusing to yield to the adult's attempts to probe her trauma. The flashlight in the psychologist's office becomes a symbol of both control and comfort, and Louisa's theft of it is an act of defiance and self-preservation. The adult world's inability to truly see or help her is laid bare, and Louisa's isolation deepens, her grief and confusion unspoken and unaddressed.

Stolen Flashlight, Stolen Childhood

Louisa's theft of the flashlight is more than petty larceny; it is a desperate attempt to hold onto something solid in a world that has become unmoored. The flashlight, echoing the one her father always carried, becomes a talisman of safety and a link to the night he vanished. As Louisa lies awake, replaying the events and the absence of sound when the flashlight fell in the sand, she confronts the unreliability of memory and the impossibility of closure. The object's journey mirrors her own: lost, found, and forever marked by what is missing.

Names Lost, Names Found

Seok's childhood in Japan is defined by shifting names and allegiances. As a Korean in Japan, he is forced to adopt a Japanese name, Hiroshi, and to navigate a world that both excludes and assimilates him. The end of the war brings a new set of confusions: the revelation that he is Korean, not Japanese, and the pressure to return to a homeland he has never known. The struggle to claim a name, a language, and a place in the world is both personal and political, and Seok's journey is one of constant adaptation and loss.

The Disappearing Father

Seok's parents, longing for a homeland and a sense of belonging, are swept up in the promise of North Korea's repatriation campaign. Despite Seok's warnings and the evidence of hardship, they choose to leave Japan for the DPRK, taking his younger siblings with them. The decision is both an act of faith and a tragic error, as letters from the new "homeland" reveal only hardship and silence. Seok is left behind, rootless, carrying the burden of their absence and the knowledge that some losses cannot be undone.

Anne's Secret Son

Anne's early life is marked by escape and secrecy. Her affair with Adrian leads to a pregnancy she hides, and the birth of Tobias, whom she gives up for adoption. The pain of this loss is both acute and chronic, shaping her relationships and her sense of self. Anne's later marriage to Seok is haunted by the absence of her first child, and the eventual reappearance of Tobias in her life is both a blessing and a source of renewed guilt. The boundaries between mother and child, past and present, are blurred by longing and regret.

The Strawberry Incident

When Anne is finally allowed to see Tobias as a teenager, she brings him and Louisa together for a day of strawberry picking. The outing is fraught with tension, unspoken connections, and the weight of secrets. Tobias's shocking accident at the electrified fence is a moment of crisis that exposes the fragility of all their lives. The aftermath—hospitalization, guilt, and the return to silence—underscores the impossibility of reconciling the past with the present, and the ways in which trauma reverberates through generations.

Letters Across Borders

Seok's family, scattered across Japan, North Korea, and the US, maintain tenuous connections through letters. These missives are both a source of hope and a reminder of loss, filled with requests, omissions, and the careful management of truth. The act of writing becomes a way to assert existence, to claim kinship, and to resist erasure. Yet the gaps between what is said and what is felt, between what is known and what can be shared, are vast and unbridgeable.

Becoming Seok, Becoming Other

Seok's pursuit of education and professional success in Japan and the US is marked by both achievement and exclusion. Despite his talents, he is denied full acceptance, always marked as an outsider. The pressure to choose between identities—Korean, Japanese, American—leaves him perpetually in-between, never fully at home. His eventual move to the US is both an escape and a compromise, and the legacy of displacement shapes his relationship with Anne and Louisa.

The Repatriation Decision

The North Korean repatriation campaign offers Seok's parents and siblings the promise of a new life, but the reality is one of deprivation and silence. The decision to leave is both a personal and political act, shaped by dreams of belonging and the manipulations of history. Seok's inability to prevent their departure, and his subsequent efforts to maintain contact, are acts of love and futility. The consequences of this choice echo through the decades, shaping the destinies of all involved.

The Unreturnable Home

Anne and Seok's year in Japan is marked by alienation and longing. Anne, unable to adapt, becomes increasingly ill and withdrawn, while Louisa, forced to assimilate, loses touch with her American self. The family's attempt to find home in a foreign land only deepens their sense of displacement. The eventual tragedy—the disappearance of Seok and Louisa's near-drowning—renders the idea of home forever unattainable, a place that can only be mourned, not reclaimed.

The Unseen Mother

Anne's decline in Japan is both physical and existential. Isolated by language, culture, and her own body's betrayal, she becomes a ghost in her own family. Louisa's shame and resentment at her mother's weakness are matched by Anne's guilt and longing for connection. The roles of mother and child are reversed, and the boundaries between self and other blur. The family's unraveling is both intimate and emblematic of larger histories of migration and loss.

The Japan Year

Louisa's immersion in Japanese school and society is both a triumph and a trauma. She learns to pass, to hide her difference, and to excel, but the price is a growing distance from her parents and her own sense of self. The rituals of daily life—uniforms, lunches, dances—become both a refuge and a prison. The year in Japan is a crucible that forges her resilience but also leaves her marked by loss and longing.

The Vanishing

The night on the beach, when Seok and Louisa are taken, is a rupture that cannot be fully remembered or explained. The official story—drowning, accident, disappearance—conceals a deeper violence: the reality of North Korean abductions. The event is both singular and part of a larger pattern, a crime that is denied, forgotten, and only much later acknowledged. The consequences are lifelong: for Louisa, a blank in her memory; for Seok, years of captivity and erasure.

The Years of Absence

Seok's years in North Korea are marked by deprivation, brutality, and the constant threat of death. He survives through luck, skill, and the occasional kindness of others, but the cost is the loss of self, memory, and connection. The hope of reunion with Louisa, the search for news of her, becomes both a torment and a reason to endure. The world outside moves on, but for Seok, time is suspended, a pool in which he is both drowning and preserved.

The Searchers

The families of the disappeared—Japanese, Korean, and others—form a community of searchers, united by loss and the refusal to forget. Their campaigns for recognition, justice, and reunion are acts of faith and resistance, often met with indifference or hostility. Tobias, Anne's lost son, becomes involved in their cause, drawn by his own history of abandonment and longing. The search for the missing is both literal and symbolic, a quest for meaning in the face of overwhelming absence.

The Return of the Living

Decades after their disappearance, Seok and Louisa are reunited in Seoul. The meeting is fraught with uncertainty: Seok is aged, diminished, and often lost in memory; Louisa is both daughter and stranger. The boundaries between past and present, self and other, are porous. The reunion is both a miracle and a reminder of all that cannot be recovered. The living return, but the dead and the lost remain, their absence shaping the contours of what remains.

Reunion Without Memory

In the aftermath of reunion, Louisa and Seok navigate the complexities of recognition, care, and letting go. The past cannot be fully known or healed, but the act of witnessing, of being present for each other, becomes its own form of redemption. The story ends not with answers, but with the acceptance of mystery, the endurance of love, and the hope that even in the face of loss, something can be salvaged.

Characters

Louisa

Louisa is the emotional center of the novel, a girl whose life is shattered by the disappearance of her father and the unraveling of her family. Her journey from childhood to adulthood is marked by resilience, adaptation, and a relentless search for meaning. She is fiercely intelligent, stubborn, and often at odds with the adults around her, who fail to understand or help her. The trauma of her father's abduction and her own near-drowning leaves her with gaps in memory and identity, but also with a drive to uncover the truth. Her relationships—with her mother, her half-brother Tobias, and eventually her father—are shaped by longing, guilt, and the hope of reconciliation. Louisa's psychological complexity lies in her simultaneous need for connection and her fear of vulnerability, her capacity for both anger and forgiveness.

Seok (Serk/Hiroshi)

Seok is a man caught between worlds: Korean by heritage, Japanese by birth, American by ambition, and ultimately stateless. His life is a series of adaptations and losses, shaped by historical forces beyond his control. As a father, he is both loving and authoritarian, projecting his anxieties and hopes onto Louisa. His abduction and years of captivity in North Korea strip him of agency and identity, reducing him to survival and memory. Yet even in the depths of suffering, his longing for his daughter and his need to bear witness persist. Seok's psychological portrait is one of endurance, pride, and the tragic cost of displacement. His relationships—with his parents, siblings, Anne, and Louisa—are marked by both love and the inability to fully belong.

Anne

Anne is a woman defined by escape: from her family, from her first child, from the constraints of her life. Her marriage to Seok is both a refuge and a site of conflict, haunted by the loss of Tobias and the challenges of cross-cultural life. Anne's struggle with illness and her eventual physical decline mirror her emotional isolation. She is both fiercely protective and deeply wounded, her love for Louisa complicated by guilt and resentment. Anne's psychological depth lies in her capacity for both denial and self-awareness, her longing for connection, and her fear of being seen as weak or unworthy. Her relationships—with Seok, Louisa, Tobias, and later Walt—are shaped by the tension between independence and the need for care.

Tobias

Tobias is Anne's first child, given up for adoption and later re-entering her life as an adult. Marked by abandonment and a sense of not belonging, he becomes a wanderer, drawn to causes and communities of the lost. His involvement with the families of the disappeared in Japan is both an act of solidarity and a way to process his own history. Tobias is gentle, empathetic, and often self-effacing, his kindness both a strength and a shield. His psychological journey is one of seeking meaning, connection, and a place in the world, even as he remains on the margins of every story.

Soonja

Soonja is Seok's younger sister, left behind in Japan when their parents and siblings repatriate to North Korea. She is practical, loyal, and burdened by the weight of family history. Her correspondence with Seok is a lifeline, but also a source of pain, as she navigates the complexities of identity, loyalty, and survival. Soonja's psychological resilience is matched by her capacity for both hope and disillusionment. She represents the enduring ties of family, even in the face of separation and loss.

The Fisherman (Ji-hoon)

Ji-hoon is a South Korean man whose father was abducted by North Korea, fueling his lifelong quest to rescue the disappeared. He is resourceful, driven, and often abrasive, his activism both a calling and a burden. His relationship with Seok is one of mutual use and reluctant trust, each man seeing in the other a reflection of their own losses. Ji-hoon's psychological complexity lies in his inability to let go, his need to bear witness, and his struggle to balance compassion with pragmatism.

Yumi's Parents

The parents of a girl abducted from Japan, they become emblematic of the families of the disappeared. Their grief is both personal and collective, their activism a form of faith. They are gentle, persistent, and marked by the refusal to forget. Their psychological strength lies in their ability to transform loss into action, to create community out of absence, and to sustain hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

Saho

Saho's brother and his girlfriend disappeared under mysterious circumstances, linking her to the community of the disappeared. She is analytical, compassionate, and haunted by guilt for not having acted sooner. Saho becomes a bridge between families, a chronicler of loss, and a seeker of truth. Her psychological journey is one of moving from isolation to connection, from self-blame to acceptance.

Walt

Walt is Anne's second partner, a man marked by solitude and a quiet generosity. His relationship with Anne is one of mutual care and acceptance, offering her a measure of peace and companionship in her later years. Walt's psychological presence is steady, unassuming, and deeply kind, providing a counterpoint to the turbulence of Anne's earlier life.

Roger

Roger is an American with government connections who helps navigate the bureaucratic and political obstacles to Seok and Louisa's reunion. He is pragmatic, patient, and skilled at working behind the scenes. Roger's psychological role is that of the enabler, the one who makes possible what seems impossible, motivated by a sense of justice and empathy for the lost.

Plot Devices

Fragmented Narrative, Shifting Perspectives

The novel employs a non-linear, multi-perspective structure, moving between characters, decades, and locations. This fragmentation mirrors the dislocation experienced by the characters, the gaps in memory, and the ruptures of history. Each section is colored by the consciousness of its narrator, allowing the reader to inhabit the psychological realities of Louisa, Seok, Anne, Tobias, and others. The shifting perspectives create a mosaic of experience, where truth is provisional and always refracted through loss.

Objects as Symbols of Memory and Loss

Physical objects—flashlights, letters, school uniforms, photographs—serve as anchors for memory and identity. The theft and loss of these objects mirror the characters' struggles to hold onto the past, to make sense of absence, and to assert their existence in the face of erasure. Names, in particular, are a recurring motif: the changing of names, the forgetting and reclaiming of them, becomes a way to explore the fluidity and fragility of identity.

The Unreliable Witness

The novel is deeply concerned with the unreliability of memory, both personal and collective. Characters misremember, forget, or invent details, and the official stories—of drowning, disappearance, or defection—are often at odds with the lived reality. The act of witnessing, of telling and retelling, becomes both a means of survival and a source of pain. The reader is invited to question what can be known, what must be believed, and what is forever lost.

Political and Historical Backdrop

The characters' lives are inextricably linked to the political histories of Japan, Korea, and the US: colonialism, war, migration, and the Cold War. The North Korean abductions, the repatriation campaign, and the struggles of zainichi Koreans are not just background but active forces shaping destiny. The novel uses these historical realities to explore themes of belonging, betrayal, and the search for home.

Intergenerational Trauma and Inheritance

The novel traces the ways in which trauma, loss, and longing are passed down through generations. The secrets and silences of parents become the burdens of children; the unresolved grief of one era shapes the possibilities of the next. The act of searching—for lost family, for truth, for self—becomes both a curse and a form of hope.

Foreshadowing and Echoes

The novel is rich in foreshadowing and echoes: motifs, phrases, and events recur across time and character, creating a sense of fate and inevitability. The night walk, the flashlight, the act of swimming, the loss of language—all are introduced early and return in altered forms, underscoring the cyclical nature of trauma and the persistence of love.

Analysis

Flashlight is a profound exploration of the ways in which personal and historical traumas intersect, shaping the lives of individuals and families across generations and continents. At its heart, the novel asks what it means to belong: to a family, a nation, a history, a self. The abduction of Seok and Louisa is both a literal and metaphorical event, standing in for all the ways people are taken from themselves and each other by forces beyond their control—war, migration, illness, silence. The novel refuses easy closure or redemption; instead, it offers the possibility of connection through the act of witnessing, of being present for each other in the face of absence. The lessons are hard-won: that memory is both unreliable and necessary; that identity is constructed, fragile, and always in flux; that love endures even when it cannot heal. In a world marked by displacement and erasure, Flashlight insists on the value of searching, of naming, of holding onto the light—however faint—in the darkness.

Last updated: January 5, 2026