Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park

Reviewed by Wayne Ng

Spycraft meets identity crisis in this sharp, genre-bending debut that moves between borders, allegiances, and emotional fault lines.

Korean culture continues its global renaissance with celebrated contributions in film, food, music, and now, literature. Jinwoo Park’s Oxford Soju Club is a standout debut that deepens this cultural wave and solidly plants a Canadian flag as he delivers a genre-defying spy thriller layered with psychological nuance and diaspora insight.

The novel’s tagline, “The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean,” succinctly captures its tense, cat-and-mouse premise. Park weaves espionage, identity, and the immigrant experience into a taut narrative that adheres to the familiar beats of spy fiction—cryptic last words, covert meetings, betrayals—while simultaneously subverting them to probe deeper questions of cultural belonging and fractured identity. Imagine the existential suspense of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, and you’re in the right territory.

Set primarily in the storied city of Oxford, England, Oxford Soju Club tracks the intersecting fates of three Koreans: Yohan Kim, a North Korean spy; Yunah Choi, a Korean American CIA agent; and Jihoon Lim, proprietor of the only South Korean restaurant in Oxford. Each character is vividly drawn, carrying emotional and ideological baggage. Each is ensnared in a deadly game of loyalty and deception. When Yohan’s mentor, the enigmatic spymaster Doha Kim, is assassinated, he’s left with a cryptic message: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” As Yohan scrambles to decode the clue, Yunah closes in on her target, and Jihoon, unwittingly tied to the Soju Club, is forced to reckon with both external threats and his haunted past.

While the plot delivers all the twists and suspense one expects from espionage fiction, Oxford Soju Club’s true power lies in its emotional and cultural undercurrents. Park explores the many masks immigrants wear—assimilation, rebellion, reinvention—and the dissonance between public persona and private truth. Yohan, Yunah, and Jihoon each grapple with identity, loyalty, and the inherited trauma of a divided homeland, offering a textured portrait of the Korean diaspora.

Park’s prose is sharp, economical and evocative, conjuring Oxford’s moody cobblestones and shadowed alleyways with cinematic clarity. The pacing is expertly calibrated, seamlessly balancing kinetic action with quiet introspection. His reimagining of the spy novel favours psychological tension over bombast, more Chang Rae-Lee than Bond, though Le Carré fans won’t be disappointed with Park’s distinct infusion of the emotional gravity of diaspora narratives. It recalls the introspective weight of The Sympathizer and the emotional resonance of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.

A notable strength is Park’s refusal to impose ethical absolutes. His characters navigate a shifting moral ground, making choices shaped by trauma, ideology, the pursuit of truth and survival. This moral complexity, along with themes of generational trauma, political allegiance, and self-reinvention, elevates the novel beyond its genre framework, rendering it richer and more enduring.

Seoul-born with stops in Vancouver, Long Island, London, and now Montreal, Jinwoo Park is a Canadian talent whose debut marks him as a literary voice to watch. Oxford Soju Club kicks the doors open for other Korean diaspora writers while raising the bar for genre-bending fiction that is as thrilling as it is thought-provoking. The spycraft keeps the pages turning, but it is the richly crafted characters who will stay with you long after the final chapter. This is a haunting, intelligent, and resonant read.

Oxford Soju Club can be pre-ordered before the September 2025 official release by Dundurn Press.