Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park, thank you @netgalley @dundurnpress for this ARC.
Pub Date of this book is Sep 30 2025 .

Genre - Literary Fiction | Multicultural Interest | Mystery & Thrillers

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.
📖

This book lavishly conveyed in two conversations, it is brilliantly unfurled with the tone of literary fiction and mysterious suspenseful journey.
This book is inspired from South Korea and North Korean life, it further developed to portray Korean people's lives in the United States, the identity crisis, pain in immigrant life bitter life struggle in the west intertwined with murder mystery, laced with seductive atmospheric description served as spread in full platter.

I love reading literary fiction and society rules creates havoc, inspired from reality, an unresting drama and if it is garnished with a tinge of mystery, it becomes a mind-blowing, delicious read.

Oxford Soju Club is an ambitious debut, a spy thriller that feels genuinely unique. I really felt like the author, Jinwoo Park, had a strong voice and a clear talent for capturing complex characters who are caught between cultures, and I felt that was a strong point in the story. The premise is engaging, and the character of Jihoon, the Korean restaurant owner, was a real standout for me.

That said, the pacing felt a little uneven for me and sometimes I felt myself being a little confused since there were a lot of characters. Some sections flew by with intense action, while others dragged more. At times, it felt like the novel was trying to juggle too many themes.

Still, overall, I felt like this was an interesting and unique story and I admire what the author set out to do here. It’s a debut that takes risks, and when it hits, it definitely hits. If you’re looking for a spy novel with soul, it’s worth checking out. I look forward to seeing more novels from Park in the future.

Jinwoo Park’s Oxford Soju Club is a razor-sharp espionage thriller that blends geopolitical tension with deeply personal reckonings of identity, loyalty, and survival. Set against the unlikely backdrop of Oxford’s only Korean restaurant, this gripping novel unravels a North Korean spy’s assassination and the deadly chain reaction it triggers among the Korean diaspora—each player hiding secrets as potent as their soju.

When spymaster Doha Kim is killed, his protégé Yohan Kim follows a cryptic clue to the Soju Club, where owner Jihoon Lim—a Seoul immigrant haunted by his past—becomes an unwitting pawn in a high-stakes game. Meanwhile, CIA agent Yunah Choi scrambles to salvage her investigation, her American-Korean duality adding layers of cultural friction and moral ambiguity. Park masterfully intertwines their perspectives, exposing how each character’s constructed identity (defector, spy, immigrant) fractures under pressure.

The prose is sleek and propulsive, shifting between smoky backroom dealings and explosive action, but the novel’s brilliance lies in its quieter moments. The Soju Club becomes a microcosm of displacement, where characters confront what they’ve sacrificed to belong—whether to a regime, a country, or themselves. Park’s insight into diaspora trauma (“The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean”) cuts deep, elevating this beyond a standard spy caper.

3.5 rounded up. A solid story that is less spy novel and more an exploration of what Korean identity means to the author. I think at times, the latter was to the detriment of the former, so it was hard to follow and understand the spy plot as a result. While it was a bit difficult to follow which character was the focus because there's quite a number of POV changes to keep track of, I appreciated how each character POV and storyline had a purpose: to serve as commentary on one facet of Korean identity. I empathized with several aspects of the characters' storylines (two including the straddling two cultures and the earnest yearning for belonging to both), and the overall story and writing was engaging enough for me to fly through the pages quite quickly.

Thank you NetGalley and Dundurn Press for a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review :)

A cast of characters that, despite putting on a mysterious front, will carve their place in your memory.
A story that moves forward - and backward :) - with every single page.
Writing that rolls off the page effortlessly.
Heaps of humanity finely woven through what is, only on the surface, a spy novel.

Read this to shake yourself out of a slump! Or, you know, if you're looking for a great book.
4,25 stars

Many thanks to the author and Dundurn Press for allowing me through NetGalley to read this before publication date.

So much of the experiences lived by the characters in this book felt familiar, like pieces of my self scattered long ago but found again then gathered within these pages. The slick pacing made this a fast read I couldn’t put down. I recommend making time to read this book in one or two sittings as there are multiple POV that you can lose track of if you don’t focus your attention. Having just finished the book, I haven’t fully formed all of my thoughts, only that I loved it and love that this book exists. I wish I could have read this when I was growing up. A book I will re-read for sure.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dundurn Press for the chance to read an ARC. I would not have been able to wait until its release on September 30th. I will absolutely be buying a physical copy for myself, my friends, my family.

When a North Korean spymaster is assassinated, his death sets off a chain reaction involving a loyal protege, a determined Korean American CIA agent, and a quiet Oxford restaurant owner with a hidden past.

This was such a fun book to read! It’s the first time I’ve come across a story that touches on the dynamics between North Korea, South Korea, the U.S., and a bit of Japan too.

Since I’ve been watching K-dramas for a while, words like eomma and hyung (probably not spelled like that in the book) felt familiar, but I can see how they might confuse readers who aren’t used to them.

Overall, I really enjoyed it and definitely recommend giving it a read.

4 stars from me! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oxford soju club is a fast paced thriller, told from multiple points of view, it also is an interesting comment on Koreans and Korean history.

I really enjoyed the story and was kept interested until the end. I liked the diverse characters, particularly Yohan, and how their lives intertwined.

Unfortunately I did find the shifting timelines confusing at times, I did eventually get used to it, but found it a little jarring to begin with. I can completely understand why the different timelines were important to the overall story though.

I would recommend this book to people interested in Korean culture and also people who love a good cat and mouse story.

I am very grateful for being given the opportunity to read this book.

I enjoyed this book, and how it touches the topic of identity and belonging. On top of that, the book is a thriller and the narrative is captivating. Overall I found this book interesting and original!

Oxford Soju Club is unique in the way that it tells the story of immigrants/diaspora and the different experiences they have. Despite it being a spy thriller, I would say that it’s more character driven than plot driven, which may be a bit disappointing to some readers given the premise, but it ended up being the most compelling aspect of this book for me.

The characters were written with so much depth and every action that they took throughout the book felt so well suited to the type of person that they were & what we knew about them.

My only gripe with this book is that I didn’t feel ‘sucked into the story’ from the beginning and it wasn’t until I was about a fourth into it before I was entertained. Whilst this can be put down to word-building, I personally believe it comes down to the fact that the storytelling was weaker at the beginning compared to the rest of the book.

Overall, I think Oxford Soju Club is a thriller for people that don’t typically read thrillers and definitely is a story to remember.

This book's blurb is giving Spy Thriller meets Dark Academia, and the book itself serves I Spy Interior Chinatown in Oxford. The key thing about this book is laid bare in the author's foreword. It is always a bit concerning when an author feels the need to take you by the hand and explain what exactly the book is meant to be, but in a book as tonally bizarre and confusing as this one, it at least gives some sense of clarity.

Nominally, this is a spy thriller following a North Korean, an American and a South Korean spy rings in Oxford, all centred on a small Korean restaurant called the Soju Club, run by a South Korean immigrant with no connection to spying. In reality, this is a slightly Avant Garde take on Korean identity, cycling through the 'good immigrant', the 'dutiful son' and other moulds governing different, conflicting and overlapping ideas of Koreanness away from (South) Korea. I put South there, as despite North Koreans being at the centre of the narrative, it is pretty clear that the book is not trying to say anything about real life in North Korea. The entire narrative feels artificial, fake, theatrical. I don't think it is intended to be taken seriously as a thriller, and it certainly does not work as such. It is difficult to get invested into any of the characters or their stories, as they are all meant to be different avatars of the same person - the author. Tonally and thematically, it reads quite similar to the intentional theatricality of Interior Chinatown, and it feels like it has the aspirations, but not the gravitas, to be something like The Specters of Algeria by Yeo Jung Hwong, a novel I also didn't quite get but appreciated much more than this one.

The North Korean storyline, in particular, was quite dull, as all three driving characters in it were disillusioned with the regime, and not even in their own specific and peculiar ways. That really flattened the narrative, making it feel completely divorced from anything interesting the author might have intended to say about Southern perceptions of North Korea, if not North Korea itself.

In short, this really wasn't my thing.

This was an interesting read. The pacing is quick and I liked how there were high stakes involved without the storytelling being overly complicated. It honestly kinda gave me action K-drama vibes at times, which made it more fun.

That said, I do wish the characters and certain relationships had been more developed. There were moments that seemed designed to get the reader emotionally invested, but they didn’t fully land for me. The sudden flashbacks that occurred also felt a bit jarring, since we're already dealing with frequent shifts between multiple povs.

Overall, it was quite enjoyable.

A novel that centres around immigrants from the Korean diaspora and how they reflect multiple and often conflicting experiences and identities that comes from belonging from different cultures. The plot in itself centres around a North Korean spy cell and how multiple intelligence agencies, South Korean, USA, are all intertwined in a cat and mouse game.

While I was very excited about this premise and the promise to explore identities within such an interesting setting I felt that it just missed the mark. I though that the writing was superb and actually made up for plot lines that were just short of convincing. I think it tries to do too much and therefore everything was left a little lacking. The multiple POVS were a good way of exploring the different aspects of what it means to be an immigrant and how that affects your identity and sense of self. The author aims to explore his experience through his characters and does so very well. However, anytime I was developing an emotional connection to the characters, there was a depth missing. It felt very surface level, the chance to really explore these complex emotions and how they affects relations in your life was not seized. What motivates them, how far are they willing to go to assimilate, how does the longing for home affect their life, these things could have fleshed out them individually more; not made them so similar that you can't tell whose point of view it was.

Overall the writing reflects that wonderful sensibility that Korean culture has, a sense of Han, and I am excited to read more from this author. Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC.

This book was definitely unexpected. At times I adored it and others it was very dull, even with all the spy action. The parts about the character’s pasts were the most riveting. Some parts though were very confusing to figure out who the narration is talking about. I liked the last couple chapters the best, and the concept is really interesting.

This was an interesting read! I love how immigrant experiences and identities were explored in all their very many nuances. I will say that it took me quite a while to read this, but that was probably because the formatting of the ebook was quite oddly done

2/5 The description of this book intrigued me. The lives of a North Korean spy, a Korean American CIA agent, and a Korean immigrant are entwined, and in the center of it all, is the Korean restaurant called "Oxford Soju Club".
I liked that we follow three different perspectives. Especially the perspective and life of Yohan, the North Korean spy, made me curious.

However, overall, this book was so confusing. I’ve finished reading it, but I can’t explain what exactly happened to all the characters. This is mostly because of the shifting timelines. Often I didn’t quite understand whether I was currently reading about something happening in the present or the past. And when I was quite sure it happened in the past, it was hard to grasp the meaning of the event and its effect on the present.
In addition to that, the key scenes in the plot didn’t impact me. I did not feel enthralled while reading them.

I liked the idea of this book, but the execution just wasn’t for me and left me feeling way too confused.

Thank you NetGalley, Dundurn Press, and Jinwoo Park for this ARC!

Admittedly, this book was a bit confusing at first. The narrative jumps between multiple characters and shifts between past and present, which made it tricky to follow—also maybe due to my unformatted advance copy. It was sometimes hard to keep track of who’s who, though I suspect the disorientation was intentional, adding to the element of surprise.

That said, I found it incredibly engaging. The plot centers on three main characters: a North Korean spy, a Korean-American spy, and a South Korean restauranteur, all of whom converge in Oxford. It was a quick read, and once I got into the rhythm, I really enjoyed it. The writing is direct and no-nonsense, which worked well for me. Frequent changes in point of view and setting made the story feel fast-paced. It was surprising in the best way and required close attention, but the payoff is worth it. Some character outcomes caught me off guard and added emotional weight.

The book also explores themes of ethnic and national identity, raising questions about how we see ourselves and how we’re perceived by others. It reminded me of a more lighthearted and playful version of The Sympathizer. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Identity politics and espionage come together in this gripping tale of spies embroiled in an international operation of defection following the collapse of a government, each blithely aware of the consequences of their duties.

In Oxford, England, three Koreans — a North Korean, a South Korean, and a Korean American — cross paths to confront what it truly means to be Korean in a turbulent political landscape following a change in regime.

Mired in this cat-and-mouse spy thriller is a complex exploration of the Korean diaspora. Park ventures deeply into the diaspora community and their place in adopted societies, eliciting in-depth conversations between the characters and exploring their emotional turmoil amid the collapse of an operation. His writing is deft, guiding each character through an emotional arc that aligns with their personal and political motives.

Doha Kim and Dr Ryu, once vanguards of the fallen North Korean regime, now face the grim reality of their existence. After Doha is found dead under mysterious circumstances, he leaves behind his protégé, Yohan Kim, with the cryptic words: “Soju Club, Dr Ryu.” As Yohan begins to decode the meaning of his mentor’s final message, he makes his way to the Soju Club — where, unbeknownst to him, American CIA agent Yunah Choi is waiting. Grappling with the fallout from Doha’s death, Choi finds herself at the club, caught between her Korean heritage and American upbringing, leading to clashes with her superiors as they question her allegiance.

Unaware of the covert operation unfolding at the club, Jihoom Lim reflects on his past life in Seoul, wondering if he would ever want to return.

As Yohan overcomes numerous obstacles to find Dr Ryu, long-unanswered questions finally come to light. Park deftly shifts between past and present, weaving multiple points of view to gradually reveal the tangled histories that led to the present crisis. Through these shifting perspectives, a clear picture emerges — of fractured loyalties and complicated notions of truth and identity.

In one interview, Park mentioned that he didn’t just want to write a spy thriller or a literary novel on identity — so he combined both, bringing together a North and a South Korean spy, perhaps to underline a message of brotherhood. It is a mighty task, and one can sense the effort in his book. It is a gripping read, not only because of the espionage, but because of the quiet, powerful conclusion each of the spies eventually reaches. And perhaps, that is the book’s most resonant message.

I really enjoyed this book! The multiple POVs were a bit hard to follow at times, but I enjoyed the pacing of this book for the most part. This genre is not one I typically reach for so I was not sure what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It did take me quite awhile to get through which I think is in part due to the confusion I experiences with how the multiple POVs were structured. The exploration of Korean experiences through these intersecting points of view was the most interesting component of the novel for me. Overall, I enjoyed this book.

A curious spy thriller read with underlying themes of prejudices.
The structure is interesting. A bit difficult to follow at times but I liked this challenge.
3.5 stars rounded up.
A nice mix of exploration of Korean identities through the characters Jihoon, Yunah and Yohan. I suppose sometimes the point was to get mixed up in who was who, and the structure with time jumps adds to the thrill.
I enjoyed the characterisation more than the stakes, but the thriller aspect certainly added to the story.