Before she met Il-sun in an orphanage, Gi was a hollow husk of a girl, broken from growing up in one of North Korea's forced-labor camps. A mathematical genius, she learned to cope with pain by retreating into a realm of numbers and calculations, an escape from both the past...
Introverted Gi and radiant Il-sun are sold as sex workers by Il-sun's suitor, first in South Korea and then in the U.S. Though their captivity outside North Korea is even crueler than the oppression, they endure on their path to freedom.