"You don't like lying?" Kyeo wasn't sure he'd heard right. It was like someone asserting they didn't like the sound of their own heartbeat.
Ibyabek
is a story by Glowfic and Rational Fic writer Alicorn (of Luminosity fame), featuring North Korea In Space. Written for NaNoWriMo.
Kyeo Sebe Luk is the seventeen-Earth-year-old son of a government official, and attends a prominent secondary school, soon to join the military. On his past school breaks, he's been assigned to tasks such as brickmaking, but this time, he's to come home and help his father with an important government task: Getting close with ambassador Wulaar Peng's son, Sarham Peng. If necessary for getting the intelligence Ibyabek needs, very close…
This novel provides examples of:
- Alternative Calendar: Every planet has to have one, but most of them also use the Earth year. Kyeo is taught that this is pathological and that Ibyabekan units are much more natural.
- Black Market Produce: Chocolate and coffee on Ibyabek are considered signs of association with the black market, as cacao doesn't grow on the planet.
- Broken-System Dogmatist: Kyeo believes that Ibyabek is the best place in the galaxy to live despite experiencing the inefficiencies of their economy in his daily life, such as even his elite school having limited access to hot water, electricity, and fresh food. After his worldview is challenged by Sarham showing him pictures that display the wealth and freedom of Kular, Kyeo holds even tighter to his beliefs as a defense mechanism.
- Commie Land: Ibyabek is a totalitarian communist planet.
- Conscription: The Standard Life Path for Ibyabekan boys at Kyeo's academy.
- Cure Your Gays: Ibyabek considers homosexuality a "philosophical malady".
- Cyanide Pill: The Ibyabek military recalled theirs, possibly due to premature breakage, possibly due to premature use, possibly for some other reason.
- Defector from Commie Land: Crane Mountain hosts Ibyabekan refugees, eventually including Kyeo.
- Dystopia Is Hard: Participation in black markets is widespread. The Academy of Merit in the capitol still includes students discussing "what teachers they bribed and what tests they cheated on and what pornography they were hacking the skylace connection to deliver".
- Fake Town: Ambassadors to Ibyabek are housed in a miniature village. It's not very good at its job, though: A child drawing with sidewalk chalk continues to pretend to draw after running out of the stuff, the free grocery store often stocks spoiled food and local Ibyabekans only visit it on an obvious schedule, et cetera.
- Fantastic Slurs: Some Outer Sohaibekans refer to Ibyabekan defectors as "poison people".
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Sohaitok star system is a sci-fi analogue for the Korean Peninsula, with Ibyabek/Inner Sohaibek standing in for North Korea and Outer Sohaibek standing in for South Korea.
- False Friend: Kyeo was ordered to be one to Sarham. It didn't go according to plan.
- Fascist, but Inefficient: Ibyabekans, even the fairly elite ones, are subject to food supply issues. Ibyabek prioritizes military tech but can no longer properly maintain much of what they have.
- Food Interrogation: Subverted. An Ibyabekan prisoner of war thinks Outer Sohaibekans are trying this. They aren't — the food situation in Ibyabek is so bad that Outer Sohaibekan prison food is a step up.
- Future Food Is Artificial: Subverted. Kyeo worries about non-Ibyabekans eating "synthetic protein cubes or something awful like that". However, the only protein cubes appearing in the work are tofu.
- Individuality Is Illegal: A mature Ibyabekan man ought not prefer one vegetable over another.
- Innocent Inaccurate: Kyeo doesn't understand why people feel uncomfortable calling Lut Naar Am "Glorious Leader", and disagrees with Outer Sohaibekans about who melted Old Sohaibek.
- Insistent Terminology: Is the innermost planet Ibyabek or Inner Sohaibek? Is the sun Ibyatok or Sohaitok? Better read the room.
- Mandatory Motherhood: Ibyabek takes the stance that "if only some people can do an essential job they had better do it". The job is somewhat more essential given their infant mortality rate.
- Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Ibyabek claims to have. If there are religious people nonetheless, Kyeo doesn't know about it.
- Parental Abandonment: Normalized on Ibyabek. Close relationships between parents and their adult children are frowned upon because, in Kyeo's father's words, "...you don't need to rely on Stone Age kinship bonds for your needs now that we have civilization and a real philosophy of interdependence."
- Planetary Nation: Ibyabek and Outer Sohaibek are both polities that encompass an entire planet. United Kular, where Sarham is from, includes several planets under one government.
- A Taste of the Lash: Used in the criminal justice system on Ibyabek. Sarham was punished in this way for unauthorized use of the skylace.
- Weapon of Mass Destruction: During the war that divided Ibyabek from Outer Sohaibek, Old Sohaibek was devastated by a "melter", a weapon that did exactly what its name suggests to much of the planet's surface. Ibyabekan propaganda teaches that Outer Sohaibek deployed this weapon, while at least some Outer Sohaibekans believe that Ibyabek was responsible. The story never explicitly says what really happened.
