Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great main dish of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
While it’s not quite an epigraph, there’s a nice map of the world included at the beginning of Pyongyang to show us exactly where the city is. The lands of North and South Korea are enlarged, and Pyongyang is marked with a little square. Who could have guessed that little square holds so much manipulative insanity?