The Invitation-Only Zone (32 page)

7. From Emperor Hirohito to Kim Il-sung

  
1
. Interview with author in Tokyo, Japan, May 25, 2009.

  
2
. United States Central Intelligence Agency,
The Japanese Communist Party, 1955–1963
(Washington, DC: CIA, 1964), p. 6.

  
3
. Robert A. Scalapino,
The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 48.

  
4
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, July 12, 2010.

  
5
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 18, 2014.

8. Developing a Cover Story

  
1
. Hasuike,
Rachi to Ketsudan
, p. 98.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, June 3, 2009.

9. The Repatriation Project: From Japan to North Korea

  
1
. Twenty-one thousand Koreans are memorialized at Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine. One hundred forty-eight Koreans were found guilty at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Palmer,
Fighting for the Enemy
, p. 189.

  
2
. The notion that North Korea was their geographic home was incorrect because 97 percent of Koreans in Japan originally came from the southern part of the peninsula.

  
3
. Dewayne J. Creamer, “The Rise and Fall of Chosen Soren: Its Effect on Japan’s Relations on the Korean Peninsula,” master’s thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2003, p. 24.

  
4
. Tessa Morris-Suzuki,
Exodus to North Korea
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), p. 199.

  
5
. Interview with the author, Niigata, Japan, June 19, 2010.

  
6
. Interview with the author, Osaka, Japan, June 17, 2010.

  
7
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, June 1, 2009.

  
8
. Interview with the author, Niigata, Japan, June 20, 2010.

  
9
. Interview with the author, Niigata, Japan, May 15, 2014.

10
. Interview with Katsumi Sato, Tokyo, Japan, May 25, 2009.

11
. Katsumi Sato, “The Peninsula That Pains Us,”
Seiron
, Sept. 1995.

10. Neighbors in the Invitation-Only Zone

  
1
. Interview with the author, Obama, Japan, July 13, 2010.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, Japan, June 19, 2010.

  
3
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, Japan, May 12, 2008.

  
4
. Hasuike,
Rachi to Ketsudan
, p. 146.

11. Stolen Childhoods: Megumi and Takeshi

  
1
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 20, 2009.

  
2
. Sakie Yokota,
North Korea Kidnapped My Daughter
(New York: Vertical Books, 2009), pp. 10–14.

  
3
. Korean Institute for National Unification, White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea, 2007, p. 270.

  
4
. Interview with the author, Obama, Japan, July 13, 2010.

  
5
. 
Chosun Ilbo
, “Young-nam ‘Never Asked’ If Wife Was Kidnapped,” June 7, 2006.

  
6
. Interview with the author in Kanazawa, Japan, May 28, 2009.

12. An American in Pyongyang

  
1
. Interview with the author, Sado Island, Japan, May 15, 2014.

  
2
. Charles Robert Jenkins and Jim Frederick,
The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion, Court-Martial, and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), p. 72.

  
3
. Interview with the author, Sado Island, Japan, May 11, 2008.

  
4
. Jenkins and Frederick,
Reluctant Communist
, p. 39.

  
5
. Although there is no such thing as Japanese DNA, I’ve since learned that Jenkins may have been on to something. In his book
Dear Leader
, North Korean defector Jang Jin-sung’s describes a program instituted after it became clear the abductees would never become spies. The “seed-bearing strategy” involved sending attractive North Korean women to seduce foreign diplomats, journalists, and businessmen. The resulting children had a dual purpose. They would give the regime leverage over the fathers, who would be manipulated into aiding North Korea, whether through favorable coverage, business deals, or government aid. Second, these “mixed-race” children would make excellent spies because they looked nothing like the image of a North Korean agent. When I later met Jang, he connected the abduction project to the seed-bearing program. “They were essentially the same project, just using different methods. They went from kidnapping people to kidnapping eggs.”

13. Terror in the Air

  
1
. Kim Hyon-hui,
The Tears of My Soul
(New York: William Morrow, 1993), p. 114.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, June 22, 2010.

  
3
. Hitoshi Tanaka,
Gaikō
no Chikara
[The power of diplomacy] (Tokyo: Nihonkeizai Shinbunsha, 2009), p. 215.

14. Kim’s Golden Eggs

  
1
. In addition to interviews, this chapter draws from several books and articles. Koji Takazawa,
Shukumei: Yodogō
Bōmeishatachi no Himitsu Kōsaku
[Destiny: The secret operations of the Yodo refugees] (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1998); Patricia Steinhoff, “Kidnapped Japanese in North Korea: The New Left Connection,”
Journal of Japanese Studies
30, no. 1 (Winter 2004);
Yodo-go Rachi
[The hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 and the North Korean kidnapping problem] (Tokyo: NHK Publishing, 2004); Asger Rojle Christensen,
Bortført i Københavnion: Japanske skœbner i Nordkorea
[Kidnapped in Copenhagen: Japanese destinies in North Korea] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2011); William R. Farrell,
Blood and Rage: The Story of the Japanese Red Army
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1990); Eileen MacDonald,
Shoot the Women First
(New York: Random House, 1992); Yao Megumi,
Shimasu
[I apologize] (Tokyo: Bungei-shunju, 2002).

  
2
. Asger Rojle Christensen,
Bortført i Københavnion
, p. 9.

  
3
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 26, 2011.

15. A Story Too Strange to Believe

  
1
. Interview with the author, Osaka, Japan, May 27, 2009.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 25, 2009.

  
3
. Ibid.

  
4
. Interview with the author, June 17, 2010.

  
5
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 25, 2009.

16. The Great Leader Dies, a Nation Starves

  
1
. Hasuike,
Rachi to Ketsudan
, p. 43.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, Japan, June 19, 2010.

  
3
. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland,
Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 25.

  
4
. Robert Winstanley-Chesters, “Landscape as Political Project: The “Greening” of North Korea, Sincerity or Otherwise?”
Yonsei Journal of International Studies
5, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2013), p. 263.

  
5
. Haggard and Noland,
Famine in North Korea
, p. 40.

  
6
. Ibid., p. 3.

  
7
. Ibid., p. 10.

  
8
. Ibid., p. 50.

  
9
. French,
North Korea
, p. 41.

10
. Interview with the author, Obama, Japan, July 13, 2010.

11
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, Japan, May 11, 2008.

12
. Hasuike,
Rachi to Ketsudan
, p. 59.

17. Negotiating with Mr. X

  
1
. Yoichi Funabashi,
The Peninsula Question: A Chronicle of the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), p. 31.

  
2
. 
Asahi Shimbun
editorial, October 22, 2000, p. 2, and
Yomiuri Shimbun
editorial, October 24, 2000, p. 3.

  
3
. Hitoshi Tanaka,
Gaikō
no Chikara
, p. 9.

  
4
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, June 22, 2010.

  
5
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 20, 2014.

  
6
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, April 10, 2008.

  
7
. Funabashi,
The Peninsula Question
, p. 8.

  
8
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, June 22, 2010.

18. Kim and Koizumi in Pyongyang

  
1
. Most flights into North Korea originate in either China or Russia.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, July 17, 2010, and May 10, 2012.

  
3
. Jin-sung Jang,
Dear Leader: Poet, Spy, Escapee—A Look Inside North Korea
(New York: Atria, 2014), p. 159.

  
4
. Funabashi,
The Peninsula Question
, p. 5.

19. Returning Home: From North Korea to Japan

  
1
. Hasuike,
Rachi to Ketsudan
, p. 213.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Obama, Japan, July 13, 2010.

20. An Extended Visit

  
1
. In comparison, the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States a year earlier received nine hours of coverage. Hyung Gu Lynn, “Vicarious Traumas: Television and Public Opinion in Japan’s North Korea Policy,”
Pacific Affairs
79, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 491.

  
2
. Interview with the author, Kashiwazaki, Japan, 2008.

  
3
. Interview with the author, Tokyo, Japan, May 14, 2014.