A bizarre, little-known tale about the most secretive culture on earth For decades, North Korea denied any part in the disappearance of dozens of Japanese citizens from Japan’s coastal towns and cities in the late 1970s. But in 2002, with his country on the brink of collapse, Kim Jong-il admitted to the kidnapping of thirteen people and returned five of them in hopes of receiving Japanese aid. As part of a global espionage project, the regime had attempted to reeducate these abductees and make them spy on its behalf. When the scheme faltered, the captives were forced to teach Japanese to North Korean spies and make lives for themselves, marrying, having children, and posing as North Korean civilians in guarded communities known as “Invitation-Only Zones”—the fiction being that they were exclusive enclaves, not prisons. From the moment Robert S. Boynton saw a photograph of these men and women, he became obsessed with their story. Torn from their homes as young adults, living for a quarter century in a strange and hostile country, they were returned with little more than an apology from the secretive regime. In The Invitation-Only Zone, Boynton untangles the bizarre logic behind the abductions. Drawing on extensive interviews with the abductees, Boynton reconstructs the story of their lives inside North Korea and ponders the existential toll the episode has had on them, and on Japan itself. He speaks with nationalists, spies, defectors, diplomats, abductees, and even crab fishermen, exploring the cultural and racial tensions between Korea and Japan that have festered for more than a century. A deeply reported, thoroughly researched book, The Invitation-Only Zone is a riveting story of East Asian politics and of the tragic human consequences of North Korea’s zealous attempt to remain relevant in the modern world.

How and why are the Kims rational? There is no consensus about either the Kims’ rationality or how best to determine if they are rational actors. Rationality in the North Korean Regime offers a concise and finite method to assess rationality by examining over ten cases of provocations from the Korean War to the August 2015 land mine incident. The book asserts that Kim Il-sung was predominantly a rational actor, though the regime behaved irrationally at times under his rule, and that both Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un have clearly been rational actors. As a rational actor, Kim Jong-un is unlikely to give up his nuclear weapons, but this work argues he can be deterred from using them if the United States demonstrates it is willing to co-exist with his regime and pursues long-term engagement to reduce Kim’s concern that North Korea’s sovereignty needs defending from U.S. hostile policy. This could allow gradual social change within the country that could eventually lead to positive systemic change as well as soften Kim’s rule. In this regard, time may be on the side of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, but the two allies must embrace the long view and learn to be more patient or risk another conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

"The author describes and investigates his obsession with North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens"--