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The generosity of our family in Japan certainly made a big difference in our lives. It enabled us to purchase the benevolence of guards and minders and slowly to inch our way closer to Pyongyang. As a matter of law, former prisoners are not allowed to leave the zone where they have been assigned to live. As a matter of practice, bribery makes everything possible. We wrote to relatives asking for help, careful to disguise our meaning, so as not to provoke the censors. North Koreans are permitted to send letters out of the country as long as they don’t criticize or complain about the regime. When our relatives suddenly received a letter from us after ten years of silence, they had a fairly good notion of what had become of us. During the years of our disappearance, they had made several attempts to visit us in North Korea and were repeatedly turned away by the police, who told them we were on vacation. There was much concern in Japan about all the North Koreans who had suddenly left on extended vacations. Petitions got circulated about the issue. Korean residents in Japan appeared on television to talk about the disappearance of their relatives. Maybe some of this even played a role in our release, though my grandfather’s death probably had more to do with that. While we will probably never discover what really became of him, it was believed that the authorities waited for a convicted political criminal to die before releasing his family.

Thanks to the power of money, we escaped the dreadful life of the North Korean backwater. Want to make a telephone call? You’ll have to pass through the operator . . . and hold the line. . . . And to reach Japan, endless troubles. Officially, of course, it is quite possible. In fact, only special—that is, tapped—telephone centers are equipped for the job, and they only accept foreign currency. Want to go out? There is only one movie theater for the whole canton. And while the prices are risibly cheap, the film will infallibly be some glorification of North Korea, its army, the anti-Japanese partisans, and so on. Everyone struggled to get by, and those with no other resources stitched their living together by selling plastic bottles, nylon socks, and army surplus shoes and clothes, which were valued for their durability. Army “surplus” was the basis of a flourishing black market trade organized by army officers. It left the lowly North Korean foot soldiers wearing threadbare old uniforms and canvas boots that couldn’t keep out the rain.

For permission to leave our canton, we had to pull out all the stops. A local pass could be had for a pack of cigarettes and a small quantity of alcohol, but an authorization to move to the Pyongyang area required much more than that. For a long time our efforts were going nowhere, but a visit from our family changed everything. The Security Force agents, who had been treating our appeals with indifference—not to say contempt—suddenly took an interest in our well-being. They began talking to us and even stopped us in the street to shake our hands! Conditions were evidently ripe for some discreet negotiations. With the aid of a few rather sumptuous gifts—most notably, a Japanese color television—my sister and I were allowed to join our uncle in Pyungsung, a city twenty miles outside Pyongyang. The scientific research center in Pyungsung had requested him to rejoin the post he had held before his internment. As a student at the polytechnic university he had finished first in his class, and his talents were widely recognized. After Yodok, he resumed his chemistry studies, and in 1991 received his doctorate. He was in a good position: the institute’s employees were treated as citizens of Pyongyang. It may come as a surprise to some that a former political prisoner was allowed to earn a master’s degree and doctorate; but the fact is that my uncle worked in a field where he could be closely monitored and controlled. He also had the benefit of some fabulous luck: the institute’s vice-president