Throughout the late 1970's and early 80's, dozens--perhaps hundreds--of Japanese citizens were kidnapped by North Korean commandos from coastal Japanese towns and cities. The intent may have been to brainwash the abductees with the regime's ideology, and train them to spy on the state's behalf. But when the project faltered, the abductees were made to teach North Korean spies how to pass as Japanese in order to infiltrate South Korea and other countries. For a quarter century, the abductees lived in a series of guarded communities on the outskirts of Pyongyang, known as "Invitation Only Zones"--the fiction being that these were not prisons, but exclusive areas into which one needed to be invited. For years, the Japanese and North Korean authorities brushed off these disappearances, but in 2002 Kim Jong Il admitted to kidnapping thirteen citizens, and returned five of them (the other eight, he said, had died). From the moment he first saw a photograph of the five abductees, Robert Boynton became obsessed with the kidnappings, the window it provided into the mysterious machinations of North Korea, and the perspective it gave on the vexed politics of Northeast Asia--the seat of one perhaps the fastest growing economies in the world. In The Invitation Only Zone, Boynton sets out to untangle the reason behind the kidnappings, and explain the complicated relations between North Korea and Japan. Over the course of many trips to the area, he discovers the clash of ethnic interests in Japan, the digital underground of North Korea, and the peculiar cultural interests of both counties. He speaks with nationalists, diplomats, government officials, abductees, and crab fishermen. With a journalist's keen eye and uncanny ability to read between the lines, Robert Boynton has written a fascinating treatise on the intense power struggle that has come to define one of the most important areas in the global economy. The Invitation Only Zone is a remarkable account of some of the most heavily laden abductions in history, and what they could mean for the rest of the world.
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