In recent weeks, North Korea allegedly developed a hydrogen bomb and hangover-free booze. This would be a worrying combination in any government not widely thought to have the force projection of an aggressively drunk toddler with a bag on its head. North Korea is often portrayed as a cartoon state — something sustained by Kim Jong-un’s propensity to execute rivals using anti-aircraft guns. Announcing the discovery of unicorns in 2012 didn’t help, though it was comparatively mild for a state media agency partial to statements like: ‘South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is a rat who should be struck with a retaliatory bolt of lightning.’
North Korea’s Punch and Judy bluster makes us laugh, but at times that leads us to discount the regime’s depravities. The journalist Robert S. Boynton’s The Invitation-Only Zone corrects this, offering a thoughtful study of North Korea via an account of one of its more sinister practices: state-sponsored abductions of Japanese citizens.
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These disappearances were considered ‘urban myths, akin to alien abductions’ in Japan, partly because they seemed so distinctly Bond-villain-like.
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