Free The Invitation-Only Zone by Robert S. Boynton Page A

fear that the other was a spy planted to test his loyalty. In the Invitation-Only Zone, the two couples lived a few houses from each other. In order to talk privately, Kaoru and Yasushi developed a schedule for secret get-togethers, usually meeting at a designated spot in the surrounding woods. At the end of each meeting,they’d set a time, date, and place for the next one. They grew close, almost like brothers, and looked forward to talking, if only for the opportunity to compare notes and commiserate. Yasushi, a high school dropout, was impressed by Kaoru’s intelligence and often turned to him for advice. After the birth of their children—the Hasuikes had a son and a daughter; the Chimuras, two sons and a daughter—thefamilies would get together regularly for birthdays and holidays. There were times when, amid the pleasant excitement of friends and food, Kaoru would look out over the two families and momentarily forget where he was.
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    By paying the abductees for their work, as it would any other citizen, the regime perpetuated the myth that they were in North Korea under normal circumstances. Althoughheavily regulated, certain markets were allowed in the North, even though the regime occasionally issued currency reforms and took other measures to curtail the freedom that came from exercising economic power. Paying the abductees in North Korean won would have been risky because it would have given them too much freedom to shop wherever they liked. So, initially, abductees were paid in a kindof government-issued scrip that could be used at only one store, the better to keep track of them.
    During the later part of their captivity, the abductees were paid in American dollars. The official dollar-won exchange rate was absurdly low, fixed at the symbolically significant ratio of 2.16 North Korean won per U.S. dollar. (February 16 was Kim Jong-il’s birthday.) One day, one of the chauffeursoffered to change Kaoru’s dollars into won on the black market. He received a better rate and could therefore frequent inexpensive local merchants rather than only the designated foreign currency stores, where prices were several times higher. In the upside-down world Kaoru and the others inhabited, Japanese abductees posing as North Korean citizens were now able to exchange American dollarsfor North Korean won in order to purchase European toiletries.
    Traveling outside the Invitation-Only Zone was permitted but was regulated by procedure. Fukie tried to leave the zone as often as possible. It was a change of scenery, a chance to buy some of the items she, a professional cosmetologist, missed from Japan. She usually shopped at the duty-free shop in downtown Pyongyang, using hergovernment per diem to buy sweaters, cotton underwear, and a particular brand of French shampoo she was fond of. For her minder, however, every foray outside the zone was a potential security breach. A routine developed. Fukie’s minder would pick her up at her home in an unmarked sedan and drive forty-five minutes to downtown Pyongyang. As their car approached the duty-free store, he would scan thelicense plates of the cars parked out front. North Korean license plates are color-coded—the license plates of foreign diplomats are blue, military plates are black, and the few people wealthy enough to own private cars have orange plates—so that the provenance of every vehicle can be identified from a distance. If he spotted a foreigner’s plate, Fukie’s minder would circle the block until the suspiciouscar left.
    Oddly, once inside the shop, Fukie’s minder didn’t pay much attention to the people she encountered there. In fact, she suspects there were times when he intentionally arranged for her to come into contact with foreigners, just to see how she behaved. In addition to Pyongyang’s few tourists and diplomatic staffers, Fukie met a virtual United Nations of abductees—from Italy, Thailand,Romania, and Lebanon. Always cautious, she