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Tessa Morris-Suzuki's newest book elicits an earlier version of the present-day six-party talks among Japan, North Korea, South Korea, the Soviet Union, the United States, and China, one that took place during the height of the Cold War. Although each country's motives, involvement, and responsibilities for the episode varied, then as now, North Korea drew the most attention (pp. 199-201). Morris-Suzuki carefully maps this intertwined political process by exploring a politically charged mass migration within northeast Asia of Korean residents in Japan, mainly, "home" to the Korean peninsula, accepting an invitation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).
Between 1959 and 1984, 93,340 people migrated from Japan to North Korea: "86,603 ethnic Koreans together with 6,731 Japanese and six Chinese spouses or dependents" (p. 12). Although this migration has been referred to as "repatriation" in the media and literature, calling it that is quite misleading. Most "repatriates" originally were from South (not North) Korea or born in Japan (p. 173). In addition, this no-return, one-way migration divided many families and forced returnees to stay in North Korea, even though they found out that life was "really quite hard" there (p. 225). Some returnees became poorer and hungrier, politically purged and imprisoned, or exploited as refugees in third countries after they succeeded in escaping...