Kim managed the war, he was imprisoned or killed.

So when the Americans at Kimpo instructed him to lie about the Sabres he had seen in Manchuria, No understood what they wanted. In any case, he felt he had no choice.

Just before he left the American intelligence compound to travel to the press conference in central Seoul, No had another talk with Major Nichols. The spymaster told him to get out of South Korea and settle in the United States. Learn English, go to college and become somebody, Nichols said.

Ever since he was a boy studying his father’s picture books about America, No had wanted to do as Nichols advised. During his first day of interrogation, he had been unable to think of a way to ask how orif he could travel to the United States. Now, with a green light from the intelligence chief, he decided to insist at every opportunity on going to America.

No had never witnessed a Western-style press conference, yet he was not particularly worried about what it would be like to star in one. He assumed it would be an orderly affair: a handful of friendly newsmen chatting with him in an office, as he had done with Air Force interrogators. But as he sat between two security guards in the backseat of a light blue Chevrolet sedan, with sirens blaring and lights flashing while his motorcade pushed through crowds in the war-shattered streets of Seoul, he began to get nervous.

Although the Korean War had ended, news from Korea—about freed prisoners