Over years, Serk develops a set of rules to survive his reeducation camp. Living conditions are so poor that prisoners resort to eating vermin and grass. There are regular executions, which everyone must attend. Thanks to his engineering skills, Serk is assigned to work as a boiler steward, which gives him a warm place to sleep at night.

On the birthday of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, some prisoners are granted clemency, though the selection has no discernible pattern. Serk is surprised when his name is called. The pardoned prisoners are taken to work on a collective farm. The farm manager enlists Serk in his side business, leveraging his engineering skills to repair the manager’s truck.

The government tries to force increased rice production by cramming seedlings together. Workers complain that this will guarantee the crop’s failure, but the manager cannot do anything about it. The government will blame the failure on anything other than policy. Later that summer, the Sung’s death is announced, causing mass panic among workers. Serk does not mourn, though he understands that the workers’ grief comes from fear for their survival.

The farm manager disappears one day. Serk leaves the farm to work with charcoal burners on a nearby mountain. The high-risk environment of this job prompts Serk to escape, stowing away on several passenger trains until he reaches North Korea’s border, where he crosses a dangerous river into China.

In China, a woman provides him with secondhand clothes and food. She advises him to travel to the nearby city, where he can find people willing to help refugees like him. Serk repairs the woman’s hut to extend his lodging. When there is nothing left to fix, Serk travels to the city. A Korean woman brings him to a refugee house and begins the process of disguising him as a South Korean tourist. She also gives Serk a Bible, urging him to study it for his salvation. Serk is housed in a cell that he cannot leave on his own.

Serk’s hosts, whom he calls the Reverend and Mrs. Reverend, run an operation to aid refugees fleeing North Korea. Because of the risk, they screen those they take in to be sure that they aren’t spies or secret police officers. The Reverend wonders about Serk’s past but chooses to trust that Serk’s story is authentic.

Serk becomes accustomed to the apartment, meeting other refugees and studying Mandarin. The Reverend complains that Serk doesn’t spend enough time learning Bible verses, but Serk doubts that anyone who benefits from the Reverend’s charity sincerely believes in God. They are merely doing whatever they must, just as they did in the reeducation camps.

One night, Serk overhears the Reverend arguing with another man, whom Serk dubs “the Fisherman.” The Fisherman disagrees with the Reverend’s charitable approach and agrees to take Serk from the Reverend’s custody. The Fisherman claims his father was abducted in the 1960s. The South Korean government refused to investigate the abduction, labeling the Fisherman’s father a defector. When the Fisherman learned that there was a grassroots movement to rescue captives from North Korea, he relocated to China. The Fisherman pays refugees to re-enter North Korea and locate abduction survivors, so that they can be rescued. More often than not, the refugees are never heard from again, which the Fisherman accepts since he loathes all North Koreans. The Fisherman’s efforts have resulted in the liberation of at least two confirmed abduction survivors.

At Serk’s request, the Fisherman uses his network to search for prisoners who match Louisa’s description. In return, Serk helps with the Fisherman’s operation. A part of Serk still believes that Louisa failed to swim against the seawater current, which caused her capture. He weighs this against memories of Louisa’s lifelong passion for swimming, which make her escape plausible. When they moved to Japan, Serk learned about the tides so that he could teach Louisa to swim in seawater.

Serk learns about a pattern of missing persons cases that occurred in Japan beginning in the late 1970s, which matches his experience. The Fisherman dislikes Japan just as much as North Korea, downplaying the suffering of relatively few Japanese families in comparison to the thousands of abductions that occurred in South Korea. This prompts Serk to admit that his family migrated from Jeju Island to Japan.

A global news story breaks about several North Koreans who attempted to scale the wall of the Japanese Embassy in Shenyang, China. They were taken into custody, causing a diplomatic scandal. The Fisherman is disgusted by the governments’ failures to consider the refugees’ needs. Serk compares the situation to his own begrudging welcome to the United States.

In September 2002, Kim Jong Il officially acknowledges the abduction of 13 Japanese civilians, five of whom are still alive. The survivors will be allowed to visit Japan with a North Korean escort, but will immediately be repatriated to North Korea by the end of the trip. The Japanese government agrees to drop all other outstanding abduction cases and reconcile with North Korea. The Fisherman, whose real name is Ji-hoon, abandons his hope of reuniting with his father. Serk urges him to keep going.