For someone, somewhere within North Korea’s secretive bureaucracy, it was a big mistake. When U.S. army deserter Charles Robert Jenkins finally left Pyongyang in 2004, the personal belongings he had accumulated after nearly 40 years inside North Korea were searched: regime officials confiscated photos that included anyone other than Jenkins, his Japanese abductee wife Hitomi Soga and their two children.

They missed one crucial image. Taken on the beach in Wonsan in 1984, it showed Jenkins smoking a cigar next to his wife and young child. It looked innocuous enough. But caught in the background was a young Thai woman,