The digital detectives searching for North Korea’s disappeared Lee Han-byeol has a favourite memory of her elder brother. They were both teenagers in the 1990s, during the famine that devastated North Korea and is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Impoverished, tired and hungry, the pair were travelling to pick up rice from relatives. They had been on the road overnight. Lee’s eyes mist when she recalls how, as they walked through the darkness, Lee Se-il had swung her on to his back. As dawn broke, she clung wearily to his bony shoulders. “He really adored me,” she whispers, clutching a small black-and-white photo of him. By now, the tears are flowing steadily. “I hope I can see his face again.”