 On this point, Korean media cast suspicion on this passage as anachronisic, since "American military did not bomb any part of North Korea during the time frame of the story".The train was stalled by the attack 45 miles before reaching Seoul,

Also, when pressed, she admitted she could not identify the armed uniformed militia that her family encountered as definitively "Korean Communists", although that was the label she has given to her posing threat throughout the book., She explained that this had been the assumption she had made after hearing that the areas left behind in her trail had been overrun by communists.The book, in a different context, describes the mother telling Yoko that Koreans had formed what is known as an "Anti-Japanese Communist Army".