Alek Sigley should tell us what happened.
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The former student at the Australian National University has issued a statement saying that he will not do so. There will be no public appearances.
"I intend now to return to normal life but wanted to first publicly thank everyone who worked to ensure I was safe and well," he said.
Many will sympathise with his desire for privacy - but there are bigger issues at stake.
As a blogger from North Korea in happier times, he ought now to share his view of the more poisonous side of the regime in which he got enmeshed.
That, of course, is understandable. Only he knows what he has gone through in a small room with members of the North Korean security services - apart from the interrogators, of course, but they keep their dark thoughts and methods far from public gaze. They are not telling.
I intend now to return to normal life but wanted to first publicly thank everyone who worked to ensure I was safe and well.
- Alek Sigley
Since the release, Alek's father has called for the family's privacy to be respected, and that is understandable, too.
But this matter is bigger than one individual.
Alek Sigley seemed to have fallen in love with North Korea. He blogged about daily life in the country's capital, Pyongyang, in a breathless - some would say naive - fashion.
To read his reports was to get a glimpse of "normal life" - there was Alek singing a patriotic song, all smiles and jigs.
He went to a pizza restaurant. It was all very exciting. He wrote that he and his friends "have a custom of trying several new restaurants each week."
He wrote: "Living in the 'Capital of the Revolution' over the course of two semesters as a foreign student at Kim Il Sung University, I've discovered a number of excellent places to dine in the city."
Through his blog we got a glimpse of North Korea - a glimpse - but he may now feel that it was only half the truth - and half the truth is not the truth.
He has a duty to tell the whole story.
Firstly, a lot of taxpayers' money has been spent getting him out, and secondly it is important that the truth of the regime in Pyongyang be known.
Another Australian has already given a verdict. The judge Michael Kirby chaired a United Nations investigation into human rights abuses in North Korea in 2014.
He cited the testimony of people with direct evidence who had got out - treatment "ranging from abductions, torture and a policy of inter-generational punishment to arbitrary detention in prison camps marked by deliberate starvation and 'unspeakable atrocities'.
"We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief.
"Women and men who exercised their human right to leave the DPRK and were forcibly repatriated spoke about their experiences of torture, sexual violence, inhumane treatment and arbitrary detention.
"Family members of persons abducted from the Republic of Korea and Japan described the agony they endured ever since the enforced disappearance of their loved ones at the hands of agents of the DPRK (North Korea)."
That is the other side of the story of North Korea. Alek Sigley has a duty to illuminate that half of the picture, too.
He doesn't have to do the full moist-eyed interview on an evening TV show. He could write something - this paper would publish it.
He should talk to students at the Australian National University about life in North Korea.
When he disappeared, a respected lecturer at the ANU made very public comments about what might have happened. Leonid Petrov is a recognised expert on North Korea but Alek Sigley's parents asked him to keep silent.
That was understandable while negotiations were going on (though the way he was abused on Twitter by one of Alek's friends at the ANU was not).
But Alek Signley is out now. He can speak freely.
Three years ago, I was in Pyongyang as a reporter. My colleague was arrested as he was about to board the plane out.
Shortly before, the American student Otto Warmbier had been arrested and sentenced to 15 years' hard labour for taking a propaganda sign at his tourist hotel. He was "released" from North Korea in a deep coma. How he suffered his injuries, we do not know.
When my colleague was arrested, he was taken to a hotel. The interrogator came in and looked straight into the captive's frightened eyes and said: "I interrogated Otto Warmbier."
Alek Sigley may well have had the same terrifying experience. We do not know. He needs to complete his reports from North Korea with the full picture - the truth.
- Steve Evans was the BBC Korea correspondent until 2017, reporting from both Pyongyang and Seoul, the capitals of the North and South.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
