HAN KIM v. DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA Cite as 774 F.3d 1044 (D.C. Cir. 2014) treated the Reverend. F.Supp.2d at 41–42. Kim, 950 The Kims appeal. We review the district court’s application of the law—in this case, its articulation of the FSIA’s evidentiary requirements—de novo. See Brayton v. Office of the United States Trade Representative, 641 F.3d 521, 524 (D.C.Cir. 2011). II. The Torture Victims Protection Act— and, by reference to that Act, the FSIA— describes torture and extrajudicial killing in some detail. An act is torture only if the perpetrator intends to and actually does inflict severe pain in order to punish or to extract information. A killing runs afoul of the statute only if it occurs outside the normal legal process. The statute thus imposes tight constraints on courts required to decide whether an act satisfies the terrorism exception’s substantive elements. But when the defendant State fails to appear and the plaintiff seeks a default judgment, the FSIA leaves it to the court to determine precisely how much and what kinds of evidence the plaintiff must provide, requiring only that it be ‘‘satisfactory to the court.’’ 28 U.S.C. § 1608(e). Our case law provides little help. Indeed, the single case on which the district court relied—Price—differs significantly from this one. In that case, we were considering Libya’s motion to dismiss under a ‘‘standard TTT similar to that of Rule 12(b)(6),’’ and we granted that motion because the plaintiff’s allegations were too general, observing that he ‘‘offer[ed] no useful details about the nature’’ or ‘‘purpose of the alleged torture.’’ Price, 294 F.3d at 93–94. Absent more specific allegations, we explained, we were unable to distinguish between ‘‘actual torture’’ and ‘‘mere police brutality.’’ Id. at 93. Here, 1047 by contrast, the issue is whether the Kims are entitled to a default judgment—a question that turns on whether the evidence is ‘‘satisfactory to the court.’’ Of course, the Kims alleged plenty in their complaint, asserting, for example, that ‘‘[w]hen Reverend Kim refused to adopt the [official political] ideology [of North Korea,] he was punished by being deprived of all food’’ and that he ‘‘died as the result of [that] starvation and [ ] torture.’’ Compl., ¶¶ 24– 25. If proven with admissible evidence, that treatment would clearly constitute torture within the TVPA’s meaning. But while accepting the Kims’ allegations as true, the district court concluded that their evidence was too weak to support their claims. Specifically, it emphasized repeatedly that the plaintiffs had failed to ‘‘provide any first-hand accounts of Reverend Kim’s treatment’’ that ‘‘address[ed] the nature or severity of any torture Reverend Kim suffered, or specif[ied] the frequency or duration of the acts of torture or the parts of the body at which they were aimed or any weapons used to carry them out.’’ Kim, 950 F.Supp.2d at 37 (emphasis added). Properly understood, then, the question before us is not whether the Kims’ allegations were specific enough to implicate the terrorism exception and withstand a motion to dismiss, but rather whether the amount and types of evidence they proffered were ‘‘satisfactory.’’ On that question, Price has nothing to say. Another important distinction separates this case from Price. Having escaped their captors, the Price plaintiffs were alive, present, and capable of describing their treatment in more detail. In those circumstances, we could realistically expect more from them. By contrast, Reverend Kim is missing and presumed dead, so his family will almost certainly be unable to offer the court any more than they already have.