Living hell of North Korea’s ‘paradise on Earth’ scheme back in spotlight in Japan | North Korea

IMore than sixty years have passed since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to start a new life in North Korea. Then 17 years old, he was among tens of thousands of people of Korean descent who were lured by the communist state with its promise of “heaven on earth.”

Instead, they encountered something closer to hell. They were deprived of their basic human rights and had to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare, as well as guaranteed jobs and housing, were a grim mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from traveling to Japan to visit the families they left behind.

But this week, after years of campaigning, four settlers who fled to Japan received some measure of justice when a court in Tokyo ordered the North Korean government to pay compensation of at least 20 million yen (£94,000) each to them.

Between 1959 and 1984, more than 90,000 people, mostly zainichi – the name given to people of Korean descent living in Japan – fell victim to an elaborate plan by North Korea to recruit workers and deal a propaganda blow to the former colonial occupier of the north. A few people, like Kawasaki, managed to escape and warn the world that critics of the plan amounted to state-sanctioned kidnapping.

Kawasaki, 83, who said he was “overwhelmed with emotion” after the verdict, acknowledged that he and his fellow plaintiffs were unlikely to see a single yen. The Tokyo high court has no way of enforcing the ruling in the case, in which it symbolically summoned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to testify.

“I am confident that the North Korean government will ignore the court decision,” he said.

Kenji Fukuda, the lead lawyer on the case, said the most realistic option to get the money back was to seize North Korea’s assets and properties in Japan. The plaintiffs, who began taking action in 2018, are among an estimated 150 people who escaped the program in the North and returned to Japan.

The regime in Pyongyang, with the support of the Japanese government and the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross, had promised ethnic Koreans a new life in a socialist paradise, with free public services and a higher standard of living.

The Japanese government and the Red Cross were not targeted in the compensation case.

Atsushi Shiraki, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said of the “historic” decision that this week’s decision was “the first time a Japanese court has acknowledged its wrongdoing by using its sovereignty against North Korea.”

Kanae Doi, Japan director of Human Rights Watch, praised the decision as “a very important and successful example of attempts to hold North Korea accountable for its international crimes.”

Under the program, people suspected of disloyalty “faced severe penalties, including forced labor or imprisonment as political prisoners,” according to the group. The initiative was supported by the Japanese government at the time; The media described the program as a humanitarian program and targeted Koreans trying to make a life in Japan due to widespread discrimination in housing, education, and employment.

Many of them had been taken to Japan against their will to work in mines and factories during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Among the immigrants were 1,830 Japanese women who married Korean men.

Kawasaki, second generation zainichi Born in Kyoto, he boarded a ship bound for North Korea in 1960 after being persuaded by promises of utopia from the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, the North’s de facto embassy.

The plaintiffs instead alleged that the regime wanted to attract ethnic Koreans, especially skilled workers and technicians, to address the labor shortage.

Kawasaki realized he had been deceived as soon as he arrived at the North Korean port; there he was greeted by hundreds of soot-covered, malnourished people. He stayed for 43 years until 2003, when he fled to Japan via China, leaving his adult children behind.

One of Kawasaki’s daughters and two of her children have since fled North Korea, but she has had no contact with her other children since the regime closed the country’s borders in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I don’t even know if they’re still alive,” he said.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report