A Tokyo court has ordered North Korea to pay over USD 500,000 to four people deceived by a propaganda scheme that promised a communist utopia.
TOKYO: A Tokyo court has ordered North Korea to pay over USD 500,000 in compensation to four individuals lured by a propaganda scheme promising a “paradise on Earth”.
The Tokyo District Court ruled on Monday that Pyongyang had taken “most of their lives away” from the plaintiffs.
Each plaintiff was awarded at least 20 million yen (USD 130,000) in redress for their suffering.
The claimants were part of a repatriation programme that ran from 1959 to 1984, drawing over 90,000 ethnic Koreans and Japanese spouses to North Korea.
Instead of a paradise, they found a denial of basic human rights and minimum sustenance.
Plaintiff Eiko Kawasaki, 83, said she was “overwhelmed with emotion” at the verdict.
She arrived in North Korea as a teenager in 1960 and spent 43 years there before escaping.
Lawyer Atsushi Shiraki called the ruling “historic” for exercising Japanese sovereignty against North Korea.
The district court initially dismissed the suit in 2022, citing a lack of jurisdiction over Pyongyang’s actions.
A higher court overturned that decision a year later and sent the case back for review.
Kanae Doi of Human Rights Watch hailed it as an important example of holding North Korea accountable.
She noted disloyalty under the programme led to severe punishment, including imprisonment and forced labour.
Kawasaki acknowledged that enforcing the payment order would be nearly impossible.
“I’m sure the North Korean government will just ignore the court order,” she said.
Chief lawyer Kenji Fukuda said confiscating North Korean assets in Japan was the most realistic option for retrieval.
The scheme was backed by the then Japanese government and touted by media as a humanitarian campaign.
It targeted Koreans who had moved to Japan during Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
Hundreds of thousands remained in Japan after World War II, reluctant to return to a devastated homeland.
