A Japanese judge has summoned the North Korean leader to face compensation claims from several Korean residents of Japan who claim to have suffered human rights abuses in North Korea after participating in a resettlement program there
TOKYO – A Japanese court has summoned the North Korean leader to face compensation claims by several Korean residents of Japan who claim to have suffered human rights abuses in North Korea after participating in a program of resettlement that promised a “paradise on Earth,” a lawyer and plaintiff said Tuesday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is not expected to appear in court for the Oct. 14 hearing, but the judge’s decision to summon him is an infrequent instance in which the verdict has not been granted. sovereign immunity to a foreign leader, said Kenji Fukuda, a lawyer representing the five plaintiffs.
They are claiming 100 million yen ($ 900,000) in compensation from North Korea for human rights violations they say they have suffered under the resettlement program.
Approximately 93,000 Korean residents of Japan and their families went to North Korea decades ago because of the promises of a better life. Many had faced discrimination in Japan.
Eiko Kawasaki, 79, a Korean who was born and raised in Japan, was 17 when she left in 1960, a year after North Korea began the mass repatriation program to compensate workers killed in the Korean War. and bring overseas Koreans home. The program continued to search for recruits, many of them from South Korea, until 1984.
The Japanese government also welcomed the program, seeing Koreans as outsiders, and helped organize its transportation to North Korea.
Kawasaki said she was confined to North Korea for 43 years until she was able to defect in 2003, leaving her older children behind.
North Korea had promised free health care, education, jobs and other benefits, he said, but none of them were available and they were mostly assigned manual labor to mines, forests or farms.
“If we were told the truth about North Korea, none of us would have gone there,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
Kawasaki and the other four defectors from the program filed a lawsuit in August 2018 against the North Korean government in a Tokyo district court to seek compensation.
The court, after three years of preliminary discussions, agreed to summon Kim Jong Un to his first hearing on Oct. 14, Fukuda, his lawyer, said.
Fukuda said he does not expect Kim to appear or provide compensation if the court orders it, but hopes the case can set a precedent for future negotiations between Japan and North Korea to seek North’s responsibility and normalize diplomatic ties.
Although the statute of limitations prohibits the Japanese government’s responsibility to help the program, Kawasaki hopes Japan can help get the return of thousands of participants “who are still waiting to be rescued from North Korea.”
“I think the Japanese government should also take responsibility,” he said.
Kawasaki’s father was among hundreds of thousands of Koreans brought to Japan, many by force, to work in mines and factories before and during World War II. Japan colonized the Korean peninsula in 1910-1945, a past that still strained relations between Japan and Korea.
Today, nearly half a million ethnic Koreans live in Japan and continue to be discriminated against in school, work, and daily life.
“It took us so long to get here,” Kawasaki said. “Finally, it’s time to do justice.”