North Korea lured immigrants with propaganda offering ‘paradise on Earth’. Instead, they found themselves in hell
- Last year, five former returnees sued North Korea and the country’s leader, accusing them of ‘national kidnapping’
Harunori Kojima still remembers the hot tears of joy that warmed his face against the sleet as he watched two Soviet ships set sail in December 1959 from Japan’s Niigata port.
Now 88, Kojima recalls how a brass band played patriotic tunes lauding then North Korean leader Kim Il-sung as some 1,000 people boarded the ships for a new life. They were part of a grand repatriation programme that continued on and off until 1984, carried out by the Red Cross Societies in Japan and North Korea and paid for by Pyongyang.
In all, 93,340 people – mainly Koreans but also Japanese spouses – enthusiastically moved to North Korea, blissfully unaware it was a land of no return.
Initially reluctant, the Japanese government also backed the scheme, with media touting it as a humanitarian campaign for Koreans struggling to build a life in Japan. But Kojima, who was a communist at the time and helped oversee the repatriation, now looks back on the scheme with bitterness.
“I was actively involved in the project, believing it was something positive. But as a result, I led people into hell,” he said.
During Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, millions of Koreans moved to Japan, either voluntarily or against their will.