Arab News Japan

TOKYO: The Tokyo district court dismissed the case of five plaintiffs who were former Korean residents of Japan repatriated to Korea between 38 and 62 years ago and had later defected from North Korea back to Japan. 

When filing the action, the five plaintiffs claimed that North Korea had committed an act of state-sponsored kidnapping by enticing and deceiving victims about what kind of lives they could expect to lead after arriving in North Korea.

In front of the Tokyo High Court, lawyers for plaintiffs seeking five hundred million yen in damages from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held up scrolls reporting the judgments. One of the displayed scrolls read “Unjust Judgment,” The other scroll read “Human Rights Abuses Continue in North Korea. Do Not Avert Your Eyes From Justice.” 

Between 1959 and 1984, North Korea encouraged long-term Korean residents of Japan to relocate to North Korea through North Korean offices in Japan at the Chongryon organization, and the Japanese government consented. Ninety thousand Korean residents of Japan relocated to North Korea and immediately found that conditions were completely different and much worse than promised and that the North Korean government had misled them.  

Most of the repatriated Japanese Korean residents could not leave North Korea, but a few defectors managed to escape decades later through China and return to Japan. Five of these defectors sued North Korea in Tokyo District Court in October 2018, alleging that the North Korean government had “criminally and fraudulently misled” them into surrendering their wealth and living in North Korea. Such cases of criminal and fraudulent inducement are allowed under Japanese law.

Kenji Fukuda, one of the three lawyers for the five plaintiffs, insisted that the judges appear not to have wanted to judge the case on the merits. Although declaring itself competent to rule in the context of this sort of international matter because the government of North Korea is not recognized as a sovereign nation by the Japanese government, and the sorts of criminally false inducements alleged by plaintiffs are actionable under Japanese law, the Court in its decision nonetheless observed that the twenty-year statute of limitations period (a rule limiting how long after the event a case may be brought in Japanese Court) for trying such alleged criminal activity under Japanese law had already expired in any case, and for that reason, the case was dismissed.

Among the plaintiffs, Eiko Kawasaki, an 80-year-old descendant of North Korean residents of Japan, expressed her disappointment that she had had to survive the famine in North Korea, after which she managed to escape from the socialist democratic republic there, which she described as “a hell on Earth where freedom of speech is forbidden.”

The plaintiffs said they intended to appeal the court decision.