A courtroom, an old woman, and a verdict that reaches across a hermit state
There was a hush in the Tokyo courtroom that felt almost like the pause before a confession. At its center sat Eiko Kawasaki, 83, her hands folded the way someone folds memory—carefully, as if to keep fragile things from spilling out. She arrived in North Korea as a teenager in 1960, persuaded by a dazzling promise: a life in a “paradise on Earth.” She spent 43 years there before finding her way back. On a gray Monday the Tokyo District Court told a different kind of story: that four people, including Kawasaki, had had “most of their lives taken away,” and that the state in Pyongyang should pay them compensation—some 20 million yen each (about €110,000).
The money is small, the court’s reach thin. The symbolism, however, is large: a Japanese court daring to pronounce judgment — if only in name — against North Korea, a state that rarely answers to other nations’ courts, and one whose leaders never darkened the courtroom door despite being summoned in the case record.
From glossy posters to harsh reality: how a dream became a trap
Between 1959 and 1984, more than 90,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan, along with thousands of their Japanese spouses, left for the Korean peninsula under a repatriation drive that read in newspapers like a humanitarian epic. Promises of free housing, education, medicine, and a land restored by a revolutionary government painted a future so bright it blinded skeptics.
“They ran stories of reunions, of orchards and abundant rice,” recalled an elderly reporter who covered the era. “For many Zainichi Koreans—Koreans born and living in Japan after decades of colonial rule—this was not only a political promise, it was an emotional refuge.”
The repatriation effort was actively promoted by Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, and carried the tacit backing of parts of the Japanese establishment. Tokyo’s official stance then was complicated—torn between postwar guilt, Cold War geopolitics, and a desire to reduce social friction at home.
But the reality awaiting returnees was far from glossy. Human Rights Watch, in a string of reports, and numerous testimonies gathered over decades describe a darker script: denial of basic rights, arbitrary detention, forced labor, political punishment of suspected dissidents, and, for some, decades of enforced isolation. Many who escaped later described starving, working in camps, and losing years to state surveillance. “We were sold a story,” said an anonymous former repatriate now living in Tokyo. “What we bought was a prison with a nice slogan.”
Numbers that matter
- Period of repatriation: 1959–1984
- Estimated people who moved: more than 90,000 (including thousands of Japanese spouses)
- Compensation awarded by Tokyo court in this case: 20 million yen per plaintiff (about €110,000); total for four plaintiffs ≈ €440,000
A legal marathon with symbolism at every turn
The lawsuit itself reads like a prolonged act of defiance. Plaintiffs sought to sue the North Korean state directly—an unusual, uphill legal tactic given the absence of diplomatic relations and the practical impossibility of levying penalties against a closed-off regime. The district court initially dismissed the case in 2022 for lack of jurisdiction. A higher court overturned that dismissal the following year, sending the matter back for reconsideration.
“This is the first time a Japanese court has exercised its sovereignty in such a way against North Korea to recognise its malpractice,” Atsushi Shiraki, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, told reporters afterwards. “It’s historic, even if the road ahead remains steep.”
Human Rights Watch’s Japan director, Kanae Doi, called the ruling “one very important, successful example of attempts to hold North Korea accountable” for international crimes, underscoring that domestic courts can sometimes become venues for wider forms of transitional justice when international mechanisms stall.
The wrenching human toll
Legal language—“detainment,” “compensation,” “jurisdiction”—is dry, but the memories behind the words are raw. Plaintiffs recounted losing youth and family, missing funerals back home, and surviving under constant suspicion. Some buried their names, some buried their grief. The government’s assurances of free education or medicine often rang hollow. “You grow up thinking the state will protect you,” one plaintiff told me. “Then you learn the state can also erase you.”
These stories are not only about individual suffering; they are about a diaspora split by history. Many Zainichi Koreans who chose to stay in Japan continued to face discrimination for decades, while those who left sometimes found themselves trapped in a political purgatory—unable to return, unable to fully belong to the nation they had once imagined as home.
Can a court order ever reach Pyongyang?
Even as the plaintiffs celebrated a moral victory, they acknowledged a sobering reality: enforcing the judgment will be next to impossible. “I’m sure the North Korean government will just ignore the court order,” Kawasaki said plainly. Kenji Fukuda, lead counsel for the case, suggested a more pragmatic route—seeking to confiscate North Korean assets located in Japan, or pursuing claims against proxies where legal tie-ins exist.
That route is convoluted. North Korea’s international assets are limited and often entangled in shell companies or diplomatic protections. Sanctions, political tensions, and the lack of formal ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang make restitution a legal puzzle and a diplomatic minefield.
Why this matters beyond Japan and Korea
This verdict matters because it presses an uncomfortable question: what does accountability look like when states hurt people across borders and then seal themselves away? In an era where restorative justice, reparations, and truth commissions are being considered for atrocities from Sudan to Iraq, the Tokyo ruling is a modest but meaningful crystal in a larger mosaic.
It also forces readers to grapple with the human cost of propaganda. When governments promise utopias—whether in the 1960s or in our social media age—the results can be catastrophic for those who believe. Who bears responsibility: the recruiting organizations that sold the dream, the governments that greenlit it, or the broader societies that let marginalized communities feel their only options were elsewhere?
Closing, and an invitation
The court’s gavel may not wake those twenty or thirty years that were stolen, but it does place names and faces back into public record. It validates memory, if not fully restitution. As Kawasaki wiped tears after the verdict, she did not speak of money so much as of recognition: of having her life acknowledged in a world that often prefers stories that fit clean narratives.
What do you think—do symbolic victories like this matter? Can legal recognition ever be a form of healing when material restitution is impossible? As we scroll past headlines and outrage, perhaps we should pause on stories like this one—stories of migration, hope, and the slow work of justice—and ask ourselves what it means to hold a state accountable when it refuses to be seen.
