A TOKYO court today dismissed a rare suit by North Korean defectors seeking to hold Pyongyang accountable for a now-defunct repatriation programme they described as “state kidnapping”.

The plaintiffs had symbolically summoned Kim Jong-un himself to court in the civil suit, though they made it clear they did not expect the North Korean leader to respond.

The unusual case centred around a scheme that saw more than 90,000 people move to North Korea from Japan between 1959 and 1984.

The programme mainly targeted ethnic Koreans but also their Japanese spouses, lured by fantastical propaganda promising a “paradise on Earth”.

Five participants who later escaped from North Korea had demanded ¥100 million (RM3.5 million) each in damages as they made their case in the Tokyo District Court.

They accused Pyongyang of “deceiving plaintiffs by false advertising to relocate to North Korea”, where “the enjoyment of human rights was generally impossible”.

But today, Chief Justice Akihiro Igarashi rejected the suit on various grounds, including that a Japanese court had no jurisdiction over Pyongyang’s years-long “detainment” of participants in the initiative. 

Similarly, Igarashi said, Japan’s judiciary had no jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ family members still in North Korea who continue to be “prevented” by the regime from seeing them.     

In all, 93,340 people took part in the repatriation programme carried out by the Red Cross Societies in Japan and North Korea, which was paid for by Pyongyang.

The Japanese government also backed the scheme, with media touting it as a humanitarian campaign for Koreans struggling to build a life in Japan.

During Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, millions of Koreans moved to Japan, either voluntarily or against their will.

When Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, hundreds of thousands remained, reluctant to return to their devastated homeland.

They were stripped of their Japanese nationality and became stateless, and many believed propaganda films portraying an idyllic life in North Korea. – AFP, March 23, 2022.