Comprehensive Scoring Analysis

It has been more than six decades since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to begin a new life in North Korea.

Then 17, she was among tens of thousands of people with Korean heritage who had been lured to the communist state by th…

Instead, they encountered something closer to a living hell.

They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship.

Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage.

And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan to visit the families they had left behind.

But this week, after years of campaigning, four settlers who had escaped to Japan secured justice of sorts, when a cour…

Between 1959 and 1984, more than 90,000 people, mostly zainichi – the name for people of Korean descent who live in Jap…

A few, Kawasaki, managed to flee and alert the world to what critics of the scheme say amounted to state-sanctioned kid…

Kawasaki, 83, who said she was “overwhelmed with emotion” after the verdict, conceded that she and her fellow plaintiff…

The Tokyo high court has no way of enforcing the ruling in the case, in which it symbolically summoned the North Korean…

“I’m sure the North Korean government will just ignore the court order,” she said.

Kenji Fukuda, a chief lawyer for the case, said the most realistic option to retrieve the money was to confiscate North…

The plaintiffs, who launched their action in 2018, are among an estimated 150 people to have escaped from the programme…

The regime in Pyongyang, with the support of the Japanese government and help from the International Committee of the R…

The Japanese government and the Red Cross were not targeted in the compensation suit.

View image in fullscreen Eiko Kawasaki fled North Korea and alerted the world to what critics of the scheme say amounte…

Photograph: Martin Bureau/AFP/ This week’s verdict was the first time “a Japanese court exercised its sovereignty again…

Kanae Doi, the Japan director of Human Rights Watch, hailed the ruling as “one very important, successful example of at…

Under the programme, those suspected of disloyalty “faced severe punishment, including imprisonment with forced labour …

The initiative was backed by the Japanese government at the time, with the media describing the programme as humanitari…

Many had been taken to Japan against their will to work in mines and factories during Japan’s 1910 to 1945 colonial rul…

The emigrants included 1,830 Japanese women who had married Korean men.

Kawasaki, a second-generation zainichi who was born in Kyoto, boarded a ship to North Korea in 1960 after being persuad…

Instead, the plaintiffs claimed, the regime had wanted to attract ethnic Koreans, especially skilled workers and techni…

Kawasaki realised she had been deceived as soon as she arrived at a North Korean port, where she was greeted by hundred…

She stayed for 43 years until 2003, when she defected to Japan via China, leaving behind her adult children.

One of Kawasaki’s daughters and her two children have since escaped from North Korea, but she has had no contact with h…

“I don’t even know if they are still alive,” she said.

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report