I left Japan for North Korea expecting paradise, and was trapped for 43 years
- Eiko Kawasaki was 17 when, lured by propaganda, she left Japan for her family’s homeland. Expecting paradise, she experienced famine, ostracisation, the death of her husband and was barred from leaving
- After many years she managed to defect, but left behind a family she can no longer contact. She and others like her have launched a lawsuit to tell the world of the misery Pyongyang inflicted on her and 97,000 others
It was cold and pitch black when Eiko Kawasaki was last able to speak with her youngest daughter. Terrified that her call might be detected, she stood in the shadow of a tree and spoke quietly as she clutched the mobile phone to her ear. Her daughter was only a couple of kilometres away, but they were separated by the China-North Korea border and she might as well have been on another planet.
“This was in November 2019 and she was able to travel close to the border at that time,” said Kawasaki, 79. “But it was still dangerous. She borrowed a mobile phone, but if she had been caught it would have been a serious problem.
Then the line went dead.
It is why she has joined a lawsuit demanding compensation from the North Korean government for deceiving her and tens of thousands of others and convincing them to leave their homes in Japan in the 1950s to go to North Korea. The suit will have its first hearing on October 14 at the Tokyo District Court.
Born in Kyoto prefecture to first-generation immigrants from the Korean peninsula, Kawasaki had attended a school run by Chongryun, the association of North Korean residents of Japan. Pupils were instructed in the wonders of life in the North and Chongryun officials began to encourage young people to “return” to their homeland, which they described as a “paradise on earth”, she said.