‘Return to paradise’, North Korea urged Japan’s Zainichi. Their reward? ‘So much pain and regret’

‘Return to paradise’, North Korea urged Japan’s Zainichi. Their reward? ‘So much pain and regret’

The exodus began with Chongryon heavily advertising what's been called the “return to paradise” programme, aimed at convincing Zainichi to abandon their lives in Japan for a fresh start in the so-called socialist workers' paradise of North Korea.

 
    Lured by Pyongyang’s propaganda, nearly 100,000 mostly ethnic Koreans left Japan for North Korea in the mid-twentieth century to seek a better life.

    Poverty and famine awaited them. As did the threat of torture, death or being sent to a concentration camp for questioning the Kim dynasty’s rule.


Almost as soon as Hyangsu Park had arrived in the North Korean city of Wonsan, she could tell something was very wrong. It was supposed to be a routine visit with her mother to see her uncle’s family – but her uncle was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, there were only the distraught faces of her three cousins and their mother, Park’s aunt, all sat in stunned silence.

“My mum asked, ‘Where’s your daddy? Where’s my brother?’, but they said nothing,” Park recalls.