N. Korean defectors in Japan struggle to adjust to new life

South Korea has been joined by activists around the world in its recent public campaign against China’s forced repatriation of North Korean defectors, but those who have resettled in Japan continue to face difficulties, defectors and activists said Monday.

About 200 North Korean defectors currently live in Japan, with about 150 in Tokyo and the rest in Osaka, according to activists here. These defectors were mostly born in Japan during Tokyo’s 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula and moved to North Korea between the 1950s and 1980s, lured by the communist nation’s so-called “Paradise on Earth” campaign, which promised free education and health care benefits.

Many of these ethnic Koreans later fled the North after realizing they had been fooled by Pyongyang’s propaganda scheme.

“(My parents) didn‘t fully believe the propaganda that North Korea was paradise on Earth, but they said they thought it would be better than Japan since our compatriots lived there,” said a 66-year-old Korean-Japanese man who followed his parents to the North in 1963. The man ended up living there for 43 years before escaping the country in 2006, leaving behind his wife and children.

“I didn’t know such a rough country existed in the world,” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous. “We went because we were told I could easily receive an education. We thought we‘d at least be able to have three meals a day.”

The Japanese government pays him 130,000 yen ($1,582) per month in public assistance grants. To qualify, he is forbidden from working, including part-time jobs. After paying the rent and utility bills, he said he is left with about 20,000 yen.

Still, he has managed to save about a third of what he needs to pay brokers to bring his family out of the North.

Japan passed a bill on North Korean human rights in June 2006, but the government has since taken few steps to follow up on the law, activists say.

“The Japanese government should set aside a budget in accordance with the North Korean human rights law and at least teach the Japanese language to North Korean defectors resettling in Japan,” said Hiroshi Kato, secretary-general of the non-governmental organization Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. (Yonhap News)