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‘Return to paradise’, North Korea urged Japan’s Zainichi. Their reward? ‘So much pain and regret’
- 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
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North Korea’s ‘Return to Paradise’ nightmare
North Korea’s ‘Return to Paradise’ nightmare
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.
Later – before Park and her mother had left Wonsan to return home to Kobe in central Japan, where Park grew up – her aunt quietly revealed that uncle Seok-geun Do had been taken away by the secret police. They had no idea where he was, but they knew he wasn’t coming back.
“They were very scared,” Park said. “I promised them I’ll be back. ‘Don’t worry, just stay alive, just survive, we’ll be back soon’, I said.” But fate, and the North Korean state, had other plans.
“I never heard from them after that. It’s been 25 years,” said Park, 50, now a human rights advocate, speaking from her home in South Korea.
In the years leading up to that fateful final visit, Park had grown close – through letters and phone calls – to the side of her family living in North Korea.
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