A Tokyo court ordered Pyongyang on Monday to pay a total of ?88 million in compensation to four people lured to North Korea by a fantastical propaganda program promising a ¡°paradise on Earth.¡±
More than 90,000 ethnic Koreans and their Japanese spouses are said to have migrated to North Korea between 1959 and 1984, drawn by the claims that North Korea was a paradise under a now-defunct repatriation initiative critics say amounted to state kidnapping.
Instead of finding a ¡°paradise on Earth,¡± victims of the scheme said in a 2018 complaint that they had been denied basic human rights and even minimum sustenance under the program, despite assurances of free education and medicine.
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