Kim Jong-Un, please come and get the verdict.” Judicial Decision Convicting Kidnapping in the Name of “Paradise on Earth

Chairman Kim Jong-Un, come and get it.”

A bulletin board set up on the south side of the Tokyo District Court. There, a document shrunk to A5 size was quietly pasted up. It was addressed to “Mr. Kim Jong-Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Committee, Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The following document addressed to you is kept in our secretary’s office, and you are requested to appear before us to receive it.

In essence, the message is, “Chairman Kim Jong-Un, please come to the Tokyo District Court to pick up the judgment documents. This is a procedure called “service of public notice” to legally deem that a document has been “delivered” by posting it for a certain period of time to those to whom it cannot be delivered by ordinary means.

On January 26, the Tokyo District Court ruled to order North Korea to pay a total of 88 million yen in compensation to the four plaintiffs who had escaped and returned to Japan. Since no appeal was filed by the North Koreans by the deadline, the ruling became official on February 10, marking an unprecedented victory in a Japanese civil court case against the state.

This was a trial over the “North Korean return home program” that began in 1959, and the aforementioned service of public notice was intended to tell Chairman Kim to come get this written judgment.

The court ruling stated, “Medical care is free of charge, and you can work at any job you wish. There is no shortage of food, clothing, and shelter.”

In the late 1950s, the Federation of Korean Industries in Japan (officially known as the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan) led a massive campaign calling for emigration to North Korea, proclaiming it “paradise on earth. The call appeared to be a source of hope for zainichi Koreans, who were living in poverty due to discrimination in Japan. As a result, over 93,000 people crossed the sea from Japan, but what awaited them was hard labor, severe discrimination, and starvation.

The following text of the judgment describes the reality of the plaintiffs’ horrendous lives.

The plaintiffs were placed near Mt. Paektu, where the temperature drops to 30 degrees below zero in the winter, and they suffered frostbite on their ears, fingers, and toes.

He was so shocked by the difference between life in North Korea, which he had expected, and reality that he became mentally ill shortly after his departure, and died in a mental hospital in 1991.

From around 1994, a severe famine broke out and many people died of starvation. (omitted) We had no choice but to eat the cheapest animal food available, and we were on the verge of committing suicide with our children in a situation where we feared we would starve to death at any moment.

Once they traveled to Japan, they were not allowed to leave the country and spent their days in fear under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Security (secret police). Only about 200 people managed to escape back to Japan after risking their lives to cross the border. How could a Japanese court order compensation to North Korea, with which Japan does not even have diplomatic relations? We interviewed Kenji Fukuda (Waseda Legal Commons Law Office), the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

Just “kidnapping” on a larger scale.

Eight years have passed since the lawsuit was filed in 2018. In fact, the plaintiffs suffered a complete defeat at the Tokyo District Court in the first trial. There was a big legal hurdle.

The reason why they lost at the first trial was because the court judged that the “act of solicitation” in Japan to “go to North Korea” and the “act of detention” in which the plaintiffs were deprived of their freedom after crossing over to North Korea were two different illegal acts (illegal acts that violate the rights of others and cause damage),” said Fukuda. The logic of the court of first instance was as follows.

The logic of the first trial was as follows. The act of solicitation took place in Japan, but the 20-year “exclusion period” (like a statute of limitations) has already expired and the right to claim has been extinguished. The act of detention, on the other hand, was completed in North Korea, so the Japanese courts do not have the authority (international jurisdiction) to judge it.

The defense team overturned the decision of the first instance court, which seemed to be flawless in terms of legal logic, at the high court.

In the first instance, the court ruled that the time, place, and manner of the acts were different, so they were different acts. However, the composition of North Korea’s series of acts is the same as that of kidnapping. Suppose a child is taken into a car and locked in a house, saying, ‘I’ll give you a delicious candy bar. No one would think that “giving a candy bar” and “locking a child in a house” are two different acts, right? The return home program is the same, only on a much larger scale, spanning two countries, but what is being done is kidnapping,” said Fukuda.

At the time, North Korea was suffering from a serious labor shortage due to the Korean War, and the aim was to secure zainichi Koreans as a labor force even if it meant cheating them. If they were allowed to return to Japan freely, the disastrous situation in the region would be conveyed to Japan, and the return program itself would become unfeasible. This is why the North Korean government’s plan included tricking them into returning to Japan and not letting them return.

In this way, the entire project was regarded as one continuous tort, and the “20-year” exclusion period was cleared. Since the tort was redefined to end “at the time the plaintiffs fled North Korea,” it was determined that the claims would not be extinguished as long as the lawsuit was filed within 20 years of the North Korean defection.

In addition, it was recognized that Japan, which was the starting point of the tortious act and the place where the result occurred, had jurisdiction over the case.

The Japanese Code of Civil Procedure has a provision (international jurisdiction) that even if a case involves a foreign country, if a part of the tortious act was committed or the damage occurred in Japan, the case can be tried in a Japanese court. In this case, since it was recognized that the acts from ‘solicitation’ in Japan to ‘detention’ in North Korea were a series of illegal acts, the rules of the Code of Civil Procedure were applied and it was determined that the Japanese court had the authority to judge the case.

Thus, the judgment of the first trial was reversed and sent back to the high court, and the case was reversed by the district court on January 26 of this year.

Someday they will be held accountable.

However, the other party is a dictatorship with no diplomatic relations with Japan. Even if they win a compensation judgment, it is not easy to actually collect the money. As a lawyer, it is not only unprofitable but also completely “unprofitable” work.

I haven’t received a penny in legal fees in the eight years I’ve been doing this (laughs). (laughs) I’ve been doing it for eight years.

Fukuda laughs, but he says that his decision to take on this difficult case was prompted by a consultation with an acquaintance at the international human rights NGO, Human Rights Watch. Mr. Fukuda undertook this unprecedented trial out of a sense of mission to create a stir in the judicial arena against the tyranny of a dictatorship.

The harshness of living in a state with serious human rights violations is unimaginable,” he said. The harshness of living in a state that seriously violates human rights is unimaginable, and someone must hold the perpetrating state accountable. There are many human rights violations committed by states around the world, but in general, it is difficult to hold them accountable unless the state collapses. A dictator may think, ‘I am the king, so I can do as I please.

However, we cannot prevent large-scale human rights violations unless we accumulate examples that sanctions are always applied to serious human rights violations, and that one day they will be held accountable. As one attempt to do so, we brought the case to court with the intention of using Japanese courts to hold them accountable in a civil trial,” said Fukuda.

Now that the case has been won, the next biggest hurdle is to “recover the 88 million yen. There is no way that North Korea will just transfer the money to our account. ……

The next step is the compulsory execution procedure. The next step is the compulsory execution procedure, which aims to seize the North Korean government’s property in Japan, including real estate, movable property, and deposit credits. We are currently conducting various investigations.

This raises a question. Are the assets of the Federation of Korean Industries, which once served as a window for the return of Koreans to Japan (officially known as the General Association of the Zainichi Koreans in Japan), not subject to seizure?

According to Fukuda, “Under domestic law, the Federation of Korean Industries is treated as a separate organization from the North Korean government, so it is difficult to seize its assets directly based on the judgment.

(Fukuda, attorney-at-law) As to the prospects for recovery,

No, it’s not that easy,” Fukuda said with a wry smile.

Fukuda laughed bitterly.

The defense lawyers had made a brilliant comeback in the courtroom from an overwhelmingly unfavorable situation. Will they be able to pull off another “super shot” by uncovering the hidden assets of a dictatorship and delivering the 88 million yen to the plaintiffs?