A group of residents of Japan who say they suffered decades of human rights abuses in North Korea after being lured there by false promises of a “Paradise on Earth” asked a Japanese appeals court on Friday to rule that the North should pay them compensation.
The five plaintiffs, including ethnic Koreans and Japanese, moved to North Korea under a 1959-1984 program in which the North promised free health care, education, jobs and other benefits. But they said none was available and they were mostly assigned manual work at mines, forests or farms.
