Japan-South Korea ties / Awful fate of Japanese wives in N. Korea

The Yomiuri Shimbun

This is the fifth and final installment in a series on Japan-South Korean relations, marking the centennial of the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty of 1910.

The novel "Japanese wife, Shizuko" centers on a Japanese woman who is imprisoned in North Korea after a failed attempt to defect and looks back on her life in the isolated state.

After relocating to North Korea from Japan with her husband, she was told she would be allowed to return to Japan to see her parents in three years, but this turned out to be a lie. Her husband, a second-generation Korean born in Japan, died at a young age. Every day, she had only corn porridge to eat. Her only comfort was the secret meetings she had with other Japanese wives who, like her, were persecuted for being "people of an enemy country."

The book, published in Japan at the end of last year, was written by Han Sok Kyu (a pen name), who defected from North Korea and currently lives in suburban Tokyo.

"Except for the names, the novel tells a true story," said Han. The writer is self-described as sixty-something, but asked that no other clues to his or her identity be published.

When the North Korean repatriation program began in 1959, about 600,000 people from the Korean Peninsula were living in Japan. They suffered severe discrimination in Japan when seeking higher education or employment.

Despite the fact that more than 90 percent were from the southern part of the Korean Peninsula (now South Korea), the majority called North Korea--which was promoted as "paradise on earth"--their homeland.

Han recalled, "In reaction to the discrimination against them in Japan, they placed their hope in North Korea and the promise of 'socialism.'"

However, the thousands who left Japan for North Korea again found themselves persecuted, this time as "reactionary elements from a capitalist country."

"We zainichi [ethnic Korean residents of Japan] were deceived, but Japanese wives who just accompanied their husbands were treated unspeakably," Han said. "I want Japanese people to know about them."

Thoughts of those left behind

Kan Chol Hwan, 41, spent much of his childhood in a camp for political prisoners in North Korea.

"In the late 1970s, I saw a lot of Japanese wives in the concentration camp," said Kan, who defected from North Korea and who now lives in Seoul, where he is a reporter for the Chosun Ilbo national daily.

According to research conducted by the South Korean government, North Korea at one stage operated as many as 13 concentration camps where political prisoners and their families were forced into harsh labor.

Kan's grandfather once lived in Kyoto Prefecture, but repatriated with his family to North Korea in the late 1970s, where he was arrested. Kan, aged 9 at the time, spent 10 years in a concentration camp in Yodok, South Hamgyeong Province.

He said he remembered meeting at least 14 Japanese wives in the camp. Rumors in the camp suggested Japanese women die sooner than Korean women, Kan said. Indeed, many Japanese women in such camps died prematurely due to diseases such as dysentery and pneumonia.

"It must have been extremely hard for those people, who received unreasonable treatment in a foreign country, to accept their destiny," Kan said.

Japanese government records show that a total of 1,831 Japanese wives went with their husbands to North Korea through the repatriation program. Only a handful managed to later defect and return to Japan.

According to one estimate, fewer than 100 of the Japanese wives who went to North Korea are still alive.

Time running out

Hiroko Saito defected to Japan from North Korea after moving there with her husband, and now lives in Osaka.

Saito, 69, lived in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province, for 40 years. She said there were 21 Japanese wives in the town, which stands by the Yalu River.

Japanese wives in the town were forbidden to speak Japanese and had to call each other by Korean names, Saito said. Sometimes when they met on the street, Saito and other Japanese wives exchanged whispered greetings in Japanese.

Saito defected from North Korea nine years ago, and was reunited with her mother, who had sent money from Fukuoka Prefecture many times.

Three years ago, Saito heard from another defector from Hyesan that only six Japanese wives were still alive there. This year, she spoke to another defector who was only able to confirm that one Japanese wife was still alive.

North Korea has tightened border security since the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in March. "People caught attempting to defect will be executed by gunshot," Saito said she has heard.

Saito said she feels tears welling up in the Bon period every year.

"The Japanese wives [in North Korea] are old and they don't have much time left," Saito said. "I wonder if there's any way to help them get a chance to visit their parents' graves in Japan before they die."

The following staffers contributed to this series: Ichiro Ue, Yomiuri Shimbun senior writer; Masahiko Takekoshi, Yasuhiro Maeda and Takashi Nakagawa of the Seoul Bureau; Junichi Fukasawa of the Bangkok Bureau; Kentaro Aoyama of the Beijing Bureau; Kiyota Higa of the Shenyang Bureau; Hiroyuki Sugiyama, Takayuki Nakagawa and Akio Oikawa of the International News Department; and Hidetoshi Tanaka of the Photo News Department.