CHIBA –
Hiroko Saito was 19 years previous when she left Japan for North Korea in June 1961 together with her Korean husband and their one-year-old daughter, persuaded by assurances that they had been heading to a “paradise on earth” and that she might return to Japan after three years. Instead, she would spend 4 many years in North Korea, enduring power starvation, the deaths of her husband and youngsters and a determined battle to outlive earlier than lastly escaping and returning house in 2001.
Now 85 and dwelling in an condominium in Osaka Prefecture, Saito continues to hope for the husband and youngsters she misplaced throughout a life formed by North Korea’s repatriation program, which caused 93,000 folks from Japan to North Korea between 1959 and 1984. About 1,800 of those that made the journey had been Japanese wives like Saito.
Saito was born in 1941 in what’s now Fukui Prefecture. The eldest of three sisters, she joined a textile producer after graduating from junior highschool. At 18, she married Shoji, a Korean resident of Japan who labored at an eyeglass manufacturing facility. Her mother and father opposed the wedding, however after the delivery of their eldest daughter, Yayoi, the younger household settled into what Saito recalled as a peaceable and blissful life.
That modified when her husband’s household got interested within the repatriation program to North Korea.
People selling this system instructed them that North Korea was a “paradise on earth,” the place meals was plentiful, jobs and houses can be supplied and there can be little motive to fret about every day life. Saito’s husband, his mother and father and siblings determined that your complete household would transfer.
Saito resisted. She didn’t wish to depart Japan, however her husband insisted that he would take their daughter even when Saito refused to go. With her little one just one yr previous, Saito mentioned the prospect of being separated from her daughter was insufferable.
Then got here the peace of mind that in the end persuaded her.
Saito was instructed that as a result of she was Japanese, she would be capable to return to Japan after three years. Believing that promise, she determined to accompany her husband and daughter.
In June 1961, the household boarded a ship from Niigata sure for North Korea. The environment aboard was initially crammed with pleasure amongst passengers anticipating to start higher lives.
Saito’s doubts started even earlier than she stepped ashore.
As their ship approached the North Korean port, she noticed crowds waving flags in welcome. Among them, nonetheless, was a boy of about 5 or 6 who was carrying garments on his higher physique however nothing beneath. Saito recalled being shocked as a result of even amongst poor households in Japan, she had by no means seen a baby with out underwear.
Shortly earlier than passengers disembarked, an announcement warned them to not hand their baggage to anybody who was not carrying an armband due to the chance of theft.
Passengers started to panic.
Saito recalled considering that that they had come to the mistaken place. Some folks mentioned they didn’t wish to get off the ship. They had been instructed that meals and requirements can be considerable, but the circumstances seen on the port instantly contradicted what that they had been promised.
What had been promoted as a paradise, Saito later mentioned, felt extra like hell.
The new arrivals had been despatched to designated locations of residence. Saito’s household was assigned to a city close to the border with China, and her husband discovered work at an eyeglass manufacturing facility, the identical kind of job he had held in Japan.
The household was given a room in an condominium constructing, however the promised comfy life by no means materialized.
Rice, flour and different provides had been distributed twice a month, however Saito mentioned the quantity was typically exhausted inside a couple of week. The household started exchanging clothes and home items introduced from Japan for meals. Within a couple of yr, these belongings had been gone.
From then on, survival dominated every day life.
Saito recalled that meals distributed each 15 days needed to one way or the other final till the subsequent ration. Eating three meals a day was typically not possible, and she or he continued to remorse that she had been unable to offer sufficient for her kids.
The promised alternative to return to Japan after three years by no means got here.
North Korea on the time inspired households to have many kids. Saito gave delivery to 5 extra kids after arriving within the nation, making her the mom of six.
Tensions additionally developed inside the household. Saito mentioned her husband deeply regretted shifting to North Korea however couldn’t brazenly specific such emotions as a result of folks feared being reported for criticizing the state. At occasions, she mentioned, his frustration was directed at her by way of violence.
By the mid-Eighties, her husband’s well being had deteriorated. He developed tuberculosis, however drugs was tough to acquire and he was unable to obtain sufficient therapy. Saito started working in his place, however the household’s circumstances continued to worsen.
Around 1990, she wrote to her mother and father in Fukui Prefecture pleading for assist.
Repeatedly apologizing, Saito requested her mom to one way or the other ship 100,000 yen, describing life in North Korea as extraordinarily tough. Money despatched by her household in Japan helped hold them alive for a time, however that lifeline ended after her father died in 1993.
Her husband died from tuberculosis in 1994 on the age of 57. Saito was 53.
His dying got here as North Korea was getting into a fair deeper disaster. Kim Il Sung died in 1994 and the nation moved beneath the management of Kim Jong Il. Economic failures and pure disasters had been adopted by a devastating famine often called the “Arduous March,” throughout which the supply account says an estimated 3 million folks died.
Saito recalled seeing folks ravenous to dying on roads and youngsters ready at railway stations for folks who had gone away in search of work or meals and by no means returned.
Parents would typically depart sufficient meals for his or her kids for per week, promising to return inside that point. When they failed to come back again, Saito mentioned, some kids remained at stations ready till they died.
She additionally recalled vehicles touring by way of cities roughly as soon as per week amassing our bodies till they had been full. The lifeless had been taken to the coast, the place holes had been dug within the floor to bury them. Families typically had no approach of understanding the place their kids had died or been buried.
With the meals scenario collapsing, Saito turned to illegally buying and selling copper wire on the black market.
The commerce was harmful and will result in punishment if found, however she mentioned there was no different solution to survive. She hid wire beneath her garments or inside fabric wrapped round her legs to keep away from detection by police.
One incident aboard a prepare remained significantly traumatic.
Saito was touring with hidden copper wire when she observed a younger mom holding a child. Hours handed with out the toddler crying, prompting passengers to marvel why the kid remained utterly silent.
Police later entered the prepare and found Saito’s hid copper. She was taken away and all of it was confiscated.
The younger mom was additionally detained.
When police ordered her to place the child down on a desk, Saito noticed that the toddler was already lifeless. According to Saito’s account, there was a gap within the child’s stomach, inside which copper wire had been hid.
Saito requested the girl how she might have carried out such a factor.
The mom replied that she had been unable to provide breast milk and the child had died, however she nonetheless had relations ready at house and wanted to carry again one thing that may very well be exchanged for meals.
Saito was launched after her copper was confiscated. She by no means discovered what occurred to the girl.
The episode left her shocked by the desperation surrounding her. She stopped smuggling copper afterward.
Further tragedy adopted.
Her eldest daughter, Yayoi, and one other daughter had been additionally caught whereas illegally buying and selling copper in an effort to outlive. One was ultimately launched after serving a sentence, however Yayoi died in jail. Saito mentioned she was by no means instructed the reason for dying and her daughter’s physique was by no means returned.
Around the identical interval, Saito misplaced one other daughter to malnutrition.
She mentioned the best remorse of her life remained the struggling endured by her kids after the household had been instructed they had been shifting to a paradise.
In 2001, practically 40 years after arriving in North Korea, Saito was introduced with an sudden alternative.
A Chinese man approached her and instructed that she cross into China, phone her household in Japan and ask them to ship cash. The man hoped to obtain a fee for facilitating the transaction.
Saito knew that if she had been captured whereas crossing the border, she would possibly by no means see her kids once more. But she additionally believed it may very well be her solely alternative to vary their circumstances.
In the center of winter, she crossed a freezing river alongside the North Korea-China border with a dealer. After touring for about half a month, she reached the Chinese province of Jilin.
She tried to phone her mom in Fukui Prefecture, however the quantity now not labored.
Having risked her life to succeed in China, Saito feared she would return to her kids with nothing.
The dealer then proposed one other risk: return to Japan, work there for 2 or three years, get monetary savings and ship it to her household.
Saito determined to take the possibility.
People aiding her contacted acquaintances in Japan, obtained paperwork from her household registry and contacted the Japanese Embassy in Beijing. About 5 months after getting into China, preparations had been accomplished for her return.
In August 2001, Saito landed at Narita Airport and stepped onto Japanese soil for the primary time in 40 years.
She instantly traveled to Fukui Prefecture to see her mom, who by then had dementia and was hospitalized.
“Mother, it’s Hiroko. Mother, I’ve come home,” Saito recalled telling her.
She mentioned merely having the ability to see her mom once more made her blissful. She cried and apologized repeatedly for all the concern and hardship she had induced.
Saito later labored at a grocery store in Tokyo and continued sending cash to kids and grandchildren she had left in North Korea. She ultimately helped one in all her daughters and two grandchildren escape North Korea and are available to Japan.
Loss continued even after her return. Her second son died from sickness in 2011, adopted by her eldest son the subsequent yr.
A daughter and grandchild stay in North Korea. Saito mentioned she misplaced contact with them after the coronavirus pandemic started and doesn’t know whether or not they’re protected.
“If they are still living there, I want to do whatever I can so that their lives can become even a little easier,” she mentioned.
In 2018, Saito joined different defectors who had entered North Korea by way of the repatriation program and later escaped to Japan in submitting a damages lawsuit in opposition to the North Korean authorities.
The plaintiffs argued that North Korea had lured them with false info, prevented them from leaving after their arrival, failed to offer even minimal meals provides and compelled them to stay beneath circumstances of extreme human rights repression, violating their freedom of motion and talent to find out the course of their very own lives.
Their lawyer mentioned the case sought formal recognition of the elemental nature of the repatriation program: folks had been deceived into touring to North Korea after which successfully trapped for many years in an surroundings the place their rights and freedoms had been severely restricted.
After eight years of litigation, the Tokyo District Court dominated in January 2026 that North Korea should pay a mixed 88 million yen in damages.
The courtroom discovered that the plaintiffs had suffered monumental bodily and psychological hurt and that it could not be an exaggeration to say that a lot of their lives had been taken from them.
For Saito, the lawsuit was by no means merely about cash. She mentioned many individuals who returned to Japan nonetheless have relations in North Korea, whereas others related to the repatriation program stay there.
Her hope is that these folks will in the future be capable to return to Japan and reunite with their households as rapidly as potential.
Source: YOMIURI