Plaintiffs say they endured decades of abuse after resettlement campaign in which Tokyo colluded

A Tokyo court has rejected a lawsuit filed by five people seeking compensation from North Korea for what they said was decades of abuse after they were lured there by Pyongyang’s false promise of living in the “paradise on Earth”.

The five plaintiffs, including ethnic Koreans and Japanese who moved to North Korea under a 1959-1984 repatriation programme and later fled, filed the lawsuit in 2018 seeking 100m yen (about £625,000 today) each in compensation over what they said was illegal “solicitation and detainment”.