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I<\/span>t has been more than six decades since Eiko Kawasaki left Japan to begin a new life in North Korea<\/a>. Then 17, she was among tens of thousands of people with Korean heritage who had been lured to the communist state by the promise of a \u201cparadise on Earth\u201d.<\/p>\n Instead, they encountered something closer to a living hell. They were denied basic human rights and forced to endure extreme hardship. Official promises of free education and healthcare plus guaranteed jobs and housing had been a cruel mirage. And to their horror, they were prevented from travelling to Japan<\/a> to visit the families they had left behind.<\/p>\n But this week, after years of campaigning, four settlers who had escaped to Japan secured justice of sorts, when a court in Tokyo ordered the North Korean government to pay each of them at least 20m yen (\u00a394,000) in compensation.<\/p>\n Between 1959 and 1984, more than 90,000 people, mostly zainichi<\/a><\/em> \u2013 the name for people of Korean descent who live in Japan<\/a> \u2013 became the victims of an elaborate North Korean scheme to recruit workers and deal a propaganda blow to the north\u2019s former colonial occupier. A few, like Kawasaki, managed to flee and alert the world to what critics of the scheme say amounted to state-sanctioned kidnapping.<\/p>\n Kawasaki, 83, who said she was \u201coverwhelmed with emotion\u201d after the verdict, conceded that she and her fellow plaintiffs were unlikely to see a single yen. The Tokyo high court has no way of enforcing the ruling in the case, in which it symbolically summoned the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un<\/a>, to testify.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sure the North Korean government will just ignore the court order,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Kenji Fukuda, a chief lawyer for the case, said the most realistic option to retrieve the money was to confiscate North Korean assets and property in Japan. The plaintiffs, who launched their action in 2018, are among an estimated 150 people to have escaped from the programme in the North and returned to Japan.<\/p>\n The regime in Pyongyang, with the support of the Japanese government and help from the International Committee of the Red Cross<\/a>, had promised ethnic Koreans a new life in a socialist paradise, with free public services and a higher standard of living.<\/p>\n The Japanese government and the Red Cross were not targeted in the compensation suit.<\/p>\n