Ko entered a university and eventually became a professor there. She married and had two children. But life remained oppressive. Her parents aged prematurely; her stepfather was arrested and interrogated.From the article by John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times on the background of the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Chosen Soren for the postwar program encouraging Korean residents of Japan to move to the DPRK.
Finally, Ko received the order from officials that convinced her that she had to flee North Korea: to secretly dispose of the bodies of neighbors who died during the 1990s famine.
"I was dumping these bodies into the river at night and thinking, 'What is this country doing to us? I could end up like this one day.'"
Read it here.
1 comment:
The following article is a better account, and her book on the issue is the most authoritative, "Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War." The Japanese government and Red Cross were complicit in the "repatriation."
"The Forgotten Victims of the North Korean Crisis" By Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Japan Focus
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Tessa-Morris_Suzuki/2382
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