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■ Documentary Insight - Eiko Kawasaki, a girl who went to North Korea at the age of seventeen Eiko's final struggle against the North Korean government Eiko Kawasaki went to North Korea at the age of seventeen. A high school student attending a Korean school in Kyoto, she wanted to see with her own eyes the great country that had become a paradise on earth. Eiko was one of the Koreans in Japan who boarded a repatriation ship and left Japan. The repatriation project that began on December 14, 1959, trampled the lives of 93,340 Koreans in Japan. Those who boarded the repatriation ship were ridiculed as "Jepo (Koreans in Japan)" and had to live a suffocating life. Upon arriving in North Korea, Eiko thought about suicide because she had been tricked, but she was only able to escape at the risk of her life when she was over 60. Out of the 93,340 people, less than 100 succeeded in escaping. Upon her return, Eiko filed a lawsuit against the North Korean government in Japan to inform the world of the existence of the trampled Koreans in Japan. On October 30, 2023, the Tokyo High Court ruled that Japanese courts have jurisdiction over the damages caused by the repatriation project for the plaintiffs of Korean residents in Japan who defected from North Korea. This was a historic ruling that acknowledged the North Korean government's responsibility for the damages caused by the repatriation project, and this opened the way for a full-fledged claim for damages against the North Korean government. Eiko's last wish is to meet her children left behind in North Korea. We closely followed Eiko's last struggle in her life to meet her family again. "I wanted to record the harsh fate of the repatriated Korean residents in Japan who were marginalized and discriminated against in every society, as Chosenjin in Japan, as Jepo in North Korea, and as defectors after escaping."_PD Lee Ho-kyung ✔KBS Documentary KBS Official YouTube Channel [KBS Documentary] 🔔Subscribe👍Like➡️ / @kbsdocumentary 📝Contact: [email protected] Copyright ⓒ KBS. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution, and use (including AI training) are prohibited. ∙Unauthorized reproduction, redistribution, and use (including AI learning) are prohibited. ∙The current situation and content may differ slightly depending on the time of broadcast. ∙Defamatory and malicious comments may be deleted by the operator to protect the performers.