Repatriation: Resettling in North Korea

Overview

In Japan and South Korea, fact-finding research has begun to reveal the human costs and political backdrop of the North Korean repatriation program, which began in 1959. The program saw more than 90,000 Korean residents of Japan resettle in the North. Repatriates have previously described the difficult circumstances they faced there, but we now know that their lives were at the mercy of shifting policies and the flux of international affairs—the Cold War contention between the US and the Soviet Union, as well as the changing configuration of Japan's relationship to the 2 Koreas. This documentary features former repatriates who fled North Korea at the risk of their lives. The untold of 60 years of hardship is depicted through new testimony.