The Tokyo High Court ruled on Monday that the North Korean government is accountable for the human rights abuses suffered by ethnic Koreans lured from Japan to the DPRK under the “Paradise on Earth” campaign, according to a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The historic ruling brings an end to the case that was brought forward by four plaintiffs in 2018, when they sued the North Korean government for human rights violations. 

The four were among the approximately 93,000 ethnic Koreans(Zainichi) and Japanese people who migrated from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation program between 1959 and 1984, most