‘Not in this for the money’: Why some families sue North Korea.

South Korea – A couple in Ohio who lost their child, a South Korea-trained preschool teacher, and a woman who fled Japan 62 year ago share one thing: They are among the few people who have sued North Korea.

Their civil litigation — often over physical mistreatment and abductions at the hands of North Korean authorities — is part of a quiet, yearslong effort by a handful of individuals seeking justice despite the huge challenge of ever collecting money from the isolated nation. Similar suits have been filed against the governments in Iran, Syria, and other U.S. enemies.

These families often hope that the lawsuits will keep the accusations in the public eyes and lay the foundation for criminal prosecutions at international courts, said Gregory S. Gordon. He is a law professor who served as a prosecutor in international criminal cases in Bosnia (Cambodia), Rwanda and Cambodia.

Gordon, who teaches at Chinese University of Hong Kong, stated that the cases can be used to help families deal with the trauma of loss. “Being able to bring these claims allows them to go through that process more effectively and more holistically,” he added.

Even though lawsuits are rare and the odds of huge payouts are extremely slim, U.S. courts recently awarded money to a few plaintiffs derived from seized North Korean assets. This has given families in America and East Asia reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Choi Byunghee (retired teacher) will have a new South Korean court hearing this summer. “I’m going to keep pushing until we get justice,” said Choi, 73, whose father was abducted and sent to North Korea when she was a baby. “Since the government won’t help us, I’m taking things into my own hands.”

Success and setbacks

A flurry in American civil courts filed cases against individuals, including many government officials, beginning in the 1980s. This was under an obscure 18th-century law, which has since been narrowed down by the Supreme Court. Others have brought civil cases under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allowed federal courts to handle a wide range of cases, including those involving terrorism.

The case involving Otto Warmbier’s parents, a college student from the USA who was brain injured in North Korean prisons in 2017, was perhaps the most recent. The following year, they were awarded damages in excess of half a million dollars. The same court also awarded $2.3 billion in 2021 to the crew members and their surviving relatives of the USS Pueblo. It was a U.S. Naval ship that was taken hostage by North Korea for 11 years in 1968.
Choi Byunghee at her Gyeongsang Province home, South Korea, June 16. Families of relatives who were abducted or held captive by North Korea are trying to hold the country financially responsible, despite the long odds that they will be able to collect money from the isolated nation. | CHANG W. LEE / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Some people outside the United States have taken to North Korea to sue them for partial success. Eiko Kawasaki (79), a Korean-born Japanese woman who immigrated to North Korea in 1960. She eventually married a North Korean man. She returned to Japan only after her husband died in 2003, when she fled North Korea. Her children were left behind.

Kawasaki was part of a resettlement program run by Pyongyang. Japan had colonized the Korean Peninsula in 1910-1945. She claimed that she worked for years in a North Korean plant and was discriminated against and starved.

In 2018, a few months after the Warmbiers won their case in the United States, Kawasaki and four other defectors sued Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, in a Tokyo court for damages they said they had suffered under the resettlement program.

In March, the court rejected their case due to a 20 year statute of limitations having expired. However, it accepted much evidence submitted by them, potentially laying the foundation for future cases against North. Their lawyer said that they were planning to appeal.

Kawasaki’s children remain in North Korea, and she said in an interview that the ruling, along with the Warmbier family’s 2018 court victory, gave her hope that she could win the appeal. She added that her financial claim — ¥100 million, about $734,000 — was far less important than her desire to see her family.

She said that it may be difficult for young people to comprehend how such violations of human rights could occur in North Korea today. “But it could really happen to anyone, anytime. Otto. Or me,” Kawasaki said.

‘They want justice’

The United States cannot award a cash settlement if a default civil judgement is won against North Korea. This is due to the fact that North Korea has few assets and properties that U.S. authorities are able to seize. Plaintiffs are forced to look for other options.

In 2019, Otto Warmbier’s parents were among the plaintiffs who collected an undisclosed amount of money when U.S. authorities sold a captured North Korean cargo ship. In January, a New York court ruled that $240,000 which was to be taken from a North Korean bank owned by the state should also be given back to the family.

The family’s lawyers appear to be following a strategy of filing court claims on seized North Korean assets before they can be deposited into a U.S. government fund that compensates victims of state-sponsored terrorism around the world, said Joshua Stanton, a lawyer in Washington who has helped Congress draft legislation related to sanctions on North Korea.

As for the Warmbiers, he said, “They’re not in this for the money. They want justice.”

A life of waiting

In South Korea, there is no system for giving financial support to victims of North Korean abductions during the Korean War, according to the country’s Ministry of Unification. Although some plaintiffs were successful in obtaining judgments against North Korea at local courts, they were not able to collect the money.
Two former South Korean soldiers were taken to North Korea in the 1950s as prisoners of war. They sued the country in 2016 after 15 years. The men, now 88 years old and 92 years old, were each awarded around 21 million won ($16200) in damages.

Choi Taejip was a former preschool teacher who was abducted and taken to North Korea. After suing North Korea, Choi was awarded 50 million won in damages.

The plaintiffs in both cases requested compensation from the Foundation of Inter-Korea Cooperation, a South Korean nonprofit that had collected 2 billion won, or about $1.5 million, in copyright royalties from South Korean media outlets that had used content in North Korea’s state-run news media. Plaintiffs sued when the foundation refused payment, arguing that its royalties were not property of the North Korean government.

A Seoul court ruled that the money in question was not property of North Korea. Tae-seob Um was their lawyer and said that they intended to appeal.

Choi Sookyi, Choi Sookyi, will be appearing in court in August. She said her father’s long absence had inflicted deep psychological wounds on her family. Her mother died in 1993. She had been hoping for years for her husband’s miraculous return since her youth.

“If we had known that he had died, we would have grieved the loss and been done with it,” Choi said through tears in a quavering voice. “Instead, my mother lived a life of waiting.”

This article first appeared in The New York Times. © 2022 The New York Times Company