30 30 13 February 2021 | The Guardian Weekend13 February 2021 | The Guardian Weekend
arms, even though almost all had family ties to
South Korea. In return for helping to rebuild the
war-ravaged Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea, Minakawa and Choe – along with tens of
thousands of others – were promised a socialist
paradise that their US-oppressed cousins in the
capitalist South could only dream of.
Irrespective of which side of the border
they came from, Koreans in Japan had faced
widespread suspicion and discrimination. “My
husband was Korean and from a poor background.
My family was against our marriage and didn’t
come to our wedding,” says Minakawa, one of
eight women whose lives in North Korea have
been documented by the award-winning Japanese
photographer Noriko Hayashi. “My mother cried
and said, ‘Please don’t go. Think about what
you’re doing. ’ When I remember her saying that,
I can’t help but cry. I was only 21 .” Minakawa
took the Korean name Kim Guang-ok. She and
her husband, who died in 2014, settled in the
eastern port city of Wonsan, where he worked as a
fi sheries offi cial while she raised their children.
Hayashi had read about the repatriation
programme, and the fact that the “returnees”
included Japanese women who had never before
set foot in North Korea. “But I had never heard any
of these women’s personal stories,” she explains.
“I wanted to hear how they felt about Japan 60
years after they left, what they miss, and about
their lives in North Korea.”
North Korea, however, is notoriously
diffi cult to access, particularly for a freelance
photographer from Japan, the peninsula’s
despised former colonial ruler. The political
environment also posed challenges. In 2002,
North Korea’s then leader, Kim Jong-il , admitted
the regime’s spies had abducted Japanese
citizens during the 1970s and 80s; more recently,
its nuclear weapons programme has invited
international condemnation.
During her fi rst visit in 2013 with a Japanese
NGO, Hayashi won over her North Korean guides,
explaining that her only intention was to meet
the women, listen to their stories, and take their
portraits. In the course of 12 subsequent visits, she
has interviewed and photographed women at their
homes in the capital Pyongyang , in Wonsan, and in
Hamhung , the country’s second-largest city.
Hayashi identifi ed an emotional thread running
through all of the women’s stories: an often
unfulfi lled desire to revisit the country of their
birth. “As a Japanese woman, I felt an emotional
bond with their stories,” she says. “ There were
many times when I got a glimpse of the feelings
they had held deep in their hearts for many years .”
When they left for North Korea, the women
had been led to believe that they would be able
to return to Japan for family visits once they had
settled into their new lives. Free travel between
Japan and the North was impossible, however,
since the countries have never had diplomatic
ties. Ordinary North Koreans’ movements remain
strictly controlled by the regime. Decades on,In return for
helping to
rebuild the
war-ravaged
Democratic
People’s
Republic of
Korea, the
young couples
were promised
a socialist
paradise
Akiko Ota, 75, left for North Korea in 1967, after
marrying in 1965 (below left). Below: with a
print of the sea near her former home in Japan.
‘If possible, I want to visit once again,’ she says