The last ten years have seen unprecedented pressure put on North Korea for alleged human rights abuses, from the international community, civic groups, and from individual North Koreans to have escaped the DPRK.

But condemnation of one of the world’s most closed countries, and the international mobilization of activist groups demanding justice for ordinary North Koreans, has precedent in the early years of the DPRK’s existence.  

In this two-part special, Dr. Markus Bell (La Trobe University) discusses a little-known episode in the 1960s-1970s, during which thousands of Koreans and Japanese migrated from Japan to the DPRK as part of the