Japan
There have been three cases of North Korean defectors who have escaped directly to Japan. In January 1987, a small boat carrying 13 North Koreans washed ashore in Fukui Port in Fukui Prefecture and then continued to South Korea via Taiwan. In June 2007, after a six-day boat ride a family of four North Koreans was found by the Japan Coast Guard off the coast of Aomori Prefecture. They later settled in South Korea. In September 2011, the Japan Coast Guard found a wooden boat carrying nine people, three men, three women and three boys. The group had been sailing for five days towards South Korea but had drifted towards the Noto Peninsula.
Japan resettled about 140 ethnic Koreans who managed to return to Japan after initially migrating to North Korea under the 1959-1984 mass "repatriation" project of ethnic Koreans from Japan. This supposed humanitarian project, supported by Chongryon and conducted by the Japanese and North Korean Red Crosses, involved the resettlement of around 90,000 volunteers (most from South Korea) in the DPRK, which was hailed as "paradise on earth" by Chongryon.
Read more about this topic: North Korean Defectors, By Destination
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“I do not know that the United States can save civilization but at least by our example we can make people think and give them the opportunity of saving themselves. The trouble is that the people of Germany, Italy and Japan are not given the privilege of thinking.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)