Published on July 14, 2019.
Based on an essay by Masayuki Takayama, this article records Asahi Shimbun’s “North Korea is paradise on earth” reporting, the repatriation project, the tragedy of Japanese wives, and the newspaper’s similar tendency seen in its praise of the AIIB.

July 14, 2019
He himself probably thought that this, too, was news, but readers end up thinking of it as “fact.”
But he says this.
That is up to the readers.
Those who are mistaken are at fault.
The following is a chapter I published on July 12, 2018.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Asahi’s Social Affairs Department and Its “Paradise on Earth” Reporting
He himself probably thought that this, too, was news, but readers end up thinking of it as “fact.”
But he says this.
That is up to the readers.
Those who are mistaken are at fault.
Around the same time, Hiroshi Iwadare was in the Social Affairs Department.
Together with his colleagues, he wrote articles saying that “North Korea is a paradise on earth.”
They said that “the pace of North Korea’s economic construction is tremendous,” that “apartments are being built one after another, factories are operating around the clock,” and that “citizens are living stable lives both spiritually and materially under Kim Il-sung.”
This “paradise on earth” campaign continued for more than twenty years.
Even highly suspicious Zainichi Koreans would come to believe it was true if such a long-term campaign continued for that long.
As a result, 100,000 people returned to hell.
It was thirty years later, after those 100,000 people had almost all been killed, that Asahi Shimbun admitted its error.
After Kim Jong-il acknowledged the existence of many abductees, including Megumi Yokota, and after some of them returned to Japan, and after it had been clearly proven that that place was hell, Asahi quietly carried “The True Face of North Korea” on an inside page on July 8, 2004.
There, Iwadare admitted that because “there was little information” and because “sufficient reporting could not be done,” he had written about hell as if it were heaven, based on imagination.
Normally, if a reporter cannot report, he does not write.
Writing from imagination is called fabrication.
Leaving Koreans aside, 3,000 Japanese wives were also killed because of that, but neither Iwadare nor Asahi has offered a single word of apology.
It seems they intend to end everything with this scrap of an excuse.
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or AIIB, which Xi Jinping launched last year, had already been predicted to collapse around that time.
For example, China’s trade volume last year fell by 15 percent.
In terms of GNP, it is said to be “minus 3 percent.
The same as the Lehman Shock,” according to Yoichi Takahashi.
That is why, although the AIIB was launched, it still has no rating.
In other words, it cannot issue bonds.
The person who seriously recommended such an AIIB was editorial board member Keiko Yoshioka.
In her column “Hamon Fukanzan,” she praised the AIIB almost every time and criticized the Abe administration’s lack of foresight for not joining it, asking, “Is it all right for Japan to remain absent?”
She also wrote that “even the United States is considering joining.”
Even the Chinese would not tell such a lie.
She portrays Jin Liqun, the head of this fraudulent bank, as a fine-looking man, “white-haired and plump.”
Does she not know that fraudsters often have just such an appearance?