Riding home from school on the crowded Tokyo underground recently one day, 12-year-old Kim says she felt something hit the back of her head. When she checked what it was, her hand came away covered in saliva spat by a middle-aged male passenger. As he was getting off, the man said: "Get back to your own country."
"I looked around for help, but everybody had their heads down," she says. "I think they were ignoring me."
Born and raised in Japan, the girl, who declines to give her real name, attends a pro-Pyongyang school. In class, she sits under a smiling portrait of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung and listens to teachers extol the virtues of his son's economic and political philosophy.