Eclipse Rising - Zainichi Koreans in the United States

Justice stalled in brutal death of deportee Autopsy suggests immigration officers used excessive force in restraining Ghanaian

2011-10-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

"Japan's immigration authorities can detain any foreigner without proper documentation for indefinite periods when they suspect violations of the Immigration Control Law. They are under no compulsion to explain why such people need to be locked up.

Both asylum seekers and immigrants without proper visas are detained in the same facilities, known as "immigration centers." Human rights groups say immigration authorities apply regulations arbitrarily and make decisions with agonizing slowness."

For a direct link to the article, click the heading. From The Japan Times Online

Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011

Immigration policy on trial: Abubakar Awudu Suraj died after being restrained by immigration officers with hand and ankle cuffs, a rope, four plastic restraints and a towel gag before a flight to Cairo from Narita airport. Below: An illustrated note that Suraj passed to his wife during her visit to an immigration center during one of his periods in detention. COURTESY OF ABUBAKAR AWUDU SURAJ'S WIDOW

THE ZEIT GIST

Justice stalled in brutal death of deportee
Autopsy suggests immigration officers used excessive force in restraining Ghanaian

By SUMIE KAWAKAMI and DAVID MCNEILL

Abubakar Awudu Suraj had been in Japan for over two decades when immigration authorities detained him in May 2009. The Ghanaian was told in Yokohama of his deportation to Ghana at 9:15 a.m. on March 22 last year. Six hours later he was dead, allegedly after being excessively restrained by guards.

Jimmy Mubenga also died last year while being held down by three private security guards before takeoff on a British Airways flight from London to Angola. The father of five had lost his appeal to stay in the U.K. and was being deported. Mubenga put up a struggle and died after the guards sat on him for 10 minutes, say witnesses.

But the details of the deportations of two men from rich countries back to their native Africa, and their aftermath, are strikingly different. Mubenga's death is already the subject of a vigorous police inquiry, front-page stories and an investigation by The Guardian newspaper. The case has been discussed in Parliament, where security minister Baroness Neville-Jones called it "extraordinarily regrettable."

Suraj has received no such honors. The 45-year-old's case has largely been ignored in the Japanese media and no politician has answered for his death. An investigation by Chiba prosecutors appears to have stalled. There has been no explanation or apology from the authorities.

His Japanese wife, who had shared a life with him for 22 years, was not even aware he was being deported. She was given no explanation when she identified his body later that day. His body was not returned to her for nearly three months. Supporters believe he put up a struggle because he wanted to tell his wife he was being sent home.

An autopsy report seen in a court document notes abrasions to his face, internal bleeding of muscles on the neck, back, abdomen and upper arm, along with leakage of blood around the eyes, blood congestion in some organs, and dark red blood in the heart. Yet the report bizarrely concluded that the cause of death is "unknown."

Any movement in the Suraj case is largely down to his wife, who wants to remain anonymous. She won a lawsuit against the Justice Ministry, which oversees immigration issues, demanding it disclose documents related to his death. The documents were finally released in May, more than a year after he died.

According to the documents, Suraj was escorted from Yokohama by nine immigration officers to Narita airport. After spending about two hours in a waiting room at the airport, he was taken to another vehicle, in handcuffs and with a rope tied around his waist. They arrived at the aircraft at 1:40 p.m.

Suraj stepped out of the vehicle at 2:20 p.m. The immigration officers said in the documents that because he was protesting his deportation, they restrained him face down and carried him onto the Egypt Air MS965 flight for Cairo. They used an additional pair of metal cuffs around his ankles (a prohibited practice) and forced him to sit in an aisle seat on the back row.

One officer took out four pairs of plastic restraints that he had bought with his own money and tied the handcuffs to his belt. Other officers gagged him so tightly with a towel (again, illegally) that his front teeth bit through the towel. One officer pushed Suraj's neck from behind to bend his body further forward. Suraj was motionless by 2:35 p.m.

At the request of the cabin crew, the officers moved Suraj to a window seat, but he was unresponsive. The officers reasoned that he was just pretending to be sick, but the cabin crew saw Suraj was leaning motionless against the window and asked for him to be removed from the plane at 2:50 p.m. No resuscitation attempt was made until he was carried out of the aircraft and into the vehicle they came in. A doctor in an airport clinic confirmed his death at 3:31 p.m.

"These documents based on the accounts of the officers point to illegal and excessive use of restraints," says Sosuke Seki, a lawyer involved in the case. "Immigration officers are supposed to videotape deportation procedures when restraints are applied, but the officer in charge of Suraj's deportation specifically ordered videotaping to be stopped when he was carried into the aircraft. Whether this was intentional or not must be revealed in the trial."

Suraj's legal problems began after he entered Japan on a tourist visa in May 1988. He met his future wife four months later; they moved in together the following January, despite his tourist visa having expired in June. Suraj was arrested and detained 18 years later in 2006, following the announcement of a crackdown on "overstayers" by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

By the time he was forcibly put on a plane at Narita, he had spent a total of 20 months in detention centers, despite the fact that Tokyo's Suginami Ward Office had officially accepted their marriage application.

Japan's immigration authorities can detain any foreigner without proper documentation for indefinite periods when they suspect violations of the Immigration Control Law. They are under no compulsion to explain why such people need to be locked up.

Both asylum seekers and immigrants without proper visas are detained in the same facilities, known as "immigration centers." Human rights groups say immigration authorities apply regulations arbitrarily and make decisions with agonizing slowness.

The Immigration Bureau says the number of people in the country who had "illegally stayed in Japan beyond the permitted period" was 91,778 as of January 2010. In addition, 1,388 people filed for refugee status the previous year. In principle, any of these people may be detained.

In 2010, 18,578 overstayers were handed deportation orders, representing about 77 percent of the 24,213 people who received such papers that year. Many were detained in Japan for many months before they were finally made to leave the country. Some had — for all intents and purposes — already settled productively into Japanese society, married Japanese nationals with Japan-born children. Others have children who have started school in Japan and only speak Japanese. Some are released on temporary permits, only to be detained again a few months later.

After Suraj's death, the police called on Junpei Yamamura, a doctor who regularly visits immigrants and asylum seekers at detention centers, and who had records of the victim's health.

"The police were obviously trying to find weakness in Suraj's health when they came to ask about him," Yamamura says. "They visited me four times about the case, despite the fact I repeatedly told them that there was nothing wrong with him."

Yamamura said his records showed that Suraj's heartbeat was slower than average on one occasion, but was normal when he was reexamined later. An electrocardiogram otherwise showed no abnormality.

Yamamura also examined his body after it was returned to his wife. He says he saw a cut on Suraj's cheek, an indication that the gag was too tight. "This is criminal abuse of power," says Yamamura.

Chiba Police began an investigation on the suspicion that Suraj died as a result of violence inflicted on him by the immigration officers. The case was sent to the Chiba District Public Prosecutors' Office in December. Prosecutors are still investigating. Police referred nine (possibly 10) immigration officers to Chiba prosecutors in December, but they have not been indicted. The criminal charges against the officers are still up in the air.

His widow fears the case will be forgotten if it is drawn out any longer. In desperation, she and Suraj's mother in Ghana filed a suit in August for compensation against the government and nine immigration officers who were involved in his deportation. The trial began on Monday.

Among their demands is that the Justice Ministry disclose why they stopped videoing the deportation on the day of Suraj's death. The ministry has admitted that such video existed but initially refused to disclose it, claiming that the case was still under investigation.

Human rights groups will be watching the outcome of the case very closely. As for Suraj's widow, she says she simply wants justice.

"Nothing will bring him back, but I just need to know why he died," she said.

Send comments on this issue and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp

Japan Multicultural Relief Fund members visited NPO Woori Hakkyo

2011-10-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

Japan Multicultural Relief Fund members visited NPO Woori Hakkyo

Kyung Hee Ha

In August, Yongna Ryo, Haruki Yang-Saeng Ha/Eda and I were fortunate
enough to make our visit to NPO Woori Hakkyo. NPO Woori Hakkyo is one of
the seven recipient organizations in Japan that Japan Multicultural Relief Fund
has been working with in the ongoing efforts of recovery from the M9.0
earthquake that had hit the eastern parts of Japan.

Founded in 2008 as a non-profit organization, Woori Hakkyo has been
supporting K-12 and college students of Korean descendants in Japan, including
those attending the Ethnic Korean schools (a.k.a. Woori Hakkyo, literally
translates to “Our School” in Korean language) and Japanese schools.

Tohoku Korean school (in Sendai) and Koriyama Korean school (in Koriyama)
are located in the disaster region, and Koriyama Korean school is located less
than 40 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The students of
Koriyama Korean schools were quickly transferred to Niigata Korean school, and
they have not been able to return ever since.

NPO Woori Hakkyo staff members, Mr. KIM Yong Hun and Mr. PARK Kyung Ho
told us that the decontamination of the ground at Koriyama Korean school is not
fully funded by the national or municipal governments because Korean schools
are not recognized as “legitimate” schools by the Japanese law. Similarly,
Tohoku Korean school will not receive any financial support to rebuild their
school building that was destroyed by the earthquake. Being excluded and
isolated, Korean schools and communities still strive to recover--physically,
materially and psychologically--from the unprecedented scale of
destruction. NPO Woori Hakkyo, in conjunction with other Korean community
organizations, has been playing a central role in the recovery efforts, and they
continue to do so.

“I am very grateful for their generosity in sparing time to meet with us despite
their busy schedules. The meeting was personally rewarding for me because I
had only been able to communicate over emails with those who are doing the
work for community recovery in Japan. Even though it is no longer international
news these days, the people’s sufferings and struggles continue to be everyday
reality, and I hope we can strengthen this network of solidarity even further.”
--Haruki

“It was very honorable to meet with staff members, and I really appreciate them
for making the time to talk with us. It had a huge meaning for me to hear
information about the reality of our people and community, and their continuous
struggles in Japan directly from the people who have actually been there and
seen what have been going on, especially because it was extremely difficult to
hear through the media or other sources. I was also glad to hear that our work in
USA could become their support on the recovery, and I would like to keep our
work for the community recovery.”
--Yongna

Holding 2 sheets full of love and strength that people from the Bay Area, San Diego,
Seattle, Seoul and many other places shared in solidarity with students, teachers and
parents of Tohoku and Koriyama Korean schools!
(from L to R: Kyung Hee, Mr. Park, Haruki, Mr. Kim, and Yongna)

ER endorses letter to Obama urging US Food Aid to North Korea

2011-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Eclipse Rising has signed a community letter to the Obama Administration urging them to provide food aid to North Korea.

There is food crisis of grave proportions in North Korea, according to David Austin, head of Mercy Corp North Korea program (they are the leading NGO of the five U.S. NGOs that provide food aid to North Korea).

Christine Hong of the Korea Policy Institute interviewed Mr. Austin about this situation and below is the link to the interview in KoreAm magazine. Christine wrote, "David's account dispels many prevalent misconceptions about food aid to North Korea, and he describes very clearly the crisis--not just chronic but verging upon acute--that the north korean people then faced."
http://iamkoream.com/september-issue-a-case-for-humanitarian-aid-to-north-korea/

According to Hong, North Korea reached out to the international community late last year to ask for food aid, which was an unusual move. The U.S. responded that North Korea open itself up for a "thorough assessment by humanitarian agencies" and four surveys were conducted (by US NGOs, US government, EU, and one by the UN World Food Program). ALL four confirmed that the country was heading toward a major food crisis. In addition, the typhoon that hit the Korean peninsula this summer has further devastated the food security of North Korea. Without proper food aid, the North Korean people could be facing a recurrence of the famine of the 1990's.

To see the letter to President Obama, please sign on to our googlegroup or e-mail us at eclipserising@gmail.com

We urge you to spread the word about this crisis in North Korea and write letters of support to the Administration as well.

Thank you,
Kei Fischer
Co-coordinator, Eclipse Rising

Volunteers Needed: Support Survivors of the Recent Disasters in Japan from the Bay Area!!

2011-03-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

Volunteers Needed: Support Survivors of the Recent Disasters in Japan from the Bay Area!!

Dear friends,

Eclipse Rising (ER) and Japan Pacific Resource Network (JPRN)* have come together and established Japan Multicultural Relief Fund to support the victims and survivors of escalating tragedy in Japan in the wake of the earthquakes and tsunami on March 11, 2011. Our goal is to provide aid to those who can be neglected and underrepresented in receiving disaster aids from the Japanese government or mainstream non-profit organizations. After careful assessment, we have determined the recipient organizations in Japan that serve these vulnerable people and communities in the disaster-struck regions. As of March 22, 2011, six grassroots organizations in Japan have been confirmed as interested parties to accept the financial support via the Japan Multicultural Relief Fund. We are currently working on logistics. Please visit our website http://www.jprn.org/relieffund.html to see the list of the organizations, as well as resources including a glossary of terms related to “minorities” in Japan and various information available in English.

This fund is now endorsed by Peace Development Fund, and supported by San Francisco Board of Supervisors and major philanthropic organizations including Levi Strauss Foundation and Lia Fund, in addition to individual donors.

We are writing today to ask you to join our effort by volunteering for this fund. We are looking for RELIABLE volunteers who have experience and/or skills in the following tasks:
-website administration: updating the website using Dreamweaver
-mailing: printing and sending thank-you letters to the donors
-other administrative tasks that may come up

In order to volunteer for this fund, you must:
-be reliable and responsible
-be able to work on a timely manner
-be able to work with minimal instruction and supervision
-be able to come to the office in Oakland
Japanese language ability is strongly preferred for volunteer working on website administration.

If you are interested in volunteering, please e-mail EclipseRising@gmail.com with “VOLUNTEER” in the Subject line and send us the Volunteer Intake Application form with your information.

Thank you for your consideration, and we look forward to hearing from you.

In community,

Haruki Eda and Kei Fischer
Volunteer Coordinators
Japan Multicultural Relief Fund

*JPRN was established as a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization in California in 1985. JPRN has worked closely with the various grassroots community organizations in the United States and Japan as a "bridge" between the non-profit sectors of both countries, to support a growing bi-national civil society.
More at: http://jprn.org/

decompression op.1

2011-03-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

by Haruki Eda

March 14, 2011

I heard the news about the earthquake and tsunami after I gave a presentation on Japan's anti-war education in a Zainichi panel at the Critical Ethnic Studies Conference. My first thought was that it would be just another relatively big incident that's not too serious. I thought so because Japan is used to natural disasters; my own grandma's house was demolished by an earthquake in 1995, and she was rescued from underneath. It happens all the time. I was too busy celebrating the success of the panel with friends with some beers and fries.

It was when I came back to the hotel that I realized the extent of the calamity, watching the footage of water washing away houses, cars, buildings, trees, boats, people, everything. It was horrifying. But I still continued to be preoccupied with the conference and managed to not think about it until I came home.

I knew my family was safe, and I personally don't know anyone in the areas most devastated. My family was shopping for my sister's moving for college in a couple of weeks when I finally contacted my mom, who was happy about purchasing a MUJI rice cooker for half the price at a local brand-new outlet mall.

But as I kept watching a Japanese news prgram through Ustream, I found myself arrested by the reports, or lack thereof, and unable to stop watching or go to bed. Without anything else to preoccupy my mind, I began to feel anxious, stressed, and depressed. I began to vividly imagine the people being washed away and the thousands of bodies scattered all around the land and sea. I won't be able to see any disaster movie for, who knows, a few years?

I am worried about the nuclear plants meltdown. I am worried about the survivors. I am worried about non-Japanese, disabled, and Queer/Trans survivors. I am worried about the environmental destruction. In 1995, we completely lost my grandma's house in the overly crowded Korean ghetto; now that she passed too, in 2002, it's like I don't have any more historical evidence to substantiate my Korean heritage. Wounds might heal, but scars will forever stay.

This havoc will no doubt transform the Japanese society more or less, but in which direction? I see Japanese flags all over facebook, which makes me want to vomit. I hear people attributing people's "calmness," "resilience," "civility," and "strength" to Japanese ethnicity as if they are superior than others, particularly African Americans after the hurricane Katrina. I am angered and frustrated. In the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake, many Koreans were slaughtered as scapegoats as rumors spread that Koreans poisoned wells, along with Okinawans who were mistaken for Koreans. In 1995, aid was not distributed evenly to everyone, leaving non-Japanese survivors short of resources. For me, disasters always come with flashbacks of historical trauma of Japanese nationalism and xenophobia.

I'm not even physically there, but I'm emotionally being overwhelmed. So I write. I am scared of going back to Japan this summer to see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and sense those irreversible changes. My brain says I'm privileged to not be there, by my heart feels left out. It wants to be there to feel everything. It wants to be there to share its absolute despair and absolute hope with people. It's disheartening.

It's not that "I can't do anything." In fact, I don't want to do anything. After the earthquake in Haiti, I donated money; not this time. I don't feel like doing that. I don't know why. I'm not even there, and I'm being impacted so much, and I don't want to do anything. You can say I'm selfish, but I don't feel any guilty. At least not yet.

This whole thing might discourage Japan from having nuclear plants, but it might encourage more money into the police and the Self Defense Force for further militarization and state control in the name of emergency preparation. As U.S. soldiers from Okinawa arrive at the ground zero, their existence in Japan is inevitably being reevaluated--most likely favorably.

Amidst of everything, the ultra-right-wing current governor of the Tokyo Metropolis, who have used derogatory terms for Koreans and called homosexuals "defunct" in the past, stated that this calamity is a "punishment by heaven." He also indicated that lootings wouldn't happen in Japan unlike Black America. I am hoping that this will result in the complete end of his political life as an election for his position is coming up. I will see how (un)reasonable the residents in Tokyo turn out to be.

My struggle for psychological health will continue, against the rise of disaster nationalism. I need to learn how to take care of myself better than this. I'm losing sleep, and it's 7am right now, but I think I can finally go to bed. I wish that I won't wake up to any more bad news.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors host a Fundraiser for the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

2011-03-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

**Please note: Location has been changed from 111 Minna to SOM Bar.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors host a Fundraiser for the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Wednesday, March 23, 2011
5:30pm - 8:00pm
at SOM BAR
2925 16th Street (between Van Ness Ave & Capp St)
near 16th Street BART

$20 suggested donation at the door

Program will include:
Silent Auction Items donated from the Board of Supervisors
Presentation from Consulate General of Japan
A few items have already been donated:
Supervisor Sean Elsbernd:
* Behind the scene tour of SF Zoo
* 5 signed copies of Speaker Pelosi's book
* 2 tickets to SF Ballet's Little Mermaid

Supervisor John Avalos:
* Lunch for 2 with Supervisor Avalos at Zabb Thai Cuisine in the Excelsior.

Supervisor Mark Farrell:
* tickets to the Exploratorium

Supervisor Eric Mar:

* 4 Tickets to the Academy of Sciences

Port of San Francisco:
* 4 tickets to a SF Giants home game
Game: Giants vs. Nationals
Date: Monday, June 6, 2011
Time: 7:15pm
Location: AT&T Park (Giants Ballpark)
Value: $57 each; total value: $228

and much more!

TO RSVP: click here for the Facebook Invitation

Donation will be made to 2 organizations:
JCCCNC: Northern Japan Earthquake Relief Fund
for more information: www.jcccnc.org
Japan Multicultural Relief Fund
for more information: http://www.jprn.org/relieffund.html

For more information: contact any of the Legislative Aides from your Supervisor office!

Viva Mogi
Legislative Aide
Office of District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
(415) 554-7969 Office
(415) 554-7974 Fax
viva.mogi@sfgov.org

Interfaith Vigil & Relief for Victims in 3.13.11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

2011-03-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

A note from Zainichi Korean professor from USF

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

These past several days have been very emotionally difficult time for those of us who are from and have loved ones in Japan. Recalling all the struggles that my family and friends endured in the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe quake, I know the road to recovery will be long and tough. I could not help but feel useless as I watch all the horrific news and images from afar while our friends and their family in the affected region are struggling to survive. But we also believe that there must be something that I could do even across miles.
In this spirit, I decided to organize the interfaith vigil for victims, survivors and rescue workers in Japan, next Tuesday at University of San Francisco, with generous help from my friends and colleagues at USF.

Interfaith Vigil & Relief for Victims in 3.13.11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

DATE & TIME: 6pm to 7pm on March 22nd (Tues)
LOCATION: McLaren 250 at University of San Francisco.

The purpose of this vigil is to share our concern and prayer, and to send a message of encouragement and hope for people in Japan. We will also prepare the donation bin so that we could raise relief fund for Tohoku, Japan.

If you're in Bay area, please join us and even if you cannot make it, please spread the word to your network.

Thank you,

Hwaji
---------------
Hwaji Shin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Dept of Sociology
University of San Francisco

http://hwaji.shin.googlepages.com/home

Support Marginalized Communities and Families in Japan!!

2011-03-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Japan Pacific Resource Network (JPRN) based in Oakland, which is one of the leading organizations in strengthening the non profit sector in Japan and the bi-national civil society between the US and Japan, and Eclipse Rising have teamed up and launched the Japan Multicultural Relief Fund. We have setup this Fund with the endorsement of the Peace Development Fund.

We have set up the groundspring.org (online donation feature), you can make a donation HERE. Your charitable contribution is a tax-deductible donation.

As you may know, JPRN and ER and its members combined together bring close to 5 decades of organizing and solidarity experience with maringalized communities throught the Japanese nation-state, from occupied Okinawa, to Ainu and landless/denationalized Zainichi Koreans, to the 'Untouchable' Buraku caste communities. Amongst our extensive network of colleagues on the ground in Japan, we are currently determining the recipient organizations to ensure all the support is directly injected to those most vulnerable, exposed and farthest removed from a lot of mainstream governmental and NPO support -either due to invisibility of these communities in general, cultural/ linguistic barriers, as well as the highly anticipated discriminatory practices in the relief process.

Why are we doing this?

We are minorities from Japan and are already hearing word from our own families and friends about the challenges confronting them, so we hope this Fund will complement those of the government and other large institutional efforts and empower those who have been long serving their constituents to administer the support they themselves deem is critical and necessary in the manner they see fit.

JPRN has a track record in relief fund support, setting up and administering the Minority Relief Fund in the Kobe Earthquake of 1995.

We are also waiting on endorsements by some key allies.

Please visit http://www.jprn.org/relieffund.html for more information!

The final list of fund recipient organizations will be available on the site shortly.

Thank you so much, and please forward this widely and post on your social media & networks!

Twitter #JMRF

Facebook: Search Japan Multicultural Relief Fund

Meet Eclipse Rising at UC Riverside this weekend!

2011-03-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

UC Riverside's Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide conference
March 10 - 12, 2011

Eclipse Rising members, Haruki Eda, and Kei Fischer and Kyung Hee Ha will be on a panel titled "Collusion of Japanese and U.S. Empire and the Politics of Transnational Zainichi Korean Resistance."

Haruki Eda
“We Lost the War, But Who’s We?”: Deconstructing Japan’s Anti‐War Education Discourse

Kyung Hee Ha
Zainichi Koreans (Koreans from Japan) in the U.S.: Multiple Displacement, Statelessness and Home Making

Kei Fischer
Zainichi Korean Social Activism

Our panel is scheduled at 5pm on Thursday, March 10 at HUB302A.

Please come and support our exciting work!

Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide:
Settler Colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy -A Major Conference
March 10-12, 2011
University of California, Riverside

Ethnic studies scholarship has laid the crucial foundation for analyzing the
intersections of racism, colonialism, immigration, and slavery within the
United States context. Yet it has become clear that ethnic studies paradigms
have become entrapped within, and sometimes indistinguishable from, the
discourse and mandate of liberal multiculturalism, which relies on a
politics of identity representation diluted and domesticated by
nation-building and capitalist imperatives. Interrogating the strictures in
which ethnic studies finds itself today, this conference calls for the
development of critical ethnic studies. Far from advocating the peremptory
dismissal of identity, this conference seeks to structure inquiry around the
logics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism, and
heteropatriarchy in order to expand the scope of ethnic studies. An
interdisciplinary or even un-disciplinary formation, critical ethnic studies
engages with the logics that structure society in its entirety.

As ethnic studies has become more legitimized within the academy, it has
frequently done so by distancing itself from the very social movements that
helped to launch ethnic studies in the first place. Irrefutable as the
evidence is of the university's enmeshment with governmental and corporate
structures, the trend in ethnic studies has been to neutralize the
university rather than to interrogate it as a site that transforms ideas
into ideology. While this conference does not propose to romanticize these
movements or to prescribe a specific relationship that academics should have
with them, we seek to call into question the emphasis on professionalization
within ethnic studies and the concomitant refusal to interrogate the
politics of the academic industrial complex or to engage with larger
movements for social transformation.

Panel on contemporary ethnic minorities in Japan

2011-02-22T07:47:00.000-08:00

Panel on contemporary ethnic minorities in Japan:
“New Ethnic Identity for Sustainable Citizenship: Searching for the Meaning of ‘Belonging’ in Japan.”

Jointly sponsored by Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka and Japanese American National Library.

Sunday, March 6
2-4 pm in Hospitality Room, Union Bank, San Francisco Japantown
(inside Miyako Mall).

The New Ethnic Identity for Sustainable Citizenship in Japan:
Searching for the Meaning of “Belonging”

In recent years, ethnicity has become a major point of interest and argument in Japan. Increasing globalization and a rapidly aging population have made it difficult for Japanese society to uphold its established identity as a nation. Growing ethnic diversity as a result of transnational migration and the resurgence of the indigenous people’s rights movement are two conspicuous examples of shifting collective identities within the Japanese population. In this time of unprecedented economic, political and cultural transformation, Japan’s ethnic minority groups have asserted their rights and renewed their identity while affirming their membership in the nation-state that has for so long denied its ethnic heterogeneity.
How, then, is it possible for each indigenous and immigrant group to construct a new identity while enhancing its citizenship rights and sense of belonging? What are the responses of Japan’s dominant majority population, and the media, the government, industries, markets, and popular culture? In this panel, experts on Japan’s three major ethnic minority groups—Ainu, Latin American immigrants and Vietnamese refugees—will examine the emerging ethnic identity within each community and its efforts to claim its place and rights in Japan. There will also be a presentation of a memoir of a Japanese family with history of immigration to California.

Date: 2-4 PM, Sunday, March 6, 2011
Venue: Hospitality Room, Union Bank, San Francisco Japantown
Sponsorship: Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka (Shizuoka Kenritsu Daigaku), and Japanese American National Library

PROGRAM
Keiko Yamanaka, Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Moderator

Mitsuhiro Fujimaki, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka

Ainu Identity and Museum: Searching for Symbolic Repatriation at Asahikawa City Museum

Takahito Sawada, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka

Economic Participation and Transforming Identity of Japanese Latino Immigrants after the Late-2000s Recession

Yuko Okubo, International & Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Vietnamese Community in Osaka: From Human Rights to Cultural Heritage

Keiko Nakayama, Chair, Center for Global Studies, University of Shizuoka

Japanese American and/or American Japanese? Identities and Biographies of My Mother and Her Brother in America and Japan

Discussion with the Audience.

ER member, Miho Kim, selected to be a candleholder for Day of Remembrance

2011-02-20T13:51:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Eclipse Rising expresses heartfelt prayers for peace for this Day of Remembrance 2011, a gathering to commemorate the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII on Feb. 20, 2011 in San Francisco. Our co-founding member Miho Kim will serve as one of the candle lighters for this event, and we regard this as a valuable opportunity to stand together on the side of justice, on both sides of the Pacific, in the United States and in Japan, so that state-sanctioned racist injustice manifest in the internment shall never be repeated in history.

Public Enemy #1: Japanese Americans during WWII, and Zainichi Koreans Today

Eclipse Rising has a unique perspective on the internment of Japanese Americans.
While Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula ended seven decades ago, we the Zainichi Koreans and our lived experiences are living proof that its colonial policies remain intact within its own borders, unbeknownst to much of the unsuspecting world. To this day, Japan continues to refuse to grant civil, political and constitutional rights to descendants of former colonial subjects of the Japanese Empire. We continue to actively hide our Korean names, in fact, far more so than did Koreans when an assimilationist law existed to prohibit the continued use of Korean names in Imperial Japan, because the cost of retaining our cultural identity is often loss of livelihood in Japanese society. Discrimination in employment, housing, marriage, schools, etc. run rampant. In fact, it is illegal in Japan to hire a Zainichi Korean into public sector jobs at all, due to pervasive racist prejudice against us as potential criminals that can turn against Japanese interests and compromise its national security.

Among many forms of racist violence against us, the Korean schools and communities throughout the country are under violent assault by popular ultra-nationalists that label Zainichi who retain their cultural identity as Koreans as dangerous and offensive terrorist threat to Japanese society. The Japanese government continues to condone, if not perpetrate, racist epithets uttered by officials against our peoples, such as the Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro, among others, with impunity. In light of persistent violence and harassment across the country the Zainichi -- many of whom are children -- continue to suffer, Japanese criminal justice system has not punished perpetrators for their hate crimes.
Nor have the courts of Japan delivered a single just verdict for its crimes of sexual slavery and forced labor. The surviving victims continue to suffer unspeakable shame and insult, and they are our ancestors and elders. We see their tears in the tears of thousands of Japanese Americans whose family perished in the internment camps, as well as in other communities of color that witness their children get shot on the streets, not uncommonly by law enforcement ironically meant to protect them. We see their tears in the tears of many day laborers and excluded workers in this country, who toil amidst profound invisibility and vulnerability. Indeed, their very realities today are reminiscent of what the first-generation Japanese Americans experienced, as Japan’s rural peasants seeking a better life for their children, leaving behind increasing repression and exploitation by the imperialist Meiji government. Similarly, our elders are mostly poor farmers, driven away from their motherland, after generations of hostile feudalist oppression, followed by brutal Japanese colonization.

Conclusion

We, as inheritors of a tragic past, insist on, and celebrate, our right to be healed and exercise of that right as a community. The Day of Remembrance, at the end of the day, is not about victimhood, but is about honoring the Story of Triumph, which has its beginnings in our experience as victims of injustice.
Naming the injustice, speaking up to tell our story, as painful as it may be, to rally support for reconciliation, healing, and ultimately, positive social change - we believe that is what Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would see as the "arc of history bending towards justice." And Eclipse Rising is inspired by precisely this journey - albeit arduous - courageously undertaken by many of our friends in the Japanese American community, as we follow suit and advocate for an end to the prevailing grip of state-sanctioned racism at home – both in the United States and in Japan.

February 20, 2011

Eclipse Rising
--Building Solidarity Network between the Oppressed Communities in the US and Japan--

The Fight against KORUS FTA, Fight for Humanity An Interview with Joo-Ho Lee

2011-02-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, members of HOBAK, Hella Organized Bay Area Koreans, put together a meeting for their members and Eclipse Rising to meet with Mr. Joo Ho Lee of the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union. He is currently in the U.S. for four months as a research fellow studying the effects of U.S. privatization of healthcare and working with the California Nurse's Association to see how Korea can lower its nurse to patient ration to about 1:5 - 1:7 instead of the current 1:25 - 1:50. Luckily the details of the very informative presentation/meeting are mentioned again in an interview of Mr. Lee conducted by Christine Ahn of the Korea Policy Institute. Please read below for the full interview.

The Fight against KORUS FTA, Fight for Humanity
An Interview with Joo-Ho Lee

Interviewed by Christine Ahn* | February 14, 2011
Translated by Juyeon Rhee and transcribed by Lisa Hahn

A Congressional vote on the proposed Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) is likely to be held in the coming weeks, yet few members of Congress are fully aware of the implications of the agreement. Christine Ahn interviewed Mr. Joo-Ho Lee on January 22, 2011 about the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement's impact on Korea's health system. Mr. Lee is the Senior Director of Strategic Planning for the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union (KHMU).

In the interview, Mr. Lee discusses the threat that the FTA represents to public health in Korea: among other points, because health insurance corporations are classified as financial investment institutions, not health institutions, they are subject to finance regulations, but not public health regulations. Meanwhile, provisions of the proposed FTA, negotiated primarily in 2006-2007, represent the deregulatory fervor that swept U.S. economic policy at that time. Experts have identified financial deregulation as a major cause of the economic recession in the U.S., and such deregulatory provisions become law under the KORUS FTA. Mr. Lee speaks from his standpoint in the context of Korean society, but this matter, and others that Mr. Lee raises, also impact conditions and public life in the U.S. The Investor-State Dispute (ISD) clause he discusses applies equally to U.S., Korean, and third-nation corporations operating in both countries, allowing corporations to sue governments in Korea or the U.S. to strike down legislation passed in the interest of public health and be awarded taxpayer dollars for profits lost on account of laws protecting the public health.

[Ahn] Mr. Lee, what brings you to the United States?

[Lee]: I am here to lo learn about single-payer universal health care and California's Registered Nurse (RN)-to-patient ratio legislation. My union aims to see Korea provide free health care for all citizens and provide adequate staffing for patient safety, which they currently don't have yet.

In order to prepare for a future where health care is free (universal health care), my union is interested in the single payer plan. I am conducting research on what other kinds of health care systems exist through a joint research project with the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. The Korean healthcare industry, government and hospitals are working to reducing human resources costs to make health care more cost-beneficial. As a result many workers have been laid off and then rehired as irregular workers.

[Ahn] The Korea-U.S. FTA is likely to come up very soon for a vote and very few people understand it. What do you think about the FTA?

[Lee] Overall, I am against the Korea-U.S. FTA, actually against all FTAs, and instead would like to see fair trade. The FTA supposedly means free trade, but the 'free' part refers to corporate freedom, their freedom to make more profit. It's irrelevant whether the FTA is beneficial to the U.S. or Korea. From the perspective of the working class and public, this FTA is only going to increase the profit maximization of U.S. and Korean corporations, and decrease the quality of life of the working class in both countries. That is why I am opposed to the FTA and very critical of it.

[Ahn] My understanding is that there are some provisions within the FTA that would extend the life of patents on pharmaceuticals and negatively influence Korea's positive list. Could you explain this and also the issue of Free Economic Zones (FEZ) U.S. health care insurance companies are establishing in South Korea?

[Lee] Since being here in the United States, I have discovered that a lot of people are critical of pharmaceutical companies because of their extensive taking of benefits and profits, and that their profits were huge. In Korea, it's the same problem. The entire amount spent annually on health care is about 30 trillion won, or $26 billion dollars. A third of that budget goes to paying for medicines. This is quite high because worldwide, statistically the cost of medicines is typically 1/10th of the entire cost of health care. In Korea it's much higher because Koreans spend more money on over the counter medicines rather than going to the hospital. Due to the high ratio of spending on medicine, Roh Moo Hyun (the former late South Korean President) sought to introduce a bill to put a limit on the positive list, that it only include generic medicines to keep people's health care costs low. This bill didn't go through and his reform failed because of internal politics and lack of support.

Under the FTA, pharmaceutical companies and the Korean government will purportedly create an independent agency to determine the costs of medicine. But we all know that pharmaceutical companies will determine the prices of medicine. Patents on U.S. pharmaceuticals would be extended 20-30 years and will therefore prevent all these medicines from becoming generic. Then these corporations can determine their own price, and by being able to determine their own price, they will be able to lobby for their own medicines to be included in the positive list. This will definitely have a huge impact on the cost of medicine, and the money will come from the people's pockets. Pharmaceutical companies are known for their lobbying activities and their financial support for politicians, for profit hospitals and doctors. For example, pharmaceutical companies finance most medical conferences, not just in Korea but also in the United States, which is also where doctors are given promotional medicines to give to their patients.

In addition to pharmaceutical companies, U.S. private health insurance companies coming into Korea will be really detrimental to South Korea's national health care. Insurance companies will not be regulated by public health care laws—rather, they are set to be regulated by financial legislation because health insurance companies are technically finance companies. MetLife, for example, doesn't just do health care. There are no articles on public health care or health provisions under financial regulations.

The social movements have been fighting for free, universal health care. Currently, public (government run) health care covers about 64% of an individual's medical costs. Because 36% is not covered, many people buy private insurance. The social movements have been calling for increasing national health care coverage up to 90%. Recently, the South Korean Democratic Party has added this call onto their platform. The critical problem if the FTA passes is with the Investor to State Dispute [ISD] mechanism. If it passes, U.S. health care insurance companies will be able argue that if they lose their profits they will have legal right to sue the state for their losses. For this reason, the South Korean parliament will likely decide against increasing the portion of national health care to 90% of a person's coverage since such a policy would place the government at risk of being sued for lost and future profits under the ISD mechanism.

In recent years, the South Korean parliament tried to regulate the entrance into Korea of super supermarkets (SSM), like Wal-Mart. But Tesco, a British supermarket, used the Korea-EU FTA to threaten lawsuits alleging that such legislation was impeding its future profits. But small-businesses are seeking support from their locally elected officials for some protection from these SSMs. The Korean legislature considered regulations that would prohibit them from entering certain portions of the market, but Tesco threatened to sue the government. Due to the threats, this legislation didn't even pass Parliament. Even though this regulation was intended to protect Korean markets and the people, the excuse legislators made publicly was "Let the market handle it." The ISD clause in the FTA is universal to all incoming corporations, including insurance companies, which will only be regulated by the Finance Committee, not the Public Health Committee.

Currently, the entrance of private insurance companies into the Korean market will be detrimental for many reasons. First and foremost is the issue of the lack of regulations. In the United States, there are many private insurance companies and U.S. regulations, which prohibit insurance companies from taking advantage of consumers. In Korea, private health insurance is still a relatively recent trend.

Korean private health insurance companies have been lobbying to increase their share of the country's health coverage (currently at 36%). Of the $26 USD billion national budget for medical care, $10-12 billion, half, goes to private insurance. We fear that with the FTA and the incoming U.S. private health insurance companies, the Korean healthcare market will be soon be entirely privatized. Private health insurance already absorbs 30-40 percent of the nation's entire health cost, and with this FTA their share of the entire health care budget will only grow.

[Ahn] Why are South Korean insurance companies supporting this FTA given that they would be in fierce competition with U.S. health insurance companies?

[Lee] Good point. First, why would Korean capitalists be supporting the FTA if they would be in direct competition with U.S. corporations? Why would Korean private health care insurance companies support FTA? Actually, if you look at most of Korea's corporations, the majority of their shareholders are U.S. corporations. For example, if you look at POSCO, Korea electricity, Korea communications, most of the shareholders are comprised of American companies. In other words, the Korean economy is subjugated to the U.S. economy, in that most Korean corporations are already U.S. ones. Approximately 50% of most Korean companies are U.S. owned. For example, GM owns Daewoo.

The second reason is that by weakening Korea's national health care system, the market would expand for private insurance companies. If the national health care system collapses, private insurance companies, which now have 36% of the market, can reap profits from the remaining 64% of the market now receiving care from the public health system. Even small Korean health insurance companies can get a small portion of that market dominated by U.S. companies. It's still beneficial to them, so of course they would support the FTA.

[Ahn] Do you think that because of the growing popularity of moving public health coverage to 90% and the threats to Korea's national health care system by this FTA, that there is widespread opposition, like there was to the beef issue?

[Lee] At the time of the explosive candlelight vigils, there were two important issues. One was beef and the second one was the issue of the privatization of health care. At the time, the progressive movement was able to highlight that the Lee Myung Bak administration was about to privatize the national health care system, which would collapse with the FTA. These two issues became very close to the people's hearts. It was such a sensitive issue that even political parties are using it on their presidential election platforms. The largest oppositional party is now called the Democratic Party, and they won the last mid-term elections.

The Democratic Party took on the issue of free lunch for elementary school students. The conservative Grand National Party was against it. They realized that the policy wouldn't cost much money and with this issue, they got popular support from the people. With regards to the Yeon-pyeong-do issue, they took up the banner of, "Do we want war or peace? We don't want war." This position also received broad popular support. The Democratic Party is running the 90% public coverage of health care on their election platform because they recognize that this is an important issue for the people. I think that their advocating for this policy as an election platform means they think they can win it.

The people's support for the issue is broad. If it comes to a debate in Parliament, then of course the people will advocate for keeping the national health care. One problem is that the Lee Myung Bak administration has been really silent on the FTA clause. They deny that the FTA will affect Korea's public health system.

There are two pillars that support health care in Korea. First, all hospitals are supposed to be not-for-profit. Although a hospital may be privately owned, there are many regulations on how much profit you can make from providing care. As a not-for-profit, you have to reinvest the money back into the hospital. This law keeps hospitals from becoming for-profit. The second pillar is that all hospitals must take national health care insurance. They cannot say, " I don't want to take a national health care insurance, I only want to treat patients who have private insurance." They cannot do that. These two regulations support national health care. Without them, public health care would not survive.

Naturally, there are doctors who have incurred high costs of training, and many of them have become discontent or disgruntled by their limited profit making. Meanwhile large hospitals have tried to privatize through lobbying government. One of President Lee's platforms when he was running for office was to privatize health care. But as soon as he was elected, he hit the wall of people's resistance on the beef issue and then on the issue privatization of health care. This is one of the sensitive, very sensitive areas that Lee has yet to move on. He could not do anything, so far.

[Ahn] But maybe through the FTA he can?

[Lee] He may be able to through the FTA, if he can mask the details. But the progressive movements are conducting massive education campaigns to build public support for expanding public healthcare coverage. I believe that the FTA can be stopped by the issue over the public's right to healthcare.

[Ahn] It seems to me the most promising, and I'm honored to be sitting with the person who's going to help make it happen!

[Lee] As for the Free Economic Zone [FEZ], it's not a part of the FTA package although it came about at the same time. As I've noted, the pharmaceutical companies and private health insurance companies (financial services companies) are major drivers for the passage of the FTA.

The third industry that threatens the healthcare system is large, for-profit hospitals in the Free Economic Zones. The three interest groups (pharmaceutical companies, private health insurance companies and for-profit hospitals) are working together to destroy the national health care system. We have to see all them working together in tandem.

The Lee Myung Bak government has established six special economic zones in major cities, like Incheon, Gwanyang, and Busan. In these six places, U.S. for-profit hospitals have been established to accommodate foreigners, especially foreign investors. The government argues that foreigners living in South Korea will find it hard to go into any hospital to receive care, and that special hospitals must be built for them. In these free economic zones, only private health insurance companies can operate. These for-profit hospitals are not required to take national health care insurance. The reality, however, is that these hospitals are also set up to service Korean nationals who can afford private health insurance. These companies advertise that they have the best health care in the world, the best technology, and direct connections to the U.S. health care system.

In response to this trend, our union has come up with the slogan "one country, two health care systems." This type of health care system will divide up people according to their income level, which will in turn enable private health insurance companies to come in and worsen the quality of the national health care system.

[Ahn] Could you clarify that point, Mr. Lee?

If you are a trained doctor, and you thought you were one the best doctors, where would you want to work? Would you want a regulated salary position or to work for a private, for-profit hospital that will pay you much more money. The quality of the national health care system will go down, which is the point we have been making in our public education that according to income level, the national health care system will suffer, which covers most (90%) of the people. In response, the government has said that they are just testing this model only in six cities. The government has also said that this would not impact the overall national health care system, but we know otherwise.

In conclusion, the three threatening forces—pharmaceutical companies, private health care insurance companies, and for-profit hospitals—are what has made U.S. health care not work for the people, and now they are going to do the same in Korea. They are the enemies of public health care systems around the world, so we need a joint struggle against them, from the United States and Korea.

When we talk about the problems of the FTA, we talk about tariffs, opening up markets, protectionist policies. But in the Kor-U.S. FTA, I understand that in the U.S., the loss of jobs in the auto industry and other manufacturing industries is more tangible. It becomes the easy social issue. But, what the FTA also does is deregulate and privatize sectors. It changes a country's social and public policies. It destroys them, what is left of a social welfare system. We have to understand that this is really about destroying public welfare systems so that corporate profits in both countries will be maximized. Under that premise, when we are struggling against the FTA, there are a lot of things that both countries can learn from each other.

There are four classes of social insurances that every country should have: 1) Health care insurance, 2) Compensation for industrial accidents, 3) National pensions, and 4) Unemployment compensation. These are four universal social insurances a country must provide for its people. When we struggle against the FTA, we can focus on how to restore these basic social pacts. We should fight not only to protect what's left, but also draw from other countries' examples and learn how people in the United States can restore their social welfare from what has already been privatized. Of course, this is going to be really hard. But this is a movement for humanity.

*Christine Ahn is Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute.

2011-02-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Essay by Kei Fischer, Eclipse Rising co-coordinator.

“Koreans in the U.S. Call for Peace”
By Kei Fischer
January 20, 2011

When I disclose that my mother is Korean, I am occasionally asked, “Is she the bad kind or the good kind of Korean?” I was shocked when I first heard such a question, but soon realized it was said out of ignorance thanks to mainstream media’s polarized portrayal of good and evil on the Korean peninsula. This rhetoric of North Korea as the “axis of evil” is part of what has prevented the end of the Korean War. Now in its 6th decade, the Korean War never formally ended since there was no peace agreement, thereby dragging the Unites States, along with the two Koreas, into a perpetual Cold War state. Consequentially, it has built up to such scares like the recent Yeonpyeong Island artillery exchange between South and North Korea where two civilians were killed. The weeks of following news coverage went in circles, always blaming North Korea and never attempting to move forward by discussing denuclearization of Korea through peace and engagement, and not through escalating military aggressions like the war games conducted at Yeongpyeong Island, which started this recent conflict in the first place. As for myself and other Koreans in the United States, peace and division is a deeply personal issue with multiple generations continuing to experience the trauma related to war and division, yet hardly any media attention has been given to the Korean American perspective. Korean activists are out there advocating for peace because it means, “reclaiming something that was brutally taken from us.” The division of Korea was conducted without any input from Koreans, but it is the Korean people, “who were the first and foremost to be impacted.” Korea suffered under Japanese colonialism for 35 years, immediately after experienced the Korean War, and now a divided homeland. Families continue to endure separation because of the arbitrarily drawn 38th parallel. The signing of a peace treaty with steps toward reunification symbolizes healing and reconciliation for Koreans. A Korean activist commented that peace in the peninsula was a move toward a world where people could “thrive in peace,” since most importantly, an end to the Korean War would mean an end of the Cold War.

In the aftermath of the Yeongpyeong conflict, the Obama Administration’s response was to send 75 warplanes to South Korea and blame North Korea for attacking. Nevertheless, North Korean officials clearly warned before the South Korean military exercises were to happen that if conducted on the disputed maritime border, they would see it as a threat to national security. Hardly a month later, South Korea, backed by the U.S. military, reinstated the war games. This time North Korea showed great restraint by not retaliating and rightfully sending a message that, “The world should properly know who is the champion of peace and who is the real provocateur of a war.” This was thanks to Senator Bill Richardson who recently met with Pyongyang officials and was able to negotiate the return of UN inspectors to North Korea, an establishment of a hotline to avert “potential crisis” and sending fuel rods out of North Korea. Such an action should not be a surprise as North Korea has consistently shown that when approached with diplomacy, they reciprocate in steps toward negotiating a peace agreement with the United States.

Former president Jimmy Carter wrote about his visit with the “Great Leader,” Kim Il Song, in 1994 during which an “agreed framework” was accomplished as a result, stopping fuel-cell reprocessing and restoring the International Atomic Energy Agency inspection for 8 years. In 2005, the 6-party talks between North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States agreed on denuclearization, a pledge of non-aggression by the U.S. and steps to a permanent peace agreement. Unfortunately, the talks had been at a standstill up until last year due to the sudden shift to hard-line policies against North Korea by Bush and South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak. It seemed we were back to square one with the imminent threat of war. During Carter’s revisit to North Korea this past summer, officials clearly spelled out a “detailed desire” to denuclearize Korea and establish permanent ceasefire as based on the 1994 agreement and 2005 terms. North Korea’s wish for talks toward a permanent peace agreement has been the strongest and most unfailing message for peace since the armistice agreement was signed in 1953. As of today, the two Koreas have agreed to engage in high-level defense talks to resolve some of the tensions between the two nations. This occurred immediately a day after Obama visited China’s President Hu Jintao. Both encouraged talks between the two Koreas and, “agreed that sincere and constructive inter-Korean dialogue is an essential step” to improving North-South relations. This may potentially be followed by a return to the 6-party talks, which if successful, could end the Korean War and lead to nuclear disarmament.

When I visited Pyongyang three summers ago, the message for peace and reunification was unmistakable and unlike the demonization of North Koreans by South Koreans and Americans, the North Korean people continue to see other Koreans, including Koreans in the Diaspora, as their brothers and sisters and only regard them with love and affection. One of the guides during our tour there reminded us that Koreans shared over 5,000 years of history as one nation, so 60 years of being apart is a mere bubble in their existence as a unified Korea. Peace in the Korean peninsula is a constant in the North and Koreans and supporters all over the world have dedicated their lives to advocating for a peace agreement. Analyzing the decades-old peace movement and all the time individuals have committed to bringing about peace on the Korean peninsula makes me believe that a peace treaty is achievable within my lifetime. Therefore, I have no qualms about continuing to advocate for peace until that day comes true.

土井敏邦(どいとしくに)　さんの「ガザ攻撃」2月4日金曜日午後7時より

2011-02-02T08:17:00.000-08:00

An Eclipse Rising co-sponsored event - information in English below Japanese
*Please note: Film is in Arabic and some English with Japanese subtitles

映画上映会
「ガザ攻撃」

--日本人ジャーナリスト及び映画製作者である
土井敏邦さんとの質疑応答--

「ガザ集団虐殺」を追悼する世界的活動の日の為に、
パレスチナの若者のネットワークに参加しよう

ガザを母国のパレスチナから分割することはできない！

包囲攻撃の壁を破って占領を終わらせよう！

------------------------------------------------------

2011年 2月4日金曜日午後7時より

アラブ文化コミュニティーセンター
2 プラザストリート, サンフランシスコ, カリフォルニア
(Arab Culture and Community Center
2 Plaza Street, San Francisco, CA)

--軽い飲食物が用意されます--

＊＊この映画は、日本語字幕をもとに、アラブ語と一部英語で
上映されます。

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

映画概要：イスラエルのガザ攻撃（2008年12月－1月）は約1400
人（7割が民間人）の犠牲者を出し、その被害は人命や家屋に
限らず、工場や農地など産業基盤の破壊にも及んだ。その被害
の実態を遺族や関係者の証言を元に詳細に報告する。一方、こ
の攻撃を圧倒的なイスラエル国民が支持した背景を有識者の声
から探る。

土井敏邦(どいとしくに)

フリー・ジャーナリスト

1953年佐賀県生まれ。1985年以来、断続的に延べ５年以上、イ
スラエルとその占領地（パレスチナ）の難民キャンプや村に滞
在して取材を続けている。1993年よりビデオ・ジャーナリスト
としての活動も開始し、テレビ各局でパレスチナやアジアに関
するドキュメンタリーを放映。著書多数。

パレスチナの若者のネットワーク
(Palestinian Youth Network) www.pal-youth.org

エクリプスライジング　
(Eclipse Rising)
https://sites.google.com/site/eclipserising/home/japanese

ご質問のある方はご連絡ください
e-mail: eclipserising@gmail.com

支援団体：ACCC, Al-Awda, AROC, Break the Silence Mural and
Arts Project,Committee for Justice, Eclipse Rising,
Freedom Archives, Japanese Activist - Masao Suzuki,MECA
-Middle East Children
’s Alliance, SJP- UC Berkeley,
USPCN
-------------------------------------------------------------

Join the PYN in a day of Action Commemorating the Gaza Genocide: Gaza Indivisible from Palestine the Homeland! Break the Siege! End Occupation!

A film screening of
Assault on Gaza*
Q & A to follow with Japanese Journalist and filmmaker, Toshikuni Doi

Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 - 7:00 pm
Arab Cultural and Community Center
2 Plaza Street, San Francisco, CA

~Light refreshments will be served~
*Please note: Film is in Arabic and some English with Japanese subtitles

Endorsed by: ACCC, Al-Awda, AROC, Break the Silence Mural and Arts Project, Committee for Justice, Eclipse Rising, Freedom Archives, Japanese Activist - Masao Suzuki, MECA - Middle East Children’s Alliance, SJP- UC Berkeley, USPCN

Blackness in Flux in Okinawa: Making Race in Between Racial "States of Being"

2011-01-31T23:24:00.000-08:00

Blackness in Flux in Okinawa: Making Race in Between Racial "States of Being"
+ Black Japanese Guest Artists

February 11, 2011
@ 691 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
4:00 - 6:30pm

Ariko Ikehara (Ethnic Studies)

Mitzi Uehara Carter (Anthropology)

Co-recipients of the UC Center for New Racial Studies Grant 2010-11

Two black-Okinawan graduate students at UC Berkeley will present some of their research findings and their works in progress on race, space, and US militarization in Okinawa.

This forum will also bring together several black-Japanese who will share their poetry, art, and other creative works which speak to blackness in flux in their own lives

Guest performers:

Fredrick Cloyd
Sabrena Taylor
Michael James
Ahmed Yamato
Ariko Ikehara
Mitzi Uehara Carter

Program A: 4-4:45 pm
Mid-Year Grant Report

Ariko Ikehara: “Situating black-Amerasian Okinawans in mixed space/race history”

Mitzi Uehara Carter: “Nappy Routes and Tangled Tales of Blackness in Okinawa”

Program B: 5pm-6:30pm
Guest Performances

Eclipse Rising demonstrates against the KorUS FTA

2011-01-30T22:55:00.000-08:00

At noon on January 14, 2011, Eclipse Rising joined a group of Koreans, Korean Americans, Labor organizers, students, fair trade proponents and concerned citizens of the Bay Area who rallied in front of Representative Pelosi’s office in downtown San Francisco. The message was clear: a total dissemination of the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, or KorUS FTA for short.

To see pictures from the rally in mid-January, please click the following the link (photo credit Richard Plunk):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eclipserising/sets/72157625833125122/

First proposed in 2006, this bilateral free trade agreement would eliminate tariffs on 95% of goods traded between the two countries within five years, something that President Obama claims would create jobs for Americans. Yet, despite the anticipated increased cargo movement if the agreement passes, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has publically stood up against this agreement, “because it continues failed trade policy and is harmful to workers, consumers, and the environment in both South Korea and the United States.” In a letter to Representative Pelosi, the President of ILWU wrote that, “The ILWU will not support trade policy that exacerbates inequities, awards special rights to foreign investors, allows banks to practice the same disastrous policies that resulted in the current economic downturn, opens domestic environmental laws to foreign challenge, increases the trade deficit, and costs jobs.” Many against this FTA have pointed out that free trade agreements of the past have promised access to multiple markets for larger corporations, but increased competition and lowered workers wages and living conditions for the average citizens. KorUS FTA is actually the largest trade agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994, the effects of which, such as job loss and suppressed wages, continue to impact US workers and our economy to this day. Not to mention the complete destruction it has caused in Mexico, where farmers were pushed out of business, workers completely exploited and the environment of Mexico totally exhausted by deforestation and the high usage of chemicals and fertilizers.
Sadly there is more than trade agreements imbedded within the KorUS FTA. Korean Policy Institute fellow and organizer with Korean Americans for Fair Trade, Christine Ahn, wrote that many chapters within the agreement, “detail a number of complex regulations and restrictions that have one clear aim: weakening public power and strengthening corporate power.” The investment chapter would allow foreign corporations to sue the South Korean government if they implemented new laws that restricted the corporation’s ability to profit. Also, a great concern among many Korean citizens is the threat of losing universal health care. With this FTA, U.S. pharmaceutical corporations could mandate the placement of higher priced drugs on South Korea’s positive drug list, “which is a listing of generic, low-cost drugs that the government believes are medically effective and which its insurance will cover.” This would make medicine that was once accessible, inaccessible to the everyday working people of South Korea, “potentially leading the government to abandon its public commitment” to health care.

You might be wondering why the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement has gone through four years of renegotiations and is yet to pass through either government bodies. There has been resistance to this agreement in both governments, but most especially by the Democratic Labor Party and Democratic Progressive Party of South Korea whose members physically blocked out other members of congress from ratifying the agreement in 2008. Ms. Kim Kyung Ran of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions from South Korea was one of the featured speakers at the rally. At a dinner following, she presented on the 4-year movement by the masses of South Korea against the KorUS FTA, which started with 300 organizations in 2006 and grew to a 700,000 strong candle light vigil in Seoul the summer of 2008. Ms. Kim warned us that the movement has since lost some of its numbers and received less coverage in the media. Both South Korean and U.S. governments are continuing negotiations around the FTA behind closed doors and unless the people come out strongly against the KorUS FTA, it will be passed by both governments in February of 2011 when it is up for ratification.
Please join Eclipse Rising in our campaign against the Korean-US Free Trade Agreement. You can
• click on links below for more information about the agreement and look out for future posts about this topic.
• write to your congressional representatives, Speaker of the House, or the President to speak out against the KorUS FTA.
• Or, write an op-ed for your local newspaper!
Links:
1) Analysis: Christine Ahn's article "Forget the FTA Fix, just say no"
http://www.fpif.org/articles/forget_the_fta_fix_just_say_no
and another is from People's Solidarity for Social Progress: "The Revival of the U.S.-Korea FTA, the Global Economic Crisis and U.S. Intentions in East Asia" by Pilsoo Im
http://www.3pssp.org/eng/?p=93
2) From the US side: the website of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, which has a whole series of linked pages with facts on the Korean US FTA:
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=3595
3) This is the page from Bilaterals.org, on the Korean US FTA, outlining the undemocratic nature of how this FTA was passed in 2007 :
http://www.bilaterals.org/spip.php?article7102
4) and finally, for history and context, this is the blog of the grouping of KA orgs that fought the negotiations back in 2007, when delegations from movement groups in South Korea came to each negotiation site:

Lunar New Year Festival 2011 - Year of the Rabbit

2011-01-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

This event will feature a Korean drumming group, Jamaesori, and one of our members in an Okinawan drumming group!
Family-centered celebration of the Lunar New year!

For more information:

Foreign victims of domestic violence band together

2010-12-13T16:05:00.001-08:00

Foreign victims of domestic violence band together
By Karryn Cartelle

TOKYO —
Mardonia Nishimoto longed to live in Japan since she was a child. After meeting a number of wealthy, kind Japanese people in the Philippines, she had come to think of the foreign land as one of limitless opportunity. So in 1982, when a friend offered her a job working in a “snack” bar, Nishimoto was delighted — and at 28 years of age, she left to earn money abroad and support her family.

Upon her arrival, she quickly learned that working at a snack bar had little to do with preparing food, and instead involved serving men drinks and engaging in overly friendly conversation. Although her salary was competitive, she felt something was amiss and returned to her homeland after her three-month tourist visa expired. But later that same year, Nishimoto was persuaded to return to Japan to work, again, as a hostess.

It was in this new bar she met her first Japanese husband — who soon became abusive. Nishimoto escaped and eventually moved to Kawasaki, where she met her second husband. After several years of marital bliss, Nishimoto invited her daughter over from the Philippines to stay with them. But when she was away from home, her husband began to sexually abuse the 16-year-old. Once again Nishimoto’s life had been turned upside down.

Rather than once more return to her native country, Nishimoto shared her story with other victims of domestic violence through the Catholic Diocese of Yokohama Solidarity Center for Migrants. Though the group eventually dissolved, its core members, including Nishimoto, Margaret Lacson and Leny Tolentiho, wanted to continue to help migrant workers and in December 2002, formed the Kalakasan Migrant Women’s Empowerment Center. Kalakasan, meaning “strength” in Tagalog, reflects their vision to instill a sense of empowerment to the hundreds of migrant women who seek their support each year.

In 2007, Kalakasan helped in 207 migrant cases, dealing with everything from domestic violence to child custody to unpaid wages. Many cases are immigration-related as well.

Kalakasan takes a four-fold approach to providing support: crisis intervention, follow-up care, children’s program, and advocacy/networking. When the crisis first hits, the group offers telephone support to women and children, and also helps remove the language barrier by translating on their behalf.

“Women who have been through similar experiences are able to provide support and encouragement to help victims rebuild their lives,” says Nishimoto. Their follow-up care services involve home visits; counseling; workshops and seminars for traumatized victims; and assistance with finding a new home and job. They also help to build skills by offering weekly Japanese classes, in cooperation with a church.

The children’s program involves monthly events ranging from strawberry picking to pottery lessons, and every second Saturday, budding chefs can whip up some Japanese and Filipino treats in a cooking class. On top of these events, Kalakasan provides the children with a space where they can safely do their homework. “More and more moms are starting to participate with their young ones,” says Nishimoto. “These programs have helped strengthen the bonds between mother and child and between the children.”

The Kalakasan team participates in a number of local conferences and mutual exchange events to help get the word out about what these women are going through.

The upcoming “Skylines Meet, Greet, Eat, Drink, Be Involved” event will help raise awareness (and much-needed funds) for the organization. The late afternoon gathering on Saturday, June 14 — hosted by People for Social Change, in alliance with Net Impact, NPO Social Concierge, International Women in Communications and the Japanese Americans Citizens League — will offer attendees a chance to network while enjoying live entertainment and dining on a selection of appetizers from Harajuku restaurant Fujimamas.

Funds raised from cash donations, drinks and a raffle will benefit several worthy Tokyo NPOs, among them Kalakasan.

June 14, 4-7:30pm. 7,000 yen. 20F Shinsei Bank, 2-1-8 Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda-ku. Email for details. skillsbuild@gmail.com

For more information on Kalakasan, call 044-580-4675, email kalakasan@inada-noborito.com or visit www.k5.dion.ne.jp/~kalakasa (Japanese).

This story originally appeared in Metropolis magazine (www.metropolis.co.jp)

MOCHI-TSUKI 2010

2010-12-13T11:53:00.000-08:00

MOCHI-TSUKI 2010

Center for Japanese American Studies / Japanese American National Library

Special Event Christ United Presbyterian Church
Tuesday December 28, 2010 1700 Sutter Street (Laguna Street)
11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. San Francisco

Tradition must go on! It's the 41st annual mochi-tsuki time! All of you and your friends are invited to join us on Tuesday December 28 at Chirst United Presbyterian Church's social hall. We'll start at 11:00 a.m. and continue until the final mochi is formed around 3:00 p.m. (We can use willing hands from 9:00 a.m. to help with preparations.) Mochigome (rice) is donated by Mr. George Okamoto of Nomura and Co.

As always, everyone is encouraged to participate in the pounding of the rice, shaping of the mochi cakes, and eating and socializing all afternoon. Participants can purchase the mochi to take home. Help us recruit mochi pounders. We need all the muscles we can find.

Our mochi-tsuki has been held annually for the last thirty-seven years. We pound old fashion way - hand pound. Issei did it, Nisei did it, and Sansei do it. We want Yonse and Gosei to continue the uniquely Japanese American cultural custom. Round up all your young generations of off-spring and relatives. Once they see the mochi-tsuki, they will get hooked.

The Japanese American National Library is carrying on the tradition established by the Center for Japanese American Studies. Naturally, it’s the same softest sweet mochi in the world for which CJAS has been known to produce.

Tell your friends and bring your entire extended family to our annual year-end festivity and perpetuate a fun part of our Nikkei cultural heritage. Any question? Call Karl Matsushita (415) 567-5006.

Buraku Youth Today: Findings from Recent Questionnaire Survey by BLL

2010-12-09T23:10:00.000-08:00

Buraku Youth Today: Findings from Recent Questionnaire Survey

From 2009 to 2010, the Central Headquarters of the Buraku Liberation League (BLL) conducted a survey through a questionnaire with the support of Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Institute. Although the final report is to be completed in due course, this serves as an interim report based on numerical results that are already available.
The aims of the survey were: i) to grasp the conditions of Buraku youth today for the purpose of improving conditions that may encourage youth to continue their involvement in the movement in their own communities; ii) to provide opportunities for Buraku youth, including those who have left Buraku communities, to develop a network; and iii) to help the BLL Youth Division expand linkages with youth in neighboring communities.
The survey was conducted with youth (aged 15 to 39) living both in and outside Buraku communities for a year, from July 2009 to July 2010. A total of 851 valid responses were received. As the survey was conducted through the Buraku Liberation League, it does not represent the whole picture of Buraku youth. It is reasonable to say that the survey was conducted with people with close ties to the BLL liberation movement. It is recommended that these results be viewed as an indication of the present condition of those who responded to the survey. Despite this, the responses from the 851 young people provide very precious data that cannot, by any means, be ignored.
Report by Ryushi UCHIDA
Researcher, Buraku Liberation and Human Rights Research Institute

Survey result: http://www.imadr.org/multi/its%20concern%20full%20_im_.pdf

2010-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Eclipse Rising invites you to its Annual Holiday Party & ‘US-Japan Solidarity Tour 2010’ Report Back Part 2!

Presented with improved materials on

the first-ever radical grassroots solidarity exchange with minority communities in Japan by a US-based Zainichi organization!!

Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010
Time: Presentation from 7pm, Doors open at 6:45pm
Location: at the School of Unity and Liberation Office,
1904 Franklin St., Suite 904, Oakland, CA 94612
Space is limited, so please RSVP (contact information at the bottom)

We would like to show appreciation for your tremendous support throughout the year of 2010, by holding our Annual Holiday Party, coupled with an improved version of the Report-Back from our US-Japan Solidarity Tour!

Come bring your curiosity and high spirit of solidarity to this event and hear Eclipse Rising delegates give a narrative & multimedia account of their 9-day long solidarity visits to communities and institutions in Japan - including:

1. Meeting with Kazuo Ishikawa (Buraku-min political prisoner) & Buraku Liberation League Campaign for ‘Sayama Justice’

2. Radical Women’s Active Museum on War & Peace on their continued global exposure of and campaign for justice for ‘comfort women’

3. Fureai-House, multicultural community center in one of Japan’s most ethnically diverse cities, providing culturally appropriate community services from kindergarten to senior housing to immigration services for Zainichi, Nikkei Latin Americans, Okinawans, migrant workers, etc.

4. Iju-ren, national solidarity network with migrants, serving and advocating for some of the most vulnerable, invisible and and fragmented foreign mirant constituencies in Japan.

ER represented at a protest rally against Japanese government for Justice for “Comfort Women” on the day of the100-year anniversary of Japanese annexation of Corea - in Tokyo, August 11, 2010

Because of your unwavering support, we were able to begin cultivating organization-to-organization relationships with various communities resisting injustice and advancing their vision for multicultural Japan. Please join us to learn more -- and our vision for Eclipse Rising's future work!

Bring your friends along!!

Space is limited, so please RSVP with Haruki by e-mailing haruki.n.eda@gmail.com.
Any questions or concerns, including accessibility, can be addressed by Haruki,

We look forward to reconnecting with you and having a fun and inspiring evening together!

Zainichi leprosy patient at sanatorium. About 10% of victims of forced quarantine have been Zainichi.

Eclipse Rising
--Building Solidarity Network between the Oppressed Communities in the US and Japan--

Standoff Amplifies Angst Over Pro-Pyongyang Schools in Japan

2010-12-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

By YOREE KOH

TOKYO—The name of the biggest North Korean school in Japan—Tokyo-North Korean Junior-Senior High School—is carved into the two cement columns lining the walkway to the entrance. It's in Japanese on one side and Korean on the other. Traditional North Korean folk music booms over the outdoor loudspeakers and students dribbling soccer balls on the field shout out greetings to passing administrators.

But the relative tranquility here belies a tense standoff between Japan's 140 pro-Pyongyang schools and the Japanese government, following North Korea's artillery barrage on a South Korean island. The Japanese government threatened to cut off support for North Korean schools here, thrusting the pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean community in Japan under the spotlight.

Japan has the largest network of North Korean schools in the world outside of North Korea itself, due to the nearly 600,000 Koreans who were forcibly taken or moved to Japan during the country's colonial rule. At these schools, classes are taught in Korean and portraits of Kim Jong Il hang from the walls.

The Japanese government is in the final stages of a yearlong debate over whether to extend public subsidies to the country's North Korea-leaning high schools. The policy, one of the cornerstones of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's campaign platform in 2009, exempts Japanese public senior high school students from tuition, while private educational institutions receive an annual subsidy of as much as 237,600 yen ($2,827) per student. Japanese public and private high school students have been included in the government initiative since it was implemented April 1, but 10 North Korean high schools that had sought assistance were excluded and required to undergo a screening process.

Education Minister Yoshiaki Takaki indicated, after a meeting with Prime Minister Naoto Kan, that the process should be halted in light of North Korea's deadly attack, a shift from comments made earlier in the month when the minister said politics wouldn't influence his final decision. An education-ministry official declined to comment on the matter.

Supporters of the schools say the North Korean attack has nothing to do with the students themselves.

"These students have nothing to do with what could happen on the Korean peninsula at any given time…it is extremely unreasonable to suspend the process of making the North Korean schools free of charge by linking it to the current tension on the Korean peninsula," said Shin Gil-ung, the head of the association of North Korean schools in Japan, at a news conference Thursday. As Mr. Shin spoke to the media, a small group of Japanese nationalists protested outside the building with megaphones and banners, underlining the contentious nature of the schools' presence in Japan.

The debate over schools raises a sensitive relic from Japan's past. There are about 600,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan, a community largely composed of third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans who arrived in Japan during the country's 35-year colonial rule that ended in 1945. Experts estimate the family trees of more than 90% of the residents have roots in the South. But in the post-World War II period when Japan refused to fund schools that taught Korean-related topics, North Korea stepped in. Pyongyang provided the early financial support that built and maintained educational facilities where Korean language, culture and history were taught in the 1950s.

Financial subsidies from North Korea peaked in the 1970s, with as much as 3 billion yen, or $35.7 million, by some estimates. The donations have fallen drastically over the years as the North's economy tanked. The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, which is considered the de facto North Korean embassy, said the hermit country has contributed 46 billion yen during the past 50 years. About 10,000 students attend the 140 Pyongyang-friendly schools nationwide—that includes kindergarten through senior high school and one university—according to documents provided by Chongryon. The financial and ideological ties with North Korea have caused the association, and by extension the community, to come under fire in the past.

The schools' curriculum today includes history lessons on North Korea as well as modern and world history. Third-year students at the four North Korea-leaning high schools in Tokyo spend as much as three hours a week in North Korean history class and five hours focused on Korean language. Senior year is a particularly exciting one for the students. It's the year the class goes to Pyongyang on a two-week school trip in what is usually the first time many of them have touched North Korean soil.

"It was different from what had been shown on the Japanese media," said Koh Yon-jae, a third-year student. "It was much more developed and everyone was very kind to us. It is a very hospitable country."

He added: "That's not to say that as someone who was born and raised in Japan but identifies himself as North Korean I didn't have complicated feelings."

Mr. Koh, who plans to attend the North Korean university next April, said he and his friends have been discussing the skirmish on the Korean peninsula with hopes it will be resolved soon.

"To be sure, they [North Korea] did attack. But to say that's the whole story, to define a country based on the event is not accurate," Mr. Koh said.

Eclipse Rising’s Statement for a Peace Treaty in Korea and Civil Rights for Zainichi Koreans

2010-11-30T00:25:00.000-08:00

Eclipse Rising, a group based in the Bay Area composed of Zainichi Koreans, or postcolonial exiles of Korean descent in Japan, stand against the Obama Administration sending more artillery to South Korea and any militarized retaliation by U.S. or South Korean troops. We feel that such actions would only increase tensions in the Korean peninsula, where we have the most heavily militarized border in the world. According to Paul Liem of the Korean Policy Institute and several other Korea experts, North Korea struck Yeonpyeong only after South Korean forces conducted live artillery drills near the disputed maritime border, drawn unilaterally by the United States after the signing of an armistice agreement and unrecognized by North Korea. As these conflicts are perpetuated by the ongoing war, the only viable resolution we see fit is the signing of a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.

As Zainichi Koreans, we want to bring attention to how the recent incident has affected the global Korean community in general, in particular the Korean communities of Japan. Only a day after the North Korean military reaction in Yeonpyeong, Japanese Prime Minister Kan told Minister of Education Takagi to freeze the process of including Woori Hakkyos, ethnic Korean schools in Japan, to the newly enacted “free tuition program,” which financially supports all high school students in their education, regardless of their nationality or which schools they go to including non-Japanese institutions such as international schools. Although the Japanese National Assembly continued to emphasize that the criteria for this program should be separated from political and diplomatic circumstances, Woori Hakkyos have continuously been excluded due to their association with North Korea, and only recently been considered to be included in the program as a result of the joint efforts of Japanese, South Korean, and Zainichi Korean communities’ outcry against their exclusion. However, the Japanese government is again using the recent political contention with North Korea as an excuse to justify their racist act against the Zainichi Korean community.

In light of these issues, we demand that the Japanese government not only stop violating the civil rights of Zainichi Korean members of Japanese society, but also make diplomatic efforts toward peace talks with North Korea along with the United States and South Korea.

DPRK Photo Journal

2010-11-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

In light of the recent conflict in the Korean peninsula, Eclipse Rising wanted to share a a beautifully crafted photo journal by one of our members about our two members' trip to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 2008 through the DPRK Exposure and Education Program. Below is an excerpt from the introduction page of the website.
Enjoy!

http://web.mac.com/flowergold/iWeb/flowergold%20lounge/Intro%20Page.html

"This opening intro page features fierce faces of many who stood in solidarity with the “comfort women” to demand Japanese accountability for its military sexual slavery. It is with the still-flowing tears, unredeemed, of the surviving halmonis (and memories of those who passed) in mind (with lots of other thoughts in mind, to be sure!) that I set out to the trip to the DPRK, the ‘other, virtually-forgotten (if not utterly demonized) half’ of the brutally divided dear motherland of my people, and beloved home for the halmonis. Somehow, I knew, their tears of painful yearning for redemption and genuine liberation didn’t seem entirely irrelevant to those I, too, and my fellow delegates on the trip, would come to shed during our 2-week stay, as we confront the forces of brutal war, violence, and colonization still pulling our people farther from the reach of justice and reconciliation long overdue... and also apart from each other.

Reunification is synonymous with reconciliation. One cannot come to realization without the other, if it were to deliver us all from the tears of our elders and our families today. To this end, the signing of the US-DPRK Peace Treaty is a first concrete step we can strive for. Not only is it simply long overdue, but it will provide us with more opportunities to participate in shaping the course of reunification of our motherland, to ensure it is achieved on the terms of the People of COREA. And that is a fundamental right of a sovereign nation. Countries of the world, beginning with the United States and Japan, have an obligation to respect and honor this today, tomorrow, and beyond. COREA IS FOR COREANS!"

Sign-making party for Protest against any further military action in Korea

2010-11-27T14:17:00.000-08:00

Tongil Study Group of Bay Area is hosting a sign-making party for the No New Korean War rally in San Francisco on Monday, Nov. 29 at 5pm. Please see information for that below the sign-making party information.

Sign-making Party - 11/28, Sunday @ 7:30 pm.

1438 4th Ave
Oakland
E. 15th and 4th Ave

5 blocks from Lake Merritt BART

rally info:

No New Korean War!
Emergency Protest in San Francisco at Powell and Market Sts. -- Mon., Nov. 29 at 5pm
Show your support for the rally by signing this statement!
Stop the Provocations – U.S. Military Out of Asia Now!

The Obama administration and its South Korean client government led by the rabidly anti-communist President Lee Myung-bak are blaming the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) for the latest escalation of hostilities in the Korean Peninsula.

But in reality the crisis there is the result of a policy of deliberate provocation by the U.S. and South Korea over the past several months. These provocations are targeting both the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China, countries where the often-concealed but very real aim of U.S. leaders -- Democrats and Republicans alike – is “regime change.” They could also lead to a new Korean war, one that could expand to wider regional, and potentially nuclear, conflict.

While hypocritically calling for “calm” in words, Washington is escalating the crisis by its actions. A U.S. naval group led by the nuclear “super-carrier” USS George Washington is on its way to carry out joint military maneuvers with South Korean warships in the Yellow Sea, menacing both China and the DPRK. By moving this huge aircraft carrier into the Yellow Sea the Pentagon and White House are sending a direct, threatening message of escalation since China considers these waters to be part of its sovereign territory.

On November 24, an unnamed “senior administration official” confirmed that the U.S. is escalating pressure on China: “China clearly does not like to see U.S aircraft carriers, for example, in the Yellow Sea.” (NY Times, Nov. 25, 2010)

What's needed to resolve the crisis

The DPRK wants direct talks with the United States, a formal Peace Treaty ending the Korean War, and a normalization of relations with the United States. This seemed like a realizable goal in the last months of the Bill Clinton administration in 1999 and 2000. George W. Bush scuttled these efforts shortly after taking office in 2001. The Obama administration continued this policy with new sanctions and endless war games simulating the invasion and bombing of North Korea.

The anti-war movement and all progressive people and organizations should stand against any new war, and demand an end to the U.S.-South Korean provocations.

In the latest incident, the North and South Korean armies exchanged artillery fire on November 23. Two South Korean soldiers and two civilians were reported killed and others wounded. Casualties on the North Korean side have not been reported. As in all such previous incidents, U.S. and South Korean leaders condemned the DPRK. But, as even a close reading of the universally anti-North corporate media here reveals, the first shells were fired by the South during military exercises staged in a disputed sea area close to the west coast of North Korea.

The North Korean government stated that it was "reacting to the military provocation of the puppet group with a prompt powerful physical strike," and accused Seoul of starting the skirmish with its "reckless military provocation as firing dozens of shells inside the territorial waters of the" North.

The roots of the crisis

The western sea border between the North and South is not recognized as legitimate by the DPRK. It was unilaterally created by the United States, using the mantle of the United Nations as a fig leaf and cover for its actions, at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. The U.S. and allied forces fought the DPRK under the UN flag, slaughtering millions of Korean people and leveling the northern half of the country by massive bombing. That war further divided a historically unified society into competing states. While an armistice was signed in July 1953, the U.S. has refused the demands of the DPRK to sign a Peace Treaty formally bringing the war to an end.U.S.

“War Games” = Preparation for Real War

In recent years there have been at least three clashes in the same area as the November 23 incident. The DPRK had repeatedly warned South Korea against carrying out the latest “war games” the area. In fact, the term “war games” is a misnomer -- these maneuvers should correctly be called dress rehearsals for war. No one knows, moreover, whether any particular military exercises is practice or the real thing, until it is over and done with. This is especially true when the “war games” take place in extremely close proximity to an enemy state.

The U.S. and South Korea annually stage such exercises close to both China and the DPRK. The latest and largest joint drills were held this past summer despite strong protests from both the PRC and DPRK. Those “games,” labeled “Invincible Spirit,” included a simulated invasion of the North.

China’s defense ministry especially objected to the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier close to its coast. In typical arrogant fashion, a U.S. Defense Department spokesperson responded: “Where we exercise, when we exercise, with whom and how, using what assets and so forth, are determinations made by the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, by the United States government.” (Agence France Presse, July 15, 2010)

Imagine for a moment the reaction in Washington if the Chinese navy announced that it was planning to hold similar maneuvers right off-shore of New York or Los Angeles.

The Number 1 Provocation – U.S. Military Presence

The biggest provocation of all is the massive presence of U.S. military bases, troop, nuclear and conventional weapons in the region. In 2010, 65 years after the end of World War II, there are scores of U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine bases in Korea, Okinawa, and all across Japan. The U.S. has provided high tech weaponry of all kinds to Taiwan. Trident submarines, each of which can launch hundreds of nuclear warheads, and nuclear-armed aircraft carriers prowl the eastern Pacific round-the-clock.

This vast deployment of military power halfway around the world far exceeds that of any other country. It and the tens of billions of dollars it burns up every year is justified to the people here as being for “defensive purposes.” But that is just another Big Lie.

The real purpose of this monstrous military machine is to secure and further the interests of the U.S. corporate power and strategic domination in Asia and around the world. It is the enemy of the people of Korea, China, Japan and the people of the United States.

There will be also be emergency anti-war protests on Nov. 27 at 12 Noon in front of the White House, and on Nov. 29 in Los Angeles, please take a moment to sign an anti-war statement in support of the rally.

Please help the ANSWER Coalition continue this vital work.
Make an urgently-needed tax-deductible donation by clicking this link.

Action Alert – ONLINE DEMONSTRATION for Peace in Korea - Sun 11/28 and Wed 12/1

2010-11-27T14:03:00.000-08:00

Action Alert – ONLINE DEMONSTRATION for Peace in Korea - Sun 11/28 and Wed 12/1

President Obama is sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS
George Washington (carrying 75 warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and
other warships for additional war-games with the South Korean military
beginning this Sunday, November 28.

This only escalates the already tense situation on the Korean
peninsula and brings us dangerously closer to an all-out war.

And the blogosphere is already full of hate-mongering rhetoric calling
for “retaliation” after the tragic incident on Yeonpyong Island earlier this week.

Two civilians and two South Korean soldiers have died. We say NO MORE LOST LIVES.

We need all those who stand for peace to call for de-escalation on the
Korean peninsula and an immediate end to the U.S.-South Korean war
games.

On Sunday, November 28, from 12 noon to 3 pm EST (9 am to 12 noon PST)

and Wednesday, December 1 from 7 pm to 10 pm EST (4pm to 7 pm PST)

Join the National Campaign to End the Korean War (www.endthekoreanwar.org) in a coordinated "online demonstration" -

1. Barrage the White House and State Department with emails and urge
President Obama and State Secretary Clinton to immediately stop the
joint U.S.-South Korean war maneuvers, and sign a Peace Treaty to end
the state of war that has existed for sixty years on the Korean
peninsula-
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact
http://contact-us.state.gov

2. Post replies on online media sites and blogs where they are
discussing the issue and beat back the war-mongering rhetoric with
calls for de-escalation and a peaceful resolution. Refer to the
attached factsheet for talking points. Some suggested sites are-

www.cnn.com
www.nytimes.com
www.washingtonpost.com
www.huffingtonpost.com
www.npr.org
www.bbc.co.uk
www.news.yahoo.com
www.voanews.com
www.abcnews.go.com
www.foreignpolicy.com

3. Post links to articles calling for diplomacy on listserves, blogs, facebook-

• "North Korea's Consistent Message to the U.S."
By former President Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post, November 24, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/23/AR2010112305808.html

• “Retaliation, Retaliation"
by Paul Liem of the Korea Policy Institute, Nov 25, 2010
http://www.kpolicy.org

• "Crisis in Korea?"
by John Feffer, Co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus in the
Huffington Post, Nov 23,2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-feffer/crisis-in-korea_b_787639.html

• Tim Shorrock
Posted on the Daily Beast.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-24/korea-standoff-barack-obama-only-has-one-choice/?cid=hp:mainpromo1

• Tim Shorrock
on Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/24/tim_shorrock_direct_talks_with_north

• “A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex”
By Siegfried S. Hecker
http://www.nautilus.org/publications/essays/napsnet/reports/a-return-trip-to-north-korea2019s-yongbyon-nuclear-complex

• “Review U.S. Policy toward North Korea”
Bob Carlin and John Lewis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/21/AR2010112102276.html

[Type text] [Type text] [Type text]

KOREA CRISIS:

Basic Facts and Historical Context

Facts on the Recent Artillery Duel:

• On Tuesday, November 23rd, 70,000 South Korean and American military troops engaged in an annual military drill,

called “Hoguk [Defend the State],” involving 50 warships, 90 helicopters, 500 warplanes, and 600 tanks mobilized for

war simulation exercises scheduled for a period of 9 days, until Nov. 30th.

• The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) criticized the mobilization, stating that they were provocative,

and demanded that South Korea halt the drill.

• South Korean artillery units fired toward DPRK from a battery close to the DPRK coast, within a disputed maritime

region called the Northern Limit Line (NLL). The disputed border on the west coast between North and South Korea

was drawn unilaterally by the U.S. Navy in 1953; it was never recognized by the North.

• After four hours, the DPRK replied with 100 artillery shells from a position north of Yeonpyeong Island; South Korea

then fired back 80 artillery shells.

• Two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed and at least 16 others injured on Yeonpyeong Island, a site

with military bases as well as a fishing community of 1,300 residents. DPRK casualty and damages are unknown.

U.S. Involvement and Escalation of Tensions

• Obama has responded by sending the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (carrying 75

warplanes and a crew of over 6000) and other warships to conduct additional joint war-games with the South Korean

military in the vicinity of the NLL, to begin Sunday, November 28.

Ongoing State of War

• There has not been a formal end to the Korean War. In 1953, only an armistice was put into place.

• Since 1953, there have been military clashes between South Korea and the DPRK in the disputed area of the NLL.

• In 1999, a DPRK ship sank in a clash with the South Korean Navy, killing 3 sailors and wounding roughly 70.

• In 2009, the South Korean Navy fired at a DPRK vessel that crossed the demarcation line and killed several sailors.

• In March 2010, the Cheonan, a South Korean navy corvette, sank, killing 49 sailors.

• 10 million Korean families are separated due to the continued state of war and division in Korea.

These tragic incidents are a result of continued division and the unending state of war on the Korean

peninsula, and underscore the frailty of the Armistice Agreement – the cease-fire signed by the United States

(representing the United Nations Command, which included the Republic of Korea), China, and the DPRK

in 1953.

Without formalized relations and engagement, the potential for increased tension and conflict will always

remain very high. The U.S. should take active steps to finally end the Korean War with a peace agreement.

and use its influence in South Korea to bring both sides to the table.

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North Korea’s Nukes – Historical Chronology

Tensions were already running high on the peninsula prior to the recent tragic events, as the DPRK recently revealed a

new uranium enrichment facility and a light-water reactor to a U.S. delegation.

• 1993 – In response to increasingly severe sanctions imposed by the United States and its aggressive military posture,

the DPRK announced its intention to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). The following year, it kicked

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agents out of the country and removed spent fuel rods from its

Yongbyon reactor.

o In response, former U.S. President Clinton threatened a preemptive strike against the Yongbyon facility.

Senator John McCain called for “air or cruise missile strikes” on the reprocessing facility.

o Referring to the possibility of U.S. nuclear strikes against North Korea, scholar Meredith Woo-Cumings

notes, “the Clinton administration came within a hair’s-breadth of a war in Korea without so much as

consulting with its South Korean ally on an action that would have had devastating consequences for the

nearly seventy million people on both sides of the DMZ.”

• 1994 – Jimmy Carter visited Pyongyang, and transformed a confrontation at the brink of war into a new opportunity

for negotiations. This resulted in the 1994 Agreed Framework, in which the DPRK agreed to stop its nuclear program

in exchange for energy alternatives and a non-aggression pact with the United States. This stopped DPRK’s fuel-cell

reprocessing and restored IAEA inspection for eight years.

• 2001 – George W. Bush reversed this course and announced that he would not negotiate with any state that he deemed

to be “terrorist.” In 2002, Bush declared the DPRK part of an “axis of evil” and a potential nuclear target, and halted

heavy oil shipments to the DPRK. The U.S. and South Korean militaries conducted the largest joint military exercise

to date.

• 2003 – The DPRK test-fired a scud missile into the East Sea and withdrew from the NPT. Alarmed by DPRK’s

nuclear program, the United States proposed the Six Party talks, a series of multilateral negotiations involving the

DPRK, United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.

• 2005 – After three years of negotiations, the talks produced the 9.19 Joint agreement, in which the DPRK agreed to

stop its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. assurance that it would not attack the DPRK and commit to

normalization of relations.

• Unfortunately, no substantive progress has been made in the Six Party talks since 2005; and the DPRK has accused

Washington and Seoul of reneging on earlier agreements, including a promise to supply energy in return for shutting

down its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

• 2010 – In November, DPRK officials permitted access by U.S. nuclear experts to an advanced facility for purifying

uranium. DPRK officials made it clear that the centrifuges would be "on the table" for discussions with the United

States.

• In their recent meeting with DPRK officials, Leon Sigal, Director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project

at the Social Science Research Council in New York, and former U.S. officials Joel Wit and Morton Abramowitz

were told that Pyongyang is prepared to ship out all of its nuclear fuel rods, the key ingredient for producing weapons-

grade plutonium, to a third country in exchange for a U.S. commitment to pledge that it has “no hostile intent” toward

the DPRK. Such a pact could set the stage for reopening the Six Party talks.

[Type text] [Type text] [Type text]

The Way Forward

• Direct negotiations, as a first step toward a peace treaty or agreement, are the only way to end Pyongyang’s nuclear

weapons program and eventually move toward a peace agreement to formally end the conflict. Sanctions apparently

have not worked to retard DPRK’s nuclear development. Neither has Obama's policy of "strategic patience."

• The DPRK insists on direct talks with the United States. Leaders in Pyongyang consider South Korea's armed forces

to be controlled from Washington and point out that South Korea was not party to the 1953 cease-fire. Since the

Clinton administration, the United States has negotiated through the six-party approach, largely avoiding substantive

bilateral discussions. The Obama administration has maintained that no talks with the DPRK government of Kim

Jong Il are possible until the regime abandons its nuclear weapons program.

• Washington’s role on the Korean peninsula is critical because the United States maintains 28,000 ground troops in

South Korea and holds operational command over Korean forces in times of war—distinguishing South Korea as the

only country in the world in such a situation.

• “Without direct negotiations, North Korea is likely to keep enriching uranium, restart its reactor at Yongbyon,

conduct another nuclear test as it did in 2006, and test more missiles.” – Leon Sigal of the Social Science Research

Council.

• “The only hope appears to be engagement. The United States and its partners should respond to the latest nuclear

developments so as to encourage Pyongyang to finally pursue nuclear electricity in lieu of the bomb. That will require

addressing North Korea’s underlying insecurity.” – Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National

Laboratory who recently toured the DPRK and saw its facility for purifying uranium

• “Being realistic about the North makes no moral judgment about its system or policies, nor does it cede anything in

terms of our values or goals. U.S. policymakers need to go back to square one. A realistic place to start fresh may be

quite simple: accepting the existence of North Korea as it is, a sovereign state with its own interests.” – Robert Carlin

and John Lewis, Stanford professors who recently toured the DPRK and saw its facility for purifying uranium

• “Pyongyang has sent a consistent message that during direct talks with the United States, it is ready to conclude an

agreement to end its nuclear programs, put them all under IAEA inspection and conclude a permanent peace treaty to

replace the ‘temporary’ cease-fire of 1953.” – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter

• "... One item should be at the top of the agenda, however, in order to remove all unnecessary obstacles to progress,

that is the establishment of a peace treaty to replace the truce that has been in place since 1953. One of the things that

have bedeviled all talks until now is the unresolved status of the Korean War. A peace treaty would provide a baseline

for relationships, eliminating the question of the other’s legitimacy and its right to exist.” – James Laney, former U.S.

Ambassador to South Korea

As tensions continue to mount, it is critical that we urge President Obama to stop the joint U.S.-South

Korean war maneuvers and not send additional U.S. warships and planes, including the U.S. aircraft carrier

George Washington.

Instead, the United States should begin negotiations immediately and sign a Peace Agreement to end the

state of war that has existed for sixty years since the Korean War.

"homeland" politics wrongly used by the japanese government

2010-11-23T20:05:00.000-08:00

"The first direct artillery attack on South Korean territory since 1953" (Yonhap) by North Korea killed 2 South Korean marines yesterday. As expected, Japanese and U.S. media, with a complete amnesia of HOW and WHY the incident happened, represent North Korea as a irrational and uncivilized nation that does not care about killing civilians. Can we talk about the Japanese colonization and U.S. military intervention that created the 38th parallel and 2 nations in the Korean Peninsula in the first place? Can we not assume that all of a sudden Korea was divided because Korean people were incapable of uniting the nation and have an independent sovereign government on their own?

Moreover, can we talk about how the "homeland" politics affects lives of Korean diaspora all over the world? Japanese government is again using North Korea as their justification to discriminate, marginalize and try to kill Korean education in Japan, claiming that woori hakkyo (Korean schools) are terrorist schools. Do they really think that taking away equal educational rights from children can promote mutual understanding and peaceful relationship? Now, who's being irrational?

Below is breaking news from Mainichi Shimbun, the only non-ultra-right newspaper in Japan. Senda, Chief Cabinet Secretary and Takagi, Minister of Education said that application of "free-tuition-program" to Korean schools in Japan must be reconsidered now due to what NK did yesterday.

----------------------------------------
＜北朝鮮砲撃＞朝鮮学校の無償化プロセス停止も…官房長官
毎日新聞 11月24日(水)11時48分配信

　仙谷由人官房長官は２４日午前の記者会見で、

北朝鮮による砲撃事件を受け、朝鮮学校への高校無償化適用について「現在進めているプロセスをいったん停止する方向に動くと考えている」と述べ、事態の沈静化まで適用に向けた手続きを凍結する考えを示した。仙谷氏は同日午前の閣議でも「朝鮮半島が緊張してくる中で現時点では手続きを停止することが望ましい」と発言したことを明かした。

　◇文科相、朝鮮学校からの無償化申請不受理示唆

　高木義明文部科学相は２４日の閣議後会見で、「砲撃は平和を脅かす極めて遺憾な行為で、朝鮮学校の授業料無償化制度適用についての影響は極めて大きい」と述べ、朝鮮学校からの無償化申請を受理しない可能性を示唆した。

　朝鮮学校については今月５日、高木文科相が日本の専修学校と同等の基準で無償化制度適用の審査をすることを決め、３０日を期限に申請の受け付けが始まっていた。

　高木文科相はこれまで一貫して「政治と教育の問題を混同してはならない」との態度を取っていたが、この日の会見では「それを踏まえた上で、重大な判断が迫られる可能性がある」と述べた。

　文科省によると、無償化制度の対象になる朝鮮学校は全国に１０校あり、現段階で７校が文科省に申請の意思を伝え、準備を進めている。朝鮮学校の生徒は全国に約１８００人おり、申請が受理されれば年間１１万８８００～２３万７６００円の支援金を受け取れることになっている。

　高木文科相の発言に対し、朝鮮学校関係者の一人は「同じ民族同士で戦うことは非常に悲しい。ただ、この問題と高校無償化とは関係がない。ずっと結論を先延ばしにしてきて、ようやくという段階になってこのような発言があることは非常に残念」と話している。

【篠原成行、井上俊樹】

最終更新:11月24日(水)11時49分

6th Grader in Japan Commits Suicide - Bullied because Mother is Filipina

2010-11-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

http://community.livejournal.com/aramatheydidnt/1433649.html#cutid1

Picture of classroom out of control emerges in wake of bullied 6th grader's suicide

MAEBASHI -- Two weeks since the suicide of a sixth grader in Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture, a picture of a classroom out of control has begun to take shape.

Akiko Uemura, 12, who was found hanged by a scarf in her room on Oct. 23, transferred from an elementary school in Aichi Prefecture when her family moved to Kiryu in October 2008. It was after her Filipino mother visited the school on parents' visitation day in 2009 that Akiko's classmates began commenting on her appearance.

After Akiko began sixth grade this past April, classmates started saying that she smelled bad and asked her if she bathed. Akiko appealed to her parents to let her transfer to another school, saying that she was willing to walk to school no matter how far. Her parents sought advice from the school on numerous occasions, and considered moving elsewhere once Akiko finished elementary school.

In late September, Akiko's classmates began to sit as far away from her as possible at lunchtime despite their homeroom teacher's admonitions to stay in designated groups. According to Akiko's mother, Akiko asked a classmate to eat lunch with her in mid-October, only to be refused.

On Oct. 19 and 20, Akiko stayed home from school. Her homeroom teacher called her at home to encourage her to come to school on the next day, as the class was going on a field trip. On Oct. 21, however, some of Akiko's classmates questioned her about why she only came to school when there was a special event and whether she was otherwise playing hooky, and Akiko came home in tears.

Akiko stayed home from school again on Oct. 22, and when her homeroom teacher visited her home that evening -- when her parents happened to be at work -- to report on the school's decision to abolish lunchtime groupings, no one answered the door. On Oct. 23, Akiko woke up around 9 a.m. and had breakfast. When her mother looked into her room around noon, she was hanging from a curtain rail by a scarf that she had been knitting for her mother.

No suicide note has been found, but after her funeral on Oct. 26, manga entitled "Friends Are Great!" that Akiko appears to have drawn before her suicide was found. In a letter addressed to Akiko's former classmate in Aichi that was found on Oct. 29, Akiko wrote: "I'm going to Osaka for junior high. So we might pass through Aichi. I'll visit you if I can!"

Meanwhile, the faces of 15 classmates found in a photo taken during an overnight school trip when Akiko was in fifth grade were crossed out with what looked like ballpoint pen, and in response to a question from an autograph book asking what she wanted if she were granted one wish, she had written, "make school disappear."

At Akiko's elementary school, located among farms and new residential areas, the sixth grade students were divided into two homerooms. One classmate said, "There was a group of students who bullied Akiko. She looked really sad when they said things like 'Get of the way' and 'Go away.' No one tried to stop them."

Another classmate said that other students had no choice but to go along with the bullying. "There were a few people who were at the center of the group, and the other students were too scared to defy them. The class was in chaos."

Korean island women carry on diving tradition

2010-10-31T07:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-women-divers-20101027,0,1862677,full.story

The connection here is that this tradition was carried on in Jeju Island, where many first generation Zainichi Korean halmonis came from.

Korean island women carry on diving tradition

For generations, South Korea's haenyeo have been free-diving for shellfish, a way of life that has brought power to the women of the sea. Though the tradition is fading, a few young women are still learning the lessons of the deep.

Kim Jae-yeon displays a typical catch, a small top shell whose meat South Koreans consider a delicacy. (John M. Glionna / Los Angeles Times)

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

October 27, 2010

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Reporting from Mara Island, South Korea —

The sea is restless as Kim Jae-yeon perches on the rocky shoreline, eyeing the churning waters at her feet. Slowly, she wipes her goggles with a fistful of grass to keep them from fogging underwater and offers a prayer to the pounding surf for her good fortune.

Like six generations of women before her on this treeless speck of land in the East China Sea, the young mother of two is preparing for a dangerous job no man here is allowed to perform: free-diving for minutes at a time to catch abalone and other shellfish.

Kim is learning to join the ranks of the haenyeo, or women of the sea, whose role as ocean hunter-gatherers has long given them special status in a Korean culture dominated by men. These women on a group of islands south of the South Korean mainland have turned tradition on its head.

For decades, divers here have groomed their daughters for a life at sea. They teach them how to conserve oxygen to extend their dives and stress the importance of working in groups, like a herd of watchful seals, vigilant against shark attacks, rip currents and marauding motorboats that buzz the surface.

The diving, with its daily hazards and emphasis on teamwork, has molded the women into a cohesive group that has often gathered by the campfire with the day's catch to make decisions about village politics.

But this matriarchal way of life is now in peril. Modern fishing boats that encroach on their catching grounds have reduced the number of shellfish, forcing the haenyeo farther out to sea, leaving them less time to dive.

The diminished catch has made the profession a struggle for survival. Nowadays, the women are able to gather only enough catch to feed their families, with a bit left over to sell to tourists. Shellfish that once was sent to ports such as Japannow stays at home. And, lured away by careers on the mainland, fewer daughters are diving.

The number of haenyeo has plummeted by two-thirds in just a few decades, from 15,000 in the 1970s to slightly more than 5,000 today. On Mara Island, about the size of an 18-hole golf course with a full-time population of 80 residents, the number has dropped from 15 to seven.

At 33, Kim is the youngest haenyeo in South Korea, where half the divers are older than 70 and 90% are least 50. She isn't diving for the money; Kim makes her living by running a restaurant. But following the lead of her mother, aunt and grandmother, she spends most mornings learning an ancient haenyeo trade that connects her to her ancestors.

"It's now or never," she said. "One day, the elders will be gone, and the sea will be mine alone. I want to learn all I can while there's still time. So I can teach the other women who might one day come."

On this morning, a typhoon is gathering 1,000 miles to the south and the swirling currents already thrash angrily. Even with only four years' experience, Kim knows the sea is dangerous enough without bad weather.

As she struggles to put on her wetsuit cap, her aunt, Kim Choun-geum, 56, appears. The older woman patiently assists her niece, whispering words of encouragement. Then student and mentor slip into the churning water to join the others.

*

The haenyeo tradition dates back hundreds of years, handed down from mother to daughter, glorified in folk tales and songs. Some say women's body fat enabled them to better endure the cold waters. Others say they're just better divers than the men.

Even now, no man would dream of taking to the waters with the divers. This skill, they know, is women's work, so they stay out of the way.

On these isolated islands, the women are often the breadwinners while the men stay at home to raise the children. The divorce rate is higher here than on the mainland, perhaps driven by the can-do spirit of women who grow weary of spouses who don't pull their weight. The haenyeo have the final word on major decisions.

Like the earliest female sea divers in neighboring Japan, the Korean haenyeo once wore only flimsy cotton gowns that offered no protection against the bone-chilling cold. Working in groups, they pushed makeshift collection nets attached to a surface buoy while diving dozens of times a day, using iron picks and scythes to pry loose the shells from rocks as deep as 60 feet or more. They didn't believe in overfishing, harvesting just enough to get by.

They eventually donned wetsuits, but there's one modern convenience the haenyeo have shunned: oxygen tanks, which would allow them to exhaust the catch too soon.

Despite their caution, accidents are common. Each year a handful of divers die in shark attacks or by drowning. The work also takes a long-term health toll. Like many older haenyeo, Kim's grandmother, Byun Chun-ok, 84, suffers from ear and lung problems. Her joints still ache years after leaving the water for good.

Kim's aunt, Kim Choun-geum, is fully aware of the dangers of her job.

"One mistake and the ocean will kill you," she said. "Our rule is to never get greedy."

Although South Korean officials pledge to help preserve the haenyeo's livelihood, the women say they need financial assistance for child care and medical checkups.

"You can't change depleted resources overnight," said Ham Chun-bo, director of the Haenyeo Museum on Jeju, the main island in the chain. "And even with good policies, you can't force young women to take up this job."

*

Kim Jae-yeon never planned on becoming a sea woman.

She grew up on Mara, the kind of place where the unstaffed convenience store still features an honor system. But she fled to attend college on Jeju Island, and later met her husband, Park Hyung-il.

Eventually, after a series of failed businesses, the couple returned to Mara. For Kim, then 29, coming home was life-changing.

One day, while accompanying her aunt into the water, Kim's eyes opened to the sea's allure. After the stress of working office jobs on Jeju, she felt a jolt of freedom.

She started out with the easiest task, collecting seaweed in shallow waters. But even that exhausted her. "Every day I was so tired I'd vomit," she recalled. "The sea is not an easy place to make a living. I came to respect my elders for their survival skills."

She learned that her grandmother was once the island's best diver, who could go the deepest, stay submerged the longest and return with the biggest catch. She heard stories of how the women of her grandmother's day never complained about the cold or danger, instead telling jokes and singing songs to pass the time.

After hauling in their daily catch, the women would sit around a campfire at the beach and discuss village business or compliment one another's fishing skills or bravery in the water that day. It was a simpler, self-sufficient life that Kim wanted for herself.

Although she makes most of her salary from the restaurant, Kim developed the quiet swagger of ahaenyeo, bringing home twice as much money as her husband, a coastal preservation worker on Jeju.

"Sometimes it irritates me," Park said. "When we argue, she plays the money card, just like a veteranhaenyeo would do."

As their profession wanes, the sea women are returning to a more traditional role. "Eventually we'll give up our power and become like any other Korean woman," Kim Choun-geum said. "That's sad."

But for as long as she can, Kim Jae-yeon, South Korea's youngest haenyeo, will watch her elders to absorb the lessons of the deep. She feels guilty knowing many ignore their own dives to show her the way.

One day, Kim hopes to herself be a teacher to a new generation of haenyeo. She awaits the day her 8-year-old daughter is ready to go to sea.

"I'm already teaching her how to dive," she said. "Whether she wants to become a haenyeo will be up to her."

john.glionna@latimes.com

Ethan Kim of The Times' Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.

2010-10-21T23:48:00.001-07:00

Slightly old, but still relevant article on Zainichi Koreans and ZK Judo fighter, Yoshihiro Akiyama. Don't know about the title of this article though...

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/02/117_19819.html

Identity Crisis of Koreans in Japan Back in Spotlight

from the Korean Times

By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

The Korean Japanese judo exponent Yoshihiro Akiyama (Chu Seong-hun) has brought the ``Dongpo'' (Koreans in foreign countries) issue back to center stage.

Those who keep their Korean nationality though they were not born in Korea are discriminated against by both their native country and their mother country, Akiyama said. It's time Korean society and the government showed more consideration toward these enthusiastic Koreans, he added.

Akiyama appeared on an MBC television talk show Wednesday and said he felt he belonged nowhere.

``I stared in the space between the Korean and Japanese flags,'' he said when asked where he was looking during the award ceremony for his gold medal at the Busan Asian Olympics. He was there as a Japanese team member who defeated a Korean.

Akiyama is a fourth generation Korean in Japan, where all of his ancestors kept their Korean nationality. But he said he experienced prejudice and discrimination in both countries.

``Being Korean, I was not able to participate in any prestigious judo matches in Japan that could guarantee a national team position. I did not regret being a Korean, because I thought I could be a Korean competitor instead,'' he said.

However, after working as a professional in judo for the Busan city government for three years in 1998, he returned to Japan, became a naturalized Japanese resident and secured a place on the country's national team.

``I came to Busan hoping that I could become a national team member. However, no matter how many times I won or how well I have done things, there was a certain obstacle. After learning the reality, I thought I cannot let that reign over my judo career,'' he said.

Still, Akiyama expressed his love for Korea. ``Korea is always in my heart,'' he said.

Akiyama is among many ethnic Koreans suffering from discrimination in their native Japan, as well as the country of their ancestors. There are thought to be one million ethnic Korean in the country. Most of them are descendants of 460,000 Koreans who did not return to Korea after liberation in 1945.

As time passed, many of them became naturalized but many maintain their ethnic ties. They speak Korean and hold Korean passports and names, staying in Japan as foreigners.

However, because they are legal Koreans, they do not get fair treatment. Constant threats against Korean schools; the selling of Utoro ― a Korean residential area ― by its owner, forcing Koreans to move out; and many other subtle forms of discrimination are faced by ``Koreans.''

However, in Korea, they are often treated as if they are just ``Japanese'' people. Not many people understand what ``Dongpo'' means. ``Some would say that the key to all our problems is acquiring Japanese nationality,'' a Korean resident in Japan said through the Korean International Network (KIN).

Lee Ji-sang, a folk singer and former professor at SungKonghoe University, said these people should be cared for. ``They chose to be Korean no matter how hard it was for them. But even I can feel the cold shoulder turned toward them'' he said.

Lee and KIN are holding campaigns to support Utoro, the Edagawa Joseon School and other organizations. ``It's not only about supporting them financially. It's about what we really think about them. Who they are? What do we call them?'' he said.

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr

New Blog on our Blog Roll!

2010-10-17T22:56:00.000-07:00

Please visit http://starlingblue.blogspot.com/.

A blog by a fellow Eclipse Rising supporter and Korean adoptee about her family reunification experience in Korea.

EXPERIENCE KOREAN HARVEST FESTIVAL, CHUSEOK!

2010-09-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

EXPERIENCE KOREAN HARVEST FESTIVAL, CHUSEOK!

The Korean American Women Artists and Writers Association (KAWAWA) will be

hosting a Korean Chuseok Festival from September 30 - October 2, 2010. Chuseok is one

of Korea’s most largely celebrated holidays, when families and friends gather to share

food and enjoy their time together, giving thanks to their ancestors for the year’s bountiful

harvests. KAWAWA invites you to join the Bay Area’s Korean American community and

participate in this fun fall festival. KAWAWA is an incubating space for individuals and

groups, who draw their inspiration from their community environment and grow through

the creative process. Get engaged in traditional Korean Chuseok rituals and be a part of

creating new Korean American traditions during this three-day event. Programs include

activities and entertainment for all ages.

Other KAWAWA Chuseok events include the KAWAWA youth presenting interactive fan dance

demonstration at the Asian Art Museum on September 19th from 1-2 pm, and hosting a Chuseok Tea Ceremony on September 22nd from 2-4 pm at Martin Luther King/Marcus Garvey Square.

DATES: September 30-October 2, 2010

LOCATION: Korean American Community Center (745 Buchanan Street. San Francisco)

Sept. 30

Greetings to Ancestors Day: 3pm-7pm

Charye ( Ancestor greetings), poetry reading, songpyeon (rice cake) making.

Oct 1

Senior Citizens Day: 12pm-8pm

Tea Ceremony, Hanbok Experience, Korean Name, Health work shop for senior

citizens, Beolcho (Community Center clean-up), Chuseok giftbag for senior

citizens, Korean Dance, Korean Movie.

Oct. 2

Youth Day: 1pm-5pm

Chuseok Station: Hip Hop & Kimbap, Hangul (Korean language) Bingo,

Art and Crafts, Ganggangsullae (Korean line dance)

Event co-sponsored by San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department, San Francisco State University Korean Student Association, Korean-American Association of San Francisco & Bay Area, Korean American Senior Service, Inc. The Association of Korean Adoptees of San Francisco (AKASF)

745 Buchanan Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Phone: (415) 252-5828 Fax: (251) 252-5827 E-mail: kawawa@kawawa.org Web: www.kawawa.org

Zainichi ‘US-Japan Solidarity Tour 2010’ Report Back & Zainichi-Brunch

2010-09-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Eclipse Rising Friends and Family,

Eclipse Rising invites you to a

Zainichi ‘US-Japan Solidarity Tour 2010’

Report Back & Zainichi-Brunch!

---the first-ever radical grassroots solidarity exchange with minority communities in Japan by a US-based Zainichi organization!!---

Date: Sunday, October 10, 2010
Time: 11:30am
Location: El Cerrito, CA (You will be provided the address upon your RSVP)

Come bring your curiosity and high spirit of solidarity to this cozy event with homecooked Zainichi-cuisine brunch, and hear Eclipse Rising delegates give a narrative & multimedia account of their 9-day long solidarity visits to communities and institutions in Japan - including:

1. Meeting with Kazuo Ishikawa (Buraku-min political prisoner) & Buraku Liberation League Campaign for ‘Sayama Justice’

2. Radical Women’s Active Museum on War & Peace on their continued global exposure of and campaign for justice for ‘comfort women’

3. Fureai-House, multicultural community center in one of Japan’s most ethnically diverse cities, providing culturally appropriate community services from kindergarten to senior housing to immigration services for Zainichi, Nikkei Latin Americans, Okinawans, migrant workers, etc.

4. Iju-ren, national solidarity network with migrants, serving and advocating for some of the most vulnerable, invisible and and fragmented foreign mirant constituencies in Japan

ER represented at a protest rally against Japanese government for Justice for “Comfort Women” on the day of the100-year anniversary of Japanese annexation of Corea - in Tokyo, August 11, 2010

Because of your unwavering support, we were able to begin cultivating organization-to-organization relationships with various communities resisting injustice and advancing their vision for multicultural Japan. Please join us to learn more -- and our vision for Eclipse Rising's future work!

Bring a friend along!! Bring a potluck dish to share!

Please RSVP with me at haruki.n.eda@gmail.com
Also, ask me any questions and concerns, including accessibility.

We look forward to reconnecting with you, and having a fun and inspiring afternoon!

Haruki, Eclipse Rising Membership Coordinator

Zainichi leprosy patient at sanatorium. About 10% of victims of forced quarantine have been Zainichi.

P.S. SAVE THE DATE! Eclipse Rising Annual Holiday Party on Thursday, December 16, 2010 near BART in Oakland or SF (Location TBD)

Pictures of our Events

2010-09-19T14:52:00.001-07:00

Please click on the title to check out our Flicker account with photos from our L.A. event in November 2009 and our U.S.-Japan Solidarity tour in Tokyo and Kansai this summer.

You can also click on the links to our flicker account on the righthand-side panel of our blog.

Q & A with Mr. Yasuda after our "Sayama Incident Tour" about the false imprisonment of a Buraku man, Ishikawa Kazuo san

Yamashita-san tells us about the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery

A Tour of the multicultural neighborhood of Kawasaki, Japan

protest in Ginza on the 100 year anniversary of Japan's occupation of Korea

A Rikidozan magazine cover at the History Museum of Zainichi Koreans

Enjoy!

-ER core members

Zainichi Korean panel at a Critical Ethnic Studies Conference

2010-09-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Eclipse Rising members, Kyung hee Ha, Haruki Eda, and Kei Fischer will be on a panel titled "Collusion of Japanese and U.S. Empire and the Politics of Transnational Zainichi Korean Resistance" at UC Riverside's Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide conference from March 10 - 12.

Please come and support our exciting work!

Please spread the word!

Registration is $50 before November.

Critical Ethnic Studies and the Future of Genocide:
Settler Colonialism/Heteropatriarchy/White Supremacy

A Major Conference
March 10-12, 2011
University of California, Riverside

Plenary Speakers:

Jacqui Alexander·Keith Camacho·Cathy Cohen·Glen Coulthard·Angela Davis·Gina Dent·Vicente Diaz
Roderick Ferguson·Ruth Wilson Gilmore·Gayatri Gopinath·Avery Gordon·Herman Gray·Judith Halberstam
Sora Han·Cheryl Harris·David Lloyd·Lisa Lowe·Wahneema Lubiano·Manning Marable·Fred Moten
José Muñoz·Nadine Naber·Hiram Pérez·Michelle Raheja·Dylan Rodríguez·David Roediger·Luana Ross
Josie Saldaña-Portillo·Sarita See·Ella Shohat·Denise da Silva·Audra Simpson·Nikhil Singh·Andrea Smith
Neferti Tadiar·João Costa Vargas·Waziyatawin

Ethnic studies scholarship has laid the crucial foundation for analyzing the intersections of racism, colonialism, immigration, and slavery within the United States context. Yet it has become clear that ethnic studies paradigms have become entrapped within, and sometimes indistinguishable from, the discourse and mandate of liberal multiculturalism, which relies on a politics of identity representation diluted and domesticated by nation-building and capitalist imperatives. Interrogating the strictures in which ethnic studies finds itself today, this conference calls for the development of critical ethnic studies. Far from advocating the peremptory dismissal of identity, this conference seeks to structure inquiry around the logics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy in order to expand the scope of ethnic studies. An interdisciplinary or even un-disciplinary formation, critical ethnic studies engages with the logics that structure society in its entirety.

As ethnic studies has become more legitimized within the academy, it has frequently done so by distancing itself from the very social movements that helped to launch ethnic studies in the first place. Irrefutable as the evidence is of the university's enmeshment with governmental and corporate structures, the trend in ethnic studies has been to neutralize the university rather than to interrogate it as a site that transforms ideas into ideology. While this conference does not propose to romanticize these movements or to prescribe a specific relationship that academics should have with them, we seek to call into question the emphasis on professionalization within ethnic studies and the concomitant refusal to interrogate the politics of the academic industrial complex or to engage with larger movements for social transformation.

See below for more information and registration:
http://cesa.ucr.edu/index.html

Eclipse Rising interviewed on the radip

2010-09-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

Please click on the title for the link or go to the website below for details. Website is in Japanese.

http://www.tcc117.org/fmyy/index.php?e=821

Eclipse Rising interviewed on the radip

2010-09-02T00:23:00.001-07:00

Please click the link below for details. Website is in Japanese

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

2010-08-30T00:18:00.000-07:00

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: August 28, 2010

KYOTO, Japan — The demonstrators appeared one day in December, just as children at an elementary school for ethnic Koreans were cleaning up for lunch. The group of about a dozen Japanese men gathered in front of the school gate, using bullhorns to call the students cockroaches and Korean spies.

Inside, the panicked students and teachers huddled in their classrooms, singing loudly to drown out the insults, as parents and eventually police officers blocked the protesters’ entry.

The December episode was the first in a series of demonstrations at the Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School that shocked conflict-averse Japan, where even political protesters on the radical fringes are expected to avoid embroiling regular citizens, much less children. Responding to public outrage, the police arrested four of the protesters this month on charges of damaging the school’s reputation.

More significantly, the protests also signaled the emergence here of a new type of ultranationalist group. The groups are openly anti-foreign in their message, and unafraid to win attention by holding unruly street demonstrations.

Since first appearing last year, their protests have been directed at not only Japan’s half million ethnic Koreans, but also Chinese and other Asian workers, Christian churchgoers and even Westerners in Halloween costumes. In the latter case, a few dozen angrily shouting demonstrators followed around revelers waving placards that said, “This is not a white country.”

Local news media have dubbed these groups the Net far right, because they are loosely organized via the Internet, and gather together only for demonstrations. At other times, they are a virtual community that maintains its own Web sites to announce the times and places of protests, swap information and post video recordings of their demonstrations.

While these groups remain a small if noisy fringe element here, they have won growing attention as an alarming side effect of Japan’s long economic and political decline. Most of their members appear to be young men, many of whom hold the low-paying part-time or contract jobs that have proliferated in Japan in recent years.

Though some here compare these groups to neo-Nazis, sociologists say that they are different because they lack an aggressive ideology of racial supremacy, and have so far been careful to draw the line at violence. There have been no reports of injuries, or violence beyond pushing and shouting. Rather, the Net right’s main purpose seems to be venting frustration, both about Japan’s diminished stature and in their own personal economic difficulties.

“These are men who feel disenfranchised in their own society,” said Kensuke Suzuki, a sociology professor at Kwansei Gakuin University. “They are looking for someone to blame, and foreigners are the most obvious target.”

They are also different from Japan’s existing ultranationalist groups, which are a common sight even today in Tokyo, wearing paramilitary uniforms and riding around in ominous black trucks with loudspeakers that blare martial music.

This traditional far right, which has roots going back to at least the 1930s rise of militarism in Japan, is now a tacitly accepted part of the conservative political establishment here. Sociologists describe them as serving as a sort of unofficial mechanism for enforcing conformity in postwar Japan, singling out Japanese who were seen as straying too far to the left, or other groups that anger them, such as embassies of countries with whom Japan has territorial disputes.

Members of these old-line rightist groups have been quick to distance themselves from the Net right, which they dismiss as amateurish rabble-rousers.

“These new groups are not patriots but attention-seekers,” said Kunio Suzuki, a senior adviser of the Issuikai, a well-known far-right group with 100 members and a fleet of sound trucks.

But in a sign of changing times here, Mr. Suzuki also admitted that the Net right has grown at a time when traditional ultranationalist groups like his own have been shrinking. Mr. Suzuki said the number of old-style rightists has fallen to about 12,000, one-tenth the size of their 1960s’ peak.

No such estimates exist for the size of the new Net right. However, the largest group appears to be the cumbersomely named Citizens Group That Will Not Forgive Special Privileges for Koreans in Japan, known here by its Japanese abbreviation, the Zaitokukai, which has some 9,000 members.

The Zaitokukai gained notoriety last year when it staged noisy protests at the home and junior high school of a 14-year-old Philippine girl, demanding her deportation after her parents were sent home for overstaying their visas. More recently, the Zaitokukai picketed theaters showing “The Cove,” an American documentary about dolphin hunting here that rightists branded as anti-Japanese.

In interviews, members of the Zaitokukai and other groups blamed foreigners, particularly Koreans and Chinese, for Japan’s growing crime and unemployment, and also for what they called their nation’s lack of respect on the world stage. Many seemed to embrace conspiracy theories taken from the Internet that China or the United States were plotting to undermine Japan.

“Japan has a shrinking pie,” said Masaru Ota, 37, a medical equipment salesman who headed the local chapter of the Zaitokukai in Omiya, a Tokyo suburb. “Should we be sharing it with foreigners at a time when Japanese are suffering?”

While the Zaitokukai has grown rapidly since it was started three and a half years ago with just 25 members, it is still largely run by its founder and president, a 38-year-old tax accountant who goes by the assumed name of Makoto Sakurai. Mr. Sakurai leads the group from his tiny office in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, where he taps out announcements and other postings on his personal computer.

Mr. Sakurai says the group is not racist, and rejected the comparison with neo-Nazis. Instead, he said he had modeled his group after another overseas political movement, the Tea Party in the United States. He said he had studied videos of Tea Party protests, and shared with the Tea Party an angry sense that his nation had gone in the wrong direction because it had fallen into the hands of leftist politicians, liberal media as well as foreigners.

“They have made Japan powerless to stand up to China and Korea,” said Mr. Sakurai, who refused to give his real name.

Mr. Sakurai admitted that the group’s tactics had shocked many Japanese, but said they needed to win attention. He also defended the protests at the Korean school in Kyoto as justified to oppose the school’s use of a nearby public park, which he said rightfully belonged to Japanese children.

Teachers and parents at the school called that a flimsy excuse to vent what amounted to racist rage. They said the protests had left them and their children fearful.

“If Japan doesn’t do something to stop this hate language,” said Park Chung-ha, 43, who heads the school’s mothers association, “where will it lead to next?”

Bend it like Jong - Japan

2010-07-21T02:28:00.002-07:00

A fairly in-depth look at North Korea's new soccer hero: Jong Tae Se and the Zainichi story between Japan and North Korea. Features well-known Zainichi activist Shin Soguk.

Please click on title for the Youtube link!

2010-07-21T02:28:00.001-07:00

7.11 Kyoto/Shiga Assembly: Demanding Free Tuition for Korean Schools!

2010-07-13T05:01:00.000-07:00

Eclipse Rising members, Haruki and Kyung Hee attended the 7.11 Kyoto/Shiga Assembly to demand the equal educational rights for Korean schools on Sunday, July 11. Initially, Korean schools and other foreign/international schools were excluded from the new law that made high school education tuition-free. In response to the protest from those schools as well as a broader Japanese society, the Ministry revised the law and included 31 foreign/international schools. However, 10 Korean high schools are still excluded because of its relation with the DPRK (aka North Korea). True, the schools are affiliated with the pro-DPRK organization, Chungryun. Even though they meet every criterion and qualify for the law, the Ministry problematized their affiliation with Chungryun.
At the assembly, the human-rights attorney, Egashira who just came back from Geneva gave a report on her experience lobbying and attending the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights meeting. The OHCHR showed concerns about the unequal treatment of Chinese, Korean and other non-Japanese school by the Japanese government . Specifically it demanded the Japanese government that it should increase financial support for those schools and give rights to take university entrance exams to the graduates of those schools based on the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education. Other speakers included Korean school students, their parents, Korean school teachers, Zainichi Korean elders, Japanese poets, graduate students, community activists and Brazilian school principal from Shiga.
--------------------
What struck me was that most speakers repeated and emphasized that Korean schools are no different from Japanese schools, and Korean students are as "good" as Japanese students. They say, hence, Korean schools should not be excluded from the new tuition-free program. But I think education should not be a privilege. Education should be a right. This means that all kinds of people -both "bad" and "good" (whatever that implies) should equally be given an opportunity to enjoy the right to learn. Both "bad" and "good" schools should equally be given resources to provide education to their students. This very way to divide "bad" and "good", and only "good" can be a recipient of the privilege is exactly how the colonizers used the divide & conquer tactics against us, the colonized. The tactics we should not use against ourselves.

The colonized are often inclined to want to be "good" so that they can be tolerated, included and approved by the colonizers. To be "honorary Japanese" has become a dream for the many colonized for so many years in so many different ways. This false consciousness is nurtured through violence in different forms, one of which is, I think schooling. As a Korean, Japanese school system was a process of learning self-hate. On the contrary, Korean high school students who spoke against the exclusion in the video seemed emotionally more stable because they know their language and history and why they were born and raised in Japan. None of those knowledge was available when I was a student in Japan.

Being exposed to pro-DPRK ideology at school while enjoying the luxury in Japan that is extremely anti-DPRK, Korean school students are naturally trained to have relational views on things. However, it seemed that their critical comments on Japanese racism seemed as if they were echoing what their teachers and parents said and it made me scared. Indeed, any sort of schooling is a system of regulating one's thinking whether pro-Japan or pro-DPRK. If they are engaged in a true critical thinking, how could they only condemn Japanese racism and not mention sexism that exists powerfully in Korean schools/school system at all, for example? I truly believe that the major reason why the number of Korean students who attend Korean schools has declined has always been because of the discriminatory treatment by the Japanese government, but I cannot stop thinking that Chongryun might have used the Japanese as their enemy and oppressor a bit too conveniently... to not confront their own issues and blame everything on the Japanese. It is about time for us to really think what it means to be Korean as Zainichi, rather than honorable overseas nationals. What kind of knowledge and skills do we need? What kind of education do we want to provide? What kind of Zainichi do we want to become?

Kazuyuki Izutsu on Rightist Rage

2010-07-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

Friday, May 18, 2007

FILM INTERVIEW
Unafraid of rightist rage

By MARK SCHILLING
Directors tend to be articulate types, especially when discussing (or rather spinning) their own films, but Kazuyuki Izutsu has few equals in the art of spoken communication, in or out of the director's chair. From snappy one-liners about dull movies to verbal bombshells aimed at local rightists, Izutsu says exactly what's on his active, unorthodox mind to everyone from television viewers of late-night talk shows to this reporter in a recent interview at the headquarters of Cine Quanon, which is distributing his new film "Pacchigi! Love & Peace."

Now 56 years old, Izutsu has had a long, up-and-down career as a director, beginning with his apprenticeship in pink ("adult") films in the 1970s. In the past decade he has become a familiar presence on TV, while making hit after acclaimed hit, including "Pacchigi!," the Kyoto Romeo and Juliet drama that swept local awards in 2005.

In speaking with "The Japan Times," Izutsu was more subdued and serious than in his TV appearances, but then the discussion revolved around war movies, social prejudice against Koreans in Japan and the rightist reaction to his latest film, "Pacchigi! Love & Peace."

You seem to have a made "Pacchigi! Love & Peace" as a response to "Ore wa, Kimi no Tame ni Koso, Shi ni Iku," the tokkotai (kamikaze) pilot film executive produced by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara.

There have been a lot of movies like that one. When major film companies in Japan are stuck for a film, they make one about the tokkotai (pilots). They have a pretty good idea that that sort of theme will draw audiences, so they make it.

But your kind of film is tougher to make.

I never could have made it with a major film company. I was only able to do it because Lee Bong-ou (president of Cine Quanon and an ethnic Korean living in Japan) was backing me. Cine Quanon is about the only company I can imagine doing it.

The film is set in 1974 when Japan's ethnic Koreans in show business were afraid to reveal their true identities because of the prejudice against them inside and outside the industry. Is it different today?

Not really. Japanese society hasn't changed that much, and that includes Japanese show business. Ethnic Koreans are still reluctant to say who they are; they worry that they might not get any more work. There's still a lot of discrimination against them. In a lot of foreign countries, the entertainment business tends to be more progressive than the surrounding society — that's only natural isn't it? — but in Japan it's still feudalistic and conservative.

In "Pacchigi! Love & Peace" you satirize not just Japanese show business, but rightist war movies and the ideology behind them. I can't help comparing it to "Minbo no Onna (The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion)" (1992), which got director Juzo Itami nearly stabbed to death by yakuza who didn't like the way he portrayed the gangs. Do you worry that that sort of thing might happen to you?

Actually, a lot of yakuza came to see "Pacchigi!" — they're some of my biggest supporters. (laughs)

But there's a difference between the yakuza and the rightists, isn't there? Won't the rightists be angry with you for disrespecting the tokkotai?

I don't disrespect the tokkotai themselves. They had a certain mission to carry out, a mission that they didn't choose. I don't blame them for carrying out their mission — and the film doesn't blame them. But I do have problems with films that distort the historical reality of what the tokkotai were. I think (audiences) will understand that, so I'm not worried about my personal safety.

Justice for Equal Educational Rights for Korean School Students!

2010-07-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

On April 30, after major protests all over Japan (starting with the 3.27 Tokyo Assembly), the Japanese Ministry of Justice announced that their revised tuition-free program for high school students now includes 31 non-Japanese schools (such as Chinese, Taiwanese, and other so-called international schools), but still persistently excludes 10 Korean high schools. Even though their programs and curricula satisfy the criteria, due to the strong connections with pro-North Korea organization, Chongryun, Korean high schools were again denied the equal educational rights by the Japanese government. Eclipse Rising sent a solidarity message to the 3.27 Assembly and the high school students saying that we, as diasporic Zainichi Koreans, support the collective efforts to demand the equal educational rights for Korean high school students. The Japanese government has changed the criteria for the free-tuition program again and again to enable them to exclude ONLY Korean schools. On June 26, 1200 people gathered in Shiba park in Tokyo to protest the Japanese government's racist policy (which Eclipse Rising also endorsed). Video is found here: http://video.labornetjp.org/Members/YUMOTO/videos/siminkodo.wmv/view
This Sunday, July 11, Eclipse Rising members Haruki and Kyung Hee are fortunate enough to attend the Kyoto Assembly! We will report after the event!!!

Resilience by Tammy Chu

2010-07-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

AKASF presents RESILIENCE by Tammy Chu
Posted June 22, 2010 by Luis in FILM EVENTS

Association of Korean Adoptees, San Francisco (AKASF) presents RESILIENCE by Tammy Chu: A Special Community Outreach Event in partnership with the Center for Asian American Media.

A story of loss and separation, RESILIENCE is a character-driven documentary that takes a unique look at international adoption from the perspective of a Korean birth mother and her American son. A single story among the thousands of stories untold, the film follows the remarkable journey of Myungja as she reconnects with her son Brent (Sung-wook) after 30 years apart.

SAN FRANCISCO – Age 21 + Only ( ID Required )

Thursday, July 8, 2010
7:00 p.m | Documentary Film and Q&A
8:30 p.m | Reception with Director Tammy Chu

Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
1881 Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

$15 – Film Only | $30 Film & Reception
Online Registration Deadline | Wednesday, July 7, 2010

OAKLAND – Appropriate for Ages 13 years or older
Saturday, July 10, 2010
1:30 p.m | Documentary Film and Q&A
3:30 p.m | Panel Discussion on Adoption
Moderator: Deann Borshay

Head Royce School
4315 Lincoln Avenue
Oakland, CA 94602

5:00 p.m | Reception with Director Tammy Chu
Silver Dragon Restaurant
835 Webster Street
Oakland, CA 94601

$15 Film Only | $30 Film & Reception
Online Registration Deadline | Friday, July 9, 2010

AKASF RESILIENCE Panel Discussion on Adoption
Saturday, July 10, 2010 @ 3:30 p.m.
Head Royce School
Oakland, CA

Panelists:

Tammy Chu (Korean Adoptee), Producer/Director, Resilience – Tammy Chu was born in Seoul, Korea and was adopted by a U.S. family along with her twin sister. She graduated with a B.S. in Cinema and Photography from Ithace College. She wrote and directed her first documentary, Searching for Go-Hyang, a personal film about reuniting with her birth family. It has been broadcast on PBS, Korean TV (EBS), and screened at film festivals internationally. She also worked as an Associate Producer on Behind Forgotten Eyes. Tammy has been living in Korea for the past several years working as an independent filmmaker and is a member of the film collective Nameless Films.

Beth Hall (Adoptive Parent/Agency Representative), Co-Founder/Director, PACT – Beth Hall is an adoption educator who, co-founded Pact, An Adoption Alliance, which is a multicultural adoption organization dedicated to addressing essential issues affecting adopted children of color. Pact offers lifelong support and placement services for birth and adoptive families with adopted kids of color. A national speaker, she is also the author of numerous articles and a book, Inside Transracial Adoption, which is filled with personal stories, practical suggestions, and theory, and delivers the message that race matters, racism is alive, and families built transracially can develop strong and binding ties. Commitment to family is a way of life for Beth. She is the white adoptive mom of two young adults: Sofia, Latina, and James, African American. Beth grew up a member of an adoptive family—her sister, Barbara, was adopted. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and children, when they are home from college. Find out more by contacting PACT, An Adoption Alliance.

Deann Borshay Liem (Korean Adoptee), Korean Adoptee, AKASF Advisory Board – Deann Borshay Liem has over twenty years experience working in development, production and distribution of independent documentaries. She is Producer, Director, and Writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000), and Executive Producer for Spencer Nakasako’s Kelly Loves Tony (PBS, 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS, 1996, Emmy Award). She served as Co-Producer for Special Circumstances (PBS, 2009) which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile. She was the former director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) where she supervised the development, distribution and broadcast of new films for public television and worked with Congress to support minority representation in public media. A Sundance Institute Fellow and a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship, Deann is the Director, Producer and Writer of the new feature-length documentary, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee. She is currently Executive Director of Katahdin Productions, a non-profit documentary production company based in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.

Debra Baker (Birth Mother), Member, CUB, Filmmaker/Presenter, Debra graduated with a degree in English Literature, and was a health care provider for 25 years. She wrote, produced, directed, and edited Broken Ties and Lost and Found, and her writing has appeared in adoption publications. Ms. Baker’s films have aired on PBS, local cable TV, and on the Women’s Television Network in Canada, as well as screening at numerous film festivals around the country and the U.K. A reunited birthmother, she is a frequent presenter at adoption conferences in the U.S. and Canada, and was awarded the Excellence in Broadcast Media Award by the American Adoption Congress in 2002. She lives in Marin County where she is in pre-production on a new project.

Sponsors:
CBS5
Busy Worker Bee
PACT, An Adoption Alliance
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Republic of Korea
Thomas Park Clement
Head-Royce School

Community Partners:
Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
Concerned United Birthmothers (CUB)
Cvent – Online Event Registration
Korean Community Center – East Bay (KCCEB)
Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC)
San Francisco Film Society (SFFS)
Silver Dragon Restaurant
Sundance Cinemas

To register or for more information, please contact AKASF.
800.450.7896 | events [at] akasf [dot] com | www.akasf.com

Japan, S. Korea researchers at odds over forced labor, 'comfort women'

2010-06-16T19:30:00.000-07:00

A little old, but interesting and relevant nonetheless.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Japan, S. Korea researchers at odds over forced labor, 'comfort women'
Kyodo News
Japanese and South Korean historians have again failed to reach a consensus view on Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, notably its recruitment of Korean laborers and women, as well as the drafting of Koreans into the Japanese military.

Agree to disagree: South Korean junior high and high school history textbooks are displayed in Seoul. KYODO PHOTO

The two countries' second joint history study group issued a 2,200-page report Tuesday nearly three years after discussions got under way in June 2007. A report by the first study group was released in June 2005.

The joint team, comprising 17 scholars each from Japan and South Korea, conducted discussions in four subcommittees covering ancient, history, modern and contemporary history, and history textbooks. The history textbook panel was set up for the second round of discussions.

In talks by the textbook subcommittee, a Japanese historian argued that South Korea made efforts to keep Japanese imperialist thinking out of the country after the occupation ended and that this eventually became anti-Japan education.

A South Korean scholar expressed understanding of that argument, saying the Japanese historian's view was an honest effort by the Japanese side to deepen understanding of South Korea. But the Korean scholar nevertheless rejected the argument that South Korea's curriculum was anti-Japanese.

Also in the latest report, a Japanese historian argued that Japanese emperors and prime ministers expressed a sense of remorse or offered apologies Japan's past misdeeds, but no South Korean history textbooks touch on this.

The Japanese side called for creating history textbooks that would teach students the neighboring country's modern and contemporary history.

Another South Korean scholar took up Japan's use of Korean laborers, the so-called comfort women, and the pressing of Koreans into Japanese military service under the theme of "recruitment of labor."

The term "comfort women" refers to women, mainly from Korea, whom Japan sent to frontline brothels to provide sex for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

The Korean scholar argued that Japan recruited labor from the Korean Peninsula "systematically and deceptively." The Japanese side denied that contention, saying there were no systematic policies on the use of forced labor and comfort women during Japan's rule over the Korean Peninsula.

On Japanese-language education in Korea during the colonial period, a Japanese historian said Japanese teachers did their best to teach Korean students and that Japanese was considered a tool to acquire modern knowledge and technology.

In response, a South Korean scholar said Japanese-language education was forced, terming the Japanese historian's view "selfish."

Japanese historians avoided mentioning the territorial dispute over the South Korean-controlled islets in the Sea of Japan called Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea.

South Korean historians were critical of Japan's claim to the islands and said it represents Japan's ignorance of its wartime responsibilities.

The Japanese scholars regard the territorial dispute as beyond the scope of the history discussions because it is an issue between the two governments.

The joint panel was led by Yasushi Toriumi, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, and Cho Kwang, a professor at Korea University's College of Liberal Arts.

Japan and South Korea agreed to the joint historical study in 2001 as part of a bilateral project aimed at promoting mutual understanding and bridging gaps in historical perceptions between the two countries.

Relations at the time were chilled by a dispute over a Japanese history textbook for public schools that South Korea said whitewashed Japan's wartime atrocities.

In the 2005 report by the first study panel, which comprised 11 historians from each side, South Korean historians stated Japan forced Korea to accept the Second Japan-Korea Agreement in 1905, which made Korea a Japanese protectorate, and the 1910 Annexation Treaty.

The South Koreans argued these pacts were invalid because procedures for their signing and ratification were lacking.

A Japanese scholar asserted that there was nothing in the treaties that would make them invalid under international law.

Japan established a similar joint historical study group with China. In late January, scholars from Japan and China issued a 549-page report covering ancient, medieval and modern history.

North Korea's star at the World Cup

2010-06-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

North Korea's star at the World Cup
Striker Jong Tae-se of North Korea's 2010 World Cup team was raised in Japan, had a pro-Pyongyang education and has dreamed of soccer greatness since elementary school.

By Barbara Demick and Yuriko Nagano, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing and Tokyo — He is the new public face of North Korea:

Jong Tae-se is a 26-year-old publicity hound with his own blog, where he strikes a sultry bare-chested pose. He has appeared in television commercials. He drives a silver Hummer and likes to dress like hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. When he goes on the road, he travels with a laptop, iPod and sometimes a Nintendo DS and a Sony PlayStation Portable.

Jong is the star striker of North Korea's 2010 World Cup team. That makes him at this particular moment the most recognizable living North Korean, with the possible exception of the Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong Il.

This is the first time North Korea has qualified for the World Cup since 1966. Although the country is as much a pariah as ever, having been implicated in the recent torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that killed 46 people, its novelty value keeps it in the headlines coming out of South Africa. At the bottom of the 32 teams in competition, North Korea is pitted against top-ranked Brazil in its first match, on Tuesday, a classic minnow-against-the-whale competition that should be curiosity enough to attract a strong following.

"People don't know about North Korea. We want to change North Korea's image," Jong told reporters last week outside the Makhulong Stadium in Tembisa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa.

If Jong sounds like a most improbable North Korean, it might be because he was born and grew up in a community of 600,000 Koreans who live in Japan. Most of them are descendents of laborers who came over during Japan's occupation of the Korean peninsula. He was educated in pro-Pyongyang schools run by the General Assn. of Korean Residents in Japan.

As a child, Jong obsessively watched videos of one of the most famous World Cup upsets of all time: a 1966 match in which North Korea beat Italy to advance to the quarterfinals.

North Korea started wooing him during his sophomore year at Tokyo-based Korea University. But the effort was complicated by the fact that Jong had been registered by his father as a South Korean. (Like most Korean residents of Japan, he didn't have Japanese citizenship.) The South Korean government would not let him give up his citizenship because it doesn't recognize North Korea.

"I am not South Korean!" Jong protested to a South Korean sports magazine in the midst of a protracted battle to renounce his citizenship. He qualified for the North Korean team anyway, since soccer federation rules allow dual nationality, but Jong is dogged by criticism that he is not North Korean enough. He has never lived in the country except for short stretches training with the team.

"It is hard to say what nationality he is," said Masafumi Mori, author of a recently published Japanese-language biography. "Jong is like this figure, standing right on top of where the Earth's crusts of the three countries of North Korea, South Korea, Japan meet."

Despite his attempt to renounce his citizenship, Jong's popularity extends to both sides of the border. South Korea's team is in the World Cup too, but when it comes to soccer, the estranged Koreans usually cheer each other on. Jong appeared last year in a television commercial for the South Korean energy drink Bacchus with Park Ji-sung, captain of South Korea's World Cup team. He also writes a column for a South Korean Web portal.

"I think it is too bad we didn't notice him when he was in high school or college. Maybe we would have picked him instead for the South Korean team," said Do Young-in, a reporter covering the World Cup for Sports Seoul.

For the North Koreans, using players raised in Japan has its advantages. Their team is handicapped by the country's poverty and isolation. Although top athletes have adequate food and training facilities, they have limited opportunity to play outsiders — or even to watch matches, since foreign television broadcasts are banned in North Korea.

"It was a very clever move for them to bring in people who live abroad and have experience playing in more competitive leagues," said Simon Cockerell, a Briton living in Beijing who has organized a North Korean soccer fan club.

Another player raised in Japan is midfielder Ahn Yong-hak. The team's Hong Yong-jo also has an international reputation, playing with the Russian premier league team FC Rostov. But it is Jong, with an impish grin and a full crest of hair that gives him a cone-headed look (his nickname among North Korean fans is "Acornhead"), who has captured the public's attention.

"He's good-looking. He scores lots of goals. He knows how to deal with media," Cockerell said.

Beyond the flamboyance is a serious athlete, say those who have worked with him.

After college, he became a professional player for the J-League's Kawasaki Frontale. "We chose him because he had these powerful moves that were rare with Japanese players," said his coach there, Tsutomu Takahata. "He has grown into a player who moves symbiotically with the others."

"He's the real thing," said Lee Chang-gang, a professional player with Japan's Fagiano Okayama team who played soccer with Jong in elementary school. He remembers him as a hotheaded kid who was sometimes taken out of a game for bad behavior. But Jong was sufficiently serious about the sport that he learned to control his temper, Lee said. "He aimed to be a professional soccer player from his elementary school days."

The transition to playing with the North Korean national team was not easy for Jong. He had to learn how to care for and assemble his own equipment, how to do his own laundry and carry his own bags, according to his biographer.

Jong had spoken and written openly about his irritation at times with the lack of worldliness of his North Korean teammates.

In a blog posting May 24, Jong recalled a stop during a trip from Switzerland to Austria, when his teammates headed to the men's room and then came rushing out in consternation. They had not expected a pay toilet.

"I laughed a little seeing this. Then they turned to me and said, 'This is truly what capitalist society is like,' " Jong wrote.

He used to have a hard time with the way his teammates would handle his personal possessions, especially his cellphone. With time, he learned that he needed to allow them to use his Nintendo and PlayStation to build goodwill within the team. "It has taken a lot to accept their culture," he told reporters in South Africa.

Fortunately for Jong, he probably will not have to do much adjusting to North Korean culture, as he showed no interest in settling down in Pyongyang. His goal during the World Cup, Jong has said repeatedly, is to score once in each game, just once.

And then to sign on to play in England.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Nagano is a special correspondent in Tokyo.
This is the first time North Korea has qualified for the World Cup since 1966. Although the country is as much a pariah as ever, having been implicated in the recent torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that killed 46 people, its novelty value keeps it in the headlines coming out of South Africa. At the bottom of the 32 teams in competition, North Korea is pitted against top-ranked Brazil in its first match, on Tuesday, a classic minnow-against-the-whale competition that should be curiosity enough to attract a strong following.

"People don't know about North Korea. We want to change North Korea's image," Jong told reporters last week outside the Makhulong Stadium in Tembisa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa.

If Jong sounds like a most improbable North Korean, it might be because he was born and grew up in a community of 600,000 Koreans who live in Japan. Most of them are descendents of laborers who came over during Japan's occupation of the Korean peninsula. He was educated in pro-Pyongyang schools run by the General Assn. of Korean Residents in Japan.

As a child, Jong obsessively watched videos of one of the most famous World Cup upsets of all time: a 1966 match in which North Korea beat Italy to advance to the quarterfinals.

North Korea started wooing him during his sophomore year at Tokyo-based Korea University. But the effort was complicated by the fact that Jong had been registered by his father as a South Korean. (Like most Korean residents of Japan, he didn't have Japanese citizenship.) The South Korean government would not let him give up his citizenship because it doesn't recognize North Korea.

"I am not South Korean!" Jong protested to a South Korean sports magazine in the midst of a protracted battle to renounce his citizenship. He qualified for the North Korean team anyway, since soccer federation rules allow dual nationality, but Jong is dogged by criticism that he is not North Korean enough. He has never lived in the country except for short stretches training with the team.

"It is hard to say what nationality he is," said Masafumi Mori, author of a recently published Japanese-language biography. "Jong is like this figure, standing right on top of where the Earth's crusts of the three countries of North Korea, South Korea, Japan meet."

Despite his attempt to renounce his citizenship, Jong's popularity extends to both sides of the border. South Korea's team is in the World Cup too, but when it comes to soccer, the estranged Koreans usually cheer each other on. Jong appeared last year in a television commercial for the South Korean energy drink Bacchus with Park Ji-sung, captain of South Korea's World Cup team. He also writes a column for a South Korean Web portal.

"I think it is too bad we didn't notice him when he was in high school or college. Maybe we would have picked him instead for the South Korean team," said Do Young-in, a reporter covering the World Cup for Sports Seoul.

For the North Koreans, using players raised in Japan has its advantages. Their team is handicapped by the country's poverty and isolation. Although top athletes have adequate food and training facilities, they have limited opportunity to play outsiders — or even to watch matches, since foreign television broadcasts are banned in North Korea.

"It was a very clever move for them to bring in people who live abroad and have experience playing in more competitive leagues," said Simon Cockerell, a Briton living in Beijing who has organized a North Korean soccer fan club.

Another player raised in Japan is midfielder Ahn Yong-hak. The team's Hong Yong-jo also has an international reputation, playing with the Russian premier league team FC Rostov. But it is Jong, with an impish grin and a full crest of hair that gives him a cone-headed look (his nickname among North Korean fans is "Acornhead"), who has captured the public's attention.

"He's good-looking. He scores lots of goals. He knows how to deal with media," Cockerell said.

Beyond the flamboyance is a serious athlete, say those who have worked with him.

After college, he became a professional player for the J-League's Kawasaki Frontale. "We chose him because he had these powerful moves that were rare with Japanese players," said his coach there, Tsutomu Takahata. "He has grown into a player who moves symbiotically with the others."

"He's the real thing," said Lee Chang-gang, a professional player with Japan's Fagiano Okayama team who played soccer with Jong in elementary school. He remembers him as a hotheaded kid who was sometimes taken out of a game for bad behavior. But Jong was sufficiently serious about the sport that he learned to control his temper, Lee said. "He aimed to be a professional soccer player from his elementary school days."

The transition to playing with the North Korean national team was not easy for Jong. He had to learn how to care for and assemble his own equipment, how to do his own laundry and carry his own bags, according to his biographer.

Jong had spoken and written openly about his irritation at times with the lack of worldliness of his North Korean teammates.

In a blog posting May 24, Jong recalled a stop during a trip from Switzerland to Austria, when his teammates headed to the men's room and then came rushing out in consternation. They had not expected a pay toilet.

"I laughed a little seeing this. Then they turned to me and said, 'This is truly what capitalist society is like,' " Jong wrote.

He used to have a hard time with the way his teammates would handle his personal possessions, especially his cellphone. With time, he learned that he needed to allow them to use his Nintendo and PlayStation to build goodwill within the team. "It has taken a lot to accept their culture," he told reporters in South Africa.

Fortunately for Jong, he probably will not have to do much adjusting to North Korean culture, as he showed no interest in settling down in Pyongyang. His goal during the World Cup, Jong has said repeatedly, is to score once in each game, just once.

And then to sign on to play in England.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Nagano is a special correspondent in Tokyo.

Zainichi player, Jong Tae Se in North Korean Soccer team

2010-06-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

NKorea’s Rooney loves his cars, clothes and rap

By JEAN H. LEE, Associated Press Writer jun 14, 13:01 EDT

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TEMBISA, South Africa (AP)—He plays like Rooney but behaves more like Beckham. He loves his cars, his rap music and his clothes, and changes hairstyles more often than you can say “Kim Jong Il.”

North Korea striker Jong Tae Se is not your average North Korean.

Born and raised in Japan, the 26-year-old forward has never lived in communist North Korea, and says he has no plans to. He loves to shop, snowboard and dreams of marrying Korea’s Posh Spice—none of which would be possible in the impoverished North, one of the most isolated countries in the world.

But he wears the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea jersey with pride, and is moved to tears when he hears the country’s anthem. The boy from Nagoya could become North Korea’s biggest international soccer star since Pak Doo Ik scored the goal that knocked Italy out of the World Cup in 1966.

“He is Japanese but isn’t a Japanese, he is Korean but is playing on the North Korean squad, he is a North Korean national but lives in Japan—all these things are very difficult for the world to understand,” Shin Mu Koeng, a friend and his biographer, said Monday from Tokyo.

North Korea is back in the World Cup for the first time in 44 years. They were the mystery team in 1966, and they’re the mystery team in 2010. Very little is known about the team from North Korea, sheltered players mostly in their early 20s with limited international experience.

Jong, witty and personable, with a dazzling smile, cheeky personality and talent for making goals, gives lowest-ranked North Korea a bit of star power as they face teams from Brazil, Portugal and Ivory Coast stacked with big names.

Jong is quickly becoming his team’s biggest personality and most powerful asset, setting himself apart on and off the field, from his fashion sense to his playing style.

On the pitch, Jong is fast and aggressive, North Korea’s leading scorer with 16 goals in 24 international matches. His impressive play earned him comparisons to England’s Wayne Rooney among South Korean media.

He collects sneakers and considers himself a bit of a fashion hound. Last Wednesday, he was sporting gelled hair. By Thursday he had shaved it all off. And he’s not shy about admitting that he cried like a baby watching South Korea’s most famous soap opera, “Winter Sonata.”

This is how he sees himself in five years: driving a car worthy of a rap star, with a pop star like one of the singers from the Wondergirls—South Korea’s version of the Spice Girls—on his arm, and playing for a big-name club in Europe.

“North Korea’s Wayne Rooney?” North Koreans hope Rooney will someday be seen as “England’s Jong Tae Se.”

Jong could have played in South Korea or Japan, but he chose North Korea.

Born in Nagoya to an ethnic Korean family, he inherited his father’s South Korean citizenship but was raised and schooled in his mother’s pro-North Korean community.

He is among Japan’s nearly 600,000 “zainichi,” ethnic Koreans who live in Japan as long-term residents, many of them third- and fourth-generation descendants of laborers or conscripts who have lived there since Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.

Their first language may be Japanese, but Jong and midfielder An Yong Hak were raised within the zainichi community, attending Korean-language schools and pledging allegiance to North Korea founder Kim Il Sung and current leader Kim Jong Il.

Still, Jong’s zainichi background sets him apart. He says he never travels without his iPod, laptop and Nintendo, much to the curiosity of teammates from a country with only one state-run TV channel where such luxuries are reserved for top officials.

Their games are simple: rock, scissors and paper are enough to send them into fits of shouts and laughter, he says. Teammates flock to his room during overseas matches, asking to listen to his music, play Super Mario, borrow his books or fluorescent Nike running shoes and hear about life in the J-League— including how much money he makes.

“Tae Se worried a lot about the difference in background,” said Shin, who has known Jong since elementary school. “The North Korean team lacks a lot of the equipment and the infrastructure that Jong’s been used to, as a J-League player” for Japan’s Kawasaki Frontale.

He’s developed a close bond with An, a lanky fellow zainichi North Korean teammate who now plays for Omiya Ardija in Japan but also for the South Korean club Suwon Bluewings.

But Jong has said he admires his North Korean teammates’ passion for soccer, and noted that they are largely indifferent to money and materialism.

“He had many doubts, but as he trained with the North Korean players, he saw their pureness,” said Shin, whose biography about Jong was released in South Korea and Japan. “They never complained about the inadequacies and they did their absolute best.”

“They were playing for their team and for victory, nothing else.”

Jong is also well aware of the controversies surrounding North Korea, which remains locked in a standoff with the international community over its nuclear program and has been hauled before the U.N. Security Council on accusations of sinking a South Korean warship in March.

“You don’t cut off your parents from your life just because they’ve made mistakes. I, too, can’t betray my parents who have raised me,” referring to North Korea,” Jong says in Shin’s biography, “Our Player, Unseen Us.”

Don’t expect him to move anytime soon to Pyongyang. “My homeland is not Japan. There’s another country in Japan, called Zainichi,” he says in the book. “None of these countries—South Korea, North Korea and Japan—can be my home country, because I’m a zainichi and therefore Zainichi is my native land.

“And I think that’s the purpose of my life—letting the world know of the zainichi existence.”

On his blog, he wrote from Johannesburg that he was filled with renewed awe for the power of football and the role he can play in the sport.

“Yesterday, I clarified a new goal and dream,” he wrote in Japanese last week. “Instead of sticking within the line of national boundaries, I’ll be acclaimed in the wider world as a player who tore down such high and invisible walls.”

Associated Press writers Sangwon Yoon, Mirae Kang and Claire Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

ER member Haruki's on the Bay Area Reporter!

2010-05-28T00:29:00.000-07:00

Queer graduate receives special honor at SF State
by Matthew S. Bajko
m.bajko@ebar.com

Among the top 10 graduating students at San Francisco State University this year was a queer student from Japan who spent the last four years working to better the lives of other LGBT Asian and Pacific Islanders on and off campus.

At the May 22 commencement ceremonies sociology major Haruki Eda received a symbolic hood on behalf of the students in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. The faculty picked Eda after he received a distinguished achievement award within the Sociology Department.

Eda, 23, grew up in Koka, a city in Shiga Prefecture famous for its ninja history. Fluent in English, his parents encouraged him to study abroad in the states. He chose sociology due to his interest in reducing discrimination in society.

"Sociology should be about social justice and reducing social injustice," he said. "It really has the potential to be a tool for social change."

During his time on campus, Eda embraced his queer identity. He founded an organization for queer API students called AQUA – Asians and Queers United for Awareness. Off campus he volunteered at a queer Asian and Pacific Islander youth program run by the Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center in the Polk.

He also blogs about what it means to be queer and Asian at the website http://www.wiqaable.com.

"I wasn't really out in Japan. I came here determined to be out," said Eda, who disclosed his sexual orientation to his family during his freshman year.

While at SFSU Eda also became involved with Eclipse Rising, a Bay Area group for Zainichi Koreans. The term Zainichi means "staying in Japan" and it refers to Koreans living in Japan who retain their Korean nationality. Eda's Korean grandfather came to Japan as a soldier after the country annexed Korea in 1910.

The Zainichi are the largest minority group in Japan and they have struggled against discriminatory policies imposed on them by the Japanese. Because his father married a Japanese woman, Eda has Japanese citizenship and more privileges in Japanese society. But bridging his family's two cultures has not been easy, he said.

"It is a struggle to belong to the Japanese or Korean community," said Eda, who said he only started hanging out with other Koreans when he came to America and first visited South Korea in 2007.

Once in California, Eda experienced not only what it is like to be an ethnic minority but also discriminated against for being LGBT.

"I am not just queer here, I am also Asian. I have been interested in those dynamics of oppression both in Japan and the United States," he said.

This summer Eda will return home to Japan and then plans to move to Oakland this fall. He is applying for an unpaid internship at DataCenter Research for Justice, a progressive think tank focused on social justice and environmental issues.

By the fall of 2011 he intends to enter a Ph.D. program at a University of California campus or in a school in the Chicago or New York area. He would like to be a professor and do sociology research or work for the United Nations.

And like so many before him, Eda has come to consider the Bay Area home.

"Whenever I go back to Japan, I miss San Francisco. When I am here, I don't miss Japan," said Eda. "I really like this city."

Jong Tae-Se, 3rd gen. Zainichi soccer player leads DPRK!

2010-05-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

ESPN World Cup Blog (May 26, 2010)
The 'Asian Wayne Rooney' leads North Korea
Posted by Mike Griffin

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/blog?entryID=5222674&name=worldcup2010blog&cc=5901&ver=us

The week of international friendlies for World Cup participants continued on Tuesday. While the United States and Paraguay looked unimpressive in their encounters -- although each were resting some star players -- little-known North Korea put on a positive display in battling back to a 2-2 draw with Greece in a match played in Austria.

A day after Cristiano Ronaldo and his Portugal teammates failed to score a goal at home against lowly Cape Verde Islands, it was enlightening to see Group G opponents North Korea put two past former European champions Greece, a side known for its defensive strength. The star man for North Korea was Jong Tae-Se, who scored both of his country's goals with brilliant individual efforts to scorch a backline that did include its regulars in the starting lineup.

Greece took an early lead in the third minute, but Jong equalized midway through the first half after cutting in from the left side to unleash a right-footed rocket from outside the box that beat keeper Michalis Sifakis and clipped the bottom of the crossbar on its way in. Angelos Charisteas gave Greece a 2-1 lead just after halftime before Jong struck again four minutes later to even the match. The physical striker known as the "Asian Wayne Rooney" expertly collected a long diagonal pass before beating his defender and blasting the ball into the net at the near post.

Jong plays for Kawasaki Frontale in Japan's J-League, and is one of the few players to ply their trade outside the closed borders of the DPR. Born in Japan and originally holding South Korean citizenship, the striker decided to seek a North Korean passport due to his parents' heritage and after attending schools partially funded by Korea DPR.

He was top scorer at the 2008 East Asian Championship, and registered four goals in each of his first two games for North Korea in international competition. Having improved his scoring in the Japanese league in recent years, Jong helped his country finish second behind rival South Korea in Group B of the Asian confederation's final round of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup.

Last week, Ivory Coast coach Sven-Goran Eriksson claimed that underdog North Korea could be a tough proposition for his side in Group G at the World Cup. "Nobody speaks about North Korea, but they play good football," Eriksson told reporters. "Physically they are better than anyone because they have been in the training camp for six months. I think we are going to have three very difficult games, and we have to be very organized."

The media basically dismissed the former England manager's comments as typical "coachspeak" prior to a major competition, but after Tuesday's result against Greece, maybe more teams will begin to take note of Jong Tae-Se and North Korea.

NHK Documentary on Mixed Roots Youth in Japan! CLICK HERE!

2010-05-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

NHK made a documentary about the group called "Mix Roots Kansai" -a group of mixed heritage youth in Japan. It started as a web-based group 2 years ago and now expanded to a nation-wide organization. "Shake the Forward" is an annual concert in addition to many other programs (family gatherings, radio programs, podcasts, different kinds of workshops...etc) that build intimate relationships amongst "mixed youths" (whether mixed race or mixed cultural heritage) and cross-cultural understanding. The documentary was aired July 19, 2008. Their official website is: http://www.mixroots.jp/

2010-05-19T01:51:00.001-07:00

http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2010/spring/48.html

Our very own Eclipse Rising member recognized for his superb academic excellence and dedication to community service!
Congratulations Haruki!

Exceptional graduating students profiled
May 17 , 2010 -- One outstanding student from each academic college, Liberal Studies/Special Majors and Graduate Studies will be honored at SF State's 109th Commencement on Saturday, May 22. They will receive the symbolic investiture of the hood on behalf of their fellow students. In addition, Marilyn Thomas, hood recipient for the College of Science and Engineering, will be this year's student speaker. SF State News is pleased to introduce these students to the campus community and friends of SF State:

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Haruki Eda
When sociology major Haruki Eda arrived in San Francisco from Japan, he struggled to find a community he truly belonged to as a mixed Queer Zainichi Korean man whose first language isn't English. In Japan, Eda was part of a population of ethnic Koreans known as Zainichi Koreans. He has turned his multiple marginalized statuses into a commitment to work with oppressed communities. He founded an organization for Queer Asian and Pacific Islander students on campus, volunteered at a Queer Asian and Pacific Islander youth program in the city and served as a Resident Assistant in University Housing. He is also involved with a Zainichi Korean community organization that raises awareness about racism in Japan. As a sociologist, Eda plans to continue pursuing his interest in issues of sexuality and globalization in a doctoral program. "In the future, I would like to conduct community-based participatory
action research," Eda said.

Japan's colonial rule of Korea not fact, says city education board head

2010-05-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, Are you kidding me?

Saturday 28th June, 09:17 AM JST

KITAKYUSHU —
The head of the Shimonoseki city education board in Yamaguchi Prefecture has told officials of a Korean school that Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula ‘‘contradicts a historical fact,’’ the education board and the Korean school officials said Friday.

Tsuyoshi Shimakura made the remark on Thursday when he met the officials and students’ parents from Yamaguchi Korean school who visited Shimakura to ask for an increase of education subsidies, they said.

According to the Korean school officials and the education board, the officials made the request, saying, ‘‘We’d like the education board to respond based on the fact that children of Korean people who had no choice but to travel to Japan due to colonial rule are attending the school.’‘

Shimakura told them, ‘‘We cannot accept that because the part about colonial rule contradicts a historical fact,’’ they said.

Shimakura said he made the remark and said, ‘‘There is no relation between education administration and history, and it goes against the rules to bring the subject up.

‘‘It is free regarding how to express the annexation of Japan and Korea,’’ Shimakura added.

Kisaburo Tokai, minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology, said at a news conference, ‘‘It is very regrettable if the remark contradicts the government’s recognition.’‘

Touching on that he does not know the detail of the remark, Tokai said, ‘‘The government has expressed recognition that it inflicted suffering and damage on the people of Asia due to colonial rule.’‘

Shimonoseki and the Korean Peninsula have a close relationship historically, with the city and South Korea’s Busan concluding a sister-city relationship.

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

2010-04-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

Sound familiar? Reminded me of how Zainichis can be stopped any time in Japan to present their immigration papers.

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal immigration into law on Friday. Its aim is to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.
Enlarge This Image

Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill, SB 1070, on Friday.
The move unleashed immediate protests and reignited the divisive battle over immigration reform nationally.

Even before she signed the bill at an afternoon news conference here, President Obama strongly criticized it.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 24 active-duty service members in the Rose Garden, he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”

The Arizona law, he added, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

The law, which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against Hispanics regardless of their citizenship status.

The political debate leading up to Ms. Brewer’s decision, and Mr. Obama’s criticism of the law — presidents very rarely weigh in on state legislation — underscored the power of the immigration debate in states along the Mexican border. It presaged the polarizing arguments that await the president and Congress as they take up the issue nationally.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was worried about the rights of its citizens and relations with Arizona. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles said the authorities’ ability to demand documents was like “Nazism.”

As hundreds of demonstrators massed, mostly peacefully, at the capitol plaza, the governor, speaking at a state building a few miles away, said the law “represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”

The law was to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, meaning by August. Court challenges were expected immediately.

Hispanics, in particular, who were not long ago courted by the Republican Party as a swing voting bloc, railed against the law as a recipe for racial and ethnic profiling. “Governor Brewer caved to the radical fringe,” a statement by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said, predicting that the law would create “a spiral of pervasive fear, community distrust, increased crime and costly litigation, with nationwide repercussions.”

While police demands of documents are common on subways, highways and in public places in some countries, including France, Arizona is the first state to demand that immigrants meet federal requirements to carry identity documents legitimizing their presence on American soil.

Ms. Brewer acknowledged critics’ concerns, saying she would work to ensure that the police have proper training to carry out the law. But she sided with arguments by the law’s sponsors that it provides an indispensable tool for the police in a border state that is a leading magnet of illegal immigration. She said racial profiling would not be tolerated, adding, “We have to trust our law enforcement.”

Ms. Brewer and other elected leaders have come under intense political pressure here, made worse by the killing of a rancher in southern Arizona by a suspected smuggler a couple of weeks before the State Legislature voted on the bill. His death was invoked Thursday by Ms. Brewer herself, as she announced a plan urging the federal government to post National Guard troops at the border.

President George W. Bush had attempted comprehensive reform but failed when his own party split over the issue. Once again, Republicans facing primary challenges from the right, including Ms. Brewer and Senator John McCain, have come under tremendous pressure to support the Arizona law, known as SB 1070.

Mr. McCain, locked in a primary with a challenger campaigning on immigration, only came out in support of the law hours before the State Senate passed it Monday afternoon.

Governor Brewer, even after the Senate passed the bill, had been silent on whether she would sign it. Though she was widely expected to, given her primary challenge, she refused to state her position even at a dinner on Thursday for a Hispanic social service organization, Chicanos Por La Causa, where several audience members called out “Veto!”

Among other things, the Arizona measure is an extraordinary rebuke to former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who had vetoed similar legislation repeatedly as a Democratic governor of the state before being appointed Homeland Security secretary by Mr. Obama.

The law opens a deep fissure in Arizona, with a majority of the thousands of callers to the governor’s office urging her to reject it.

In the days leading up to Ms. Brewer’s decision, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat, called for a convention boycott of his state.

The bill, sponsored by Russell Pearce, a state senator and a firebrand on immigration issues, has several provisions.

It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.

It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.

States across the country have proposed or enacted hundreds of bills addressing immigration since 2007, the last time a federal effort to reform immigration law collapsed. Last year, there were a record number of laws enacted (222) and resolutions (131) in 48 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The prospect of plunging into a national immigration debate is being increasingly talked about on Capitol Hill, spurred in part by recent statements by Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, that he intends to bring legislation to the Senate floor after Memorial Day.

But while an immigration debate could help energize Hispanic voters and provide political benefits to embattled Democrats seeking re-election in November — like Mr. Reid — it could also energize conservative voters.

It could also take time from other Democratic priorities, including an energy measure that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has described as her flagship issue.

Mr. Reid declined Thursday to say that immigration would take precedence over an energy measure. But he called it an imperative: “The system is broken,” he said.

Ms. Pelosi and Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, have said that the House would be willing to take up immigration policy only if the Senate produces a bill first.

Helene Cooper and Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 23, 2010

A earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of the Arizona state senator who sponsored several provisions of the bill. He is Russell Pearce, not Pierce.

Zainichis Rising - a blog post about ER's fundraising event!

2010-03-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

Zainichis Rising
By Sylvie Kim
Originally posted on

You can count the number of things I don’t know about Korean history and culture on many fingers and toes. Usually, I utilize my standby excuse of “But I’m an Asian American Studies scholar” and then huff and puff about my second generation identity issues.

However, I am slowly but steadily learning more about my ancestral homeland, and more importantly, the issues affecting people of Korean descent.

Last year, I attended an academic talk about Zainichi Koreans with my one of my friends who is an East Asian Studies scholar. It was my first time learning about this population of ethnically Korean, multigenerational “outside residents” of Japan since that country’s colonization of Korea, residents who continually face systematic discrimination.

From an informational standpoint, it was an interesting event to attend but in essence, it was a lecture. It wasn’t until last week, from inside a cozy home in the East Bay, that I saw the human element of Zainichi Korean identity and experience. My classmate and friend Kei Fischer invited me to a meeting of Eclipse Rising, a Bay Area Zainichi Korean community organization of which she is co-coordinator as well as one of the founding members along with Miho Kim, Amana Oh, Yongna Ryo, and Kyung Hee Ha. Their mission is to “recognize and celebrate the rich and unique history of Koreans in Japan, promote Zainichi community development, peace and reunification, and work for social justice for all minorities in Japan.”

The diversity of people in the room was amazing: Kei and member Richard Plunk are two hapa Zainichi Koreans who did not discover until later in childhood that they were half-Korean, not half-Japanese as they were led to believe; Haruki Yang-Saeng Pak is half-Japanese and half-Korean but was granted Japanese citizenship through his mother’s side, meaning he has two last names: Eda and Pak. Miho Kim is a third generation Zainichi Korean from Fukuoka, Japan and in 2008 was the first Zainichi Korean to win the Yayori Award for achievement in Women’s human rights work.

Guests included Manami Kishimoto, an activist for the Buraku people in Japan; San Francisco State University Asian American Studies students; members of nihonmachiROOTS , a group of young Japanese American leaders focusing on issues regarding the redevelopment of San Francisco’s Japantown; as well as two visiting guests from abroad: Zainichi Korean brothers from Okinawa who are now in college and graduate school in Japan. Listening to the brothers talk about how the gathering gave them a sense of confidence to be themselves and speak out at school, where they are the only two Zainichi Korean students that they know of, was what really crystallized the purpose of Eclipse Rising for me.

Living under discriminatory policies is only part of their plight; Zainichis are not recognized by either Japan or Korea as legal or symbolic citizens. Language, culture, ethnicity all come into complicated play: ethnic Koreans cannot be granted citizenship in Japan even by birth and to return to Korea is to return to a country whose language and culture are wholly unfamiliar. Stories from Eclipse Rising members reveal that Zainichis of this current generation often face hostility in Korea since their relatives were thought of as “traitors” for moving to Japan to find work and feed their families during colonization.

In addition to learning about Zainichis from a historical and sociological perspective, being at the meeting kept my privilege in check: a clear acknowledgment of my nationality and ethnicity and that of my family and ancestors is something I take for granted. As the beginning of my post explains, there’s so much I don’t know but could know due to an contradictory mix of desire to educate myself and lack of motivation to get started. But, perhaps the most significant impression left on me was an urge to keep deconstructing and reconstructing what it means to “be Korean.” I don’t think Korean identity is something that can necessarily be quantified or qualified in so-called definitive ways: vocabulary, names, or what country issues your passport.

We’re descendants of passionate, proud people, and I like to believe that within that collective spirit, there’s room for difference: different identities and different histories that are all a part of the Korean consciousness.

If you would like to learn more about Eclipse Rising, their events, and how you can contribute, visit their website or Facebook group page.

Zainichis Rising - a blog post about ER's fundraising event!

2010-03-28T09:50:00.001-07:00

ZAINICHI RISING By Sylvie Kim - originally posted on www.iamkoream.com/zainichis-rising

You can count the number of things I don’t know about Korean history and culture on many fingers and toes. Usually, I utilize my standby excuse of “But I’m an Asian American Studies scholar” and then huff and puff about my second generation identity issues.

However, I am slowly but steadily learning more about my ancestral homeland, and more importantly, the issues affecting people of Korean descent.

Last year, I attended an academic talk about Zainichi Koreans with my one of my friends who is an East Asian Studies scholar. It was my first time learning about this population of ethnically Korean, multigenerational “outside residents” of Japan since that country’s colonization of Korea, residents who continually face systematic discrimination.

From an informational standpoint, it was an interesting event to attend but in essence, it was a lecture. It wasn’t until last week, from inside a cozy home in the East Bay, that I saw the human element of Zainichi Korean identity and experience. My classmate and friend Kei Fischer invited me to a meeting of Eclipse Rising, a Bay Area Zainichi Korean community organization of which she is co-coordinator as well as one of the founding members along with Miho Kim, Amana Oh, Yongna Ryo, and Kyung Hee Ha. Their mission is to “recognize and celebrate the rich and unique history of Koreans in Japan, promote Zainichi community development, peace and reunification, and work for social justice for all minorities in Japan.”

The diversity of people in the room was amazing: Kei and member Richard Plunk are two hapa Zainichi Koreans who did not discover until later in childhood that they were half-Korean, not half-Japanese as they were led to believe; Haruki Yang-Saeng Pak is half-Japanese and half-Korean but was granted Japanese citizenship through his mother’s side, meaning he has two last names: Eda and Pak. Miho Kim is a third generation Zainichi Korean from Fukuoka, Japan and in 2008 was the first Zainichi Korean to win the Yayori Award for achievement in Women’s human rights work.

Guests included Manami Kishimoto, an activist for the Buraku people in Japan; San Francisco State University Asian American Studies students; members of nihonmachiROOTS , a group of young Japanese American leaders focusing on issues regarding the redevelopment of San Francisco’s Japantown; as well as two visiting guests from abroad: Zainichi Korean brothers from Okinawa who are now in college and graduate school in Japan. Listening to the brothers talk about how the gathering gave them a sense of confidence to be themselves and speak out at school, where they are the only two Zainichi Korean students that they know of, was what really crystallized the purpose of Eclipse Rising for me.

Living under discriminatory policies is only part of their plight; Zainichis are not recognized by either Japan or Korea as legal or symbolic citizens. Language, culture, ethnicity all come into complicated play: ethnic Koreans cannot be granted citizenship in Japan even by birth and to return to Korea is to return to a country whose language and culture are wholly unfamiliar. Stories from Eclipse Rising members reveal that Zainichis of this current generation often face hostility in Korea since their relatives were thought of as “traitors” for moving to Japan to find work and feed their families during colonization.

In addition to learning about Zainichis from a historical and sociological perspective, being at the meeting kept my privilege in check: a clear acknowledgment of my nationality and ethnicity and that of my family and ancestors is something I take for granted. As the beginning of my post explains, there’s so much I don’t know but could know due to an contradictory mix of desire to educate myself and lack of motivation to get started. But, perhaps the most significant impression left on me was an urge to keep deconstructing and reconstructing what it means to “be Korean.” I don’t think Korean identity is something that can necessarily be quantified or qualified in so-called definitive ways: vocabulary, names, or what country issues your passport.

We’re descendants of passionate, proud people, and I like to believe that within that collective spirit, there’s room for difference: different identities and different histories that are all a part of the Korean consciousness.

If you would like to learn more about Eclipse Rising, their events, and how you can contribute, visit their website or Facebook group page.

Documentary - "Zainichi"

2010-03-17T23:11:00.001-07:00

Eclipse Rising
SFSU Asian American Studies and
Eastside Arts Alliance present

The Zainichi Korean Quarterly Film Series

Featuring two showings of “ZAINICHI”
by Oh Duk-Soo

Monday, April 5 @ 7:00 PM
Burk Hall 237, San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Ave., San Francisco

Saturday, April 10 @ 1:00 PM
Eastside Cultural Center, 2277 International Blvd. at 23rd Ave., Oakland
(10 min. from Fruitvale Bart)

Suggested Donation $7 - 10 (no one turned away for a lack of funds)

We will be selling onigiri, spam musubi and light snacks starting at $1 so come hungry!

About the Film: Zainichi is a two-part documentary, and the first and one of the most comprehensive visual accounts of Zainichi Korean history. The film traces back Korean migration under the Japanese colonial occupation and the struggles that followed in post-war Japan. It also discusses the ways in which the Japanese constitution intentionally excluded the remaining Koreans from its protection, which is the root of inequality and discrimination Zainichi Koreans face to this day. Zainichi came out in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Korean peninsula.

Eastside Arts Alliance is dedicated to nurturing and supporting the work of the Lower-San Antonio District’s African American, Latino/Chicano, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Indigenous artists and cultural workers, many of whom have not found a home within Oakland’s mainstream arts community.
web: www.eastsideartsalliance.com

San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies
web: http://www.sfsu.edu/~aas/

Hyphenating Japan

2010-03-13T19:43:00.000-08:00

This article is interesting. She seems to have a pluralistic overgeneralization about the experiences of Zainichi Korean youth in Japan, but covers a lot of issues related to the community. It's interesting to see how Japanese youth or minority youth in Japan are being influenced by what they believe to be a multicultural utopian society in the U.S. - an idea I disagree with. That's why Eclipse Rising's work to connect minority youth from Japan to youth of color in the U.S. is so important! The issue is not with being able to hyphenate your identity, but ending discriminatory practices that effect the daily lives of so-called non-Japanese living in Japan, connecting modern prejudices (personal, institutional, policy) as the extension of oppressive practices from the colonial days, and creating a cross-cultural solidarity movement among all oppressed groups in Japan to fight for their space in Japanese society. What do you think?

Hyphenating Japan by Debbie Hodgson

Lee Yun Chul is not your typical 21-year-old Japanese youth. His Korean family took Japanese citizenship before he was born. But after spending his high-school years in multiethnic London, Lee grew to resent the fact that his parents hid their Korean roots. He broke away from his family's koseki —something almost sacrilegious in Japan—and went through a painful process in court to change his name to a Korean one. With the stage name Liyoon, he joined his friend Kwak Jeong Hoon (known as Jewong) to form the rap duo KP, and hopes to become a model for the next generation. "My dream is that by my kids' generation, Japan will be a society where you can be called Kim or Lee and still be OK," he says.

In short, Lee is Korean and proud of it. But it's not that simple. He is also Japanese and proud of it. His family represents only a fraction of the more than 9,000 Korean residents who are becoming Japanese citizens every year. And that trend could spell the end for the zainichi—Koreans and their descendants who came to Japan before the end of World War II and live here as permanent residents. Given that there are fewer than 600,000 zainichi, they could be absorbed in the next fifty years if current rates of population decline, naturalization and inter-ethnic marriage continue.

But with extinction as a distinct group looming, young zainichi and Japanese of Korean ancestryare awakening to their ethnic identity, and letting the world know about it. Kang Sachiko, activist and official at South-Korea affiliated Mindan, says rapper Lee is one of a breed she calls the "new zainichi"—those who are trying to escape the stereotypes and inferiority complexes that plagued the old generation. Affluent and relatively untouched by discrimination, the new zainichi are being met halfway by young Japanese who are eager to embrace difference. Despite naturalizing and marrying Japanese, the new zainichi are giving themselves Korean names, studying the Korean language and trying to revive a fading zainichiculture. "We are proud of our roots, but don't care about nationality and bloodline the way our parents do," Kang says. "With that flexibility we are going to change Japan's obsession with being a homogenous nation-state."

With relations between Japan and North Korea at their worst in living memory, it comes as a shock that young Korean residents can be so optimistic. Ever since Kim Jong Il admitted last September that Pyongyang had abducted at least thirteen Japanese citizens in the 1970s and '80s, zainichi have been on the defensive. Since then, the government has focused on North Korean residents of Japan as never before. The Man Gyong Bong, which ferries Koreans to visit their relatives in the North, has suddenly been subjected to stricter customs and safety checks. Tokyo's right-wing governor Shintaro Ishihara drew the ire of Koreans in Japan and abroad with his recent suggestion that Koreans asked Japan to occupy their country in 1910. The government has revoked a long-standing tax exclusion policy applying to Chongryon, the zainichi group associated with North Korea, and has conspicuously left Chongryon schools out of a law change allowing graduates of foreign schools to take the public university entrance examinations.

But despite current tension, Japan's treatment of its largest ethnic minority is far better than it's ever been before. The Japan that used Koreans as slave labor for the good of the empire is long gone. Tokyo today sees both Koreas as regional powers that cannot be ignored. To many younger Japanese, South Korea is cool—the host of the 1988 Olympics, the co-host with Japan of a successful World Cup, a fount of TV and pop stars who've found success singing and acting in Japanese. Korean food is hugely popular, as attested by the hundreds of trendy Korean izakaya, and the success of Jong Kwon Fa, a second-generation Korean cooking personality in the mold of Kurihara Harumi. And particularly since the World Cup, thousands of Japanese of all ages tune into emotional Korean dramas and pick up brochures for vacations in Cheju as readily as for tours to Okinawa. "In my generation, Japan and Korea are relating to each other more," says company employee Taiki Yamaoka, 27. "We've entered a new era."

As many as ninety percent of Japanese-born Koreans are, for all intents and purposes, completely assimilated. They lead quiet if somewhat schizophrenic lives, passing as Japanese in public and using Korean names among themselves. That's a legacy from the colonial period, when their ancestors were forced to use exclusively Japanese language and names. Deprived of citizenship after the war, they were denied access to most jobs in the new economy. So many turned to self-employment, setting up pachinko parlors, barbecued-meat restaurants and other businesses.

For many of this generation, there was but one goal: to guarantee a better life for their descendants. In Tokyo's Shibuya district, just up the road from the teen shopping mall 109, is a narrow unpaved alley with a fading sign that says "Love Letter Alley". It's where Japanese women who'd had love affairs with GIs during the Occupation went to have their letters translated, and it was amongst the alley's makeshift translators' stalls that Kim Byeong Hyo, 81, built her rags-to-riches story. Having escaped near-starvation in Japanese-occupied Cheju, she worked, since the age of twelve, sewing soldiers' uniforms in Osaka. Moving to Tokyo after the war, she set up a Chinese restaurant in Love Letter Alley, charming her customers with her pretty face and hardworking attitude. She'd come home at 4:00 a.m., breastfeed her baby, then grab two hours of sleep before opening the shop again. Soon she employed seven cooks and ten waitresses. "I just wanted my children to be able to go to school," she says.

She accomplished that for her nine children—and more. Kim now owns several large properties back in Cheju and a couple in Shibuya, too. But despite her success in Japan, she says, she would be heartbroken if her grandchildren naturalized or married Japanese. It's at this point that her grandson, Bu Dukjoo, jotting down his grandmother's oral history on his iMac, has to bite his tongue. "It hurts me," he says later, "when Grandma says she doesn't want her grandchildren to marry Japanese. She's had so much pain. I want to end that pain in this generation—by that I mean grow to love Japan, take citizenship. I don't tell her that, of course."

As far as Bu is concerned, he says, taking citizenship is like joining a soccer team and shouldn't be confused with personal identity. But by openly endorsing the idea of becoming a Japanese citizen, he's breaking a significant Korean-Japanese taboo. Though thousands of resident Koreans are doing just that, they tend to do it quietly. To naturalize or not is a complicated matter of pride and deference to one's ancestors—sometimes still living—who survived all manner of insults from the Japanese state. Add to that government pressure to adopt Japanese names, and taking Japanese citizenship is equated for many with denying one's Korean roots. "I was called a traitor many times by other Koreans," says Lee of the KP duo. "That hurt more than being taunted by Japanese."

None of this holds back ethnic Koreans who have decided to naturalize—if only because these days it's the practical thing to do. Chung Chon Su, who works processing documents for Koreans, including naturalization papers, says the process can take up to a year, cost up to ¥500,000, and involves copious paperwork and background checks to prove the will to assimilate. But many Koreans have decided to swallow their pride and comply, for their children's sake. "Of course, they aren't happy about it," says Chung. "In other countries like the U.S., naturalization is cause for a party. Here it's done in secret, and no one is celebrating much."

The issue splits zainichi intellectuals. Tokyo Metropolitan University's Chung Dae Kyun,　author of "The End of the Zainichi Korean", says that with discrimination at levels "so low as to ignore" and with little attachment to Seoul or Pyongyang, it's illogical to continue resisting becoming Japanese. Practising what he preaches, the professor recently completed his naturalisation paperwork. But Tokyo University professor Kang Sang Jung insists that there's a need for Japan to separate ethnicity and nationality. Instead, he says, Japan should provide avenues for non-Japanese to maintain their difference and still be treated with respect.

Whatever the arguments, the young generation is voting with their feet. The good news is, naturalisation no longer necessarily equals assimilation. Like rapper Lee, Kang Sachiko was born with Japanese nationality, as Yamazaki Sachiko, to a Korean-resident mum and half-zainichi/half-Japanese dad. But when she turned 23, she started working for the South Korean Residents Association youth group, gave herself a Korean name, and started researching her grandparents' history. "I want to create a Japan where it's natural for minorities to live openly, not to hide," she says. It's something that more and more Japanese agree with, too. "I don't like the aspect of Japan that is prejudiced against difference," says Dohi Ikumi, 25, who first met Kang Sachiko when they were studying Korean in Seoul. "I may be in the majority as a Japanese in Japan, but I can suddenly become a 'minority,' like when I had to have counseling for family problems." After getting to know Kang, Dohi was drawn to other Koreans in Japan, and now has a wide group of Korean-Japanese friends. "They're so positive and outgoing. When I see how much they love and take pride in their nationality and ethnicity, I start wondering why I as a Japanese wasn't like that. I even started going to rakugo, traditional story-telling performances, to get to know Japanese culture better," she says.

Indeed, rediscovering pride in one's Korean roots is natural now because so much of Korean culture has caught on. Some of the coolest celebrities—like hip-hop diva BoA and sexy actress Yun Son A—are Korean—as in straight from the peninsula. And now, Japan has its own homegrown version of Korea Cool—the tarento Sonin, a Korean-Japanese from Shikoku, who unlike many Korean performers in the past, never bothered to hide her ethnicity. Sonin herself doesn't know why on earth she should. "There was discrimination in the past, but it's nothing to do with me," she was quoted as saying in "Quick Japan" magazine in August.

She's luckier than some zainichi, who say they endure regular discrimination. The stigma is so embedded that even Korean bosses of "ethnic businesses" won't employ people with Korean names, says the son of such a pachinko parlor owner in Nagoya. "Koreans get discriminated against at the formative stages of life," says Mindan's Bae Cheoul Eun: "when they go for job interviews, propose marriage and look for an apartment."

Certainly, incidents of prejudice have been noticeable lately. Since Pyongyang admitted abducting Japanese citizens, attacks on girls wearing Korean school uniforms have increased sharply, the Association of North Korean Residents' Tokyo headquarters has been bombed, and bullets have been mailed to the organization. The Association receives hundreds of hate calls a day, and police now patrol its heavy steel gates. Prejudice can affect even the very young. Says Kim Jeho, a 27-year-old businessman in Tokyo's Okubo district: "My four-year-old niece stopped a family gathering in its tracks a while ago when she told us how a girl at nursery school had taunted her, saying how glad she was to have been born Japanese. I patted my niece on the head, but all the while I was thinking, 'Can this really still be happening?'"

It's because of incidents like this that Kim thinks the "new zainichi" are kidding themselves. "They say stuff that is music to Japanese people's ears, like 'Ethnicity doesn't affect anything;' 'We don't dwell on the past.' But I can tell them, I still receive discriminatory treatment when I go for jobs or try to rent an apartment. As long as that goes on, I choose to 'dwell' on it," he says.

Chongryon (the Association of North Korean Residents) and Mindan (Association of South Korean Residents) were originally set up to protect Koreans from such prejudice. But nowadays their role is less clear-cut. Mindan's Bae says individualistic young people are pulling away. "The organisation feels a sense of crisis," he says. Classrooms at Chongryon-affiliated schools are empty, and teachers go unpaid as enrollments drop—from 20,000 twenty years ago to 14,000 now. Reality, and the increased attacks are forcing Chongryon to adjust. It's changing its once heavily ideological, pro-Kim Jong Il textbooks, and this year for the first time had a Japanese Ministry of Education official visit a Chongryon school.

But more ideologically-flexible young people may already be ahead of them. Mindan's Youth Group leader in Okayama, Lee Bo Chang, does something that would have been unthinkable in the past: though he's a Mindan official, he meets for a drink once or twice a month with people from the rival Chongryon group. "I don't like the way organizations ignore individuals," says Lee. "We're making horizontal networks." Tonight, they gather in the bar of a restaurant run by Lee's mother. The friends rib each other about the shortcomings of each other's organisations over milky white makkoli wine. But they also share heart-to-hearts on love, marriage and the thorny subject of Korean reunification. "The older generation wouldn't drink together like this," Lee says. "But for us it's easy to become close."

Some zainichi Koreans express hopes to return and live in an eventually reunified Korea. But most Korean-Japanese, for better or for worse, have tied their future to that of Japan and are intent on making it a better society in whatever way they can. They're already influencing some young Japanese. Nineteen-year-old Hayasaki Wataru is one. "KP—that's Korean Pride, right?" he says at one of the duo's recent concerts. "That's cool. Why don't we have any 'Japanese Pride?' We need to work on that." Tabu Nobuhiro, strategy manager for KP, has a grand vision for a pan-Asian culture. "In New York City, no one cares where you are from. Different ethnic groups influencing each other is the way culture and a mature society is born," he says. "That's what I want for Japan."

KP's Lee is certain about the future. "When I finally finished the legal process, I saw my Japanese passport there with the Korean name on it, and I thought, Yes! This is the way the Korean-Japanese should be."It's certainly one option. And with the diverse politics, philosophy and goals of today's zainichi, expect many other variations on the theme.

Newsweek Japan Cover 26th November 2003

Korean forced laborers lose redress appeal

2010-03-09T22:20:00.000-08:00

Korean forced laborers lose redress appeal (The Japan Times Online)
KANAZAWA, Ishikawa Pref. (Kyodo) An appeals court rejected a demand Monday that the government and a machinery maker pay compensation to Korean women coerced into working at a military plant in Japan during the war.

The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court turned down an appeal by 23 South Korean former forced laborers and their relatives who demanded about ¥100 million in compensation from the state and Nachi-Fujikoshi Corp. based in Toyama.

Presiding Judge Nobuaki Watanabe said the plaintiffs lost their right to demand compensation under the 1965 compensation rights treaty between Japan and South Korea.
Under the treaty, the nations agreed that South Korean residents of Japan who were brought to Japan as wartime laborers were not qualified to claim individual compensation. Japan instead paid a lump sum of $500 million to South Korea as a form of economic cooperation.

The plaintiffs said an internal Foreign Ministry document found in 2008 suggests the treaty only provides for the South Korean government renouncing compensation claims.

But the appeals court dismissed the argument.

The high court upheld a September 2007 decision by the Toyama District Court that rejected demands for redress.

The lower court recognized in its ruling that the government brought women from the Korean Peninsula to Japan under false pretenses and forced them to work at a military plant during the war, but dismissed the South Korean plaintiffs' damages claim.

The plaintiffs were taken to Japan from the Korean Peninsula from 1944 to 1945 after being misled by Japanese teachers and others who told them they would receive higher education or earn generous wages in Japan, the lower court said.

The plaintiffs were in fact coerced into performing hard labor, including grinding bearings, and were not provided with sufficient food or any wages, the court said.

Eclipse Rising Community Gathering

2010-03-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

Eclipse Rising would like to invite you to a Community Gathering Dinner/Presentation!
Location: El Cerrito, CA - please e-mail for address if you are interested in attending
When: Saturday, March 20, 4:00PM
E-mail: eclipserising@gmail.com

Eclipse Rising would like to welcome Bay Area Zainichi Koreans, friends, and allies of our movement to a food party/Eclipse Rising presentation of our mission, our work, and our vision.

We also wanted to take this time to thank all the community supporters who have shown unwavering devotion to our cause.

Thank you for coming out to our events, volunteering, and taking an interest in Zainichi issues. I hope you can join us for an evening of zainichi food, laughter and friendship, where we would like to present to you all the wonderful work we've been able to accomplish so far because of your support, and introduce to you our future project ideas and ask you to help us in fundraising for such events.

We would greatly appreciate a donation to ER for our work (suggested $10 - $20) for the food and drinks we'll provide. PLEASE RSVP so we can have enough food prepared for you!
Thank you! We look forward to seeing you!

Haruki & Yongna's Eclipse Rising TV vol.1

2010-03-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

We decided to launch this video blogging project by just talking in front of a camcorder. We will update new clips regularly!

So this is the very first one, and we are talking about our grandmothers.
Enjoy!

Japan apologizes for colonial rule of Korea

2010-02-14T12:55:00.000-08:00

What are the implications for the apology? How do the government materialize their apology in the way that victim can be healed and redressed, and we can educate ourselves about the past and create the vision for the future?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/11/japan.korea.apology/index.html

(CNN) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Thursday apologized to South Korea for the more than three decades when Japan ruled over Korea, calling the time a "tragic incident."

Okada made the rare apology during a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, Korean state-run media reported.

"I believe it was a tragic incident for Koreans when they were deprived of their nation and their identity," Okada said, according to the Yonhap news agency.

"I can fully understand the feelings of (Koreans) who were deprived of their identity and nation. I believe we must never forget the victims," he added.

Japan controlled Korea from 1910 to 1945. During that time, Japan's military is accused of forcing about 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, to serve as sex slaves. They were known as "comfort women" for soldiers in Japan's Imperial Army.

There have been street protests and lawsuits in that past in South Korea over the sufferings of the comfort women.

At least one other Japanese leader has apologized for the era.

In 2001, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi acknowledged the "enormous damage" inflicted by Japan's military "by colonization and invasion."

solidarity message

2010-02-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

In response to the recent hate crime attack on the Korean school in Kyoto by Zaitoku-kai (lit. trans. "Citizens’ Group against Special Rights for Zainichi," an ultra right-wing nationalist group that has been accusing Zainichi Koreans for having various "special rights" by manipulating their alien/non-Japanese citizen status) , there was a huge public meeting to condemn their violence against students, teachers, families and communities of Kyoto Korean School. Eclipse Rising, along with numerous social justice groups both in Japan and globally, sent a message to show our solidarity in fighting against the injustice.

--------------------------------
（日本語）
私たち、エクリプス・ライジングは、アメリカを拠点とし、日本人および日本国家の特権を許さない、在日朝鮮人の会です。
「我々が自由を手に入れる唯一の手がかりは世界中の抑圧された人々との繋がりの中にある」と、かつてマルコムXが言ったように、
私たちエクリプス・ライジングもウリハッキョの直面する問題を我々自身の問題とし、他の被差別の仲間とともに闘う連帯表明をします。

(English)
Eclipse Rising is a SF bay area-based Zainichi Korean group that does not allow privileges of Japanese nationals and the Japanese state. As Malcolm X once said, The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world," Eclipse Rising situate the issues that Korean schools in Japan are confronted as a part of the bigger system of oppression that we all are forced to live under, and hence is determined to fight against the injustice in solidarity with people and communities of the oppressed in the world.

End the Korean War

2009-12-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Please see the following website and YouTube clip about Korean Americans asking for PEACE on the Korean peninsula.
Eclipse Rising supports the National Campaign to End the Korean War.
Please click on the website link and sign the petition for peace!
http://endthekoreanwar.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bq6YlWkob4

Eclipse Rising W. Coast Roadshow & Solidarity Tour

2009-11-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

Zainichi Koreans in the United States!
An LA Zainichi Korean Community town hall meeting
A working collaboration between Zainichi Korean, Japanese American, and Korean American organizations in the United States
Please join us:
• Date: Saturday, November 21, 2009
• Time: 4:00 – 6:00pm
• Place: Little Tokyo Service Center’s Casa Heiwa
231 E. 3rd St. (between Los Angeles St. and San Pedro St.)
Los Angeles, CA

Presented by Eclipse Rising w/generous support of Little Tokyo Service Center

Eclipse Rising is a community organization of, by, and for Zainichi residents in the U.S., in and beyond the Bay Area, to recognize and celebrate the rich and unique history of Koreans in Japan, promote Zainichi community development, peace and reunification, and work for social justice for all minorities in Japan and around the world.

Background:
Eclipse Rising started in 2008 when some Bay Area residents of Zainichi Korean background decided it was time to finally start a community organization to reclaim Zainichi Korean history and elevate our voices as a key vehicle to shape our own destinies with dignity.

"Zainichi" literally translates to "resident of Japan." This term pertains to any so-called "foreign resident" in Japan, including Koreans who lived in Japan as a result of Japanese colonization of Korea between 1910 and 1945, and their descendents, who historically comprise the largest minority group of Japan. Although multiple generations of Koreans (4, 5 generations now) have been born and raised in Japan, basic rights (even access to public compulsory education) are/can be denied to Zainichi Koreans legally.

Our wish is that Korean and other ethnic minorities in Japan who still suffer many forms of discrimination to this day can live in harmony and craft a blueprint for a truly multicultural society.

Our organization was formed to recognize and build on the history and legacy of our ancestors, and to work toward social justice for all minorities in Japan. We also work to establish a stable and supportive community for Zainichi Koreans in the United States, an increasingly popular destination for Zainichi Koreans seeking a ‘home’ after generations of searching.

The name "Eclipse Rising" is meant to counter the imperialist Japanese flag with the "rising sun." The Eclipse, though through few occurrences, is able to cover the sun completely and change the perspective. We would like to view the eclipse as a symbol of Koreans in Japan rising up against oppression.

Find our group on Facebook & Connect with us today, or contact us to join our mailing list!

A Jainichi Scholar Scrutinizes the ‘Unresolved Past of Korea and Japan’

2009-11-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

“A Contemporary History of Deadlocked Thought” by Yun Kon-cha, Translated by Park Jin-u et al., Changbi Publishers Inc., 625 pages, 27,000 won;

“Winter Forest” by Yun Kon-cha, Translated by Kim Eung-gyo, Hwanam Publishing Co., 134 pages, 6,300 won

“It seems it`s my duty to leave some meaningful marks by facing and struggling with an era that produced the so-called jainichi (Korean residents in Japan),” said Professor Yun Kon-cha of Kawakana University. Professor Yun is known as the author of “Trend of Modern Korean Thought” and “Modern Ideological Deadlocks in Korea and Japan.” He recently published two books in Seoul, “A Contemporary History of Deadlocked Thought” (Gyochak-doen sasang-eui hyeondae sa) and “Winter Forest” (Gyeoul sup). The former was originally published by Iwanami Shoten Publishers in Japan last year; the latter, simultaneously published in Korea and Japan, is Yun`s first poetry collection. For “Winter Forest,” Im Heon-yeong, a literary critic and professor, wrote an introduction under the heading “A Diasporean Intellectual`s Search for Self.” This can also be applied to “A Contemporary History of Deadlocked Thought.”

Yun`s search for self, though belated and seemingly sluggish, was dramatic and thoroughgoing. Through the vast research by Yun, who has studied enormous amounts of material, we may be able to experience an intellectual shock and an amazing extension of our views to encompass Japan and jainichi by moving our eyes to jainichi, from where his research began. This is directly linked to the problem of inaction in addressing the issue of “Japan`s imperial system and Joseon (Korea`s pre-modern state name)” and “the founding of a unified Korea,” which remains an unresolved question from the decolonization process between Korea and Japan.

The Japan that Yun talks about can be very different from the Japan we know. While in high school he was surprised to find his name written in Korean style in the roll book and “desperately pleaded that it be changed to the Japanese style.” He graduated from Kyoto University but could not find a job. “With nowhere else to go,” he enrolled for a graduate program at the University of Tokyo and earned a doctorate at the age of 38. It was about this time that he acknowledged he was jainichi. Thereafter he desperately clung to studying modern Japan, especially Japan after its defeat in World War II, and jainichi. These days he is more devoted to the study of Korean society. He met Hong Se-hwa, a pro-democracy activist known as “a taxi driver in Paris,” and his friends in Europe around the time of the democratization struggle of June 1987. Around that time his passport problems were solved so he began traveling to Korea frequently. Hence he began to see the world through Korea.

The original Japanese title of “A Contemporary History of Deadlocked Thought” may be translated into “Deadlocked Experience of Thought.” Therefore, it is not anyone else`s story but a chronicle of the author`s own experience of journeying back and forth between Japan, jainichi and Korea, each with a different ideological soil. The book grasps the paths trodden by Japan, Korea (South Korea) and Korean residents in Japan since the defeat/liberation of August 1945 to the present primarily “as the ideological experiences imprinted in history” by looking at them through the eyes of the Korean residents in Japan, who are the “products of Japan`s colonial rule over Korea, the living witnesses of history and the most acute embodiment of Japan`s brutal rule over other nations,” and “the historical existences manifesting the absurdity of modern Japan in the most miserable shape.”

The “thought” discussed by Yun refers to the “desperate and repeated question as to how to live.” And what is most important in his quest of thought is “pursuing the greatest absurdity and task of the era.” He thinks the three pillars constituting the identity of Japanese people are “worship of the West, the imperial ideology, and disdain of Asia.” The worship of the West and disdain of Asia are the two sides of a coin, which are rooted in discrimination and prejudice against the heterogeneous others. The imperial system, “forming the nucleus of Japanese nationalism asserting uniqueness and superiority and performing the oppressive and exclusive function internally and externally,” was the mechanism that made these thoughts possible. Under this mechanism Korea and the Korean people were imprinted in the minds of the Japanese with the gloomiest and the most negative images. In this regard, Japanese imperialism and Korean issues are mutually interrelated and form the core of modern Japanese thought.

Japan should have jettisoned its emperor system and established a republican democracy when it lost the war. However, the United States applied ambiguous terms in the surrender process and colluded with the Japanese ruling forces. The occupying power thus allowed Japan to maintain its monarchial system for its convenience in governing Japan as a bridgehead for its Cold War strategy in the Far East. It suppressed by force Korean residents and the Japanese Communist Party, who opposed the system most strongly, and revived the prewar elite forces including Nobusuke Kishi. Such a “reverse course” taken by postwar Japan exactly corresponded with a series of events that occurred in the southern half of the Korean peninsula under U.S. occupation, such as the annihilation of leftists, the civilian struggles in Daegu on October 1, 1946 and in Jeju Island on April 3, 1948, the bloody suppression of the uprising in Yeosu and Suncheon, and the taking of power by Rhee Syngman and pro-Japanese forces. A broad scope of cross-examination simultaneously delving into these crucial events in Japan and Korea is the biggest strength of this book. Perhaps it has an effect of triple vision expansion.

Korea`s biggest ideological challenge is building a unified country. This aborted task is closely linked to Japan`s original sin of colonial occupation leading to Korea`s territorial division and the U.S.-Japan alliance, which the postwar Japanese intellectuals thoroughly ignored. Shigeru Nanbara who led the “democratization” of postwar Japan and even Masao Maruyama who is known as “a leader and victor of postwar democracy” turned a blind eye to the problems of Korea and Koreans. Yoshimi Takeuchi, who was sympathetic to jainichi issues, talked only about Japan`s invasion of China and evaded the issues of Korea and Korean residents in Japan. Their self-centered “great power chauvinism” is apparent in taking issue with the so-called 15-year war from Japan`s invasion of Manchuria to its defeat but brushing aside its reckless assault upon Korea since the Sino-Japanese War. Yun points out that even Professor Haruki Wada whom he highly regards reveals his limitations by failing to criticize the emperor system straightforwardly.

From the Japanese intellectuals who simply define nation and nation state as “fallacy” and emphasize non-violence, tolerance, coexistence and reconciliation, Yun peeps at “an effort to free themselves from pressures of colonialism and nationalist issues” and also finds “the common illusion to shelve their responsibility as the wrongdoers.” Progressive intellectuals of the two countries once achieved a happy alliance during the democracy movement in Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. However, as reaffirmed afterwards through the history textbook controversies, comfort women issues, the rise of Korean “new rightists” and rapport by Japanese conservatives, “Japan basically has neither apologized nor compensated for its invasion and rule over Korea and the division of Korea, so the past history remains little liquidated.” Still worse, there seems to be little hope that this state of affairs will ever change in the future.

As for the argument by Park Yu-ha who has drawn applause from Japanese conservative intellectuals for her book “For Reconciliation,” Yun criticized it as “pseudo-rightist sentimentalism” showing no sympathy toward the national division of Korea and consequent sufferings. “Her logic is rough and shows a great deal of misunderstanding and distortion of historical facts,” he said.

Yun warned against hasty reconciliation, arguing that Park`s opinion welcomed by the Asahi Shimbun should probably be little different than the right-wing fascist Katsumi Sato`s view that “rejecting apologies should be the first step toward reconciliation.” The ultimate solution he suggests is that Korea should continue to demand Japan`s self-reflection and apology but without expecting its demand to be met. He says Korea should instead find the correct path to reunification and national prosperity on its own.

[ July 25, 2009 ]

2009-11-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

今熱い！サンフランシスコ・ベイエリア発
Eclipse Rising 講演・レセプション

LA在住の在日コリアン求む！（その他の方々も歓迎！）　
将来に働きかける次世代の‘草の根’の熱い声をお届けします!
　　　　

主催者：Eclipse Rising
　　　　支援団体：Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC)

日時：2009年11月21日(土) 午後4時〜6時

場所：Little Tokyo Service CenterのCASA HEIWA　　
231 E. 3rd St. (Los Angeles and San Pedro St.の間)

Los Angeles, CA 90013 (213) 473-3030

言語：日本語/English (通訳有)
連絡：eclipserising@gmail.com

Eclipse Rising はサンフランシスコ・ベイエリアを拠点とした在日コリアン団体でトランスナショナルな在日コミュニティの基盤を築き、在日特有の歴史性やアイデンティティの視点から、日本社会の公正そして朝鮮半島の平和的な統一を目指し2008年に発足。団体名のEclipse Risingは、日食が太陽を覆い隠す様に、抑圧の象徴である”Rising Sun”に対抗して立ち上がる在日コリアンをイメージして命名されました。Eclipse Risingは在日コリアン個人のリーダーシップを育み、在日の多様性を尊重し、日本や米国、さらに世界のマイノリティーと連帯して差別と闘う活動を展開しています。

連絡先:
Email: eclipserising@gmail.com
Blog: www.eclipserising.blogspot.com
Facebook!にもグループがあります。　

New Ninja movie by zainichi director

2009-10-29T12:11:00.000-07:00

from Japan Times:

Friday, Sept. 18, 2009

Ninja epic not all about action

By MARK SCHILLING
Staff Writer
Producers, both here and abroad, have been busy scouting film properties among the anime and manga of the 1960s and 1970s, from kiddie cartoon fluff such as "Yattaman" to the apocalyptic thriller "MW," created by manga maestro Osamu Tezuka.

Given the growing popularity of the originals around the world, the target audience is often not only nostalgic Japanese graybeards, but also young foreign fans.

Yoichi Sai's "Kamui Gaiden" would seem eminently exportable to these fans. Based on a classic manga by Sampei Shirato that ran in "Shukan Shonen Sunday" from 1965 to 1967 and then again in "Big Comic" from 1982 to 1987, "Kamui" has a hot-blooded ninja hero, played by the star du jour Kenichi Matsuyama, as well as action scenes galore, choreographed by Hong Kong-trained Kenji Tanigaki (see my June 12 profile at japantimes.co.jp).

Those expecting a fun two hours with campy chopsocky are in for a letdown, however. Shirato was a pioneering alternative-comics artist who injected "Kamui" with his own leftist politics, including a pointed critique of discrimination and inequality in Japanese society. Sai's screen version, with a script by Kankuro Kudo, is more on the entertaining than politicizing side, but it preserves the core of Shirato's dark, violent vision. In his Japan, outsiders are, not merely marginalized, but hunted and exterminated like vermin.

Sai is the right director for this story, if background and filmography are any criteria. A zainichi (ethnic) Korean, Sai has often examined the lives of minorities and social marginals in his films, from his 1993 comedy "Tsuki wa Dotchi Deteiru" ("All Under the Moon"), whose hero is a cynical zainichi cabby, to the prison comedy "Keimusho no Naka" ("Doing Time," 2002) and the zainichi family drama "Chi to Hone" ("Blood and Bones," 2004).

At the same time, Sai had not had much action experience prior to "Kamui" and the shoot, which began in April 2007 and wrapped in September 2008, was long and grueling. That effort is visible on the screen — and not always in a good way, with airborne battles that look a bit labored instead of lyrical, as though, after weeks of 20-hour days, everyone was running on fumes.

But energetic and inspired action moves are also on abundant display, many of which are supplied by Matsuyama as the inhumanly agile ninja hero. Also, compared with Kazuaki Kiriya's "Goemon," a recent period actioner with the weightless look and feel of a video game, "Kamui" packs far more of a visceral punch — the positive side of all that heavy breathing.

Kamui (Matsuyama) is raised by a ninja clan and becomes one of its strongest fighters, but feeling hemmed in by the clan's rules and yearning for freedom, he decides to leave it. The story proper begins after he has taken this fateful step and is being relentlessly hunted by his former fellow ninja as a traitor and renegade. After eliminating his pursuers one by one, he meets and befriends Hanbei (Kaoru Kobayashi), a fisherman whose rank in the social pecking order is almost as low as his own.

Hanbei, however, ends up being chased himself by the minions of Gumbei (Koichi Sato), a local lord who is convinced that his favorite horse has been killed by Hanbei. Kamui helps him escape and, in return, Hanbei takes him to the remote island village he calls home. There Kamui finds Sugaru (Koyuki), Hanbei's wife — and a runaway ninja like himself. Thinking Kamui has been sent to assassinate her, she tries to kill him and, even after he pleads his innocence of evil intentions, is slow to trust him. But Hanbei's teenage daughter Sayaka (Suzuka Ohgo) takes an immediate liking to this dashing stranger.

Then the island receives a visitor — a ship on the hunt for the killer sharks that infest the surrounding waters. The captain, Fudo (Hideaki Ito), is playing a double game, however, and pulls Kamui into it. Soon our hero is faced with a choice that could cost him his life.

"Kamui" thoroughly demythologizes the ninja of fabled secrecy and cunning, showing them as a closed society of absolute conformity and amoral duplicity. Quitting a ninja clan is like quitting the old Sicilian Mafia — you leave as a corpse or not at all. Also, once you are a clan renegade, you can never rest easy, since friends and lovers can suddenly reveal themselves as deadly enemies. Whom can you trust? The short answer, Kamui finds, is "no one."

This may sound grim, but Matsuyama, who made his breakthrough as the sweets-addicted detective L of the "Death Note" films, is an eye-riveting combination of feral grace and intensity as Kamui. Also, while flashing those wary-animal eyes, he gives the character a humanly likable and tongue-in-cheek comic side. Meanwhile, Hideaki Ito, so stiff as the pure-hearted skin-diver hero of the "Umizaru" films, delivers an exuberant stemwinder of a performance as Fudo, all toothy, menacing grins and hammy, vicious energy. One reference point is Gregory Peck as Ahab in "Moby Dick" (for the shared beards and borderline nutso affects). Another are the charmingly ruthless villains that were a specialty of postwar star Tetsuro Tanba.

A sequel is implied at the end, which is only right, since Shirato's manga epic has hundreds more pages yet to film. But if Sai wants to take a break who could blame him? Fortunately for us, he got "Kamui" in the can before he and everyone around him collapsed of exhaustion.

Missile Defense on the Peace Island

2009-10-26T07:27:00.001-07:00

Missile Defense on the Peace Island

I just got home from 3-weeks in South Korea. It was quite a trip.
During my last two days I was visiting Jeju Island (about 500 miles south of the Korean peninsula) which is recognized by UNESCO as being a place of world class environmental quality and one that hosts many endangered forms of corals and other sea life. To say it is a jewel would be an understatement.

Soon after arriving our delegation of five activists, which included some real notables in the South Korean movement for democracy and peace, we were brought to the offices of Jeju Solidarity for Participatory Self-Government & Environmental Preservation. There we were shown a most impressive 50-minute video about the struggle on the island to stop plans by the federal government to build a Navy base on the south side of the island. Jeju calls itself the "Island of Peace" and activists wonder how a Navy base, hosting Aegis destroyers outfitted with missile defense systems, could be considered a compatible use.

Three villages have been approached to host the base and the first two turned the government down. By the time the third village was asked the government had decided to offer bribes of $100,000 each to the respected sea diving women who are known for searching the bottom of the ocean for sea urchins which they then sell to make a living. The third village, Gangjung, is predominately opposed to the base but the bribes created enough of a division to cause the government to say they will build the base in this village.

Gangjung, like the rest of Jeju island, is most famous for growing tangerines in this tropical climate. Tourism is the second industry as people come from around the world to experience the wonders of the lush volcanic island. A long walking trail takes people across the island and recently the government has removed Gangjung from the walking trail maps so they can limit the numbers of people who would see the active signs of resistance amidst the splendid beauty of the rocky seaside where the proposed Navy base is to be built.

When I asked activists who the government said they needed the base to protect against the answer was followed by much laughter: pirates they told me. The truth is that the US will be jointly using the Navy base with the South Korean Navy as a port to deploy Aegis ships that will be used to help surround the coast of China and to give the US the capability to choke off China's ability to import 80% of its oil through the Malaka Straight that flows right off Jeju Island.

The villagers of Gangjung do not see the Navy base as offering them much. Their local economy is thriving from the tangerine groves that are everywhere in the town and from the abundant numbers of tourists who come there to experience the seaside. In fact the Navy base would take significant portions of their village land now used for farming and would destroy the environment. The rocky shoreline would be covered with cement and the proposed base pier would extend to the edge of where the fresh water Gangjung River flows into the sea.

Kang, Dong Kyun, the mayor of the village and a key protest leader, told me that 70% of the drinking water for the community comes from the river and would surely be negatively impacted by the Navy base. Take away our water, he said, and you destroy the town.

Throughout the village you see many tall bamboo poles with yellow flags on them that say, "We desperately oppose the Naval base." But no one in the government wants to listen to them. They have tried all the usual steps of meeting with government officials, organizing protests, and they recently tried to recall their provincial governor in a special election but did not turn out a high enough percentage of voters to make the vote official.

They've now set up a camp along the rocky coastline where some are now holding a round-the-clock vigil. More tents will be erected in the coming weeks as construction is set to begin at the end of this year. When I spoke to the village people in their community center last night there were key activists from other parts of South Korea who are trying to help.

I was deeply touched by the good people of Jeju. Mayor Kang told me, "This is the land of our ancestors that we must pass on to the future generations. This village must not be used as a 'strategic' base but must be preserved. The government is dividing people against each other which is the worst thing of all. The long lasting people will ultimately win."

I told the mayor and the village people that because the proposed base would have Aegis destroyers homeported there, with missile defense systems on-board, that the Global Network must do all it can to help them with their valiant effort. Just as we did what we could to support the people in the Czech Republic last year in their effort to resist US missile defense deployments, we must do the same for Jeju Island. That is what solidarity means.

Who will speak for the fish, the coral, the rocks, or the water I asked? We must all do it.

It has been a remarkable journey to South Korea and one that I am proud to have taken. I have met splendid people who are doing their best to resist the destruction of their democracy by corporate interests, the destruction of their farming lands, and the expansion of militarism. There are many fights going on in the world that we all have to be concerned about, more than we can all handle I know, but every now and then one comes along that represents all of these important struggles in one bundle. That is Jeju Island.

I hope that once we get the Jeju Island video, expected in a few weeks, that all of you will get a copy from us and show it in your community. I promise that everyone who watches it will be moved beyond tears about the beauty and the wonder of the island of peace. We must help bring the struggle on Jeju Island to the world.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog)

Eclipse Rising - Zainichi Koreans in the United States

Justice stalled in brutal death of deportee Autopsy suggests immigration officers used excessive force in restraining Ghanaian

Japan Multicultural Relief Fund members visited NPO Woori Hakkyo

ER endorses letter to Obama urging US Food Aid to North Korea

Volunteers Needed: Support Survivors of the Recent Disasters in Japan from the Bay Area!!

decompression op.1

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors host a Fundraiser for the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

Interfaith Vigil & Relief for Victims in 3.13.11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Support Marginalized Communities and Families in Japan!!

Meet Eclipse Rising at UC Riverside this weekend!

Panel on contemporary ethnic minorities in Japan

ER member, Miho Kim, selected to be a candleholder for Day of Remembrance

The Fight against KORUS FTA, Fight for Humanity An Interview with Joo-Ho Lee

土井敏邦(どい としくに) さんの「ガザ攻撃」2月4日 金曜日 午後7時より

Blackness in Flux in Okinawa: Making Race in Between Racial "States of Being"

Eclipse Rising demonstrates against the KorUS FTA

Lunar New Year Festival 2011 - Year of the Rabbit

Foreign victims of domestic violence band together

MOCHI-TSUKI 2010

Buraku Youth Today: Findings from Recent Questionnaire Survey by BLL

Standoff Amplifies Angst Over Pro-Pyongyang Schools in Japan

Eclipse Rising’s Statement for a Peace Treaty in Korea and Civil Rights for Zainichi Koreans

DPRK Photo Journal

Sign-making party for Protest against any further military action in Korea

Action Alert – ONLINE DEMONSTRATION for Peace in Korea - Sun 11/28 and Wed 12/1

"homeland" politics wrongly used by the japanese government

6th Grader in Japan Commits Suicide - Bullied because Mother is Filipina

Korean island women carry on diving tradition

Korean island women carry on diving tradition

For generations, South Korea's haenyeo have been free-diving for shellfish, a way of life that has brought power to the women of the sea. Though the tradition is fading, a few young women are still learning the lessons of the deep.

New Blog on our Blog Roll!

EXPERIENCE KOREAN HARVEST FESTIVAL, CHUSEOK!

Zainichi ‘US-Japan Solidarity Tour 2010’ Report Back & Zainichi-Brunch

Pictures of our Events

Zainichi Korean panel at a Critical Ethnic Studies Conference

Eclipse Rising interviewed on the radip

Eclipse Rising interviewed on the radip

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

Bend it like Jong - Japan

7.11 Kyoto/Shiga Assembly: Demanding Free Tuition for Korean Schools!

Kazuyuki Izutsu on Rightist Rage

Justice for Equal Educational Rights for Korean School Students!

Resilience by Tammy Chu

Japan, S. Korea researchers at odds over forced labor, 'comfort women'

North Korea's star at the World Cup

Zainichi player, Jong Tae Se in North Korean Soccer team

ER member Haruki's on the Bay Area Reporter!

Queer graduate receives special honor at SF Stateby Matthew S. Bajkom.bajko@ebar.com

Jong Tae-Se, 3rd gen. Zainichi soccer player leads DPRK!

NHK Documentary on Mixed Roots Youth in Japan! CLICK HERE!

Japan's colonial rule of Korea not fact, says city education board head

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

Zainichis Rising - a blog post about ER's fundraising event!

Zainichis Rising - a blog post about ER's fundraising event!

Documentary - "Zainichi"

Hyphenating Japan

Korean forced laborers lose redress appeal

Eclipse Rising Community Gathering

Haruki & Yongna's Eclipse Rising TV vol.1

Japan apologizes for colonial rule of Korea

solidarity message

End the Korean War

Eclipse Rising W. Coast Roadshow & Solidarity Tour

A Jainichi Scholar Scrutinizes the ‘Unresolved Past of Korea and Japan’

New Ninja movie by zainichi director

Missile Defense on the Peace Island

土井敏邦(どいとしくに)　さんの「ガザ攻撃」2月4日金曜日午後7時より

Queer graduate receives special honor at SF State
by Matthew S. Bajko
m.bajko@ebar.com