Please click the link below for details. Website is in Japanese
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign
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?”
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?”
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Bend it like Jong - Japan
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!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
7.11 Kyoto/Shiga Assembly: Demanding Free Tuition for Korean Schools!
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.
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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?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Kazuyuki Izutsu on Rightist Rage
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.
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.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Justice for Equal Educational Rights for Korean School Students!
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/viewThis Sunday, July 11, Eclipse Rising members Haruki and Kyung Hee are fortunate enough to attend the Kyoto Assembly! We will report after the event!!!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Resilience by Tammy Chu
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
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Japan, S. Korea researchers at odds over forced labor, 'comfort women'
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
North Korea's star at the World Cup
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.
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