As we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the "liberation" this month, we also know that the liberation is yet to come as imperial system that had put Koreans and other colonial subjects in the position of "second class citizen" during the colonial occupation is still alive and well in Japan. The third-, forth- and fifth-generation Koreans born and raised in Japan -whose condition is a byproduct of not only Japanese colonization, but also unending Korean War, the Cold War, and thriving War on Terror -struggle to gain recognition and equal access to resources as full members of the society to this day.
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August 10, 2015
"A legacy of WWII, Korean residents test nation’s ability to accommodate non-Japanese"
by Eric Johnston
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/08/10/national/history/legacy-wwii-korean-residents-test-nations-ability-accommodate-non-japanese/#.VctpZLf9H81
Underneath the train tracks of JR Tsuruhashi Station, it’s easy to wonder if you’re still in Japan. The smell of
yakiniku barbecue
permeates the air and the narrow warrens of shops offer all sorts of
Korean foods, including the ever-popular kimchi pickles. Advertising
posters are often in Korean, and the shop owners chat with each other in
the same language.
The Tsuruhashi district is known nationwide and,
increasingly, abroad as one of Japan’s main Korean neighborhoods. It’s
part of Osaka’s Ikuno Ward, home to over 24,000 resident Koreans. That’s
nearly 20 percent of the total ward population, the highest ratio of
resident Koreans nationwide.
There are no official statistics on the total number of
ethnic Koreans with Japanese nationality, but about 430,000 Koreans live
in Japan as foreign nationals with permanent residency. Of these, about
370,000 hold special permanent residency, as they or their forebears
came to Japan between 1910 and 1952 as colonial subjects.
The Kansai region, particularly Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo
prefectures, are home to the largest numbers of Korean residents. Today,
the Tsuruhashi “Korea Town” area attracts locals and tourists from
around Japan and the world. It has a reputation as being one of the few
remaining traditional working-class neighborhoods of “old” Osaka, the
one that hasn’t yet been transformed into a cold, gleaming, upscale
cultural desert of Italian and French fashion house chains and fast food
restaurants — as one finds in many other parts of the country.
“Tsuruhashi and the Ikuno Ward area are one of many areas
settled by Koreans during Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
They did a lot of dredge work on the rivers and canals in the area, and
were mostly laborers,” said Kwak Jin Woong, head of the Tsuruhashi-based
Korea NGO Center.
The occupation lasted from 1910 to 1945. During that time,
millions of Koreans, who were legally Japanese citizens even though they
faced discrimination, came to Japan to work. After 1940, many were
forcibly brought to do the toughest, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs.
By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, there were about 2 million
Koreans living in the country.
The U.S.-led Allied Occupation offered them the chance to
return to their homeland and about 1.4 million did. The roughly 650,000
who remained did so for a variety of reasons. Some had worked in Japan
before 1940, had children born in Japan, and felt more Japanese than
Korean. Some had prospered, or believed their economic prospects would
be better if they remained in Japan. And some simply were too poor to
return to Korea.
Occupation officials were not quite sure what to do with the
large population of Koreans who remained. Officially, the American
government wanted them to be treated as either “liberated nationals” or
“enemy nationals.” But in May 1947, the Japanese government passed the
Alien Registration Law, which declared that Koreans and Taiwanese were
now to be considered foreigners. As such, they were required to carry
identification papers.
When the Occupation ended in 1952 with the signing of the
San Francisco Treaty, which returned sovereignty to Japan, the
government formally revoked the citizenship of Koreans in Japan. The
peninsula had been divided into North and South Korea and the Korean War
was raging.
An estimated 90 percent of Koreans in Japan changed their
nationality to South Korean, and two civic groups were formed: Mindan,
which supported South Korea, and Chongryon, which supported North Korea.
About a decade later, in 1965, Japan and South Korea
normalized relations, but those who supported North Korea were
effectively stateless.
In 1959 the North Korean government launched an effort to
draw Koreans from Japan by promising them the rewards of a socialist
paradise. By 1967, Chongryon had gotten about 89,000 Koreans in Japan to
resettle in the North
, according to Soo Im Lee, a
professor at Ryukoku University, in her 2012 report “Diversity of
Zainichi Koreans and Their Ties to Japan and Korea.” Zainichi is a name
for Japan-based ethnic Koreans.
Those that remained in Japan suffered discrimination in public life and from society, and they remained second-class citizens.
However, the Japanese government exploited the existence of
Mindan and Chongryon, using their executives as quiet back-channel
liaisons between Japanese politicians and the governments of South and
North Korea.
It would be revealed in the late 1990s that some Chongryon members also served as spies for North Korea in Japan.
In stories that sounded like the plots for fiction
thrillers, Korean residents in Japan who had become disillusioned with
North Korea wrote books about how they had received coded instructions
over short-wave radio and made secret trips to Pyongyang to deliver
suitcases full of cash.
They also mapped parts of the coast on the Sea of Japan,
where North Korean agents sought isolated beaches on which to land at
night by rubber boat. The mappers would include information about the
nearest train station for agents to continue their journey.
By the end of the Cold War in Europe in the early 1990s,
much had changed. In 1991, the Japan-South Korea Foreign Exchange
Memorandum gave pro-South and pro-North Korean residents in Japan the
status of special permanent residents. Previously, only those with South
Korean nationality had enjoyed special permanent residency status.
At the same time, the past 20 or 30 years had seen some
positive changes. The requirement that Korean residents be fingerprinted
was abolished. Some municipalities now allow Korean residents to vote
on certain local ordinances. More public-sector jobs are open to Korean
residents than in the past.
However, problems remain. Kwak noted that many major
Japanese firms remain reluctant to hire Korean residents, and that
discrimination in jobs and housing hasn’t disappeared. More worrisome
for many Korean residents is the rise of anti-Korean hate groups like
Zaitokukai, which verbally abuse Koreans and make death threats toward
them.
A survey by the Organization of Korean Youth in Japan
between June 2013 and March 2014 of 200 Korean residents under 30 years
old showed that about a third of them avoided discussing Japan-Korean
history in public and on the Internet. In an August 2014 report to the
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,
the Lawyers Association of Zainichi Koreans (LAZAK) called on the U.N.
to pressure the Japanese government to prohibit the use of public
facilities by groups promoting or inciting racial discrimination.
Just this month, the Diet has also begun to debate a bill
that not only Korean residents in Japan but human rights activists have
long sought: a law that would ban public racial discrimination at the
national and local level. Kim Chang Ho, a lawyer with LAZAK who helped
prepare last year’s report to the U.N., called the bill a major step
forward to secure the rights of foreigners, but noted it faces tough
political hurdles.
“The bill was jointly submitted by the Democratic Party of
Japan, the Social Democratic Party and independent Upper House member
Keiko Itokazu. But the Liberal Democratic Party has taken a very
cautious stance, so it’s unclear as to whether . . . the bill will be
enacted in the current session,” Kim said.
If enacted, the bill would benefit not only Koreans but all
foreign residents in the future. It is part of the larger effort by
Japan to come to grips with not only its historical legacy in Korea in
the pre- and postwar period but the more general question of how
Japanese in the future want to live with foreigners in their midst.
“For many years, Japan’s policy toward resident foreigners
was one of ‘assimilation,’ which basically meant ‘make them the same as
Japanese.’ Now, it’s evolving toward ‘integration,’ which allows for
more differences,” Kwak said. “Hopefully, though, we’ll see the day when
the official policy and social mindset in Japan is one of ‘coexistence’
with Korean residents and foreigners, which will respect and protect
differences.”
