Profile: a Zainichi Korean Family

Legacies of the Division (of the Korean Peninsula) on Zainichi Koreans

Background

When Japanese colonization of Korea (1910-1945) ended due to Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War, there were some two million Koreans living in Japan, whose subsequent hope for repatriation were promptly shattered by the two mutually antagonistic ideologies, communism and capitalism, clashing on their homeland, eventually escalating into the Korean War (1950-) and the country’s division. The despair over the short-lived national liberation compounded by the shortage of return ships and hastily-imposed prohibitions of capital flight imposed by Japan consequently led some 600,000 Koreans -- an overwhelming majority of whom hailed, as peasants and laborers, from historically impoverished rural regions in Korea’s south and southwest, such as Kyongsang Provinces, Chŏlla Provinces and Jeju Island (Ryang 1997) -- to be tragically stuck on their former colonial master’s soil, coming to be known as “‘Zainichi’ Koreans” (“zai” means “residing in” and “nichi'' means “Japan”). Today, nine out of ten descendants of these “liberated” Koreans as well as Korean War-era refugees are born in Japan, faced with the same choice as their predecessors: either remain Korean (legally non-Japanese and therefore excluded from civic, political, and public life) or apply for naturalization. The hyphenated identities such as Korean-Japanese or Japanese-Korean are not readily available upon naturalization, however, as Japan has not officially recognized  the existence of any ethnic minority groups in Japan.

Perpetual Foreigners --- Literally

After Japan restored its sovereignty as the San Francisco Treaty went into effect in 1952, Koreans remaining inside Japan proper became unilaterally stripped of their Japanese nationality (that Japan had unilaterally imposed upon them) without being given the option to choose between Korean or Japanese nationality, which would have reflected an international norm at the time. Japanese nationality law does not recognize birthright citizenship, and for over the next three decades, allowed only a patrilineal transfer of Japanese nationality to his off-springs (though the law was amended in 1985, allowing matrilineal transfer as well). If neither parent is Japanese, the child, though born in Japan, cannot inherit Japanese nationality. This is why many Zainichi born and raised in Japan after four or more generations still remain foreigners in Japan. One may apply to be naturalized; however, the process is deeply rooted in the colonial assimilation policy and remains controversial and unpopular among many Zainichi Koreans.

It is unfortunately impossible to know how many of each types of Zainichi exist in Japan today, because, in spite of repeated recommendations by the United Nations bodies, the Japanese government does not collect data on different racial and ethnic identifications, only differentiating nationals and non-nationals. 

Biography of Jungsook Kim (Yoshino Miwa) b. 1977

Jungsook was born in a working class, ethnically mixed neighborhood in the City of Kobe, Japan, to second-generation Zainichi Korean parents. Her paternal grandfather migrated from rural Kyongsang Province and eventually settled in Kobe, raising seven children. Jungsook’s father is the sixth child out of six boys and one girl. As per traditional Confucian cultural norms at the time, her paternal grandfather occupied a prominent patriarchal position in the extended family. As a small child, Jungsook, the eldest of four children, recalls making annual visits to the home of her eldest paternal uncle, where the family’s traditional Chuseok holiday ceremonies were hosted. While rarely exposed to Korean culture, language or customs, none of which her Japan-born parents knew well, Jungsook felt the highly choreographed ritual “mysterious and foreign.” She thinks she was the only student at her school (that she knew of, anyway) to go by her ‘real’ Korean name, while many other Zainichi went by their Japanese aliases, sometimes secretly confiding in her, “I’m actually Zainichi Korean, too...but don’t tell anybody.” 

Zainichi Women: Never Back Down, Always Fight Back! 

Zainichi women have historically been the hard-working breadwinners in Japan: among the first generation, most of whom lacked formal education, much less literacy in either Korean or Japanese, informal, manual labor and other means of self-employment dominated the economic activities landscape. However, due to decades-long discrimination in employment, even for Zainichi men and women with top college diplomas and other coveted skills in the subsequent generation, respectable life-long careers in corporations and other private institutions remained largely a pipe dream. As a result, many Zainichi in the private sector are self-employed or involved with a family business, while some others enter into sectors farthest related to national security matters, such as sports and entertainment -- where nationality requirement and institutional conformity and loyalty, are considered to be less relevant.

“Strong Women: I Thought That was Normal, but Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Need Rights and Equality.”

“I just did not know any different back then. Women were always the strongest in our family and other Zainichi families. Domestic violence was commonplace, but women would always rise above and even at times fight back.” It was only when she began to see the larger world beyond her own, since college, that she realized deep imbalances of power were not only systemic, but constituted violence, and violation of rights. “Our women never back down, you know,” she laughs. As she became more politically aware, her understanding of the concept of rights of Zainichi Koreans, and rights of women, deepened hand in hand.  

Following her divorce, Jungsook  became a single mom with a two-year-old son. When he entered third grade, she became painfully aware of the precarious nature of being a Zainichi single mother. At the municipal office, in applying for the compulsory ‘residence card’ for her son, she learned that she could not be listed as his legal guardian because “I was not Japanese.” So, the default was to list his own name as his own head of household. “Still such a young boy, he was listed all by himself, on this legal paper that defined him as not having parents! Officially, he was all alone on this earth. I could not bear it.” Obtaining Japanese nationality was the only way to get herself listed on his legal document as his parent at that time. Working up a smile, she says, “well, becoming Japanese now enables me to vote for the first time!” Her passion for civic and political participation and women’s rights has led to a new career as a staffer for a progressive female member of the Reiwa Shinsengumi Party in Parliament. “If I were still Zainichi, I would not have been able to use my voice to influence Japan’s politics, and advance the human rights of Zainichi people’s human rights, including overcoming the division that separates my family to this day.”

Pro-Ethnic and National Pride = Pro-North?

In the post-war years, many Zainichi, including Jungsooks’ family, sympathized more with North Korea (even though they originated from provinces in the South), because they saw Kim Il-sung, a legendary guerilla fighter against the Japanese aggressors and founding father of North Korea, as a national hero, as opposed to U.S.-educated Syngman Rhee, South Korea’s inaugural president installed in an illegal election under U.S. occupation.

Jungsook’s Eldest Uncle: Pro-North Communist, or Preserving the Family’s Korean Tradition?

Jungsook’s eldest uncle, while uneducated due to poverty, inherited the patriarch’s duty in executing family traditions and values. Modeling values of national allegiance and ethnic pride, he enrolled all three of his daughters in Korean schools in Japan in spite of extremely high tuition (Japan excludes Korean schools from receiving prohibits public education subsidies, to by which all other ethnic and Japanese schools are entitledfunded). He was also an active local leader of Chongryon, which has historically been supportive of Korean ethnic education in Japan. 

Zainichi Koreans “Return” to the North

In 1955, the pro-U.S. and anti-Communist Japanese government started discussing how to reduce, if not eliminate, these Koreans and Zainichi in general (Lee, 2010). Exploiting the North’s immense popularity among the Zainichi, a massive repatriation program was carried out by Red Cross organizations of North Korea and Japan between 1959 and 1984. In its 25 years in operation, a total of 92,749 Koreans (and 6,600 Japanese nationals, mostly female spouses) were “repatriated” to North Korea under the “humanitarian” arrangement (Morris-Suzuki, 2007). Many families eagerly sent off their loved ones as the ship sailed to the homeland known as “Paradise on Earth” -- free of racism and poverty, where they could walk with their heads held high -- in hopes that remaining families would follow suit, or prosper as a trans-national family, traversing national borders.

Today,  as we all know, they could not have been more wrong. 

The Story of Jungsook’s Uncle Who ‘Returned’ to the North 

“I knew one of my dad’s older brothers had ‘disappeared,’ but I just knew to not bring it up. So I don’t know the full details.” According to her relatives: when he, Kyeong-hong, repatriated to the North in 1962, no one expected that this separation would be permanent. As it turned out, life was hard in ‘the promised land.’ Jungsook’s family began to receive letters from him asking for money so one of her other uncles would take up the regular task of wiring and shipping him boxes of household items. Jungsook heard at one point the family suspected the money was not actually reaching him. Yet, concerned for his well-being, they continued to send what they could. 

As fate would have it, the North-South division and Cold War tensions have obliterated not only a chance at this dream of reuniting with the motherland, but also between parents and child, and siblings, seemingly forever. The only way to achieve their family reunion, they say, is to end the ongoing Korean War for good.

Zainichi Korean Political Prisoners in the South

In context of the heightened Cold War tensions, the ruthless military dictatorships under Park Chung Hee (1963-1979) and Chun Doo Hwan (1980-1988) left no stone unturned in their relentless quest for potentially dangerous leftist elements lurking in the midst. During this period, hundreds of Zainichi students from Japan were in South Korea, studying, visiting relatives and dealing businesses, and they were regularly suspected simply of by being from Japan. By 1988, more than 200 Zainichi Koreans had been arrested on mostly dubious, unfounded allegations of spying for North Korea in violation of the National Security Act. Under illegal custody at KCIA, they were tortured into making false confessions, and many were sentenced to death and life in prison.

The Story of Jungsook’s Other Uncle Imprisoned in the South 

Jungsook not only lost an uncle to the North, she lost her other uncle, Tae-hong, to the South. Second-generation Zainichi and Japanese monolingual speaker, Tae-hong taught himself Korean language for a whole year after high school to enroll in Yonsei University in Seoul, one of the most prestigious universities in Korea. In his senior year, an unspecified security agency of Korea suddenly came and detained Tae-hong in spite of lacking legal arrest powers. 

After news of Tae-hong’s imprisonment reached Jungsook’s family, her mother led the charge in assembling a team of defense lawyers and supporters, and making frequent trips to visit him in prison in Korea. Tae-hong was released on parole in 1996, having served fifteen years as a political prisoner.

In 20152012, nearly two decades after his release and return back to Japan, Tae-hong sued the South Korean government demanding a retrial. The following year, the Candlelight Revolution led to a precipitous fall from grace for the-then South Korean President Park Geun-hye, arrested and jailed for corruption and other charges. When pro-democracy candidate Moon Jae-in took the President’s post in 2017, the The retrial took place in 2016 with the spectacular backdrop of the Candlelight Revolution that led to a precipitous fall from grace for the-then South Korean President Park Geun-hye.  Following her arrest and conviction for corruption and other charges., the pro-democracy human rights lawyer Jae-in Moon won the presidency in a landslide. Under his administration, Tae-hong was cleared exonerating him of all of his alleged crimes and issuing received an official apology and monetary compensation from the government.

But others were not so lucky. In the Cold War-afflicted Peninsula, some Zainichi nearly lost their lives and were impaired permanently as a result of KCIA’s unlawful detention. Some lost their parents while imprisoned. Tae-hong insists that the Cold War victimization has not subsided for the Zainichi people whose families have literally been torn apart, so soon after their previous generations had to undergo tragic family separation and displacement due to Japan’s exploitative colonial policies. 

​All of the Zainichi Korean political prisoners were later released thanks to the pro-democracy movement in South Korea and support from their families and friends from Japan as well as the international community (Ino 2019). However, though finally free, they were now faced with a new problem. During the years of unlawful imprisonment, these Koreans from Japan had lost their permanent residence status in Japan (The Korea Times, Aug 20, 2018). Note that these Koreans, as Zainichi, were born and raised in Japan but denied Japanese nationality at birth due to Japan’s nationality law. Consequently, they were required to have a valid visa to enter and live in Japan.