Vol. 78/No. 15      April 21, 2014

Over the last decade the Japanese government has stepped up its attacks against the association along with measures aimed at isolating North Korea. Chongryon operates some 70 schools for Korean residents in Japan, a newspaper, banks and other businesses, and has been an important source of food, medicine and other aid for North Korea.

After annexing Korea and turning it into a colony in 1910, the Japanese government confiscated much of the country’s best agricultural land, forcing thousands of peasants off their farms. By 1938, according to an article in Saitama University Review, some 800,000 Koreans had moved to Japan in search of work.

Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were conscripted during World War II, forced to slave in Japanese factories and mines or serve as cannon fodder for imperial Japan. In addition, as many as 200,000 Korean women were forced into sex slavery as “comfort women” for Japanese troops throughout Asia. By 1945 there were 2 million Koreans in Japan.

When the war ended, most returned to Korea, but some 600,000 stayed in Japan. In 1950, Japan stripped the children of Japanese mothers and Korean fathers of citizenship. In 1955, Tokyo required all “foreigners” to be fingerprinted. Koreans were excluded from government jobs. Those who were allowed to become naturalized citizens were required to adopt Japanese names. Koreans in Japan were stateless until 1972, when they were granted permanent residency status.

In the 1970s and ’80s Korean residents led a movement against fingerprinting, for the right to use their Korean names and for an end to exclusion from many jobs. They won the right to keep their ethnic names in 1987 and an end to forced fingerprinting in 1993.

In 2006, after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test, the Japanese government banned most financial transactions with North Korea, clamped down on family remittances, and shut down a ferry service between the two countries, making it harder for Koreans in Japan to visit relatives and send aid. Tokyo has worked hand in hand with Washington in its moves to punish and isolate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Many financial institutions tied to Chongryon failed in 2012 and a district court ordered the auction of the group’s Tokyo headquarters to pay part of a $6 million debt. The federal government and seven regional governments ended subsidies to Chongryon schools in 2013, increasing financial pressure on the group.

When a Mongolian company that was willing to let Chongryon stay in the headquarters won the auction bid, the court rejected it, claiming that the paperwork submitted was inadequate. Instead the court awarded the headquarters to real estate developer Marunaka Holdings Co.

“Many Koreans in Japan suspect that the government’s Resolution and Collection Corporation and the court had a secret agreement to make sure Chongryon is evicted,” Kyung Hee Ha told the Militant by phone from San Diego April 9. “The bid the court accepted was half the market price of the building and below what the Mongolian company bid.”

“I was born and raised in Japan as a third generation zainichi [Korean resident of Japan],” said Ha, a graduate student at the University of San Diego. “My grandparents, who were peasants, migrated to Japan when their lands were taken away. I left Japan when I was a high school sophomore. I didn’t see a future there because of discrimination against Koreans.”

Even though Koreans now have the right to use their ethnic names, Ha said few do, “because we censor ourselves. We know what it’s like to be Korean in Japanese society.”

“The moves to evict the Chongryon should not be considered an independent incident,” she said, “but in a broader context of the U.S. empire and the Japanese empire.”

The move to deprive Chongryon of its headquarters is designed “to stamp out the movement of Koreans in Japan,” the Pyongyang-based Committee for Aiding Overseas Compatriots of Korea said in a March 28 statement.

Meanwhile, Tokyo continues to take steps to loosen restrictions on the use of its military imposed as a result of Japan’s defeat by Washington in World War II. On April 1, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted a ban on the export of weapons that had been in place since the late 1960s.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home