Testing Tolerance
Fallout from North Korea's Nuclear Program Hits Minorities in Japan
Edagawa Chosen School students
perform traditional Korean dances
and songs. Photo by D Jae Lee.
TOKYO, Japan--Nestled among the towering half constructed apartment frames that fill the skies of the Koto-ku section of Tokyo leans a squat building with crumbling walls, propped up on one side by a tangled assortment of metal pipes. This is the Edagawa Chosen School, one of a number of ethnic Korean schools run by Chongryon – The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan – a group that also serves as North Korea’s unofficial embassy in Tokyo.
The building boom sweeping the neighborhood is echoed indoors, as small hands busily construct a tower of toy blocks inside the warm classroom. The elementary school children switch easily between Japanese and Korean, often pausing to debate the usage of words.
What these students may not be aware of is the ongoing struggle the 60-year-old school has had with the Japanese government. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has filed a $3.7 million lawsuit against the Edagawa School for use of the land since 1990, when the school's previous contract with the government ended. During negotiations in 2003, the government offered to sell the land for $11.9 million, an offer the school, with a student enrollment of 65, had no means to even consider.
The Korean community, the country’s largest minority group, believes the harsh stance taken by the city government reflects a growing atmosphere of xenophobia and discrimination in Japan.
The neighborhood’s concentration of Korean residents has its roots in another construction boom, this one in preparation for the 1940 Olympic Games. At that time close to a thousand ethnic Koreans were forcibly moved to what was then an isolated, barren dump site on the outskirts of the city. They were pushed out of more desirable neighborhoods to make room for the Olympics – which ended up being cancelled due to World War II.
"Not many people wanted to live here," recalls Song Hyon Jin, principal of the Edagawa School, remembering the early days of the community. Song goes on to describe how basic necessities, fresh produce and clean water could not be acquired because Japanese merchants refused to deliver to the area citing ‘the smell’ as the main reason. Back then, crucial utilities like water and sewage were nonexistent. Many crowded into windowless ramshackle houses made of flimsy materials. Song himself was born here, just two blocks from the main entrance of the school in a small house that still stands today.
Almost 70 years later the neighborhood has been swallowed up by the city. Property here is now worth a small fortune, and the pressure is back on for Korean residents, and the school that anchors their community, to move to less desirable areas.
After the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, many Koreans were brought to Tokyo as forced laborers. Others moved willingly in search of better lives. For many Korean migrants Japan was only a temporary home. "The first generation believed they would return to Korea," says Song.
After WWII, Zainichi – literally ‘Staying in Japan,’ the Japanese term for ethnic Koreans living in Japan - found themselves destitute and politically voiceless. following the war, Koreans were stripped of their Japanese nationality, and all the rights and protections that came with it.
Despite 60 years in existence, the school
is still under recognized as an academic
institution. Edagawa diplomas are seen as
equivalent to a beauty school or technical
certificate. Photo by D Jae Lee
Despite the fact that Korea was unified when most ethnic Koreans had arrived in Japan before the war, two organizations – The Mindan, aligned with South Korea, and the Chongryon, associated with North Korea – sprung to organize ethnic Koreans economically and politically.
Principal Song explains the choice of many Zainichi to identify themselves with North Korea: "When there was trouble, the South didn't help us with anything. The South Korean people threw away the Zainichi people.”
The Chongryon organization, on the other hand, built primary schools, secondary schools and a university in Japan through funds from North Korea.
Chongryon schools such as Edagawa are the answer for some families who disagree with a new education policy in Japan making the singing of the national anthem and showing respect for the flag compulsory for the first time. For many, especially ethnic Koreans, the anthem and the flag symbolize Japan's military past and a tragic history of Koreans being used as forced laborers and government sanctioned "comfort women"—forced prostitutes--after the annexation of Korea in 1910.
But students who attend the schools face their own set of problems. The schools are not officially sanctioned, and graduates often face difficulties entering Japanese universities or jobs that require a high school diploma. The schools do not receive government funding or tax deductions.
"The school is recognized as equivalent to a beautician or car mechanic school," says Principal Song.
These issues have contributed to decreasing enrollment in recent years, and Song has had trouble gathering funds to fix the school’s deteriorating physical structure. Large uneven fissures in the fluoride-green first floor, and disconcertingly on the second, are clearly visible. Two plastic buckets line the hallway to catch water from a leaky roof. In dire straits, the school has partitioned part of its exercise field to build a parking area to add income to its budget.
But the crumbling school building may be simply the most visible embodiment of strained relations between ethnic Korean and Japanese communities. According to Song Hesuk of The Association of Korean Human Rights in Japan, both verbal and physical abuse against ethnic Koreans have been on a steep rise in the country since the early 1990s. The frequency and severity of the incidents have kept pace with ominous developments a thousand miles across the Sea of Japan, starting with the North Korean government’s suspected construction of nuclear reactors in 1993 and re-ignited by periodic missile launch tests since 1998 that have unnerved the Japanese population.
Further inflaming the public, in 2002 the North Korean government admitted to abducting 13 Japanese nationals in the 1970s to acquire native Japanese speakers to teach their operatives. Much of the public uproar resulting from the admission was vented towards ethnic Koreans associated with Chongryon and to the schools it runs.
“More than 500 cases of harassment towards Koreans were reported by Korean schools after the revelation,” says Song.
Japanese media watchdogs have criticized the relentless coverage the networks put on North Korean issues as exacerbating hatred toward ethnic Koreans. On the country’s public broadcasting network, NHK, over 700 of some 2,000 stories on North Korea focused on the case of the abductees- an average of almost three stories a day.
Ominously, for the first time in post-war history the Japanese government has interfered with the editorial decisions of NHK. The Internal Affairs and Communications Minister, Yoshihide Suga, ordered the network to increase its coverage of North Korean abductions on its shortwave radio service. The government claims the order is to give hope to Japanese abductees who it believes are still held in North Korea.
North Korea's nuclear and missile tests last year have further poisoned the political atmosphere and many fear ethnic Koreans will again turn into targets.
"The students are in a very dangerous situation because the media tries to connect the bomb and North Korea with the school," says Principal Song. Students have been advised to stay in groups when going home after school to discourage attacks.
While ethnic Korean students may be the target of ethnic hatred, many identify as Japanese as well as Korean.
Kim Qwan-shee, a 12 year old who attends the Edagawa Chosen School, wakes up every morning at 7:30 and eats a typical Japanese breakfast of fermented soy beans and rice. He speaks only Korean at the school, comes home to watch Japanese cartoons and for dinner has Bim Bim Bap, a classic Korean dish consisting of rice, vegetables and red pepper paste. His parents were born in Japan and his grandparents also live in Tokyo. They speak mainly Japanese at home.
But when asked if he associates with Japanese people he responds, “I have no Japanese friends.”
He describes tension and scattered incidents of taunting from ethnic Japanese kids, but when asked how he responds when someone asks where he’s from, Kim replies confidently, “Nihonjin – I’m Japanese”.
Update:
On March 9th 2007 the Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reported that the Tokyo metropolitan government and the Edagawa School reached a settlement. The government ceded the land to the school for a reduced cost of 170 million yen ($1.43 million) on the condition that it be used strictly as a school site for at least 10 years.
© 2007 The Common Language Project
