The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 14 | Issue 15 | Number 11 | Article ID 4922 | Aug 01, 2016

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The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichiand beyond

Sonia Ryang

In the Beginning

Horrified by the sight of the lynching of AfricanAmericans, Abel Meeropol wrote a poem calledStrange Fruit that is perhaps better known inthe form of the 1939 rendition by Billie Holiday.African Americans continued to suffer lynchingfor many decades after the American CivilWar—mostly in the South, but also in manyother states all around the country. Being blackmeant risking being turned into a strange fruithanging from a poplar tree, giving off the smellof burnt flesh as it swung in the southernbreeze. Being black meant close proximity todeath—by accidentally stumbling into a whiteperson, by not adhering to prescribedetiquette, by not addressing a white personproperly, or simply by making eye contact witha white woman. In a word, lynching could anddid take place at the whim of certain whitepeople. Hardly any explanation, let alonejustification, was required. In some states, alynching would be announced in advance in thelocal newspaper so that white people couldgather and enjoy a picnic while watching it.Men and women, old and young, and boys andgirls participated, eager and curious witnessesto the spectacle of black bodies being beaten,severed, carved, sliced, burned, and mutilated.Today, half a century after the passing of theCivil Rights Act, great numbers of blackAmericans die at the hands of police or while inpolice custody, reminding us that to erase abelief and the system that it is founded upontakes more than the declaration of a new law.

Being Korean in Japan during the twentiethcentury carried a similar peril for a long time.Being a chōsenjin (Korean) meant to be in a

situation more likely to incur harassment,blame, penalty, or punishment. Perhaps theworst moment for anyone to be a Korean inJapan came in 1923 in the aftermath of theGreat Kanto Earthquake, when pogrom-likehunt for Koreans spread across the scorchedlands of Tokyo and its vicinity. Like the blackbodies hanging from those southern trees,Korean bodies were on display withouteyeballs, without nose, without breasts, theirthighs and arms covered with lacerations andwith very little skin surface intact (Ryang2007). The end of Japan’s colonialism twenty-two years later did not of course end the perilof being Korean overnight. Just as the shiftfrom public lynching to racial profiling, policebrutality, and the disproportionately largenumber of incarcerations in the case of AfricanAmericans attests, for Koreans, too, the form ofperil shifted as they were incorporated into amore formal, administrative apparatus.

In contrast with 1923, what Koreans faced in1945 after thirty-six years of colonial rule wasabject poverty, disenfranchisement, andtremendous uncertainty. One factordifferentiating their case from that of AfricanAmericans persecuted in twentieth-centuryAmerica was that their former colonizer, theJapanese, had been defeated by the AlliedForces and rendered powerless—as powerlessas their former colonial subjects—makingpossible Korean independence. The majority ofKoreans who were in Japan at the end of WorldWar II did not view themselves as Japanese andconsidered it natural that they be repatriated toKorea now that Korea was an independentnation. And indeed, about 1.4 million Koreansvoluntarily returned to Korea, following Japan's

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defeat in 1945, leaving around 600,000 inJapan (Morita 1996; Ryang 1997: Ch.3). Forthose who remained, the peril of beingchōsenjin continued, although, unlike the caseof African Americans, their similar skin colorwith the majority of Japanese would create adifferent dynamic of discrimination anddisenfranchisement. As well, especially for theJapan-born generations, their ability to speakJapanese as their native language (without anyaccent) would enhance their opportunities evengiven obvious l imitat ions. But , suchopportunities would only emerge after ageneration or two of living in Japan. FollowingWorld War II , Koreans in Japan foundthemselves in a peculiarly fragile situation ofbeing chōsenjin in the former colonialmetropolis, their former masters defeated andforced to give up their colonial possessions andto rebuild their nation from the ruins of war.The story of Chongryun, or the GeneralAssociation of Korean Residents in Japan,begins here.

Genesis

In the early months of the Allied occupation ofJapan, at a time when authorities were moreopen to liberal reform, wartime politicalprisoners were released, including severalprominent Korean members of the JapaneseCommunist Party who quickly rose toleadership positions among the Koreansremaining in Japan.

The vast majority of Koreans in Japan hadmoved or been transferred to Japan from thesouthern provinces of the Korean peninsuladuring the colonial period. Like most othernewly-liberated peoples in the post-WWIIperiod, Koreans in Japan were ferventlynationalistic, with even those self-identifying ascommunist more nationalist than Marxist. Thus,when the left-leaning Korean expatriateorganization, known in Japanese as Zainichichōsenjin renmei, in Korean as Jaeil joseoninyeonmaeng and in English as the League of

Koreans in Japan (hereafter referred to usingthe abbreviated Korean name Joryeon), wasformed in October of 1945, the hegemonicethos was nationalism. The same applied to theanti-communist alternative for Koreans inJapan, Mindan which was formed shortly afterthe establishment of Joryeon.

Although the majority of Koreans in postwarJapan originated from the south of the Koreanpeninsula, most Koreans supported Joryeonwhich was more sympathetic toward thenorthern half of the peninsula under Sovietoccupation, while Mindan supported the southunder American military occupation. This was areflection of the widespread belief that thepartition of the Korean peninsula that hadtaken place in 1945 would be merelytemporary. Moreover, Joryeon’s sympathytoward northern Korea was not exclusive; bylocating its Korea office in Seoul, Joryeonpreserved ties with the original homes of itsmembers from the southern half of thepeninsula.

This is an important point: Joryeon was not aNorth Korean organization and its goal was toenable all Koreans in Japan to repatriate to awould-be unified Korea. For, in the eyes ofKoreans in Japan, the separate occupation ofKorea’s northern and southern halvesrespectively by the Soviets and the Americanswould be transient—indeed, why should it notbe, since Korea had not played any hostile rolein WWII against the Allied powers and Koreanswho were conscripted and participated in thewar did so as Japanese subjects (Fujitani2011)? Moreover, the American MilitaryGovernment occupying the southern half of thepeninsula was deemed less favorable toKoreans than the Soviet one occupying theNorth. The primary reason for this was that theAmericans relied heavily upon former colonialelements, while the Soviets entered Korea withthe agenda of building a newly independentnation on a new footing, shedding the legacy ofthe colonial past. The Soviets brought to the

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fore indigenous Korean leaders of diversepersuasions, including Christians and anti-Japanese guerrilla veterans including Kim IlSung (Armstrong 2003).

Divide

Once separate regimes began operating in eachhalf of the Korean peninsula in 1948, however,the situation became immensely unstable, withdeepening mutual animosity and numerousborder skirmishes and confrontations along theline of partition, the thirty-eighth parallel(Cumings 1981). In Japan, reflecting rapidlyrising Cold War tensions in East Asia and therise of the People’s Republic of China, theAllied occupation took a radical anti-communistturn. One result was that expatriate Koreanpolitics began exhibiting a clearer division withpro-North and pro-South orientationsrespectively sustained by Joryeon and Mindan.

Among Koreans in Japan Joryeon commandedbroader and stronger mass appeal thanMindan. The operations of the former groupencompassed a comprehensive assortment ofactivities, including community organization,propaganda, and, perhaps most importantly,Korean language instruction. Starting fromOctober 1945, Joryeon built makeshift Koreanschools in key urban areas where Koreans wereconcentrated. Behind this undertaking lay theassumption that all Koreans would soon berepatriated to Korea.

When the Occupation administration andJapanese authorities decided in 1948 that allschools would have to be accredited by theJapanese education authorities and that thesole language of instruction should beJapanese, mass protests erupted in the Koreanenclaves. Koreans in Kobe, in western Japan,protested, insisting that they should beexempted from the ruling on the basis that theywere former colonial subjects. When thisprotest was spurned, Koreans and Japanesesupporters occupied the offices of the Mayor ofKobe and carried out street demonstrations in

April 1948. The protests culminated in theshooting of unarmed demonstrators by militarypolice, with one youth shot to death, a girl leftto die from a head injury, and a Korean teacherdying while in custody in jail (Inokuchi 2000;Koshiro 1999). It is notable that this was theonly incident in which martial law was declaredduring the entire seven-year Allied occupationo f J a p a n . E v e n t h e w a v e s o f m a s sdemonstrations led by the Japanese CommunistParty did not result in a declaration of martiallaw. One can discern in this state of affairs thelingering figure of the chōsenjin as a grouplacking basic rights in postwar Japan, a figurethat posited more threat to American andJapanese authorities than did the Japanese left.

Purge

The legal status of the Koreans remaining inJapan remained ambiguous throughout theAllied occupation, often referred to asdaisangokujin or third-country nationals,meaning neither Japanese nor Allied nationals.Koreans assumed that the end of Japanesecolonialism meant that they had acquired civiland legal rights, including the right to engagein education in Korean language, culture, andhistory. The reality, however, was that Koreansin Japan were as stateless, if not more so, thanthey had been during the colonial period.Under the Allied occupation administration,they were, collectively, an unwanted legacy ofthe colonial era, initially deemed an anomalouspopulation by the Allied powers as well as bythe Japanese government , and latertroublemakers that Japan would eventually riditself of. Either way, chōsenjin were deemedunruly, and inferior to the Japanese.

Reflecting rapidly rising Cold War tensions inEast Asia, with the rise of the People’s Republicof China, Koreans in Japan increasingly came tobe seen as a ser ious prob lem, suchapprehension peaking when Joryeon beganpublicly supporting the North Korean regimeafter its foundation in September 1948. In

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1949, the Allied occupation and the Japanesegovernment forcefully suppressed Joryeon. Itsoffices were shut down, properties confiscated,assets frozen, and arrest warrants issued for itsleaders. This resulted in a strange twist in thehistory of the expatriate nationalist movementas remaining Joryeon activists joined theJapanese Communist Party, which already hada sizeable Korean contingent. Interestingly, theauthorities allowed the JCP to remain intact,despite its conspicuous and often violentopposition to the Japanese government.

The situation underwent another drasticchange after the Korean War broke out in1950. In 1952, as truce talks continuedbetween North Korea and U.N. forces, theNorth Korean foreign ministry issued a numberof communiqués stating that its governmentwas prepared to enter into a normal diplomaticrelationship with Japan. Under thesecircumstances, Korean members withdrewfrom the JCP en masse and formed their ownunified underground organization with theabbreviated Korean name Minjeon.

When the Korean War truce agreement wassigned in 1953, Minjeon began a prolongedperiod of self-examination. Two years later, inMay 1955, the forces organized under Minjeonre-emerged as the General Association ofKorean Residents in Japan (known in Korean asJaeilbon joseonin chongryeonhaphwe or by itsabbreviation Chongryun and in Japanese asZainihon chōsenjin sōrengōkai). It soonembraced a diverse assortment of politicalorganizations, including a youth league, awomen’s union, a writers’ association, anartists’ association, a scientists’ association, anathletic union, merchants’ and entrepreneurs’associations, and the Young Pioneers.Chongryun soon came to command masssupport among Koreans in Japan for whomNorth Korea still had greater sway than SouthKorea, which remained under militarydictatorship. It issued its own publications, notonly in Korean, but also in many foreign

languages, including Japanese, English,Spanish, and French and operated numerousbusiness and cultural organizations includingits own art troupes, soccer team, nationwidecredit union, and film production company.Chongryun’s organizational network of localheadquarters (sub-divided into lower branchesand cells) extended to every prefecture fromHokkaido to Okinawa and was under thedirection of Chongryun’s central headquartersin Tokyo.

Coexistence

The most formidable element of Chongryun’sorganization was its independent schoolsystem, and its ability to sustain itself wasclosely related to its new identity as anorganization representing North Koreaoverseas. In order to avoid the violentsuppression suffered by its predecessor at thehands of the authorities in 1948/49, Chongryundeclared itself to be an entity existing outsidedomestic Japanese politics. While Chongryunexisted within Japanese jurisdiction, it defineditself as an organization that would notinterfere in Japan’s internal politics. Thus, itscriticism of the Japanese government wasconfined to issues involving Japan’s foreignpolicy toward North Korea. Chongryun did notdemand Japanese citizenship or residentialrights for Koreans as former colonialimmigrants. Nor did it call for postcolonialreparations. Rather, its political focus was thepromotion of North Korea’s position andsecuring mass support for the regime amongKoreans in Japan.

Against the backdrop of what was later namedthe 1955 system, in which the long-rulingLiberal Democratic Party reached a structuralcompromise with other parties including theJCP and Japan Socialist Party thereby makingpossible a certain peaceful co-existence, thedeclaration of non-interference in Japan’sdomestic affairs by Chongryun created asituation that suited the Japanese authorities.

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This unusual situation – contrasting sharplywith the situation in other Asian nations suchas China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Korea, inwhich irreconcilable differences between leftand right resulted in massive bloodshed –benefited Chongryun too. By presenting itselfas an entity that was not demanding civil rightsfor Koreans in Japan or postcolonialreparations, Chongryun secured a semi-autonomous space for itself within Japan,enabling it to create an organizationrepresenting overseas nationals of NorthKorea.

Legally speaking, there was no such categoryas “overseas national of North Korea living inJapan.” Japan and North Korea did not havediplomatic relations (a situation that remainstrue today), so there is no legal structureallowing citizens of each country to reside inthe other’s territory. Rather, this identity waspolitically and ideologically coded andreinforced by Chongryun through itspropaganda, its public discourse, and, aboveall, its school system. This became a realidentity for Koreans joining Chongryun, whoproudly identified themselves with North Koreaand re fused to accept the labe l o f amarginalized minority in Japan. The Japaneseauthorities, while closely monitoring andcollecting intelligence on Chongryun, alsomaintained the stance that would becharacterized as laissez-faire, so long asChongryun did not exceed the boundaries.

Growth

International trends in the 1950s and 1960swere on Chongryun’s side: North Korea, incontrast to the US-backed South Korea, lookedalmost heroic in singlehandedly resisting theU.N. invasion during the Korean War. (This wasnot, of course, true, as the Chinese People’sArmy and the Soviet Union provided crucialsupport.) Its economy demonstrated stronggrowth, while South Korea struggled withmassive poverty under the constraints of a

severe military dictatorship which monopolizedpostcolonial settlement funds from Japan andredistributed them among the large jaebeolenterprises, leaving the vast majority of peoplein deplorable conditions. The continued heavyUS military presence emphatically reinforcedthe image of South Korea as an Americanpuppet, while North Korea had rid itself ofSoviet and other foreign forces (includingChinese Korean War volunteers) by themid-1950s. North Korea began to be seen as aleading force among the non-aligned and newlyindependent nations of Asia and Africa. Thepopularity and rapid growth of Chongryun’sschool system needs to be seen against thisbackdrop of North Korea’s increasinginternational standing.

A man in a Japanese ultra-nationalistdemonstration holds sign stating: "Put thetrash in the trash can; Send Koreans backto the Korean peninsula." Photo takenfrom a blog site Tadashii rekishi ninshiki,kokueki jūshi no gaikō, kakubusō nojitsugen [The Correct Understanding ofHistory, the National Interest-FirstDiplomacy, the Materialization of NuclearArmament]. Source

At its peak, Chongryun had more than 160schools all over Japan from Hokkaido to

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Kyushu, including rural prefectures on theJapan Sea side of the archipelago, itsinstitutions offering education at all levels,from kindergarten right up to graduateprograms, and all-Korean instruction, exceptfor Japanese and English classes. Subjects thatwere included in fourth through twelfth gradesincluded “The revolutionary history of MarshalKim Il Sung” and “Revolutionary activities ofGreat Leader Kim Il Sung.” Aside frompromoting Kim Il Sung’s authority andauthenticity as leader of all Koreans,Chongryun’s education was patriotic andnationalistic in tone, emphasizing the sufferingthat Koreans had endured during the colonialera, the pride that Koreans needed to feel withrespect to their national traditions, and thesuperiority of Korean culture.

North Korea took notice, sending funds in 1956to assist with the construction of the campus ofChongryun’s new university. Further fundsfollowed in 1957, marked for educationalsubsidies. Until the early 1970s, Chongryunheld frequent public meetings at which thankswould be offered for funds that had been sentby North Korea, primarily to assist withChongryun’s educational activities.

The reason that such things were possible inJapan—not hidden in some obscure enclave, butopenly and all over the country withoutrepeating the 1948-style suppression under themartial law of Korean schools—was closelyrelated to Chongryun’s strategic self-definition.By declaring itself to be a non-Japanese, NorthKorean organization, and by adopting thestrategy of registering its schools as non-academic institutions (miscellaneous schools)or kakushu gakkō, thereby placing thembeyond the purview of the Japanese educationauthorities, Chongryun was able to legitimizeits identity to the massive population offollowers that it acquired in the early daysfollowing its foundation. In exchange,Chongryun high school graduates’ educationwas not recognized as a GED equivalent. By

explicitly de-emphasizing demands for civilrights within Japan, Chongryun was able toredirect the passion of its followers away fromtheir disenfranchised civil status in Japan andtoward the utopic (and positive) future ofrejoining a reunified Korea, the genuinehomeland of all Koreans remaining in Japan.

What is remarkable is not so much the fact thatChongryun’s strategy succeeded in certainways, but the fact that hundreds of thousandsof Koreans in Japan welcomed it, supported it,and eagerly enrolled their children in itsschools—not only in order to raise theirchildren as part of the future generation of areunified nation, but also to shed themselves ofthe colonial past. For, even until well into the1970s, the official ideal of the reunification ofKorea and the eventual return of all Koreans totheir unified motherland was alive and wellamong Chongryun Koreans. This should bes e e n n o t a s s i m p l y t h e p r o d u c t o findoctrination, but rather more as part of aprocess of self-decolonization that Koreans inJapan opted for.

A gl impse at a Chongryun schoolclassroom. Female students wear schooluniforms made of modified Koreantraditional dress for women. Photo source:Roland Buerk, "North Koreans in JapanRemain Loyal to Pyongyang," BBCAsia/Pacific, October 28, 2010. Source

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I would also associate the broad andenthusiastic mass support that Chongryunenjoyed from its inception in 1955 through untilthe late 1970s with the primordial sense ofbeing a chōsenjin, and the perils associatedwith such an identity, that every Korean inJapan experienced. For those too young to haveexperienced such a sense first-hand, theirparents’ recollections of their poverty-strickenlives and lack of access to education, alongwith the raw anger and violence that theydisplayed to them domestically, would havesufficed. As recently as the early 1970s,Koreans in Japan continued to live tough anddeprived lives. They were poor—much poorerthan the Japanese poor. The typical educationlevel of a member of the Korean population wasextremely low, and they suffered from highunemployment (Ryang 2000; Ryang 2008). Thecombination of a lack of a steady livelihood,poor living conditions, unsanitary housing(often with limited access to running water andsewerage with shared communal outhouses),confined many Koreans to a slum-likeexistence. Even though the colonial era wasover, deprived of their civil rights and with nostable residential status, Koreans hovered onthe edges of Japanese society.

Repatriation

The repatriation of Koreans from Japan toNorth Korea, starting in December 1959 andlasting until the end of the 1970s, should alsobe understood as having taken place during aperiod when many Koreans in Japan weresuffering from the effects of poverty anddeprivation of all kinds. While Chongryun’spropaganda, often involving exaggeratedclaims relating to the benefits that wereaccessible in North Korea, played a large partin motivating Koreans in Japan to make thejourney to North Korea, the peril of being achōsenjin in Japan in the late 1950s and early1960s was an ontological condition thatKoreans lived every day and that made theoption of being repatriated to North Korea

emerge as a viable alternative.

From December 1959 through the 1970s, over90,000 Koreans were repatriated to NorthKorea (Morris-Suzuki 2007). This was ananomaly, given that the majority of thereturnees had originated from the southernprovinces of the Korean Peninsula. But theNorth Korean promise of steady employmentfor parents, education for children, and betterhousing—all relayed by Chongryun in anemphatic propaganda campaign— lookedextremely attractive to the poor Koreans.Besides, the assumption still remained that allKoreans would eventually be repatriated to thereunified motherland. While repatriating toNorth Korea meant a one-way journey with nopossibility of return to Japan, many chose thisoption.

It needs to be underscored that the legalresidential status of Koreans in Japan was leftunresolved until 1965, twenty years after theend of WWII, which meant that Koreans wererequired to renew their limbo-like status astemporary foreign residents annually in personat local municipal offices including mandatoryfinger-printing—the rule applying to allKoreans above the age fourteen. Upon thenormalization of diplomatic relations betweenJapan and South Korea in 1965, permanentresident status became available—but only tothose who opted to become South Koreannationals.

The 1960s were a decade deeply fraught withCold War tensions in Korea, leading thousandsof Chongryun followers to refuse to becomeSouth Korean nationals on the basis of theiropposition to the brutal military dictatorshipthen in power in South Korea. This meant thatthe majority of Koreans in Japan remainedstateless, as Chongryun commanded a farbroader support base than did the pro-SouthKorean Mindan.

This situation created a perfect storm forChongryun to fan the zeal for repatriation to

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North Korea among Koreans in the 1960s andwell into the 1970s. During those decades,Chongryun solidified its already-strong tieswith North Korea, the strength of theconnection exemplified in the lavish list of giftspresented to Kim Il Sung on his sixtiethbirthday in 1972—Mangyeongbong, therepatriation ship, left the Japanese port ofNiigata filled with an inventory that includeditems as diverse as Mercedes Benzes andbushels of premium-grade Koshihikari rice.

As stated earlier, the zeal shown toward NorthKorea by Koreans in Japan in those days was achild born from perilous memories of a colonialpast, as well as the abject living conditions andcomplete disenfranchisement from Japanesecivic life that Koreans in Japan were subjectedto during the 1950s and well into the 1970s. Itwas not until the 1980s that this pattern beganto change, which was the product of severalmajor historical factors: changes in theresidential status of Koreans in Japan, changesin the South Korean political and economicenvironments, and Chongryun’s own internalstrife reflecting a demographic shift in theKorean population in Japan from first-generation colonial immigrants to Japan-borngenerations.

Erosion

At the very beginning of the 1980s, Japanratified the International Covenants for HumanRights and joined the UN Refugee Convention.These moves made it necessary for theJapanese government to amend its previoushuman rights breaches, including thedeprivation of residential stability for thoseKoreans in Japan who had migrated to Japanduring the colonial period (and theirdescendants) and who had not acquired SouthKorean nationality after the 1965 normalizationof relations between Japan and South Korea.The majority of Chongryun Koreans belongedto this category. Starting from 1981, they wereable to gain permanent resident status, which

was accompanied with the ability to obtain re-entry permits to Japan.

This opened the possibility of ChongryunKoreans paying visits to North Korea and beingreunited with their repatriated families. Eventhough diplomatic relations did not (and still donot) exist between North Korea and Japan,Chongryun Koreans became able to visit NorthKorea on humanitarian grounds for the purposeof visiting family members, including those thathad been repatriated. Thus, during the 1980s,the ferry service between Niigata, Japan, andWonsan, North Korea, came to be redefined asa family reunion route, replacing the one-wayjourney of repatriation. After experiencing aninitial wave of emotion during their reunions,Chongryun visitors to North Korea realized thattheir repatriated families and friends were notliving in a “paradise on earth,” as North Koreanpropaganda insisted. Instead, the lack ofmaterial means as well as the surveillancefactor that Koreans in Japan were not familiarwith made them increasingly uncomfortable.Although witnessing the material shortagesmotivated Koreans in Japan to send overseasremittances to North Korea, Chongryunfollowers came to feel not only deceived, butdeeply concerned over the fate of theirrelatives, especially those that they had beenunable to locate, growing increasinglysuspicious of North Korea and Chongryun. WithNorth Korean education funds long sincestopped, many Chongryun Koreans came to therealization that North Korea was a land ofmaterial shortage and political repression.

Changes in the residential status of ChongryunKoreans in Japan came in stages. During the1980s, every effort was made to intimidateChongryun Koreans who applied for re-entrypermits to visit North Korea and return toJapan. Upon their departure and arrival, theirpaperwork was subjected to excessive scrutiny,while it was not uncommon to hear theuniformed immigration officer utter words suchas "chōsenjin no kuse ni," equivalent of: "Who

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do you think you are, you f-ing Korean." Eachtime that they applied for a re-entry permit,they were required to submit tangansho, apersonal petition in writing using the politeform begging the Japanese Foreign Minister forthe permit.

In the 1990s, reflecting the improvement inrelations between Japan and South Koreafollowing the end of the decades-long militarydictatorship, Koreans in Japan were given amore comprehensive form of permanentresidence on the basis of their colonial past,this time without a distinction being madebetween those who had South Koreannationality and those who did not. Moreover,demographic shifts in the Korean population inJapan meant that, now, the majority had beenborn in Japan and, therefore, calling NorthKorea or South Korea their motherland wasbasically a political act rather than a visceral oraffective one. As such, sections of the Koreanpopulation in Japan, including Chongryunaffiliates, began acquiring permanent residencein Japan; before long, they would acquire SouthKorean nationality.

The 1990s was a decade characterized bysteady attrition in Chongryun membership andsupport for North Korea among Koreans inJapan on one hand and an equally steadyincrease in the number of Koreans in Japanacquiring South Korean nationality. The lattertrend did not, however, signify a transfer ofsupport from North to South Korea. Now thatSouth Korea was governed by a civilian head ofstate, the act of acquiring South Koreannationality primarily seemed a matter ofconvenience for the purpose of securing apassport rather than continuing to rely only ona re-entry permit. For, by then, the majorityKoreans in Japan had been born in Japan andhad no intention of repatriating either to theNorth or the South. Reflecting the sea changein Europe and e l sewhere a f t e r thedisintegration of the Soviet Union and thecollapse of Communism, Koreans in Japan, too,

entered a phase in which politics alone nolonger ignited passions. While the lack ofeconomic data relating to the Koreanpopulation in Japan makes it difficult tostatistically demonstrate, by the end of thetwentieth century Koreans were no longerliving below the poverty line. Their livelihoodshad improved, and they were enjoying thebenefits of higher education levels andimproved residential status in Japan, albeitslowly (Kim 2003).

Kim Il Sung died in July 1994, to be quicklyreplaced as North Korean leader by his son,Kim Jong Il. This dynastic succession became asubstantial—and for many insurmountable—hurdle for Chongryun’s rank and file. Manydistanced themselves from Chongryun andremoved their children from its schools, placingthem in Japanese schools, despite feelingextremely ambivalent about this.

Chongryun’s difficulties were compounded by alooming distrust in its leadership. Ever since itsfoundation, Han Deok-su had presided as itschairman. By the early 1990s, he and his familywere living a life of luxury, occupying a massivemansion in a choice Tokyo neighborhood thatwas staffed with domestic workers, bodyguards, personal assistants, academic tutors forthe children, chefs, and chauffeurs. Hisyounger daughters had a limousine transportthem between the residence and their school.Chongryun employees were paid very modestsalaries, barely getting by with their rentalpayments, making Han Deok-su’s lifestyle standout as being excessively indulgent. Given thatChongryun’s predominant sources of revenuewere membership dues, school tuition fees, andcharitable gifts from supportive Koreans,critical voices became louder. The rise of suchvoices reflected the inevitable demographicshift inside the Korean population in Japan. Toolder generation Koreans, Han represented thetough past which he survived to eventuallybuild this formidable organization. For thisgeneration, it was tolerable that he received

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special treatment. Younger, Japan-bornChongryun Koreans did not share suchsentiments. In their more pragmatic approachto the future, it was inevitable that suchtreatment of the chairman’s family be seen as agreat d i sserv ice to the un i ty o f theorganization, resulting in further attrition anddistancing.

A Chongryun high school Korean danceclub. Korean dance clubs are one of themost popular among female middle schooland high school students of Chongryunschools in Japan. Photo credit: EmilTruszkowski , "What I Learnt at a N.Korean School Festival at Japan," July 21,2015, NKNews.Source

Zainichi

By the end of the 1990s, Chongryun Koreanswere no longer passionate about North Korea.Rather than pursuing the end of diaspora andan eventual return to the homeland, younger,Japan-born Koreans sought an alternativefuture in Japan. Even though some continuedplacing their children in Chongryun schools,their primary reason for doing so shifted fromthe ideological commitment of their parents’generation to the lack of an acceptablealternative in the Japanese public educationsystem, where the homogeneity of thepopulation was fundamentally assumed and thebasic historical sources of ire for Koreans, suchas Japan’s colonial rule of Korea, was not

taught properly, if at all. After hauntingKoreans in Japan for nearly half a century, thefigure of the chōsenjin was being replaced bythat of the zainichi, a Japanese term denoting“being in Japan” or “existing in Japan.”Whereas in the past, the chōsenjin representedthe face of the colonial—undernourished,speaking Japanese with a Korean accent,walking with strangely broad gait, andcharacterized by the colonial authorities asignorant, insolent, and quick to resort to a fistfight, the zainichi had a different face—a nativespeaker of Japanese with a high level ofeducation, perhaps enjoying minor commercialsuccess, aware of his or her ethnic origin, yetdignified, assimilated into the Japanese culturalenvironment, while also knowing how todistinguish him or herself from the rest ofJapanese society. The zainichi constituted adifferent form of existence from the chōsenjin.While the latter evoked ontological peril, theformer denoted an alternative future in Japan,while building upon complex reflections onpostcolonial life (Lie 2008).

For those Japan-born zainichi Koreans whowere raised according to the tenets ofChongryun and who had lent it their support,the decades of the 1980s through 1990s provedto be crucial in marking Chongryun’s definitivefall from its status as the object of masssupport. The gradual replacement of the figureof the chōsenjin with that of the zainichi costChongryun its political identity or raison d’être.Japanese society was changing, and the ethnicdiscrimination and sense of disenfranchisementthat the chōsenjin had formerly experienced asparts of everyday life in Japan were becomingless pronounced. The figure of the zainichiwould appear in public discourse, in a vastarray of publications, including prize-winningnovels, and even in popular films (Iwabuchi2000; Kura ish i 2008; Ryang 2008b:Introduction). Whereas the chōsenjin wasabominable and grotesque, in the publicimagery of Japan, in the new millennium thezainichi appeared in a form comparable to that

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of a minor star, a cool alternative to simplybeing Japanese. In other words, the emergenceof the zainichi stripped the political edge fromKorean ident i ty in Japan, somewhatnormalizing or at least politically neutralizingit, thereby accentuating the prospect forKoreans born in Japan to be part of Japan,albeit in a special framework. This contrastedwith Chongryun’s self-exile from Japan and itsidentification as a North Korean organization.In this new setting, the home of the zainichiwas Japan, not North Korea or South Korea.

It must also be borne in mind that the very lastdecade of the twentieth century was a time ofunprecedented optimism, albeit short-lived. Itwas the decade in which the Japanese leftshowed its final demonstration of integrity. In1995, Japan Socialist Party Prime Minister,Murayama Tomiichi, issued a statement ofapology for the sexual slavery of women fromthe Korean peninsula by the Japanese Armyduring World War II. On the local level, therewas a hope for zainichi Koreans to gain widercivic enfranchisement and solidarity with theirJapanese neighbors without having tocompromise their identity. Some municipalitiesvoluntarily abolished nationality hurdles forpublic service positions, for example, in orderto accommodate the broader participation ofzainichi Koreans in civic affairs (Chung 2003).

It was also around this time that the post-1988liberalization of overseas travel for SouthKorean citizens began to have a real impact onzainichi life. The so-called newcomers beganreaching ethnic enclaves that had hitherto beenleft without any tangible contact with ancestralhomes in South Korea. Accompanied by a shiftin the South Korean political environment fromone of the most oppress ive mi l i tarydictatorships in the world to a civiliangovernment, the influx of South Koreanmigrants as employees, co-workers, andbusiness partners recast the divisive Cold War-inspired stance that had been rife amongstKoreans in Japan.

Yet another factor, which became evident inthe early years of the twenty-first century, wasthe steady increase in the number of Koreansbeing naturalized as Japanese citizens. Thenumber would reach an average of 10,000 to15,000 per year during the early 2000s,indicating a fundamental shift in the area ofpostcolonial identity formation that involvedpractical considerations, such as gaining fullcitizenship, even though that citizenship wasthat of Japan, the former colonizer (Ryang2010).

The trend toward gaining Japanese citizenshipwas a challenge to Chongryun’s program,which insisted that the homeland of Koreans inJapan was North Korea, that Korea would beeventually be reunified through the initiative ofNorth Korea, and that all Koreans in Japanwould repatriate to the reunified Korea toregain the national independence that had beentaken away originally by Japanese colonialismand then through the partition of the peninsulathat was the product of US imperialism and thecooperation of its South Korean lackeys. Thisplatform implicitly relied on the continuingperil of being a chōsenjin.

The replacement of the chōsenjin with thezainichi, and perhaps, eventually, the zainichias a Japanese citizen, was not a welcomedevelopment for Chongryun. Yet, the changinginstitutional and socio-cultural structure ofdisenfranchisement among Koreans that is nowseen in the availability of a relativelypermanent residence status has steered thedynamic for Koreans in Japan, especially thoseborn in Japan, the numerical majority, awayfrom homeland politics and toward anexploration of the possibilities for improvingtheir livelihoods in Japan and contributing toreshaping Japanese politics. Chongryun lackedthe proclivity, let alone the capacity, to respondto these changes, causing the organization tosteadily lose legitimacy in the eyes of zainichiKoreans.

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Death or Rebirth

The crisis in the legitimacy of Chongryun asshown above was, through yet another ironicturn of events, temporarily mitigated, as itwere, by the robust rise of the rightwing andgrowth in all-out hostility toward North Koreain Japan in the early twenty-first century,trampling the short-lived optimism of themid-1990s. In 2001, during a historic firstmeeting between Kim Jong Il and the thenJapanese Prime Minister, Koizumi Junichiro, itwas revealed that North Korean agents hadkidnapped innocent Japanese citizens fromJapan’s shores during the 1970s and 1980s.This revelation led to an all-out assault onChongryun. Its assets were thoroughly audited,resulting in numerous charges of tax evasionand other illegal acts, subsidies that its schoolshad received from local governments (not fromthe central government) were suspended, themedia began carpet-bombing Chongryun withhostile questions, and right-wing and ultra-nationalist organizations launched campaignsof intimidation and harassment againstChongryun schools, offices, and individuals,including women and children--not entirelyunlike the repression of 1948 and 1949.

The 23rd congress of Chongryun, May2014. The Large screen on the left frontintroduces the message sent from KimJong Un. The venue is filled with gray-haired participants, reflecting the youngergeneration's distancing from theorganization. Photo source: Korean

Friendship Association, the official websiteof the Democratic People's Republic ofKorea. Source

Unprecedented audit assaults were wagedagainst Chongryun offices, credit unions,businesses, and businesses operated byindividuals that were sympathetic withChongryun, revealing irregularities in taxpayments, resulting in exorbitant fines, courtcases, and arrests (e.g. “Tokyo Police Raid NKorea HQ” 2001). During the last decade and ahalf, Chongryun has lost a substantial portionof its assets including its now-defunct creditunion, dozens of schools, press buildings,printing facilities, and most symbolically, itsheadquarters building in Tokyo. Funds fromNorth Korea have long since dried up, while thedonor basis has crumbled, with manyentrepreneurs and business people expressingdisenchantment.

The Japanese authorities raid ChongryunHeadquarters in Tokyo. The tall whitebuilding in the left rear is the ChongryunHeadquarters building. The building hassince been sold to a non-Korean entity,although Chongryun is said to be rentingit. Photo source: "Decision on ChongryonSite Delayed," Japan Times October 22,2013. Source

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What I meant by the ironic turn above is thatthe more persecutions Chongryun receives, thestronger Koreans unite around it. And indeed,the rage against Japanese ultra-nationalismwhich normally comes hand in hand with thestate-staged audits would remind Koreans inJapan of the reality of disenfranchisement theycontinue to face. But, unlike the 1950s or eventhe 1990s, today, the threat is less acute:chōsenjin, the figure of anger and indignation,does not emerge in response to th ispersecution. Rather, zainichi strategize andmake calculated moves in response to thesituation. So, even though, temporarily andsporadically, Koreans are made to feel thenecessity for action and representation ofthemselves as a group, the reaction is no longerthe earlier reflex of uniting around Chongryun.How is it possible, then, that Chongryuncontinues to exist, albeit with a greatly reducednumber of schools, each with far fewerstudents and teachers, with its press officesnow operating in rented suites on a muchsmaller scale, and with very few Koreans evenconcerned with North Korea, save for thewelfare of family members who wererepatriated. Despite public denunciation ofChongryun by the Japanese media and right-wing organizations, despite repeated raids ofits offices throughout Japan by Japanesetaxation authorities, and despite visiblydiminished support from Koreans in Japan,reduced, shrunk, disgraced, and weakened,Chongryun still exists.

Or, perhaps, it is developing a new relationshipwith North Korea in these post-2001 conditionsof adversity. This can be glimpsed in the May2015 arrest and indictment of Chongryunemployees, including a son of currentChongryun chairman, Mr. Ho Jong-man. Acharge was laid against four people, includingMr. Ho’s son, for illegally importing three tonsof mushrooms from North Korea and using fakelabels to suggest that they were imported fromChina: Japan had placed an embargo on NorthKorean trade since 2006 as punishment for the

earlier kidnappings of Japanese citizensmentioned above (“Chongryon Chief’s SonArrested over Suspected N. Korea MushroomImports” 2015). These mushrooms, known asmatsutake in Japanese, are a delicacy in Japanand yield substantial profits. Pyongyang joinedChongryun in denouncing the Japaneseauthorities, a show of solidarity of a kind thathad been absent for the past decade. It appearsthat Chongryun and North Korea have enteredinto a business partnership in illegallyimporting and selling North Korean products inJapan and possibly elsewhere. This form ofrelationship does not require a mass supportbase. Taken altogether, the current situation issomething of a prolonged death for Chongryunas a mass organization of Korean expatriates inJapan. The open hostility expressed towardChongryun functions something like aventilator for the final breaths of this oncerobust organization. Its schools still exist, theircurricula still including some North Koreanmaterial. Its performing arts company stillexists, its repertoire having become lessrevolutionary and more traditional, so to speak.Its publications still exist, although thepredominant language is now Japanese notKorean. Its public rallies still take place, albeitw i t h n o t a b l y t h i n n i n g l e v e l s o fparticipation—down from the thousands ofparticipants of all age groups in its glory daysto a few hundred seniors today. The skeleton ofthe utopia of Korean reunification coupled withthe peril of being a chōsenjin clings to the finalstretch of its life.

Ultimately, the chōsenjin has died its deaththrough history—it was not through lynching ormob violence, but via historical shifts andstructural readjustments that Koreans in Japanhave been subjected. The chōsenjin came to bereplaced by the zainichi, bringing about asteady weakening in Chongryun’s mass basisand pretty much taking the life out of it.Koreans in Japan today, regardless of their pastsupport for or opposition to Chongryun, facetheir future in Japan and the question of how to

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l ive—and die—in Japan. Many wil l benaturalized as Japanese citizens. Many willremain South Korean overseas nationals. Butnot many will call themselves overseasnationals of the Democratic People’s Republicof Korea. As such, zainichi, too, is faced withthe possibility of being replaced with that of thenew figure, the naturalized Japanese citizenswith Korean heritage. Whether such a figure isable to retain his/her heritage with prideremains to be seen: the answer will hinge onthe possibility of multicultural tolerance andacceptance on the part of Japanese society,resilience of Koreans in Japan, and takentogether, possibility of coexistence of differentpeoples that were once unequivocally superiorand inferior, the master and the subjugated.Edward Said wrote in the late 1970s:

The life of an Arab Palestinian in the West,particularly in America, is disheartening. Thereexists here an almost unanimous consensusthat politically he does not exist, and when it isallowed that he does, it is either as a nuisanceor as an Oriental. (Said 1978: 27)

Would a Japanese who was formerly a Koreanbe able to have a life that is not dishearteningin the twenty-first century Japan? The questionwarrants future inquiry. For, 40 years later, Isuspect, the life of an Arab Palestinian in theUS has gotten much more precarious despite,or precisely because of, globalization. Ischōsenjin, and then, zainichi, able to be rebornas some other figure that can find a meaningfulplace in Japan? And can this figure still claimtraces of Korea that was once colonized anderased? Or, indeed, will this figure still beinterested in such an endeavor?

Acknowledgements

More than twenty years ago, I embarked on myresearch on Chongryun and the Koreancommunity surrounding this organization. Ithank Mark Selden and Asia-Pacific Journal forgiving me the opportunity to revisit this topic.Much has changed since I first started this

research in the early 1990s. I realize inretrospect that those were the last days forChongryun's strength. Today, only ruinsremain.

Note on romanization

In this article, I use the spelling of Chongryundenoting the General Association of KoreanResidents in Japan. While its current Englishname is spelled Chongryon, it long usedChongryun. There exists no state-officiatedRomanization/transliteration system in NorthKorea, and measured against the current SouthKorean transliteration system, neither iscorrect.

Related article

John Lie, The Nation (and the Family) ThatFailed: The Past and Future of North Koreansin Japan

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Sonia Ryang is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian Studies in Rice University and theDirector of the Chao Center for Asian Studies. Her recent publications include: Eating Koreanin America: Gastronomic Ethnography of Authenticity (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) andReading North Korea: An Ethnological Inquiry (Harvard University Press, 2012). She iscurrently conducting anthropological research on North Korea with funding from the NationalScience Foundation. She is an Asia-Pacific Journal editor. A complete bio and a list of herworks are available on the website of the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Rice University.