Reimagining the Homeland: Zainichi Koreans’ Transnational Longing for North Korea

Abstract

This paper explores the changing relationship of diaspora to the homeland. In particular, this article focuses on the changing relationship of pro-North Korea, Zainichi Koreans (Koreans in Japan) towards North Korea. Many Koreans in Japan continue to identify with North Korea, but the nature of this relationship has changed, due to shifting generational attitudes towards both the host society and North Korea. A dance recital I witnessed in an ethnic Korean high school in Japan exemplifies these changes. I suggest that the symbols highlighted within the recital articulate a particular form of political-ethnic identity that is characterised by a long distance nationalism, but without the desire to return to the homeland. Based on a year of ethnographic fieldwork with members of the pro-North Korea organisation, Ch'ongryŏn, this paper explores how diasporic groups construct, negotiate, and reproduce identity in relation to nation states and transnational processes.

Keywords:

• Diaspora
• Identity
• Affective Transnational Longing
• Zainichi Korean
• North Korea
• Japan

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank my interlocutors for their invaluable help with my research, especially my hosts during the school open days. Further thanks go to Im Kohong for his help during fieldwork, and to Peter Matanle, Ziyi Wei, Yu Chen, and Harald Conrad for their comments on an early version of this article. Finally, sincere thanks go to the anonymous TAPJA reviewers for their helpful suggestions, and to Susan Menadue-Chun and Rosita Armytage for offering useful comments and feedback.

ORCID

Markus Bell http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2364-3730

Notes

1 See a 2014 report by Matthew Carney in ABC News.

2 I use the term ‘Zainichi Korean’ to refer to Koreans who migrated to Japan from the Japanese colonial period (1910–45) until the Korean War (1950–53). In Japanese ‘Zainichi’ means ‘residing in Japan’. The expression ‘Zainichi Korean’ has been appropriated by long-term ethnic Koreans to distinguish them from the Japanese population and from later waves of ‘Newcomer’ migrants from South Korea.

3 This article understands identity as, ‘a process of ongoing social interaction in which people are agents in shaping their identification through a dialectic process with other actors and with the material world around them’ (Bell 2018, 7).

4 In this article I use the expression ‘transnational’ to refer to the social and cultural connections that people create and maintain across long distances. For more on transnationalism see Vertovec (2001, 2009).

5 Although reports in the media often refer to this community as ‘North Koreans in Japan’, this is a misunderstanding because Koreans who affiliate and/or sympathise with North Korea do not have North Korean citizenship. Ryang explains that, ‘Technically speaking, there can be no North Koreans in Japan, for the Japanese government makes no diplomatic acknowledgement of North Korea’ (Ryang and Lie 2009, 9).

6 The idea of homeland for many Zainichi Koreans who politically sympathise with North Korea is complicated by the fact that the majority of these individuals trace their origins to what became South Korea in 1948.

7 The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, ‘Ch'ongryŏn’ in Korean and ‘Chōsen Sōren’ in Japanese is one of two main organisations for Zainichi Koreans and has close ties to North Korea. Ch'ongryŏn functions as North Korea's de facto embassy in Japan. For more information on this organisation refer to the Ch'ongryŏn webpage: http://www.chongryon.com/

8 I used qualitative methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews to research the lives of ethnic Koreans residing in Japan. I observed and participated in school open days and met with Ch'ongryŏn members for informal interviews. I draw on interlocutor responses from semi-structured interviews and in-depth conversations with 10 members of Ch'ongryŏn in Osaka, Kobe, and Tokyo. Following my fieldwork in Japan I spent a month in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), carrying out research on Zainichi Koreans in Japan and the mass migration of some 90,000 Koreans from Japan to North Korea.

9 The occasion for this event was a Ch'ongryŏn school fund raising ‘bazaar’.

10 The performances I observed in Ch'ongryŏn schools were an inversion of those I observed in a South Korea-affiliated school in Osaka. In the ‘South Korean’ school there were only two traditional Korean cultural performances throughout the entire day. The majority of performances were K-pop dances, American love songs, or skits performed in English.

11 It is likely that the star over Cheju Island reflects the high number of Zainichi Koreans in this community who trace their ancestry back to the island.

12 For a thorough treatment of the hagiography of the North Korean leadership see Richardson’s (2017) chapter in Change and Continuity in North Korean Politics.

13 Jung’s description of the Arirang performance as a state display of contour and power in which a mass of bodies are arranged and subjected to, ‘a bodily regimen that is designed to instill a certain structure of sociality and affect, which anchors the Father in both the body and psyche’, is particularly useful for characterising North Korean performance (2013b, 96).

14 For an in depth exploration of the concept of sacred geography see Samuel (1994) Theatres of Memory. For more on the relationship between state ideology and the North Korean government’s landscapes of power see Winstanley-Chesters (2014) Environment, Politics and Ideology in North Korea: Landscape as Political Project.

15 Morris-Suzuki explains that, by the time of the Asia-Pacific War, most Cheju families had at least one member living in Japan (2010, 34).

16 For more on the migration of Koreans from Cheju to Japan and the ideological violence that followed colonial rule on the island see Kim (2014), The Massacres at Mt. Halla: Sixty Years of Truth Seeking in South Korea.

17 The performers’ representation of life in pre-colonial Korea as a carefree, child-like state echoes Brian Myers’ reflections on how the North Korean government presents a narrative of the ‘cleanest, purest’ race (Myers 2010, 8–9).

18 B AG 232 105–025 (Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross).

19 The Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) dissolved the League in 1949, ostensibly for carrying out Communist activities. Further, the Japanese government shut down 350 ethnic Korean schools supported by the League (Tai 2004, 358).

20 Ch'ongryŏn (established May 5, 1955) grew out of Minsen, or the ‘United Democratic Front of Koreans Residing in Japan’, which itself emerged from the ‘League of Koreans’.

21 According to the Japanese police, quoted in The Japan Times, of the estimated 580,000 Korean residents in Japan in 1965, more than 350,000 were pro-Ch'ongryŏn and 230,000 were registered with Mindan. In the same article, Mindan estimated the number of ‘neutral’ Koreans to be around 200,000. Morita, drawing on the Japanese government’s annual Residence Foreigner Statistics, notes that by 1974 there were 638,806 Koreans in Japan. The 350,067 with Kyotei Eiju (permanent residence in Japan) were registered as ROK citizens and the remainder (around 288,739) would have been Chosen seki – regarded as stateless by the Japanese government (1996, 177). However, these are rough estimates and not clear-cut distinctions.

22 For a thorough account of Japan’s assimilation policies in Korea see Caprio (2009) Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–45.

23 For more on the early years of Korean education in Japan see Lee and De Vos (1981, chapter 8), and Inokuchi, in Ryang (ed.) (2000, chapter 7).

24 Lee and De Vos note that, in contrast to Rhee’s South Korea, North Korea’s approach to Japan was conciliatory, perhaps as a way of gaining the allegiance of Koreans in Japan and driving a wedge between Japan and South Korea (95–97).

25 B AG 232 105–025 15/07/59-15/07/59, pp.31, International Committee of the Red Cross.

26 This is according to a December 1965 report in The Japan Times.

27 Interview with Chin Kil-sang in Tokyo, June 2014.

28 For more information on the contemporary curriculum offered in a Ch'ongryŏn school see the Tokyo Chōsen Middle and High School webpage.

29 Ch'ongryŏn does not release information on its membership but, according to a 2016 report in the Asahi news, the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency believes the organisation has around 70,000 members (‘Chōsensōrenwa yaku 7man-ri’).

30 ‘Chōsen-seki’ is the status assigned to Koreans in Japan who choose neither to naturalise as Japanese nor to take South Korean citizenship. It essentially marks them as stateless. The Japanese government ascribes this status to ‘North Korean’ residents in Japan because it does not recognise North Korea as a sovereign state. For a discussion of nationality and Koreans in Japan see Tai (2009) ‘Between Assimilation and Transnationalism: the Debate on Nationality Acquisition among Koreans in Japan’.

31 The debt relationship that exists between Ch'ongryŏn Zainichi Koreans and North Korea was also present during a discussion Ryang had with a concerned parent in Kobe who told her, ‘If we were to forget to thank our Great Leader, how would we be able to identify ourselves as [North Korean] overseas nationals?’ (1997, 58).

32 Three definitions come up when searching for ‘hometown’ in the Naver dictionary: 1. The place where you are born, 2. Your ancestral home, and 3. A place deep in your heart (maum) that you long for (translation by the author).

33 For more discussion on Korean literature and the concept of kohyang see Lee’s (1988) post-doctoral research, A Study of Hometown Consciousness in Korean Contemporary literature (in Korean).