On Jul 7, 2006, at 11:10 PM, uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
> High on the radar for both groups is limiting fund remittances to
> North
> Korea from pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan, a major source of
> funds
> for the isolated state.
>
> About 600,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, and about 150,000 of them
> consider themselves to be North Koreans.
>
> Most are descendants of people who came voluntarily or were
> forcibly brought
> to Japan during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean peninsula.
Most of them do not consider themselves "North Koreans" but were forced by Japan after the Korean peninsula to adopt a nationality based on their place of birth in Korea before the separation. Hence creating artificial categories of Japan born "South Koreans" and "North Koreans".
The rest is the product of the ghettoization that resulted from the division: pseudo North Koreans were seen as communists (it has to be noted that a lot of such Koreans actually left japan for North Korean after the Korean war) and South Koreans as yet another minority group that has nothing to do in Japan.
Before the signing of the San Francisco treaty and the birth of the new constitution, Koreans in japan were still "citizens of the Empire" and had voting rights, some of them even were representatives in the national parliament. THose rights were stripped little by little until Koreans began "foreigners". With the new constitution, came the first "foreigners control" legal texts, not laws at first, and specifically aimed at criminalizing Koreans (finger printing them, forcing them to carry foreigners cards with them all the time even when going to the public bath etc).
Most of the control practices have tended to smooth down but with the recent "anti-terror" laws of the last 5 years, foreigner control is back to the headlines and we'll have electronic finger printing at entry for anybody coming in, even long terms residents with families here etc...
Jean-Christophe Helary