Now, after
North Korea dramatically raised tensions across the region with tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles and Tuesday’s
missile launch over the Japanese island of Hokkaido,
tens of thousands of Korean residents of Japan with family connections to the North fear becoming the innocent victims of growing Japanese hostility towards Pyongyang.
Of the estimated 600,000 Korean residents of Japan – many of them the descendants of the tens of thousands of people
forcibly brought to Japan as labourers before and during the second world war – about 150,000 claim to be loyal to the North Korean regime.
They send their children to schools affiliated with Chongryon – a residents’ association that serves as North Korea’s de facto embassy – where they
follow the regime’s curriculum and study in classrooms adorned with portraits of the Kim dynasty.
Reports of verbal abuse directed at Korean schoolchildren emerged in 2002, after the then North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, admitted the regime had abducted Japanese citizens during the 1970s and 80s.
Schools serving the North Korean community received hate mail and threatening phone calls. Reports of female pupils being harassed prompted schools to tell them not to wear their traditional chima jeogori uniforms on their way to and from school – a policy that is still in place.
Then
in 2010, Japan’s government said it would no longer provide state subsidies to North Korean schools, leaving many short of funds and triggering a string of court cases, as residents attempt to get the policy overturned.
Yasuko Morooka, a visiting researcher at Osaka University of Economics and Law said N
orth Korean schools were bracing for more abuse after Tuesday’s missile launch.
“Everybody gets nervous when the political situation deteriorates, especially the parents of young children,” said Morooka, a lawyer who is involved in a legal campaign against the withdrawal of state funding for North Korean schools.
“
The Japanese government is adding to the anxiety over North Korean missiles, and that creates an atmosphere in which Korea-bashing is acceptable.
North Korea is seen as the enemy and so, by extension, are people in Japan with North Korean roots.”
Resentment towards the North Korean community rose again after Pyongyang began testing nuclear weapons just over a decade ago, and intensified after
Kim Jong-un accelerated the regime’s quest to build long-range ballistic missiles.
Zaitokukai and other far-right groups held demonstrations in Korean neighbourhoods in Tokyo, Osaka and other cities, with activists describing Koreans as “cockroaches” and urging them to die or “go home”.