Socialism Meets Neoliberalism in Pro-North Korean Schools in Japan

Social Identities Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture ISSN: 1350-4630 (Print) 1363-0296 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csid20 Cultural politics of transgressive living: socialism meets neoliberalism in pro-North Korean schools in Japan Kyung Hee Ha To cite this article: Kyung Hee Ha (2018) Cultural politics of transgressive living: socialism meets neoliberalism in pro-North Korean schools in Japan, Social Identities, 24:2, 189-205, DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2017.1327140 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1327140 Published online: 25 May 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 44 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csid20 SOCIAL IDENTITIES, 2018 VOL. 24, NO. 2, 189–205 https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2017.1327140 Cultural politics of transgressive living: socialism meets neoliberalism in pro-North Korean schools in Japan Kyung Hee Ha Graduate School of Humanities, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and Received 30 November 2016 dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), North Korea stands in Accepted 18 April 2017 isolation from not only Western liberal societies, but also former KEYWORDS Eastern bloc with its nuclear weapons programs under ‘military Pro-North Korean schools; first’ policy, or Sŏngun. In spite of the condemnation of North ‘ ’ sanctions; neoliberalism; Korea as an axis of evil and the subsequent sanctions against Hallyu; transgression; Zainichi North Korea and its associates, socialist ideas and practices as well as ‘allegiance’ to a ‘rogue state’ appear to be well alive in pro- North Korean schools Japan. Based on ethnographic observation and interview data, this essay explores the politics and poetics of dissent. Members of the pro-North Korean schools disrupt the politics of respectability that only allows two ways to become legible subjects in contemporary Japanese society – either as victims of North Korea’s dictatorship or as someone who disavows it. Instead, they strive to gain agency beyond these two readily available positions vis-à-vis North Korea. In doing so, however, their political and cultural responses are not always in the most progressive forms or purely nationalistic, but entail nuances and flexibilities by actively engaging with neoliberal capitalist logic and South Korean popular culture. By examining their day-to-day politics of living, this essay sheds light on how people negotiate the socialist legacies in growing neoliberalism, as well as their contradictory strategies and competing discourses to navigate, defy and challenge the material, discursive and affective consequences of being associated with North Korea today. Stepping into a pro-North Korean school September in Kyoto is still quite hot and humid. On 23 September 2012, the annual athletic meeting at Kyoto Korean Junior High and High School (hereafter ‘Kyoto Korean School’) was held on fields puddled with rain from the previous day. Kyoto Korean School is one of some one hundred K-12 schools operated by Chongryun, the pro- North Korea organization in Japan.1 As soon as I passed the school gate, I was greeted by a number of vendors run by mothers of the schoolchildren, selling all kinds of Korean foods and drinks. Under the decoration of North Korean national flags, students were proudly marching just like the North Korean soldiers that are frequently shown on CONTACT Kyung Hee Ha [email protected] © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 190 K.H. HA Figure 1. Kyoto Korean Junior High and High School’s athletic meeting. Source: Koppon-ori (2013). Note: Koppon-ori is a popular nickname for a civic support group based in Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, Chōsen Gakkō to Minzoku Kyōiku no Hatten wo mezasu kai/ Keiji. television.2 The highlight of the day involved all the students holding up a gigantic North Korean national flag (Figure 1).3 Toward the end of the day, I started to hear the familiar sound of Psy’s Gangnam Style, which was becoming extremely popular in South Korea, the United States and other parts of the world in the summer of 2012. While the original music video reached one billion views on YouTube within the first month, a record high of all music videos on YouTube, it remained largely unknown in Japan except among some K-pop fans (Time,15 October 2012). As soon as I heard the melody, a group of high school students appeared to perform the famous ‘horse dance’ in front of several hundreds of audience members perfectly mimicking Psy in his music video (Figure 2). This was happening all in front of my eyes: South Korean popular dance music performed by the students at the allegedly pro-North Korean school in Japan. Although I had expected that at least some of the students would be committed K-pop fans because of the rise of the Hallyu, or the global spread of South Korean popular culture, little had I imagined that their appreciation of Figure 2. High school students dancing to Psy’s Gangnam Style. SOCIAL IDENTITIES 191 K-pop would appear in public events at a pro-North Korean school, let alone at the annual athletic meeting, the biggest and most well-attended event of all. More than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), North Korea stands in isolation from not only Western liberal societies but also former Eastern bloc with its nuclear weapons programs under ‘military first’ policy, or Sŏngun. In spite of the condemnation of North Korea as an ‘axis of evil’ and the subsequent sanctions against North Korea and its associates, socialist ideas and practices as well as ‘allegiance’ to a ‘rogue state’ appear to be well alive in pro-North Korean schools in Japan. In this essay, I ask: How do the pro-North Korean schools in Japan strive to survive amidst escalating anti-North Korean sentiments? What kind of strategies do they employ in their politics and poetics of dissent? How do they negotiate North Korean style socialist ideas and practices with the rise of South Korean popular culture while phys- ically situated in Japan that is increasingly driven by neoliberal capitalism? I argue that examining pro-North Korean schools will enable us to bear witness to the life that con- tinues after the rupture of postsocialist turn. Based on ethnographic observation and interview data, I explore the ‘politics of living’ (Feldman, 2012, p. 157) rather than simply documenting the damages and pains of the socially dead.4 I am not so interested in documenting incidents and events of victimiza- tion, or engaging in what Tuck (2009) calls ‘damage-centered’ research that focuses on the ‘pain and brokenness’ of the marginalized communities (p. 409). Instead of represent- ing the communities as damaged and hopeless, I intend to show how members of pro- North Korean schools have struggled to make sense of the world they live in, create lives and respond to their desires despite the stigma associated with them. As editors Neda Atanasoski and Kalindi Vora contend, postsocialism is a global condition engender- ing diverse responses in local communities. This article examines one of many such ‘afterl- ives’ in which people employ various personal and collective approaches to cope with a new modernity brought by the ‘end of the cold war’. Members of the pro-North Korean schools disrupt the politics of respectability that only allows two ways to become legible subjects in contemporary Japanese society – either as the victims of North Korea’s dictatorship or as someone who disavows it. They strive to become political agents beyond these two readily available positions vis-à-vis North Korea. In doing so, however, their political and cultural responses are not always in the most progressive forms or purely nationalistic, but entail nuances and flexibilities by actively engaging with neoliberal capitalist logic and South Korean popular culture. By examining their day-to-day politics of living, I hope to shed lights on how people negotiate the socialist legacies in growing neoliberalism, as well as their contradictory strategies and competing discourses to navigate, defy and challenge the material, discursive and affective consequences of being associated with North Korea today. Moral rupture and disavowal of the evil Scholars have argued that socialism was about moral economy as much as it was about political economy (Hann, 2002; Kwon, 2010). The ‘defeat’ of the Eastern bloc symbolized with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the passing of Kim Il-sung, the founding father of North Korea in 1994, followed by the succession of his son, Kim Jong-il made many diasporic Koreans skeptical of their homeland politics. With the 2002 revelation of 192 K.H. HA the abduction of Japanese civilians between 1977 and 1982 by North Korean secret agents at the September 17th summit in Pyongyang,5 even the most loyal members of the pro- North Korean community lost faith in the country’s moral integrity. Confused and angry, Koreans in Japan, postcolonial exiles and their descendants, popularly known as ‘Zainichi Koreans’,6 condemned North Korea for its ‘senseless and unforgivable’ acts (Mainichi Shimbun, 18 September 2002).7 Meanwhile, this 9/17 admission immediately made Zaini- chi Koreans targets of racist hate crimes and state sanctions, particularly

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