The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichi and Beyond

Volume 14 | Issue 15 | Number 11 | Article ID 4922 | Aug 01, 2016 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichi and beyond Sonia Ryang In the Beginning situation more likely to incur harassment, blame, penalty, or punishment. Perhaps the Horrified by the sight of the lynching of African worst moment for anyone to be a Korean in Americans, Abel Meeropol wrote a poem called Japan came in 1923 in the aftermath of the Strange Fruit that is perhaps better known in Great Kanto Earthquake, when pogrom-like the form of the 1939 rendition by Billie Holiday. hunt for Koreans spread across the scorched African Americans continued to suffer lynching lands of Tokyo and its vicinity. Like the black for many decades after the American Civil bodies hanging from those southern trees, War—mostly in the South, but also in many Korean bodies were on display without other states all around the country. Being black eyeballs, without nose, without breasts, their meant risking being turned into a strange fruit thighs and arms covered with lacerations and hanging from a poplar tree, giving off the smell with very little skin surface intact (Ryang of burnt flesh as it swung in the southern 2007). The end of Japan’s colonialism twenty- breeze. Being black meant close proximity to two years later did not of course end the peril death—by accidentally stumbling into a white of being Korean overnight. Just as the shift person, by not adhering to prescribedfrom public lynching to racial profiling, police etiquette, by not addressing a white person brutality, and the disproportionately large properly, or simply by making eye contact with number of incarcerations in the case of African a white woman. In a word, lynching could and Americans attests, for Koreans, too, the form of did take place at the whim of certain white peril shifted as they were incorporated into a people. Hardly any explanation, let alone more formal, administrative apparatus. justification, was required. In some states, a lynching would be announced in advance in the In contrast with 1923, what Koreans faced in local newspaper so that white people could 1945 after thirty-six years of colonial rule was gather and enjoy a picnic while watching it. abject poverty, disenfranchisement, and Men and women, old and young, and boys and tremendous uncertainty. One factor girls participated, eager and curious witnesses differentiating their case from that of African to the spectacle of black bodies being beaten, Americans persecuted in twentieth-century severed, carved, sliced, burned, and mutilated. America was that their former colonizer, the Today, half a century after the passing of the Japanese, had been defeated by the Allied Civil Rights Act, great numbers of black Forces and rendered powerless—as powerless Americans die at the hands of police or while in as their former colonial subjects—making police custody, reminding us that to erase a possible Korean independence. The majority of belief and the system that it is founded upon Koreans who were in Japan at the end of World takes more than the declaration of a new law. War II did not view themselves as Japanese and considered it natural that they be repatriated to Being Korean in Japan during the twentieth Korea now that Korea was an independent century carried a similar peril for a long time. nation. And indeed, about 1.4 million Koreans Being a chōsenjin (Korean) meant to be in a voluntarily returned to Korea, following Japan's 1 14 | 15 | 11 APJ | JF defeat in 1945, leaving around 600,000 in Koreans in Japan (hereafter referred to using Japan (Morita 1996; Ryang 1997: Ch.3). For the abbreviated Korean nameJoryeon), was those who remained, the peril of beingformed in October of 1945, the hegemonic chōsenjin continued, although, unlike the case ethos was nationalism. The same applied to the of African Americans, their similar skin color anti-communist alternative for Koreans in with the majority of Japanese would create a Japan, Mindan which was formed shortly after different dynamic of discrimination andthe establishment of Joryeon. disenfranchisement. As well, especially for the Japan-born generations, their ability to speak Although the majority of Koreans in postwar Japanese as their native language (without any Japan originated from the south of the Korean accent) would enhance their opportunities even peninsula, most Koreans supportedJoryeon given obvious limitations. But, suchwhich was more sympathetic toward the opportunities would only emerge after a northern half of the peninsula under Soviet generation or two of living in Japan. Following occupation, while Mindan supported the south World War II, Koreans in Japan foundunder American military occupation. This was a themselves in a peculiarly fragile situation of reflection of the widespread belief that the being chōsenjin in the former colonial partition of the Korean peninsula that had metropolis, their former masters defeated and taken place in 1945 would be merely forced to give up their colonial possessions and temporary. Moreover, Joryeon’s sympathy to rebuild their nation from the ruins of war. toward northern Korea was not exclusive; by The story ofChongryun, or the General locating its Korea office in Seoul,Joryeon Association of Korean Residents in Japan, preserved ties with the original homes of its begins here. members from the southern half of the peninsula. Genesis This is an important point: Joryeon was not a In the early months of the Allied occupation of North Korean organization and its goal was to Japan, at a time when authorities were more enable all Koreans in Japan to repatriate to a open to liberal reform, wartime political would-be unified Korea. For, in the eyes of prisoners were released, including several Koreans in Japan, the separate occupation of prominent Korean members of the Japanese Korea’s northern and southern halves Communist Party who quickly rose torespectively by the Soviets and the Americans leadership positions among the Koreanswould be transient—indeed, why should it not remaining in Japan. be, since Korea had not played any hostile role in WWII against the Allied powers and Koreans The vast majority of Koreans in Japan had who were conscripted and participated in the moved or been transferred to Japan from the war did so as Japanese subjects (Fujitani southern provinces of the Korean peninsula 2011)? Moreover, the American Military during the colonial period. Like most other Government occupying the southern half of the newly-liberated peoples in the post-WWII peninsula was deemed less favorable to period, Koreans in Japan were ferventlyKoreans than the Soviet one occupying the nationalistic, with even those self-identifying as North. The primary reason for this was that the communist more nationalist than Marxist. Thus, Americans relied heavily upon former colonial when the left-leaning Korean expatriateelements, while the Soviets entered Korea with organization, known in Japanese asZainichi the agenda of building a newly independent chōsenjin renmei, in Korean as Jaeil joseonin nation on a new footing, shedding the legacy of yeonmaeng and in English as the League of the colonial past. The Soviets brought to the 2 14 | 15 | 11 APJ | JF fore indigenous Korean leaders of diverse April 1948. The protests culminated in the persuasions, including Christians and anti- shooting of unarmed demonstrators by military Japanese guerrilla veterans including Kim Il police, with one youth shot to death, a girl left Sung (Armstrong 2003). to die from a head injury, and a Korean teacher dying while in custody in jail (Inokuchi 2000; Divide Koshiro 1999). It is notable that this was the only incident in which martial law was declared Once separate regimes began operating in each during the entire seven-year Allied occupation half of the Korean peninsula in 1948, however, of Japan. Even the waves of mass the situation became immensely unstable, with demonstrations led by the Japanese Communist deepening mutual animosity and numerous Party did not result in a declaration of martial border skirmishes and confrontations along the law. One can discern in this state of affairs the line of partition, the thirty-eighth parallel lingering figure of the chōsenjin as a group (Cumings 1981). In Japan, reflecting rapidly lacking basic rights in postwar Japan, a figure rising Cold War tensions in East Asia and the that posited more threat to American and rise of the People’s Republic of China, the Japanese authorities than did the Japanese left. Allied occupation took a radical anti-communist turn. One result was that expatriate Korean Purge politics began exhibiting a clearer division with pro-North and pro-South orientationsThe legal status of the Koreans remaining in respectively sustained by Joryeon and Mindan. Japan remained ambiguous throughout the Allied occupation, often referred to as Among Koreans in Japan Joryeon commanded daisangokujin or third-country nationals, broader and stronger mass appeal than meaning neither Japanese nor Allied nationals. Mindan. The operations of the former group Koreans assumed that the end of Japanese encompassed a comprehensive assortment of colonialism meant that they had acquired civil activities, including community organization, propaganda, and, perhaps most importantly, and legal rights, including the right to engage Korean language instruction. Starting from in education in Korean language, culture, and October 1945, Joryeon built makeshift Korean history. The reality,

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