Rhetoricity of History and Narrativity of Life: A Life History Approach to the First-

Generation Koreans in Japan

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Min Wha Han

June 2009

© 2009 Min Wha Han. All Rights Reserved.

This dissertation titled

Rhetoricity of History and Narrativity of Life: A Life History Approach to the First-

Generation Koreans in Japan

by

MIN WHA HAN

has been approved for

the School of Communication Studies

and the Scripps College of Communication by

Raymie McKerrow

Professor of Communication Studies

Gregory J. Shepherd

Dean, Scripps College of Communication

ii

ABSTRACT

HAN, MIN WHA, Ph.D., June 2009, Communication Studies

Rhetoricity of History and Narrativity of Life: A Life History Approach to the First-

Generation Koreans in Japan (272 pp.)

Director of Dissertation: Raymie McKerrow

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore, record, and analyze the traces of colonial and postcolonial conditions through various standpoints of Korean diasporic communities in Japan. My approach is to reveal life course narratives of the first- generation Koreans in Japan. As a third-generation Zainichi Korean whose familial history witnesses, yet has overlooked, the colonial root as an origin of displacement, I employ a self-reflexive stance and an insider’s (yet only in a partial form) perspective to history writing. Specifically, in this dissertation, I ask: 1) what would be some shared life course experiences of first generation Koreans in Japan as the population whose lives are conditioned by the colonial displacement, and how are they narrated by them?; and 2) how would the first generation Koreans’ stories of their displacement explain their material and sociopolitical circumstances that were uniquely conditioned by the colonial history and diasporic experiences? Chapters approach these research questions in multiple ways—with my autobiographical reflections, with a historical literature review, with a discussion of rhetorical history, narrative as well as postcolonial theories, and with actual stories collected through field work. The stories of the interviewed first generation

Zainichi Koreans are divided, yet acknowledging the interconnectedness, into two versions—‘Big’ and ‘Small’— based on the intensity and duration of life story

iii interviews. The Big stories, about which I aim to narrate the participants’ holistic life history, have revealed the three ‘relationships’: 1) the past relationship between colonial rulers and subjects; 2) the present relationship between postcolonial subjects and the society; and 3) the power relation between popularly acknowledged memory and oppressed ones. The ‘Small’ stories, which are context-based and conversational narrations of the participants’ life experiences, have emotionally spoken to what I call the six ‘then and now’ problems. The challenges they have faced in daily lives in Japan have been expressed in such thematic terms as: name, education, work, poverty, illiteracy, and kurou, or hardship. The Big and Small stories, collectively speak to the continuity of the colonial experiences among the first generation Koreans in Japan: Experienced migration to Japan, witnessed the transition from the old Korea to the divided one, and transformed

(or resisted doing so) their positionality/s from the “Japanese subjects” to the permanent

“foreigners” cum “citizens” in Japan. Through the lenses of rhetorical history perspective, I argue for an importance of a critical perspective on the part of a researcher in the process of text-making in history writing.

Approved: ______

Raymie McKerrow

Professor of Communication Studies

iv

To my father

v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have waited and waited to write this section of my dissertation hoping that I would finally find the ‘right words’ to write. But, as has always been the case for me in

my years of studying in the United States, this time again, I could not reach the point

where I know what the ‘right words’ would be to thank every person I owe for this work.

What I do at this time, again, is to try to express my desire to thank enough and

appreciate enough those people, without whom I could not get here, with careful words,

and with sincere heart.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my academic advisor, Dr.

Raymie E. McKerrow. Ever since I came to Ohio, with the hope to learn from him, I have

been constantly amazed to learn how humble, thoughtful, and humorous person he is. I

am honored to be able to have him as my academic advisor, and am grateful for our

frequent conversations in his office, on the phone, at a coffee shop, over lunch and dinner. After the tremendous help and support I gained from him, I find myself repeating what many people have already said, “Without his help and guidance this dissertation

could not be completed.” I really mean it.

I would also like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. William

Rawlins, Dr. Devika Chawla, and Dr. Julie White. They are three brilliant professors

whose classes I enjoyed taking, insights and mentorship I always appreciated. I am

grateful for many learning opportunities with Dr. Rawlins, whose personality and way of

living I admire so much. I am thoroughly thankful for my “unexpected” encounter with

the worlds of narrative, friendship, and dialogue. They happened to me, thanks to him.

vi

Dr. Devika Chawla not only provided me with academic opportunities, but also gave me

personal help on many occasions. She is a kind of person whose emotional and academic

support co-helped the struggling student. Dr. Julie White was one of the most brilliant

and smartest persons that I have ever met. Just listening to her talk, I was constantly

pulled into the world of learning and growing. I truly appreciate each of the committee

members for reading and guiding my work.

My sincere appreciation and respect goes to all the grandmothers and grandfathers

I met for the purpose of this project, and those who kindly agreed to tell me their life stories. I will never forget their songs, tears and smiles, on top of the stories and wisdom they shared with me. Gomapsumnida (Thank you).

I am thankful for all the academic opportunities and financial help the School of

Communication Studies provided with me. Teaching was one of the great things that happened to me in my life, giving me hope and joy to keep learning. Thank you to all the students I met at Ohio University for making me who I am as a little teacher/scholar today. You were always my teachers and scholars that I learned from. I even thank chilly winters and the frequent rains in Athens, Ohio, because the former made me appreciate the warm apartment as a cozy space for me to think, read, write, and grow, whereas the latter a cup of cappuccino inside a coffee shop.

I also thank all the wonderful people, professors and friends I could meet here in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University. In particular, I thank my cohort members for helping each other, learning, and growing together, and my friendship with

vii

them. Thank you for your warm support and kind words during the hard time I had to go through.

Finally, I would like to express my deepest ‘thank you’ and love to my family.

With their unconditional love, support, and encouragement, I could earn the courage to continue my doctoral path. My father, mother, and sister have never lost faith in me, even those moments I myself thought it impossible to finish. And, there is one ‘connector’ for my family’s bond—our lovely cat Hyang. I felt blessed in every moment I could spend with her, especially upon finishing this dissertation. Just being there with me, she kept me at home to write, relax, and be encouraged. Her presence, and illness, taught me how I should bless each moment with my family.

My sincere appreciation goes to my husband Dr. Jong Hwa Lee. Both as a mentor and partner, he encouraged me in every moment. I am grateful for the transformation from the former to the latter that happened to us. I am also excited about our new journey—as husband and wife, and as co-writers for our projects.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

ABSTRACT ...... iii

DEDICATION ...... v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... vi

LIST OF FIGURES ...... xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Autobiographic Reflection as an Entry Point ...... 1

Summary, Research Questions, and Preview ...... 10

CHAPTER 2: FRAMING THE OREGIN OF ZAINICHI KOREANS ...... 13

Framing Modernity and Colonialism from the Perspective of Japanese Annexation of

Korea ...... 14

Roles of Emperor in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea ...... 18

The Ways of Naturalization ...... 20

Forms of Exploitation and Migration to Japan ...... 21

Stories of Forced Labors ...... 23

Military “Comfort Women” ...... 28

Problems Concerning the Literature on Koreans’ Experience ...... 33

Liberation, Division, and Korean War ...... 35

Korean Diaspora after the Liberation ...... 42

Where Do We Belong?: Problems Concerning Social Positions of Zainichi Koreans 46

Summary ...... 48

CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL ORIENTATION ...... 50

ix

Rhetorical History, Narrative Inquiry, Postcolonial Studies ...... 50

Rhetorical History and a Call for Narratives ...... 50

A Position of Narratives in History Writing: Big and Small Stories ...... 57

Two Stories ...... 59

Narrative and Postcolonial Studies ...... 64

Summary ...... 68

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGICAL ORIENTATIONS ...... 69

Life History Interviews and Self-Reflexivity ...... 69

Life History Interviews ...... 69

Language, Culture, Translation ...... 74

Authorship and Self-Reflexivity ...... 77

Parameters of the Study ...... 78

Summary ...... 80

CHAPTER 5: CLAIMING THE ‘BIG’ STORIES ...... 82

Mr. Song’s Colonial Experiences ...... 87

About the Name-Change: Sousikaimei ...... 89

Work Experience at the Japanese Government-General of Chosun ...... 90

Division in Family, Visiting ‘Home’ after 68 Years ...... 95

Mr. Lee and the Fight for Education ...... 98

Memory of the 4.24 Education Fight ...... 100

Positioning Poverty and Segregation as Continuity: Mrs. Hwang’s Appeal ...... 109

An “Ordinary” Korean School Teacher: Mr. Hong’s Story ...... 117

x

Returning ‘Home’—Schooling, War, and Mobility ...... 120

Life as a Korean School Teacher ...... 124

Fidelity to Chongryun: The Reason NOT to Tell ...... 127

Reclaiming the Meaning of Hardship: Mrs. Kanamoto’s Story ...... 128

Upon Sharing Memories and Experiences ...... 131

Claiming the Historicity through Narrative Identities ...... 134

From “Big” to “Small” Stories ...... 137

Summary ...... 140

CHAPTER 6: BUILDING UP THE ‘SMALL’ STORIES ...... 142

Setting the Scene ...... 142

Entry to the Sites: The Interview Contexts ...... 146

Shared Mixed Feeling to Japanese ...... 148

The Need for the Protected Space ...... 151

Memories of Colonial Experiences that Shape Korean Identities: Addressing the Six

‘Then and Now’ Problems ...... 154

Claiming Name as the Site of Negotiating Self-Representation and Identities ...... 154

Addressing Discrimination, Managing the Segregated Lives ...... 159

Problematizing (Both Presence and Absence of) Education ...... 167

Defining Work ...... 172

Making Sense of the Poverty ...... 176

Positioning the Illiteracy as Gendered History ...... 184

xi

Liberation and Forming of the Diasporic Communities: Communicating the

Communal Identities ...... 188

Community as a Way of Living ...... 190

Chongryun Koreans and Disconnection to the Homeland ...... 196

A Mindan Supporter and the Story of Mobility and Displacement ...... 200

Organizational Affiliations that Shaped One’s Mobility and Immobility ...... 208

Summary ...... 211

CHAPTER 7: RETHINKING HISTORY THROUGH ‘BIG’ AND ‘SMALL’ STORIES

...... 213

Re-Entry with an Idea of ‘Displacement’ ...... 213

Personal Reflections, Collective Memory and Historicity ...... 225

Claiming the Personal as Historical (Learning from Direct Experience of the

Colonized) ...... 226

Learning from Indirect Experiences: Shaping Familial Memory ...... 228

Learning from the Retold Experiences: Sharing Collective Memories ...... 229

Bodies Tell Stories ...... 231

From Objects of Care to Subjects of Telling ...... 231

Politics of Telling and Meaning of Silence ...... 235

Toward Understanding the Rhetoricity of History through Narrativity of Life ...... 238

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 243

APPENDX A: LIFE HISTORY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 257

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Koreans who were abused at a tako-beya in Hokkaido, Japan………………25

Figure 2: Investigation by police officers ...... 26

Figure 3: Summoning Koreans in Gyung-gi prefecture, Korea in 1941 ...... 26

Figure 4: Summoned Koreans upon leaving their country ...... 27

Figure 5: Korean youths imprisoned in Okubo, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan...... 27

Figure 6: Two “comfort women” crossing the Yellow Sea ...... 28

Figure 7: Korean comfort women waiting to be interrogated...... 29

Figure 8: American troops with ‘comfort women’ in Okinawa ...... 30

Figure 9: Entrance to a “comfort station.” ...... 30

Figure 10: A “comfort station” from the side ...... 31

xiii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Autobiographic Reflection as an Entry Point

Dear Aboji, Omoni, and Eunni (Father, mother, sister)

Growing up, I would often entertain myself with an imagination of what my life

would have been like if my parents had both returned to Korea and my sister and I were

born there. Other times, I would imagine what if Korea had not been colonized by Japan,

or even if it was, what if you, father and mother, especially since both of your fathers

were from the Kyung-Sang (Kyŏng-Sang) Province in present South Korea, met somewhere in Korea (granted that both of my grandparents did not come over to Japan).

Would my life have been different if I was born and lived in my native country? Why, on what fate (as we were taught to believe) was I born as a minority in Japan? Why have I always been a ‘foreigner’ in Japan even though I was born in Japan? This set of questions, which may appear odd to those people who do not have to think about what

their country and homeland mean to them, reflect to a great extent my fantasizing about my “native land.” Looking back and recalling this rather strong feeling that I, and all of

us, have been sharing, I wonder, what really made me miss the land that I have never been really living in? Some might easily answer this question of “what made you miss the

nativity?” (especially those people who are observers but do not share this emotion)

saying that education is the cause, which in many cases causes more problems than does

the good. (In fact, Korean schools in Japan have always been a target of criticisms in

Japanese public sphere, with an attached belief that they are reproducing the North

Korean nationalist propaganda.) However, is the answer really that simple? Granted

that education was a reason, was the education like a conduit that conveyed the North

Korean national ideology despite that we were exposed to Japanese society, media, and

people more practically than we were to North Korea? Why, then, did my father, who

never has had an opportunity to learn at a Korean school, end up sending his family to

North Korea, believing that they would live better in their homeland than in the

“colonizer’s” hand?1 What are the real reasons that make people identify themselves with, cry for, long for, and sometimes die for the ‘home land’?

Today, I think that you all will agree that we have come to the stage where we can look back upon this feeling of longing and belonging that our family has shared for a long time. But, I personally think that the “why” of this feeling is harder to be answered

than it appears. It bears the whole history of colonization as has been the reason for our

displacement, post-liberation turmoil, the country’s division and Cold War conflict, and

the remnant of all of these conditions now in slightly different forms than they were

before. By looking back on our familial trajectory, we may now be able to say, “that’s

what we were believing in at that time,” and I know that when you (father and mother)

say so, it would be with a twinge of regret. In a way, father, I have been a witness to your

guilt toward your family (for sending them to North Korea), and also to your own family

especially to your wife (my mother) who had to support you, while you were concerned with your entire family in North Korea. Probably with this sense of guilt and with the

1 Here, I would like to caution the reader not to imagine as if his type of decision was made solely by my father’s individual choice. Rather, my father’s family narrative is a part of a larger social movement among Korean residents in Japan. Since the mid 1960s, many Koreans chose to go back to North Korea. Some returned as family but some returned by themselves, leaving their own family in Japan. My father, who worked for Chung-Ryun, an organization affiliated with North Korea, thought of remaining in Japan to support them both financially and materially. 2 feeling of “failed” decision-making, your, as well as your family’s story, has never been told to me and my sister.

Despite your enormous hardship as the oldest son of a father with a disability,2 I wonder, why your story, along with your father’s, has never been told as a heroic one. I remember that my mother told me that your father (my grandfather) worked as a coalminer in Kyushu Prefecture3 during the period in which forced labors were imposed on Koreans. Then, he became a disabled person (a half of his body became paralyzed).

What made you (and probably many other first and second generations) be so silent about your and your father’s background and experiences? Now, as I write this letter to all of you, I want to stress to you that sometimes sufferings, no matter how much of shame they entail, need to be told, so that the meaning of them can be transformed. I would like to thank you, Aboji and Omoni, and ask you to let go of the sense of guilt that you have kept to me and my sister, for involving us in the family history of suffering. And, to Eunni, my forever soul mate who witnessed and shared every memory of hardship as we grew up, let us find meanings of those memories, and of the lives of our parents and grandparents, so that we realize that our stories perhaps can be shared by others.

2 In a traditional Korean family, as was/is the case in many other Asian cultural contexts, the oldest son would take the whole responsibility of the family when they grew up. 3 Since 1939, Koreans were counted as labor forces to the Japanese empire. Kimigayo-maru, a ship named in this way, was used to bring people back and forth between Pusan, Korea and Shimonoseki city in Kyushu Prefecture. Due to this geographic reason, many Koreans who lived mostly in the southern parts of Korea (Kyung-Sang Province, Chul-La Province, and Jeju Island) were brought to Japan, first landing in the Shimonoseki city. This is also a reason why a large percentage of Korean population in Japan has been focused in the southern regions (Kyushu, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Kobe) of Japan. 3

**

I was born in Tokyo, Japan, as a third generation Korean resident. I do not

remember exactly when I started to realize myself as being an ethnic minority in Japan.

As I grew up, the realization of being a minority or “foreigner” did not come from a sense

that I was different from other Japanese friends, but rather, it came from inside my

family. Having a father and mother who worked for Chongryun (Ch’ongryŏn), a pro-

North Korean organization in Japan, I knew that I would be going to a Korean school.

My older sister entered a Korean school two years before I did. I remember that for those

two years until I entered the same school as my sister did, I felt left out at home, since I

did not understand sentences’ long Korean words that my father, my mother, and my

sister were sharing occasionally mingling them in their Japanese. With this sense of

longing for another language, to me, going to a Korean school appeared to be a privilege

that I would be enjoying pretty soon. Indeed, it was my parents’ strong will that my sister

and I would attend a Korean school all through our K-12 education so that we would not

have to learn a sense of inferiority as being Koreans in the same way they had to. From

their own experiences, my parents believed that the education at Korean schools would

provide us with a shelter-like environment in Japan, while allowing us to grow as what

we were by not hiding our own identities.

When I was three years old, my maternal grandfather passed away. While I rarely remember him from my own childhood memories, stories of my maternal grandfather, in contrast to those of my paternal side, have rather been present in my family. He came to Japan by himself for the purpose of studying. As a person who chose to support North Korea, he never returned to his hometown, which, after the liberation 4 became part of the South Korean territory. According to my maternal grandfather, his country was not what it used to be, and he believed that until the country’s reunification it never would be. He became an activist in Japan, and by my mother’s stories about him, I could see how the spirit of anti-empire was imbedded within his bone (as we say in a

Korean expression). Like many others who chose not to return home immediately after the liberation, my maternal grandfather rejected having a tomb in Japan when he passed away. His body rests in a temple named Tong Guk Sa, meaning the “Buddhist temple of united country,” a place many Koreans think of as a ‘temporal’ site for those who are in a similar case as my grandfather.

Only now, I can think of my grandfathers’ experiences as something ‘typical’ in the lives of first generation Koreans. On the one hand, my paternal grandfather is a person who came to Japan as a forced laborer, became a disabled body, and finally chose to “return” to the place where he was not from. On the other hand, my maternal grandfather came to Japan as a student, joined an activist movement in Japan for his country’s unification, and passed away in Japan while waiting for a chance to go home.

Both of their lives are stories of displacement.

My life so far has been all about carrying this complicated family history of displacement. As a third generation Korean who still identifies herself as a foreigner in

Japan, my social position carries the antagonistic history between Japan and Korea. At the same time, as a generation who witnessed the harsh antagonism between the South and North Korea, the representation of me has involved politics of the country’s division.

As long as I claim myself as a Korean, I often am faced with the question of which Korea to support as my country. My life after graduation from the Korean schools has been 5

about the telling of this family history that I have carried with me. I realize, however, this

need of telling, or choosing to tell, is something that illustrates my life as a Zainichi

Korean. As a person who either directly or indirectly has had access to the national histories of Japan, North Korea, and South Korea, I have often witnessed moments in which any two of these national histories clash against one another. For example, despite

Koreans’ antagonism toward Japan for their past memory, ordinary Japanese citizens remain to be untaught about their Japan’s past wrongdoings. Therefore, although many

Japanese would understand war in general is cruel (especially because of their experiences as well as their public memory of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), they tend to remain indifferent towards their own war-time crimes. When an encounter between Koreans from Korea and Japanese causes an irresolvable tension, Zainichi

Koreans who know how their stories are incompatible with each other, would feel caught between the two. My story below would show myself as a witness.

When I was a college student, my friend invited me to a forum that presented testimonials by war-time survivors named ‘comfort women.’ I knew about these women who forcefully became sex slaves for the Japanese military from school education,4 from books (Il Myung Kim, 1976), and textbooks. For the Japanese friend of mine, however, this forum was something that would “open our eyes” especially because it had never been taught in her past education. The forum was organized solely by volunteers from among Japanese university students. Obviously, with the tone suggesting “we should

4 The early 1990s was a time when this war-time crime got attention in Japanese media, during which I entered a high school. While I did not realize about this timing issue until I did some research, it might be that I had been unconsciously witnessing the breakthrough of this ‘truth’ from World War II. 6

know about this,” the organizers of this forum were those who seemed to be keen to

issues of human justice and injustice. In this forum, I rather remained as an observer.

What stays in my memory as troublesome from this forum is the moment in

which I witnessed a justice-seeker who appeared to be an insensitive perpetuator of

injustice in the victim’s eye. While a halmoni or grandmother5 was telling her experience,

she occasionally stopped sharing, obviously because of the mentally challenging activity of recalling the torturous past. Organizers seemed to have been posed by a moral question as to whether they would discontinue the session. However, the chair, who happened to be a Japanese male student, kept asking the halmoni to continue telling her story. All of a sudden, her anger was directed toward this male student, shouting at him “what do you want me to tell you more, you son of Japan!” This utterance was not translated into

Japanese, so most of the audience as well as the chair himself did not realize why and to whom she was angry at. I, as a person who could understand both Korean and Japanese, was shocked to see this. I was shocked not necessarily because of what happened in front of my eyes, but rather because I knew where both of them—ignorance on the man’s side and the anger targeted toward that ignorance—were coming from. Why did the person, who was supposedly trying to do a good thing to sufferers, not even realize that he himself could be a source of pain?6 It was as if the national amnesia on the side of

5 Victims of the sex slavery are often called in this way, to avoid using the problematic name “comfort women.” 6 Frank (2004), for example, has asked similar question in his article entitled “Asking the Right Question about Pain.” 7

colonizer was challenged by the national memory of suffering and pain on the side the

colonized.7

Perhaps, each culture or nation (in most cases these two terms have been used identically among Koreans and Japanese who claim their cultural homogeneity) has its

own memory or sense of worth called “collective memory.”8 What would happen,

however, if two cultural memories clashed against each other, not only being

incompatible but almost unarguably different in their memory of the same event: One,

lives in the memory of shame and grudge;9 the other, in a total ignorance or social amnesia? When I imagine the lives of Koreans in Japan (exclusively distinguished from

Koreans in Korea), namely Zainichi Koreans,10 they are positioned at the place where

these two cultures co-exist. Their history exists somewhere ‘in-between’ national

histories as a forgotten minority; ‘in-between’ the rhetoric of accusation and total

ignorance. What exists in this space ‘in-between’ are tactics (De Certeau, 1984) of daily

lives that allow them to survive in the country, yet be nowhere home.

**

With my autobiographic recollections, both in a letter and an essay form, I wanted

to explain, through my own personal and familial stories, the essences of this project.

7 Ueno (1998) wrote about the challenge she has faced as a Japanese feminist scholar. While she feels the sense of empathy to the “comfort women” as a feminist scholar, her stance has been challenged by Korean scholars who say that she is not talking self-reflexively from a stance of Japanese. The question, for Ueno, raised by this type of claim, is whether one can be a person, or woman, before being Japanese. 8 Works on collective memory have developed along interdisciplinary lines in history, anthropology, and communication. 9 For many first and second generation Koreans in Japan, being Korean meant inferiority. See Han, et.al (2007). 10 The term “zainichi” literally means “being in Japan.” Korean residents are referred to in this way in Japan. 8

These are: about presence and absence of narratives or politics of telling; ‘clashes’ of

colonial/post-colonial antagonisms as well as tactics of daily lives. The history of

Zainichi Koreans, which certainly is a product of the national history of Korea and Japan,

is distinctly different from national history. If a national history of Korea (both North and

South) in post-colonial era has been about reconstructing borders and protecting them,

the history of Zainichi Koreans as postcolonial subjects has been about experiencing

these borders and being caught in-between them. As cultural minority caught in-between

the rhetoric of national history, living a life as a Zainichi Korean is like witnessing the

gap, as much as hole or absence, and experiencing the fissures (Schechet, 2005) between

representative narratives. In this regard, the positionality and lived experiences are

something that distinguish a life as a Korean descendent in Japan. Thus, when I attempt

to record the history of Zainichi Koreans, what interests me is not about narrating the

“Grand Narrative”—be it national or cultural—but looking at connections between people’s personal stories and political structure; between history in the past tense and the

‘doing’ of history from present context; and between embodied experiences and discursive formation of collective history.

By focusing on life-course narratives of first generation Korean residents in

Japan, in this study I try to understand traces of colonialism and the postcolonial condition within the context of Korean-Japan relationships. In this self-reflexive and intersubjective inquiry, I try to elucidate stories that are not told in history textbooks and that are invisible in national histories of both Korea and Japan.

9

Summary, Research Questions, and Preview

The purpose of this study is to unpack traces of colonialism and its impact upon

people’s lives. The study focuses on recording the lives of first generation Koreans who

came to Japan, voluntarily and involuntarily, during the colonial period and remained in

Japan. Although the colonial past has been included in the Grand National history in liberated Korea, stories of Korean people under colonial Japan have long been

undervalued in Japan. Knowing that official stories of the past are not compatible with

each other among the divided Korea and Japan, Zainichi Koreans often would feel caught

in-between them, in many cases forced to ‘choose’ to follow any one of them. In this

regard, the history of Korean residents was experience-based, involving enactment of

‘tactics’ of daily lives in Japan.

As ways to approach this research, I pose the following research questions:

RQ1: What are some shared life course experiences of first generation Koreans in Japan

as the population whose lives are conditioned by the colonial displacement, and how are

they narrated by them?

RQ2: How would the first generation Koreans’ stories on their displacement explain their

material and sociopolitical circumstances that were uniquely conditioned by the colonial

history and diasporic experiences?

In chapter 2, I explain the origin of Zainichi Korean by positioning it within the

history of colonialism and Japanese nationalism. In addition, through published

documents, I explain practices employed as forms of exploitation during the colonial

period. In Chapter 3, I elucidate theoretical orientations in which this study is situated.

Discussions on rhetorical history, narrative inquiry, and postcolonial studies are made in 10

relation to the standpoint of this study. In chapter 4, I explain the methodological

orientation of this study. I have employed life history interviewing as a primary method

of inquiry for this study. At the same time, I keep my autobiographic stance as a way to

enact self-reflexivity throughout the process of conducting this research.

The analysis of interviews will follow in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 illustrates

the stories of the first generation Koreans in Japan, by focusing on the inner structures of

the selected stories. By narrating the lives of the first generation Koreans in Japan, in this

chapter I try to emphasize uniqueness of individual stories. That is, the focus in this

chapter is to treat one’s reflection of the past at the levels of personal memories. Chapter

6 comprises my analysis of the obtained stories in the frameworks of colonialism and postcolonialism. In this chapter, while I acknowledge the uniqueness at the personal level, I would also like to consider how these stories communally speak.

The final chapter will discuss the overall implications drawn from the analysis. In this chapter, I will re-consider and re-evaluate the theoretical frameworks I employed in this research. I try to address implications of thinking at the intersection of rhetorical history, narrative inquiry, and postcolonial studies. Finally, a critical reflection on my

own standpoint will be included. As Briggs (2002) eloquently stated, methodological,

theoretical, and meta-discursive questions “make more sense afterward, where they

provide an opportunity to reflect on what the presences and absences of the narrative

have been, what it confirms, contradicts, and is silent on about what we thought we knew

about culture, the past, power, or human beings” (p.193). As such, this final chapter will

be a critical re-evaluation of what worked and what did not, what has been revealed and

what concealed as the result of this study. Importantly in this concluding chapter, I try to 11 also suggest new sets of questions as a way of new departure that were produced by my final discussions.

12

CHAPTER 2: FRAMING THE OREGIN OF ZAINICHI KOREANS

When I was in a prep-school for a college entrance exam, in a history class, the

teacher introduced the history of Japan’s annexation of Korea. A short, simple sentence

was written on the chalkboard, “Cosen-no Nihon-ni-yoru Hogokokuka,” or, “Korea being

patronized by Japan.” Stunned by this simplistic yet euphemistic expression, soon after, I

came to an awareness of the nature of this unique moment. An interrogation of the

meaning was absent in this classroom, and with this objectified “fact” presented to the

class, no room was allowed for questioning the origins, background, and consequences of

this historical “fact.” “No wonder Japanese students do not know about us.” Leaving the

classroom, I shared this feeling with one of my Korean friends.

The history of modernism, especially of colonialism, entails an oxymoronic tone:

From the perspective of the colonizer, it is characterized by progress and integration,

whereas from the perspective of the colonized, it means disruption, digression, and

separation. A tricky position is given to those persons who had been caught at the historical positions of the latter yet whose living conditions were still caught in the former.

As many stories about displacement represent either processes or products of the nation’s political turmoil, the history of Koreans’ migration to Japan, as well as their diasporic lives in Japan, is situated within the dynamic modern national history of the

Korean peninsula—mainly the nation’s colonization, decolonization, and division. In this chapter I attempt to frame background knowledge about Zainichi Koreans, by reviewing the published discourses and literature on the history of Korea since 1905, when the attempt for the annexation of Korea by Japan occurred. In providing the reader with the 13 knowledge on Zainichi Koreans, however, this review chapter neither tries to narrate the history of Koreans in Japan nor attempts to be an exhaustive review of different historical perspectives. Rather, an attempt is made to create a framework as an entry point for further studying, deepening and complicating narratives of the first generation Korean immigrants as well as their familial stories. The first section tries to frame the Zainichi

Korean’s origin within an intertwined relationship between modernity and colonialism.

The second section reviews ways in which Koreans were integrated into the Japanese colonial policy as forced labors, which conditioned many Koreans’ displacement to Japan during the annexation period. The third section will provide an overview of Korean history after World War II, followed by a discussion on the lives of Koreans in Japan after the liberation. Then, I draw the rationale for studying the first generation Koreans’ experiences with problem statements.

Framing Modernity and Colonialism from the Perspective of

Japanese Annexation of Korea

Modernity in Korean history, as was the case for many other countries, was characterized by colonization, decolonization, and neo-colonial conditions by foreign forces (Yoon, 2002). As the history of 20th century is characterized by the growth of nationalist thought (Anderson, 1983), Korea’s official annexation by Japan (1910-1945) originated within the context of the development of Japanese nationalism and its pursuit of power (Anderson, 1983; Crofts & Buchanan, 1958; Dudden, 2005; Thomas, 1996;

Unno, 1995; Weiner, 1994; Yoon, 2002). Yoon (2002) claims that the modern history of

Korea has two main characteristics, one of which is the Japanese’ takeover of the country despite Koreans’ independent effort to build a modern society before the annexation. 14

Another critical condition that characterizes Korean politics in the 20th century is the

country’s division that occurred almost simultaneously with its liberation from Japan at

the end of WW II. Furthermore, with the division of the country into South and North— especially because the South Korean politics until now have kept a submissive position to

the United States—Korean modern history can be defined as continuous ruling by the

foreign forces in the forms of colonialism and neo-colonialism (Yoon, 2002, p. 13).

Contrastingly, the modern history of Japan can be identified as one of few

exceptional cases among Asian nations, by emerging as a colonizer with its Imperial

system (Anderson, 1983; Mills, 1997; Shome & Hegde, 2002; Yoon, 2002). To borrow

Mill’s (1997) statement, considering the power relationship between the West and East

and White supremacy within world politics, Japan is an exceptional case “which escaped

colonization, and so for most of the twentieth century has had a shifting and ambivalent

relationship with the global white polity” (p. 31). Japan’s escape from Western

domination had a close tie with its occupation of others throughout the Asian continent,

with the help of already developed nationalism during the Meiji period.11

Benedict Anderson (1983), in his book entitled The imagined community, has traced the history of Japanese nationalist ideology that mostly developed in Meiji Japan.

According to him, there are three points that preconditioned the Meiji Japanese to equip the nationalistic mindset. First, Japan was an ethnoculturally homogeneous nation, conditioned by its isolative policies that lasted throughout the previous two centuries.

Second is the succession of an Imperial system that is incomparably old and truly unique to Japanese culture. That is, Japan is the only country in which one imperial family has

11 Meiji era in Japan lasted from 1868 to 1912. 15

succeeded in power throughout its entire history. Finally, the West’s territorial expansion,

which was perceived by many Japanese as a surprise and a threat, enabled the Japanese

citizens to equip themselves with the newly built nationalist mission of protecting the

country from invaders. With the help of these conditions, that Anderson observes as

rather “accidental,” Japan developed the sense of nationalism, enabling her to become an

independent militaristic nation by the end of the 19th century (Anderson, 1983).

Anderson’s discussion on Japanese nationalism bears an important explanation as to how the Japanese takeover of Korea is unique in its treatment of the colonized when compared to Western colonial policies toward other Asian nations, while certainly entailing some similarities with them. It is important to understand the unique characteristics of Japanese colonial national policy toward Korea, along with its general

perspective shared by other Western nations, since both the similarity and the uniqueness

are critical characteristics that are embedded in the history and lives of Korean residents

in Japan. According to Masao Maruyama (1964), one of the prominent Japanese political theorists,12 European nationalism has always been defined in frameworks of the

international society. Therefore, when a war breaks out, it is often evaluated within the

framework of international law. This international framework, however, was the one

lacking in Japanese political philosophy. From the Japanese political philosophy, war and conflict was viewed rather from the perspective of domestic hierarchy. That is, the result of the conflict suggests either total inclusion of the other into “my” nation or the complete surrender of “my” nation to the “other,” and not both. With this strict either/or perspective that lacks an international viewpoint, Japanese political philosophy supported

12 Maruyama’s work is also reviewed by Anderson (1983, pp. 160-161). 16 the condition that transformed the nation from a passive victim of racial discrimination into an aggressive expansionist nation (Maruyama, 1964).

Therefore, in order to better situate the logic of Japanese annexation of the Korean peninsula, it seems plausible to position both these countries within the framework of

European expansionist politics. Charles Mills, in his book, named Racial Contract

(1997), eloquently explains the logic of racial exploitation started by European White supremacy. Mills (1997) claims, “We live in a world which has been foundationally shaped for the past five hundred years by the realities of European domination and the gradual consolidation of global white supremacy. [In this sense] the Racial Contract is global” (p. 20, Original emphases). What Mills tries to articulate in this book is the claim that “‘Race’ is the common conceptual denominator that gradually came to signify the respective global statuses of superiority and inferiority, privilege and subordination” (p.

21). Indeed, for Mills, modernity exists as a “racially hierarchical polity, globally dominated by Europeans” (p. 27). Yet, as was stated earlier, Mills considers Japan as an

“exception” in thinking about this “privilege and subordination” relationship. What, then, made Japanese modern history exceptional, and how did she achieve it? More importantly, how was the “global white supremacy” in Mills’ sense related to Japan’s colonial expansion?

A careful reading of the rhetoric of Japanese Imperialism as well as Emperor

Hirohito’s statements reveals that the colonization is justified based upon Japan’s protection for the rest of Asian countries from Western expansionism. Therefore, at the very motivational level, Japan’s annexation of Korean peninsula can be situated within a larger global context that is characterized by Western domination. The method of 17

justifying the colonial policies, in this sense, is quite remarkable, when one considers the

sense of victimization rather than that of victimizer still strongly pervasive in Japan.13

Two rhetorical, and practical, strategies—roles of emperor and the way of

naturalization—will be discussed in the following section.

Roles of Emperor in Imperial Japan and Colonial Korea

In the Imperial Japan, the Emperor served not only as a symbol of the state but

also exercised practical power over the people. Several scholars have explained how,

under the Japanese Imperial system, the emperor was considered to be the center of the

state (Barshay, 1988; Manning, 1986; Naragora & Chribb, 2003; Wetzler, 1998). As the

name of the authority serves an important function in Japanese society, the emperor was

not called by his own name (Wetzler, 1998). Instead, as Wetzler (1998) explains, the

emperor is called “the Honorable Emperor (Tenno Heika). His given name, Hirohito, was

often used in Western books and articles, but as late as the mid-1960s it was all but

unknown among ordinary Japanese living in Japan” (Wetzler, 1998, p. x).

The power of the emperor in Imperial Japan did not serve as mere symbolism.

The power of the emperor, if only symbolically, also was permeated through every

segment of people’s ordinary life. From this aspect, Wetzler (1998) differentiates the

power of a Japanese emperor from a “British constitutional monarch,” since the former

served as “the head of the Japanese imperial line and the Japanese imperial state” (p. 82).

Domestically, the Japanese citizens were told to view the emperor, Hirohito, as “a god-

13 For example, consider Weiner’s (1994) observation as follows: “Throughout the postwar period, public education institutions [in Japan] have presented the Pacific War as a natural disaster, which swept all the nations of East Asia. Indeed, due to its unique experience of atomic warfare, Japan is depicted in school textbooks as having suffered proportionately greater damage and loss than its neighbors” (p. 2). 18

like figure.” The prewar constitution of Japan that was exercised since 1890 defines the

citizens as “the Successor to the prosperous Throne of [the] Predecessors” (1889

Japanese Constitution). In this way, in every sector of the public life in prewar Japan, the

citizens were treated as the “emperor’s sons and daughters,” who solemnly would follow the power of the Imperial Throne.

Importantly, however, the emperor’s power and the nationalist thought surrounding him was also used as the way to assimilate Korean people into the Japanese imperial sphere. Under the term of “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Japan tried to extend its militaristic power throughout the Asian region. This act was made under the ideology of a “strong Japan,” within which the emperor was a symbol of the harmony. As

Narangora and Chribb (2003) observes, this Japanese action that explains its “liberal” motive bears an ironic meaning:

The term ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, for all its vagueness and even

deliberate obfuscation, summed up the hope—still alive today—that a large

economic unit in Asia would be able to deliver prosperity to all its peoples. In the

light of long-standing Western colonial exploitation in Asia, co-prosperity within

a Japanese sphere was an idea which many people could find comforting, at least

in principle. (Narangora & Chribb, 2003, p. 316, emphases added)

Explaining the ironic relations between Japanese Imperialism and the identities of Asian nations, Narangora and Chribb (2003) illustrate how the Japanese ideology that “hoped” to bring “prosperity” to the world and Asia in reality contradicted its oppressive actions toward neighboring nations. Japan’s optimistic ideal toward its position in Asia has left many moral questions. Yet, the ideology of “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” 19

helps one understand the motive of Japanese Imperialism. Emperor as a core of the nation served both symbolically and practically to integrate Korea into its ideological sphere by the acceptance of its protective role.

The Ways of Naturalization

In 1905, Japan secretly received approval from the United States to rule the

Korean peninsula, promising instead that she would not occupy the Phillipines (Kang,

2005; Oberdorfer; 1993). In the same year the protectorate agreement was created, and the Japanese administration office was installed in Seoul, Korea. Because of these

“agreements,” one can view the year 1905 as the beginning, if not an official one, of

Japan’s occupation of Korea. Dudden (2005), for example, claims that by the year 1907 the world observed that Korea became an “illegal” country. While official annexation treaty was not signed until 1910, “Japanese administrators in Seoul gained control of every office that once constituted a functioning Korea” (Dudden, 2005, p. 11). Then in

1910, Korea was “officially” integrated into Japan.

Dudden (2005) asserts, “The international atmosphere that declared Korea an illegal nation and Japan a legal one bred itself on the erasure of certain countries, similar to the political economy of slavery that labeled some humans the owners and traders of other humans” (p. 11). In this sense, the relationship between Japanese and Koreans certainly resembles that of other colonial and slavery experiences. Each colonial regime had its way of legitimizing the colonial impulse, both by diminishing the capacity of the colonized and by claiming the sophistication of their own culture. By analyzing British colonization of India, for example, Metha (1999) posits that “Childhood is a theme that runs through the writings of British liberals on India,” and, “it is the fixed point 20 underlying the various imperial imperatives of education, forms of governance, and the alignment with progress” (p. 31). Similarly, Charles Mills (1997), explains how African slaves were recognized as “subperson,” not as “full,” thus making it plausible to be treated as objects for trading. The “vivid memory for Koreans,” to borrow Chulwoo

Lee’s (1999) assertion, was “the populous claims of Japanese colonialists that they were modernizing Korean society” (p. 21, emphasis added).

However, what distinguished Japanese colonization of Korea was in its objective of “erasing” (Dudden, 2005) the other culture to achieve an absolute assimilation. Weiner

(1994) observes that Japan’s assimilation policies toward Korea “demanded no less than absolute acculturation; the complete abandonment of an independent Korean identity and its replacement by Japanese institutions and forms of behavior” (p. 5). Under the slogan of “Nai-sen Ittai,”—meaning that the “inside” Japan and Korea becomes one body—the assimilation policies in the pre-war period required that Koreans stopped using their own language and their own names, and instead, Japanese names and the use of Japanese in public were coerced. As Weiner (1994) states, “Assimilation was perceived as a process which would enable Koreans to assume their natural and proper place within a racially defined hierarchy of dependent states within the empire” (p. 5, emphasis added). In this regard, “the texture of the Korean colonial experience differed significantly from those territories under European control, where racially defined capacities most commonly resulted in the retention of indigenous institutions and distinct policies formulated on the basis of separate and unequal” (Weiner, 1994, pp. 5-6).

Forms of Exploitation and Migration to Japan

It was under these conditions stated above that Koreans were counted as, and 21 traded for, human resources for the Japanese empire. Several forces were recorded as reasons for Koreans’ migration to Japan. The early stage of migration to Japan was caused by the enormous agricultural restoration that the Japanese empire started in 1910 that lasted until 1918. This restoration aimed at reforming the land ownership and land values, in order to increase the agricultural benefit through a radical restructuring of land- related rules. The Imperial Japan artificially and arbitrarily restructured the land related rule in order to forage the land/resources in Korea and deprived Korean’s ownership by making the registration of Korean owners deliberately difficult or impossible. For Korean land owners, this agricultural reform meant deprivation of their land. Under the name of

“land investigation,” the Japanese empire banned all the customs of land ownership and cultivation methods that previously existed in the Korean peninsula, transforming many

Korean landowners into poor farmers. Those farmers and previous landowners who were now deprived of their livelihood came to Japan searching for other sources of living.

According to Park (2005), the number of Koreans in Japan jumped from 790 before the reform to 28,000 by the year 1919. The number increased year after year, and by 1921, it was estimated that 32,274 Korean workers resided in Japan, which was followed by a reported 136,709 Koreans by 1925 (Weiner, 1994, p.53 based on records by Japanese

Home Ministry, Police Affairs Bureaus).

Since 1939, Japan started to recruit massive numbers of the Koreans for their military forces. In July 1939, the empire announced the “importation” of 85,000 Koreans to Japan, signaling the beginning of what has come to known as the “forced labors.” By the end of World War II, a sum of 1.5 million Koreans were brought to Japan as forced labor sources, including tens of thousands, within approximately 2 million as total, 22

Korean women who were forced to provide sexual “comfort” to the Japanese military

(Shin, 1995, p. 133). In this way, the number of Koreans in Japan increased so

explosively that by the year of liberation in 1945, more than 2 million (2,365,000)

Koreans were estimated to reside in Japan (Shin, 1995; Park, 2005).

Stories of Forced Labors

Regarding the origin of Zainichi Koreans, it is not an overstatement to say that many of them are descendents of the “forced” migration to Japan. If not “forced,” either deceived as was in the case of the military “comfort women,” or made to believe that coming to Japan would save their lives. It is important to note that by the end of the 19th

century, Koreans had developed the nationalism that was closely tied with their

attachment to the territory of the Korean peninsula: “To be inside the boundaries of a

nation defined as a territorial unit was to be closer to the nation in its other, especially

cultural, forms of definitions” (Schmid, 2002, p. 239). Thus, as Schmid (2002) states, “To

be deterritorialized was presented as an uncomfortable and ambiguous position, in which

one’s very Koreanness, unless assiduously cultivated, was threatened” (p. 240). This

sense of national identity that reflected close ties to the peninsula later continued to form

the collective cultural identity of Koreans in Japan. Simultaneously, it was out of this

context in which many Koreans deprived of their own territory reacted with rage toward the Japanese empire.14

Of the work that illustrated the history of forced labors, along with that of

Zainichi Koreans, Shin’s effort is remarkable. As a second generation Zainichi Korean

14 It is commonly known among Koreans that the feeling of Han, of grudge, is the most prevailing national emotion among this population. 23

himself, Shin devoted his life to collecting data regarding the Koreans’ movement for their independence and to record Zainichi Koreans’ history. Shin’s objective, in his book on the Korean independence movement, was to transform the tone of Korean colonial history from passive to active, from victims to survivors. In Until the Day of Liberation, for example, Shin includes a poem by Shigeharu Nakano, in which Koreans were depicted as active partners of the Japanese proletariat (See Appendix A for the whole poem). According to Shin, the poem was banned in Japan under censorship, but it was translated and published in Korea.

In the book entitled Kankoku heigoto dokuritu undo [Annexation of Korea and independence movement], Shin (1995) included an extensive amount of pictures to illustrate the history of forced labors. Figure 1 is a picture of Korean forced laborers in

Hokkaido, Japan.

24

Figure 1. Koreans who were abused at a tako-beya in Hokkaido, Japan. The picture appeared in Asahikawa Newspaper in 1926 (In Shin, 1995, p. 134). Korean workers were quartered in the “tako-beya,” or the “room for devilfish.” Workers who tried to escape or behaved unfaithfully would be tortured.

Figures 2, 3, and 4 show the processes of recruiting Korean forced laborers.

Figure 5 shows four Korean youth prisoners who were liberated from a jail in Hyogo prefecture, Japan only after Korea’s liberation.

25

Figure 2. Investigation by police officers (In Shin, 1995, p. 136).

Figure 3. Summoning Koreans in Gyung-gi prefecture, Korea in 1941 (In Shin, 1995, p. 136).

26

Figure 4. Summoned Koreans upon leaving their country (In Shin, 1995, p. 136).

Figure 5. Korean youths imprisoned in Okubo , Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. Taken on October 10, 1945. (In Shin, 1995, p. 155).

The history of forced labors among Koreans has been relatively unknown, compared to other war-time crimes such as the concentration camps of Nazi Germany

27

(Barkan, 2000). In this sense, Shin’s works with vivid pictures helps to record the history of colonized Koreans, serving as pictorial “evidence” to document the past.

Military “Comfort Women”

“Comfort women,” euphemistically named in this way by the Japanese military during World War II period, refers to those women who were drafted as military sex slaves during the Second World War under the Japanese military system. It is known that there were approximately 200,000 women who served as “comfort women” during the

War period (Horn, 1997), among which the majority were from Korea.15 Figure 6 shows

a photograph that became the first visual evidence for the existence of the “comfort

women” system.

Figure 6. Two “comfort women” crossing the Yellow Sea (Hicks, 1994).

15 Population of drafted women varied in their country of origin. Followed by the number of Koreans, there were also women from China, the Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia (Horn, 1997), and even some Westerners (Barkan, 2000). 28

According to Hicks (1994), one Japanese journalist named Kako Senda’s keen eye on this

somewhat “mysterious” picture has contributed to revealing the existence of the brutal

military “comfort” system. Among war time photos during World War II, Senda found this picture, in which two women were crossing the river holding their skirts. “Senda asked a former war correspondent who these women were; he was told they were

‘Korean Ps’” (Hicks, 1994, p. 15). Although the term was new to ordinary people like

Senda, he found that the “comfort women” were known among the former soldiers. Yet, the existence of comfort women were known only through soldiers’ personal experiences, not as a system which took place during the war. In order to put pieces of evidence together, Senda investigated on his own.

Pieces of raw data, both in visual and written forms, came to be revealed. Figure 7 and 8 also show pictures that are considered to be important evidence. In the figure 7,

“comfort women” are sitting in line waiting to be interrogated.

Figure 7. Korean comfort women waiting to be interrogated (Hicks, 1994).

29

Figure 8. American troops with ‘comfort women’ in Okinawa (Hicks, 1994).

Figure 9. Entrance to a “comfort station.” The slogan is welcoming the Japanese soldiers. (In Shin, 1995, p. 148).

30

Figure 10. A “comfort station” from the side (In Shin, 1995, p. 148).

Figures 9 and 10 show pictures of “comfort stations,” where these women were

detained and raped. The photos, as evidence, reveal the undeniable existence of the

systematized sexual slavery by the Japanese empire.

Along with visuals, these women’s stories served as important evidence. Shim

(2000), for example, interviewed six Korean women who testified that they had served as military sex slaves. The locus of Shim’s study is the women’s collective memories of being “comfort women.” Shim’s study revealed that although the women were

“liberated” from the lives of being “comfort women” with the country’s liberation, they were not free from their memories. The social norm for women’s chastity in Korean society positioned many “comfort women’s” bodies as being “dirty,” “impure,” and

31

“prostitutes.” Shim argues that the relation between the silence and the disclosure would

reveal that these women have lived with their memories. On the one hand, the silence would speak to their stigmatized identity as living with the “raped” body in the Korean culture, where people believe in the strong chastity of unmarried women. On the other

hand, however, Shim argues that the process of narrating and telling their experiences

brings crucial “changes in their identity and the recognition” (p.137, the author

translated).

Another work on comfort women history worth reviewing here has been published

by Zainichi Korean women. Jugun-ianhuwo kangaeru zainitidouhoujoseino kai, or the

Zainichi-Korean Women Council for the Issue of the Drafted Women, have enacted a

project to trace the history of “comfort women” from the perspective of Koreans still

residing in Japan. In doing so, their work introduced the ethnographic work conducted by

Jung-Ok Yun (1990), who attempted to trace the lives of Koreans who were drafted as

the “forced labor” and remained outside Korea. Yun’s work introduced the process in

which she connected with Pon-Gee Pae, who was forced to come to Okinawa prefecture

in Japan to be a “comfort woman,” and Yu-Tah Yoo, who has lived in Thailand for the

rest of her life. Also, by hearing some stories from their neighbors, Yun described how

Korean “comfort women” had gone through their harsh experience as the colonized.

As her field study was in Okinawa, Japan, Yun’s ethnographic work revealed a life

of a former Korean “comfort woman” who became a Zainichi Korean. Yun, for example,

located some places where a tremendous number of Korean women committed suicide.

Stories told at those sites suggested that those women went through their harsh

experiences by singing Arirang, a traditional Korean folksong, together. In her study, 32

Yun contrasted the Zainichi Korean woman’s life with Yoo’s (a Thai woman) “positive

attitude.” Yun contrasted the present lives of these two women; one who was suffering

with phobia of meeting ordinary people in Japan, and the other who, surrounded by her

husband and three adopted sons, has “recovered” her memory of the past enough to say

“it is not (Japanese) people but the ‘sin’ they created that we have to curse” (p.19, my

translation).

Pae’s life implies that Zainichi Koreans’ experience, even after the country’s

liberation, might significantly differ from those populations who either returned home or

left Japan. Due to the severe attack in Okinawa, Pae was the only “comfort woman” in

Japan who survived from the war (Hicks, 1994). She lived with the support of one

Korean woman in Okinawa, and when she died in her tiny apartment, nobody stood by

her. Her body was found on October 18, 1992, but by the time she was identified, Pae’s

body had already been severely decomposed.

Problems Concerning the Literature on Koreans’ Experience

Since the end of World War II, scholars and political activists have been arguing

over the issue of historical injustice by the Japanese Imperialism. The forms of exploitation discussed above have been introduced in the context of discussing the wrongdoings of Japanese Imperialism over East Asian countries. In Japan, for example, an organization named “Zainichi Chosenjin Kyousei Renkou Chousadan,” or Zainichi

Korean Investigation Committee for Forced Labor, have been revealing their annual effort to track accurate information about the issue of forced labor. Moreover, the efforts of various organizations have been successful in building solidarity among the victimized nations. In 2006, for example, an International Solidarity Council Conference was held in 33

Manila, Philippines, and an International Joint Appeal was submitted to the United

Nations to urge Japan to fulfill its obligations to the victims under the Japanese

militaristic regime.

Despite all of the scholarship and activist effort both in Japan, Korea, and

internationally, I have observed at least two problems for these historical discussions. The first problem is the restricted focal point of the studies concerning the first generation

Koreans. Other than the discussions that focused on the period of “forced laborer,” there

is limited academic literature on first generation Koreans in Japan. Both in Korean and

Japanese scholarship, the first generation Koreans tend to be explained as an origin of

Zainichi Korean history, and, discussions that follow are those on Zainichi Koreans in general. Further, when scholars’ discussions deal with more current problems, the representation of the first generation Koreans, along with their experiences, remains as that of a static past. There seems to be general lack among scholars in acknowledging the life course experiences of the first generation Koreans as something dynamic, living memories.16

Related to this point, the second problem lies in the mode of representing the past.

Overall, historical studies rely on what I call “evidence claims,” which tend to

overemphasize the “fact” from the past. In many evidence-driven researches, stories as

well as the bodies of victims are transformed into objective evidence. The discussions on

the Japanese wrongdoings during WWII and on Korea’s colonial period have focused on

16 A counter to this effort is rather evident among the works of non-profit social organizations in Japan, than of scholarly works. For example, an organization named KMJ—Osaka Kokusairikai Kyoiku Center [Osaka International education center], (1999) has published life stories of first generation Koreans as a result of their two-year-project. 34

the discovery of evidence from legal standpoints. From a humanistic point of view,

however, one must ask, whether these evidence-based approaches really capture the sense

of experiences people have gone through? Several questions can be drawn from a

humanistic perspective: Does the official debate over “forced labors” cover succeeding

consequences of this historical incident, witnessed by the lives of survivors? When

human body becomes legal “evidence” by reducing the lived body into an “object” of

scrutiny, what are the implications? Can we also understand how those bodies of

survivors deal with the history debate in the present context? What seems to be required

is a perspective that connects personal and political, past and present, body and

discourse. We need a perspective that is timely, the one that can travel a space in-

between the past and present.

Liberation, Division, and Korean War

With the end of World War II and the simultaneous defeat of Japanese

Imperialism, Korea was liberated from the 36 years’ colonial occupation by Japan. The

strongest impact of the 36 years’ Japanese occupation is the creation of “han,” or

“grudge” among Korean people, forming the national identity of the newly liberated

Korea (Wada, 1998). The tragedy of losing one’s country made Koreans strive for the

country’s independence and the nation’s subjectivity. During the Japanese occupation period, there occurred a number of anti-Japanese movements. The two political leaders,

Rhee Syng Man-the First President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and Kim Il

Sung-who led the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) for more than thirty years, had both been the leaders of the anti-Japanese movement (Lee, 2001; Wada,

35

1998; Cumings, 1981). Both Rhee and Kim appeal to the nation’s independent right, but

opposed each other in how they wanted to envision the newly independent Korea.

Despite the will of Korean people, however, Korea was not allowed to have subjectivity in rebuilding the country after its liberation. Politics in the Korean peninsula after its independence was brought up as an issue among the international coalition among the Allies. While the joint declaration at the Cairo conference in 1943 claims that

Korea should be independent, at the Yalta Conference in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes the trusteeship of the peninsula among the United States, Soviet Union, and

China. Further, on August 10, 1945, it was suggested that “U.S. troops occupy the area south of the thirty-eighth parallel, which was approximately halfway up the peninsula and north of the capital city of Seoul, and that Soviet troops occupy the area north of the parallel” (Oberdorfer, 1997, p.6). No Korean officials were consulted upon the country’s division (Cumings, 1981; Oberdorfer, 1997).

On August 15, 1948, Rhee Syng Man, with the help of the United States and the

UN, declared an independent government in southern half of the thirty-eighth parallel, and became the first president of the newly built country, the Republic of Korea. While

Rhee’s rhetoric claims for the country’s independence and later, reunification, his policy put more focus on excluding Communist influence in the country. Lee (2001) argues that

Rhee’s anti-Communist policy is on the one hand “for the liberal independence of the nation,” and on the other hand “for achieving the liberal democracy throughout Korean peninsula” (p.55, Author translated). ‘Liberalism and democracy,’ therefore, since then become the terms that differentiate the Communist ideology from South Korean society.

36

Meanwhile in the Northern half of the Korean peninsula, Kim Il Sung declares the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on September 9, 1948, which is only twenty five

days later than Rhee’s declaration of the ROK. According to Cumings (1989), Kim had

gained prominent reputation for his leadership in anti-Japanese guerilla more so than the

South Korean counterpart:

One of Kim’s postwar [post-liberation] advantages was that he rose to

prominence in the last decade of a four-decade-long resistance struggle; when

other leaders were dead, in prison, or had given up, he was able to establish a

reputation for himself, preserve his strength, and situate himself and his

followers profitably as liberation approached (p.36).

The anti-Japanese spirit is reflected in Kim’s rhetoric as an identity of the newly built

socialist country. Kim emphasizes the country’s sovereignty characterized by self-

independence, self-reliance, and a “determination policy” eliminating outside

interference. The achievement of reunification, for the socialist ideology, should be

realized by revolution, excluding the United States’ troops occupying South Korea. In his

speech upon the matter of revolution, Kim Il Sung states that Koreans never should forget

the legacy of colonialism that Japanese imperialism left in Korean society; and the fact

that the Southern half of Korean peninsula is occupied by the militarist power of the

United States (Kim Il Sung, 1975). In this way, the “subjectivity” stressed by the North

Korean socialist leader is based on an idea of reestablishing an independent society

excluding any other nation’s influence by revolution.

Each country in the Korean Peninsula, the ROK and the DPRK, claimed that each

one’s nation was a solely legitimate country over the entire Korean land. As Lee and 37

Campbell (1994) claim, “neither entity (North and South) recognized the other; each

claimed exclusive sovereignty over the entire Korean peninsula” (p. 30). Therefore, an

exclusive characteristic of the authoritative rhetoric over the declaration of the ROK and

the DPRK lead to the absolute negation of the other side of Korea. In the Communist

North, the socialist ideology of revolution has been exclusively used under the banner of

“liberating” South Korean society from the U.S. occupation. Similarly in the Capitalist

South, the term “freedom” has rhetorically functioned to criticize the domination by the puppet regime of the Communist Soviet Union over the Northern society. The outcome of this exclusive rhetoric of negation was the outbreak of the Korean War. Ironically enough, the rhetoric of “liberation” over the entire Korean country ended up with brutal killing of each other, developing it to an international war between Capitalism and

Communism.

The Korean War, which started on June 25, 1950 and lasted until its ceasefire on

July 27, 1953, has brought a devastating impact in intensifying the political antagonism between South and North Korea. According to Cumings (1990), an “official story” about the starting of the Korean War in North Korea is opposite to that in the South in terms of

“who attacked” first (p. 568). Both South and North Koreans officially claim that the other side started the attack, but their stories that answer to the question of how it started are the same (Cumings, 1990). As Cuming concludes, a question of “who started the

Korean War” not only is impossible to be answered but also “should not be asked” (p.

621). Instead, an emphasis should be on the fact that the Korean War has an enormous rhetorical influence in the DPRK and the ROK as that of accusing the enemy and the possible threat they often represent, which has still not been eliminated. 38

The War made the hostility toward each opposing ideology more rigid not only

between South and North Korea, but between Capitalist countries such as the United

States and Communist nations such as the USSR and the Republic of China. In South

Korea, publications and the presidential rhetoric identified North Korea, along with the

Soviet Union, as a major enemy of the nation’s reunification. Kim (1952) has represented

Rhee Syng Man’s position toward Communist leaders as follows:

Due to the North Korean attack, the military front had spread by the Manchurian

border, and we faced a difficult problem because of this. That is, we are facing a

serious problem with the barren land soils, which had been wasted …by Stickov,

the Soviet consular with a red face, Kim Ilsung, a fat monster with devil eyes, and

other puppet leaders. (p. 56, Author translated)

Kim’s statements emphasize President Rhee’s Anti-Communist position clearly, maintaining Rhee’s will to “punish and reeducate the Communist leaders” (Kim, 1952, p.

57, Author translated). In a similar way, an attitude of anti-Communism was also emphasized in the United States. Kim (2000) summarizes the results of American polls conducted during 1952 that asked about the plausibility of imprisoning Communist suspects in the United States. The result shows that 52% of the participants answered that it is plausible to imprison the Communist suspects, whereas about 68% believed that the

Communist Party should be dissolved. Furthermore, 80% of Americans claimed that the

Communist supporters’ civil rights should be deprived. The Anti-Communist emphasis in

South Korea as well as in the Unites States is coincidental to the outbreak and the eventual ceasefire of the Korean War, ensuring the Communist entities, namely North

Korea, Soviet Union, and all other Communists as the enemies. 39

On the contrary, in North Korea, accusation was put on the South Korean leaders, associated with the hostility toward the United States. The Korean War rhetoric served in the North to legitimize the Communist “revolution” for the reunification on their terms.

The rhetoric emphasized Kim Il Sung’s persona as the “liberator” of the nation; at the same time it created the hostility toward the United States and South Korean leaders.

Kim’s speech on August 15, 1960, on the occasion of the national liberation holiday, emphasized the “liberation” of the South Korean people through the Communist revolution (Kim, 1975). The text of Kim Il Sung’s lengthy speech in terms of the country’s reunification, can be read as an exemplary text revealing North Korea’s

“legitimate” reading of the national division. The “evil” terms that were put on South

Korea and the United States in Kim’s speech can be seen as a sheer contrast from the anti-Communist ideology that was clearly declared in the presidential rhetoric of South

Korean Presidents. In the speech, Kim Il Sung sets up the Unite States as a major enemy for the nation’s reunification, while enforcing the antipathy to the United States as being the reason for the division:

Today the U.S. imperialists, dismayed at the awakening of the south Korean

people and their unceasing struggle, are resorting to every trick to maintain

their colonial rule over south Korea. They are bringing new-type weapons

into south Korea, reinforcing their troops there and intensifying war

preparations, while frantically trying to put the paralyzed puppet ruling

apparatus in order. The south Korean reactionary clique is trying to dampen

the fighting spirit of the people by means of repression and deception,

40

faithfully carrying out the orders of their American masters. (Kim Il Sung,

1975, p. 26)

The “threat” of another war is directly associated with the “colonial rule” of the U.S. army in the ROK, thus requiring the Communist revolution in the South. This

“revolutionary rhetoric” became the only official and legitimate discourse in the DPRK.

The Korean War was misused by the authority as a symbolic signification of the “poor south” and the “evil U.S. imperialists.”

The great rhetorical impact of Anti-Capitalism in the North and Anti-Communist influence in the South meant that the Korean War rhetoric served in each society as the

“discourse of domination” (McKerrow, 1989). However, the real outcome of the war in the first place is neither the victory of anti-Communist ideology nor that of the anti-

Capitalist. It was the devastating fact that more than one sixth of the entire Korean population (approximately 5.2 million out of the entire population of 30 million

Koreans), were killed in this hopeless war (Kim, 2000). Moreover, 10 million Korean people were separated from their families due to evacuations from North to South or from

South to North, and the ceasefire dividing the nation along the thirty-eighth parallel. The

Korean War was not merely the civil conflict between the South and North; it started from an ideological one, which ended up having a great international conflict among other superpower nations such as the United States, the Republic of China, and the Soviet

Union. Zainichi Koreans, as a diasporic community closest to the Korean peninsula, were not free from these experiences of conflict, sacrifice, and separation.

41

Korean Diaspora after the Liberation

So far in this chapter, I have discussed the nationalism of the Japanese empire

during the colonial period and that of South and North Korea reflected through published

discourses. The Japanese colonialism has the tone for the history of Zainichi Koreans by

originating the massive dislocations among them. During the annexation period between

1910 and 1945, Koreans were strategically included as the Japanese “citizens” under the

rhetoric of the “Emperor’s sons and daughters,” while preserving the highly hierarchical order in which Koreans were positioned at the lowest rank. The country’s liberation, which occurred simultaneously with the defeat of Japan in World War II, however, brought another political turmoil to Korea. The post-war politics between Japan and the newly divided Korea had been illustrated with the ideological conflict signaled by the beginning of the Cold War. Along with the post-war turmoil, both within the divided

Korea and with the conflict between Japan and Korea, Koreans in Japan had to face their reality as an abandoned people. In this section, I will discuss how the post-war politics affected the lives of Koreans in Japan. Specifically, I will explain how diasporic identities had been formed among Koreans in Japan in relation to the two Koreas’ national ideologies as well as the international politics between Korea and Japan. Discussing

Zainichi Koreans in relation to these countries is important, as in Lee’s (1981) argument,

“legal status and subsequent privileges [for Koreans in Japan] were determined formally by international agreement and informally by social attitudes” (p. 133).

In 1945, the year of the country’s liberation, approximately 2 million Koreans,

2,365,000 in number, were estimated in Japan (Shin, 1995; Park, 2005). Now that they were not under Japanese rule, returning home seemed plausible for both Koreans as well 42

as for Japanese officials. Indeed, many Koreans headed to their homeland soon after the liberation. A report by the South Korean government indicates that “1, 414,258 Koreans returned from Japan by the end of 1946” (K. Lee, 1983, cited in Y. Lee, 1991, p. 141).

The remaining Koreans formed the diasporic society in Japan, sustaining its approximate population of 650,000 to 600,000.17

However, most Koreans among these remaining populations in Japan also have

kept their will to return home. According to a study done by Zainihon Daikanminkoku

Seinenkai [The Youth League of South Koreans in Japan] in 1988, 70.4 % of the

participating Zainichi Koreans answered that they actually prepared to repatriate to their

homeland. The 77.6 % of populations who worked as forced laborers showed their will to

return home, indicating a higher percentage than any population who came with other

reasons such as financial (67.4%), marriage and family reasons (64.9%), and study

(73.3%). Of those populations who did not, or could not return home, the majority of

them (66.5%) stayed in Japan for financial reasons. Others (22.1%) remained in Japan for

familial and personal reasons. The result of the study implies that the majority of Zainichi

Koreans had held their will to return home. Observing the instability of their homeland

both politically and economically and losing the familial connection due to the colonial

displacement, many had to remain in Japan for a while, if not permanently.

The legal status of Zainichi Koreans after the country’s liberation was ambiguous.

Both Korean and Japanese authorities refused to acknowledge the necessity of legal

protection of Koreans in Japan. In 1947, the announced “legal reform required Koreans to

register as aliens” (Ryang, 2005. p. xvi), and Zainichi Koreans were automatically

17 According to K. Lee (1983), 670,890 Koreans in Japan were estimated in 1981. 43 cancelled from their status of being “Japanese.” However, the cancellation of Japanese citizenship did not mean the gain of Korean nationality. Until the year 1965, in which diplomatic relations were built between South Korea and Japan, the former government had kept the position that the issue of Koreans in Japan was solely the domestic matter of

Japan. Therefore, with the avoidance from both Japan and Korea, Koreans in Japan became stateless people (Ryang, 2000). Furthermore, the traffic between Japan and Korea had become harder after the start of the Korean War in 1950, and the country’s division became clearer. Since the country called “Korea”—neither the Republic of Korea (South) nor the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North)—was their envisioned homeland, many Koreans in Japan experienced a bitter sense of losing their home.

Observing the country’s division and another form of occupation by the U.S. in their homeland, the Korean diasporic society in Japan was also divided into the supporters of South and North. While the South-supporting organization called Mindan promoted Koreans’ naturalization in Japan, the North-supporting League or Choryun

(later Minjun, then to Chongryun) claimed for Koreans’ sovereign rights in Japan. When the country was liberated, “The majority of Zainichi Koreans were not communists, but fiercely anti-Japanese,” and therefore, “the communists’ record of staunch resistance to the colonial authorities appealed to many” (Ryang, 2000, p. xvii). Hence, when Zainichi

Koreans were to choose communities in response to the country’s political climate, the south-supporting organization, Mindan, “failed to attract comparable mass support”

(Ryang, 2000, p. xvii). Oppositely, the Korean League, or Choryun, appealed to many

Koreans in Japan under the banner of protecting and promoting Koreans’ rights in Japan.

44

Many Korean people were gathered in newly built Korean schools, with the hope of

taking back the deprived language of their own and their cultural dignity.

The existence of Zainichi Koreans was certainly not welcomed in the post-war

Japan. With the fear of Communist influence throughout Japan, the U.S. occupation army

in 1949 banned the League. Korean schools were banned, and the purge created more social turmoil between the supporters of North Korea and the U.S. army. Then the

oppressed Koreans joined the Japanese Communist Party, forming an underground

organization called Minjun. In 1955, the establishment of Chongryun was announced,

claiming its detachment from the Japanese Communist Party. Rather, Chongryun showed clearer political attachment to North Korea, acclaiming its own members as the country’s oversea citizens.18

In 1965, the diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea was newly

established, allowing Zainichi Koreans to obtain South Korean nationality. However,

“Despite the fact that fully 98 percent of first-generation Koreans n Japan came from the

southern provinces, at least initially large numbers of zainichi Koreans refused to accept

South Korean nationality” (Ryang, 2000, pp. xvi-xvii). Instead, the opened route to North

Korea attracted many Koreans who were suffering with poverty, discrimination, and

hardship in finding jobs in Japan. In 1959, the North Korean government and the

Japanese Red Cross agreed upon Zainichi Koreans’ repatriation to North Korea. Given

18 Kyung-Shik Park, one of the prominent scholars in Korean Studies in Japan, explains the major shift from Minjun to Chongryun occurred in its position to two countries— Japan and North Korea. The new position for Koreans suggested by Chongryun was that, “Zainichi Koreans were the citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who would gather around the country … and would not intervene domestic political matters in Japan” (Park, 1992, p. 15, author translated). 45 the neglect by the South Korean government to officially accept Koreans’ repatriation, the offer from North Korean side also attracted the Japanese government. An official document recently revealed by NHK—a Japanese broadcast station— indicates that in

1959 the rate of unemployment among Zainichi Koreans was 8 times as high as that of

Japanese, and the numbers of welfare recipients due to unemployment was 7 times as many as their Japanese counterpart (NHK, 2007). In addition to the financial burden, from the eyes of Japanese authorities, Koreans in Japan were considered to be the major suspect for the high crime rate. From the viewpoint of Japanese government, therefore,

Zainichi Koreans were clearly the unwanted citizens. Hence, as is indicated even in the

U.S. official documents, the repatriation to North Korea had come to reality, foreseeing the clear benefit to the Japanese side as well (NHK, 2007). With the idea of ‘living in one’s own country’ on one side, and of ‘removing the source of harm’ on the other, at least in its initial stage the repatriation seemed to have functioned as the win-win situation.

Where Do We Belong?: Problems Concerning Social Positions of Zainichi Koreans

In Japan, various discussions exist concerning the social positions of Korean residents and their identities (Hukuoka, 1993; Kang, 2004, 2005; Kim, 1994; Park, 2005).

Each viewpoint is related to another set of discussions that suggests how this minority population in Japan needs to be named. From multiculturalism’s perspective influenced by the U.S. and other European societies, as well as by the pressure of globalization, an argument suggests that Zainichi Koreans need to be positioned as Korean-Japanese. This hyphenation suggests the blend between their Koreanness and Japaneseness, the former suggesting their origin and the latter their citizenship. Another perspective, which is more 46

popular among Japanese and native Korean societies in which racial and ethnic

homogeneity is so deeply rooted in people’s consciousness, suggests that Zainichi

Koreans should assimilate themselves into either Japan or Korea.19 However, choosing

any of these perspectives can cause moral dilemmas for Zainichi Koreans. The

multicultural approach, which is rather a new approach that appeared during the post-

Cold War era, is challenged by those who argue that Japanese society is fundamentally

different from the U.S. and many other Western societies. In contrast to Japan, such

nation’s homogeneity has not been an original condition of the countries, and therefore,

inclusion and exclusion of cultural minorities have continuously been raised as social

problems. The criticism of the multiculturalists’ approach thus claims that Japanese

society simply is not “ready” to accept another culture as a visible minority (Park Il,

2005).20 On the other hand, having to choose either Korea (which further means either

South or North) or Japan calls for another problem that is caused by the incongruity

between the social representation and their own identity. In the eyes of Koreans in Korea,

young generations of Zainichi Koreans look exactly same as Japanese (Hukuoka, 1993).

Then, while many Koreans in Japan still want to keep their identities attached to Korean

nationality,21 forces of exclusion come from both Korean societies in the Korean

19 This nationalistic force has been much stronger in the Cold War period, in which most Zainichi Koreans either voluntarily or forcefully had to choose the country to which they belong. I will talk about this issue separately in another chapter. 20 For example, choosing whether to keep their Korean name upon acquiring the Japanese nationality is a moral decision for Zainichi Koreans. According to Park (2005), keeping their Korean names in Japanese society has been hard for many Koreans. Park lists 51 public figures in Japan who “came out” to be Koreans, revealing their Korean names. Stories of some of these Koreans reveal that they had to hide their Korean origin and were forced to choose Japanese nationality in order to work in Japanese media. 21 Park (2005) has conducted a research that tried to understand Zainichi Koreans’ sense of affiliation and future vision for their social position. According to this research, 48 % (out of total 1328 sampled) 47

peninsula. Choosing either Korea or Japan thus creates a moral dilemma, mainly because

in both societies little attention has been paid to possible social positions for Zainichi

Koreans.

What I try to claim from the above discussion is that, while the positions of

Zainichi Koreans cannot be argued independently from the national politics of Japan and

the two Koreas, there has been little attention to Zainichi Koreans within each society.

One of big reasons for this, I argue, comes from reluctance in both Japanese and Korean

societies to understand the origins of Zainichi Koreans and their lived experiences. The

nationalistic politics and histories of both Korea and Japan seemed to have overlooked

the positionality of Zainichi Koreans as something existing in-between the native and

foreign lands.22 Indeed, for them, the notion of “native” and “foreign” is a tricky question. Zainichi Koreans cannot be collectively identified within the either/or dichotomy. When official texts on the past only tell nationalistically homogeneous stories, where would those of the ethnic minorities fit? An effort needs to be made to

deconstruct the national categorization and to dig out untold facets of their history.

Summary

In this chapter, I framed background knowledge about Zainichi Koreans by

reviewing the literature related to their experience. In providing the reader with the

knowledge on Zainichi Koreans, the Zainichi Korean’s origin was framed within an

of the people showed their will to keep their Korean nationalities throughout their lives, while 38% answered that they might obtain Japanese nationality in future. 22 This sense of inability to capture individuals’ unique experiences with national history is explained eloquently by Ranajit Guha (2002). In pointing out the inadequacy of state historiography in recognizing the “historicality” of the colonized people’s experience, “What concerns [him] is the representation of colonial past held in thrall by a narrowly defined politics of statism” (p. 5, emphasis added). 48

intertwined relationship between modernity and colonialism. Japan’s annexation of

Korea—signaled in 1905, officialized in 1910, and lasted until 1945—has its root in the

heightened Japanese nationalism at the end of 19th century. The Japanese national

expansionist’s thought, reacting to that of Western countries, originated the colonial

relationship imposed upon Korea. Koreans’ migrations to Japan were conditioned within

this context of the country’s colonization. The two forms of exploitations, “forced labors”

and the military “comfort women,” were claimed as evidence of the colonial experiences

among Koreans. Despite all of the scholarship and activist effort both in Japan, Korea,

and internationally, I illustrated the continuing problems for these historical discussions.

The first one is the restricted focal point of the studies concerning the first generation

Koreans, focusing only on the colonization period. The second problem is in the

“evidence claims,” which tend to overemphasize the “fact” from the past. In many

evidence-driven researches, stories as well as the bodies of victims/survivors are

transformed into objective evidence. Finally, while the positions of Zainichi Koreans

cannot be argued independently from the national politics of Japan and the two Koreas,

there has been little or almost no place for Zainichi Koreans to fit within each society.

The nationalistic politics and histories of both Korea and Japan have overlooked the

positionality of Zainichi Koreans as something existing in-between the native and foreign

lands. An effort needs to be made to deconstruct the national categorization and to dig out untold facets of their history as displaced citizens.

49

CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

Rhetorical History, Narrative Inquiry, Postcolonial Studies

In this chapter, I discuss ways in which history is shaped through stories of the past contextualized within particular local meaning-making communities. Focusing on embodied experiences of the past and present, a narrative mode of inquiry adds to, or sometimes challenges, what is already established as an “objective” history. Through the notion of rhetorical history, I will show how narrative inquiry has a potential to add perspectives that are easily ignored by a number of historical works. In addition, I will discuss a compatible relation between narrative and postcolonial studies in creating and analyzing history works.

Rhetorical History and a Call for Narratives

Bruce Gronbeck (1998) has stated, “the rhetoric of history writing has been developed into a thriving specialty, especially since the demise or at least serious illness of scientific history” (p. 48). While scientific inquiry of history emphasizes an attention on objective findings of the past,23 a rhetorical history perspective acknowledges the

argumentative force in an act of writing history (Clark & McKerrow, 1998). Therefore,

when I use the term “rhetorical history,” this expression is strategic and suggestive rather

than merely definitive. I use “rhetorical history” to emphasize the process, rather than a

product, of making a moral claim by revealing, constructing, making sense of, and

23 For example, in talking about Japan’s compensation to Korean residents, discussions have often been challenged by the counter-claim that is validated by the absence of official documents. Historical discussions that are based on justice claims have had a tendency to appeal to the presence or absence of official documents. This evidence claim, as I argue in this chapter, has a fundamentally different set of criteria and questions in mind from those of the moral questions that rhetorical historical and narrative perspectives can ask. 50 recording knowledge of the past. For example, Richard Weaver (1953) makes a similar claim in his chapter named “The Rhetoric of Social Science.” Weaver asserts that many questions in the realm of humanity require dialectical exploration. “‘Justice,’” Weaver observes, “is a dialectical term which is defined by ‘injustice’; ‘social improvement’ is made meaningful by the use of ‘privation of social improvement’” (p. 188). Positive terms, which scientific inquiry prefers to employ as their method of argument, cannot answer these questions that require dialectical exploration. As soon as they try to “cross a divide” (to use Weaver’s term) from a positive to an argumentative term, they enter into the world which is governed by dialectical terms. As Weaver states, “one cannot use the dialectical term in the same manner as one uses the positive term because the dialectical term always leaves one committed to something” (p. 188). Historical argument—no matter how hard one tries to prove one objective truth that happened in the past—usually crosses the divide from “what is objectively true to what is morally or imaginatively true”

(Weaver, 1953, p. 189). The scientific history, as Gronbeck’s observation and Weaver’s critique suggest, tends to answer only partially to questions such as what happened in the past and why it happened. And such historical accounts certainly are not appropriate for answering moral questions in light of present consequences, such as how we should understand the past, why this particular incident is wrong or unjust, and how we can learn a lesson from it.

Therefore, when we take into consideration the rhetorical dimensions of history writing, this perspective potentially moves us away from positivistic obsessions with accuracy and evidence claims, by letting us ask different sets of questions. As Clark and

McKerrow (1998) illustrate, a meaning of history as the relational dialectic between past 51

and present raises questions such as “How were my forebears like me;” “How did their

strivings resemble mine;” and “What in their accomplishments confirms my sense of

direction?” (p. 37) In Turner’s (1998) words, “Both as methodology and as perspective,

rhetorical history offers insights that are central to the study of communication and

unavailable through other approaches” (p. 2).

What, then, exactly is rhetorical history? Turner urges scholars to perceive

rhetorical history as social construction. By proposing to situate the notion of rhetorical

history within social construction, Turner (1998) asserts two points:

Rhetorical history as social construction includes both 1) the ways in which

rhetorical processes have constructed social reality at particular times and in

particular contexts and 2) the nature of the study of history as an essentially

rhetorical process. (p. 2)

By acknowledging the relational aspects crucial in both making and interpreting history,

Turner (1998) believes that “rhetorical history can contribute to historical knowledge” (p.

4) with what has been previously overlooked. Referring to Potter’s observation, Turner

points out historian’s ill-equipped attitude toward human emotions such as “fears,

anxieties, frustrations, [and] the aggressive impulses of a society” (Potter, 1973, p. 35).

Rhetorical history, quite to the contrary, deals with these emotions as well by “seeing the

rhetorical process as the central epistemic function by which societies constitute

themselves” (Turner, 1998, p. 6).

In defining and understanding the potential contribution of rhetorical history,

Zarefsky’s (1998) and Gronbeck’s (1998) perspectives are noteworthy. The notion of

rhetorical history was first identified by Gronbeck (Zarefsky, 1998). In an early version 52 of his work, Gronbeck claimed that rhetorical history and rhetorical criticism should have distinctively different goals in mind. For Gronbeck (1975), rhetorical history is “the study of the historical effects of rhetorical discourse” whereas rhetorical criticism refers to “the analysis of rhetorical discourse and acts for a series of normative and adversary purposes” (p. 310). This definition of rhetorical history focuses more on the product (with an emphasis on “effect”) of rhetoric rather than the process. Zarefsky (1998), for example, posits that an attempt to distinguish the effect of history from rhetorical criticism is problematic because any type of historical study and rhetorical criticism exist as “overlapping circles” (p. 21). Indeed, states Zarefsky (1998), works of rhetorical history exists in this “area of overlap” (p. 21).

With this type of constructive criticism Gronbeck in his later work broadened the notion of rhetorical history. He (1998) clarified a set of assumptions in understanding rhetorical history as follows:

1) The past is inaccessible and even unknowable; 2) History is a

discursive practice, a discourse about the past; 3)History is a bivocal

discursive practice, one that is both narrative and argumentative in voice

and social understanding; 4)The professionalization of history has created

gaps between academic historians’ and public readers’ versions of the

past; 5)The past is more than merely of historical interest; its importance

to social, political, moral, and economic analyses of problems and their

presumed alleviation is undeniable; and 6) Multiple rhetorics of the past

have been practiced by various groups of advocates.(Gronbeck, 1998, pp.

48-49, emphasis in original) 53

These assumptions, refined from his earlier effect-model, suggest that history involves

processes of narrating and making an argument. The first through the third assumption

indicates that history involves discursive practice, along with its product. Importantly, the

latter three perspectives illustrate multiple webs of historical representations and their

impacts upon various aspects (social, political, moral and economic) of social analysis.

All of these assumptions, as I will discuss at the end of this section, contribute to an

understanding of history as a complex, multifaceted, and ongoing rhetorical process.

Along with Gronbeck’s refinement of the assumptions, Zarefsky’s clarification

with four senses of rhetorical history is also helpful. First and “probably the least

problematic[ally] the history of rhetoric” (Zarefsky, 1998, p. 26) shows the development within the studies on discourses “from classical time to present” (Zarefsky, 1998, p. 26).

Second, “the rhetoric of history” deals with “the inventional and presentational practices

of historians as a specialized discourse community” (p. 28).24 Third, “the historical study

of rhetorical events” (p. 29) considers the historical meanings of a particular event in

making meaning for people and society.25 Finally, the fourth sense of rhetorical history,

named “the study of historical events from a rhetorical perspective,” focuses on “how

messages are created and used by people to influence and relate to one another” (p. 30).

In this perspective, scholars identify situations that call for public discourse to persuade

24 Here we can define locating and analyzing history textbooks as well as published materials on the history of colonial Korea and Zainichi Koreans as a way of identifying rhetorical history. 25 For example, a study of the Inter-Korean Summit and its rhetoric can be identified as a work on rhetorical history in this sense. This event as “a force in history” (p. 29) brought enormous change in the inter-Korean relationship. As Clark and McKerrow (1998) observe, “rhetoric is both intentional and instrumental in shaping history” (p. 35). 54 people.26 With the four senses of rhetorical history, Zarefsky successfully broadened the definition of rhetorical history, while emphasizing the “distinctions that do matter”

(Zarefsky, 1998, p. 25).

All of the above four “distinctions,” corresponding to Gronbeck’s “assumptions,” are important in positioning this study within a rhetorical history perspective. In fact,

Zarefsky (1998) states that “these distinctions are useful not for boundary drawing but for understanding the richness of our field (and, perhaps, for being less defensive about it)”

(p. 26). Drawn from the above discussion, I would address the four aspects in a rhetorical history perspective that inform this study. First, a rhetorical history perspective suggests that processes of creating, finding, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating historical materials are not exclusively distinguishable, but rather, interconnected. This contention also explains why the same historical event often is explained differently in different interpretive communities. Second, writing about history, regardless of its forms

(scientific, narrative, autobiographic, etc), to some extent is rhetorical. Any form of historical representation entails some kind of discursive power. Similarly, any claim about the meaning of history cannot avoid some kind of value judgment. In this sense, this contention also agrees with Weaver’s (1953) earlier claim about the impossibility of separation between historical “fact” and moral statement. Third, a rhetorical history perspective, since it stresses the process of interpreting, telling, narrating, and arguing the past in expressive forms, supports to some extent an idea of the social construction of

26 This perspective would allow one to analyze how much of public discourses contributed to the creation of official history in Korea and defined historical moments. Zarefsky believes that “studies of this type are potentially valuable because they may offer a powerful answer to the ‘so what?’ question” (p. 30). 55 reality. Whether history is told orally or in written forms, history involves a process in which people in the same interpretive community share an agreeable set of meanings. A process of interpreting the past in a particular way is also a social one. Fourth, a socially constructed representation of history in one community (be it ethnic, national, academic, or vernacular) can create a problem with any other type of interpretive community. For example, the tensions between the official and vernacular, written and oral, male and female, Korean and Japanese, North Korean and South Korean ways of representation are becoming increasingly visible as the other sides’ perspectives are revealed. Finally, and because of all the above four reasons, a historical study needs to be considered as multi- faceted works that can be done in an interdisciplinary way. As Zarefsky (1998) posits:

Gone is the assumption that a single all-purpose method will work. Gone is faith

that one can assess causality with the flimsiest of empirical evidence. Increased is

the need for sophistication in historical methods, especially in finding,

interpreting, and assessing primary sources rather than relying on the judgments

of others. Increased is the expectation that research will result in book-length

studies. And, along with that, increased is the expectation that scholarship will be

accessible to, and pass muster with, scholars in many other disciplines as well as

our own. (p. 30).

History—on a personal level—has close relation to history on the communal level. History—expressed in documents—speaks closely to what is literally present and what is not. History—silenced in documents—might suggest a potential presence in an oral form. How can one take a scholarly approach that also privileges orally produced, locally situated knowledge? How can one identify lived experiences that embody the 56 statement, “personal is political”? How is one’s social position informed by a larger picture of nation/s and history/s? And importantly, how are these connections (between personal and communal, written and oral, presence and absence, and history and present) communicated? Identifying different levels of discourses and seeing the connections among them is an approach that both rhetorical and historical scholars have neglected to take, and the one perfectly defined as a communicative approach. In the following section, I discuss how a narrative approach can be suggestive in this regard to history writing.

A Position of Narratives in History Writing: Big and Small Stories

Clark and McKerrow (1998) posit, “The mode of arguing that is most adept at displaying [the] ‘imaginative experience’ through rhetorical topoi is that of narration, literally, the recitation of ‘facts’ drawn from the historian’s understanding of the past. It is through narrative … that the coherence between thought and action is established. It is through narrative that data are patterned to yield claims that make sense in terms of experience” (pp. 43-44). An increasing number of scholars are paying attention to values of stories as social and communal devices to understand processes of meaning-makings in personal (Ellis & Bochner, 2000), familial (Miller, 2000), cultural and social (Harter,

2005) realms of human interactions. As Bochner (1994) observes, “scholars are beginning to consider what social sciences would become if they were closer to literature than to physics, if they privileged stories rather than theories, and if they were self- consciously value-centered rather than pretending to be value-free” (p. 21). Bochner

(1994) believes that this shifting tendency among social scientists is an exciting one; and further, he argues for bringing studies of narratives that are situated within a local context 57

into the field of interpersonal communication. Rather than doubtlessly acquiring a

conventionalized method of inquiry such as “theory,” Bochner (1994) claims that

“students of interpersonal communication must begin to confront openly and self-

critically some of the most deeply entrenched and taken-for-granted assumptions and conventions of the academy” (p. 22). With this methodological and perspective shift

within the field of communication, what became more apparent is the blurred boundary

between theory and story. What has been challenged for its truth value is the core belief

for universalism, for “no matter how ‘real’ or ‘objective’ they may seem to be, criteria

are created by human beings in the course of evolving a set of practices to which we

subsequently conform” (Bochner, 1994, p.27). Instead, local stories and narratives have

emerged as appropriate tools to convey viewpoints, values, and criteria for moral

judgment.27

Given this blurred line between objective and subjective aspirations and insights as well as local and global perspectives, what then do stories add to history writing and how do narratives accomplish what they do for a history? In approaching this question, I would like to enact a mode of thinking with stories (Frank, 2004). Frank (2004) differentiated thinking with stories from thinking about them. While thinking about stories requires the writer to be an expert and analyze stories as stable texts for an inquiry, thinking with stories means that the writer and the reader would engage in a sphere of mutual engagement. Following this way of thinking, I will offer stories as pathways to the discussion of narrative’s place in history.

27 A discussion on postcolonialism in relation to their use of stories will appear later.

58

Two Stories

Summer 2006. In a packed room of a hotel in Manila, Philippines, survivors from the Japanese colonial period were invited to tell stories of their past. When I entered the conference room, I was already exhausted by more than 24 hours’ travel from the United

States, without a break from my teaching schedule. My legs were swollen, and my mind was somewhat still in the U.S. Even one day’s delay in my flight did not give me enough time to fully cross the border between what is called academia and what is called a lived life. Despite my unreadiness, however, the room’s atmosphere, full of ‘real’ life stories from ‘real’ history, gave me a strong sense of encounter. I soon had a feeling that I was invited to cross not only geographical borders but times and experiences as well.

Two stories that I remember vividly even now are those of an elderly woman from

South Korea and of an elderly male from North Korea. The woman from South Korea told us her testimony of having experienced what is now named as a military “comfort woman.” The elderly male from North Korea shared his testimony of experiencing

“forced labor,” having worked in a coal mine in the Nagasaki prefecture in Japan. Both of their stories were heart-wrenching, revealing cruelties in the history of colonialism.

The old lady who served as a “comfort woman” described how she came to be a sex slave for Japanese soldiers, what kinds of cruel incidents she witnessed as her friends were raped and killed in front of her, and how she escaped to China after World War II.

The story of the North Korean man also revealed the hardships he experienced as a forced labor worker, treated badly in inhumane conditions. His story also ended with escaping, finally returning to Korea. What I most vividly remember from both of their storytelling is the performative dynamism of two survivors’ talks about the past. The 59 woman showed scars on her body that remained from her past experience. Their stories were engaging, moving, and disturbing as oral performances.

The conference lasted for three days. During these three days, I had several opportunities to engage in “small talks” with both of the survivors. My position in these conversations was far from a so-called “researcher.” Many meaningful and engaging moments actually occurred in these personal conversations. After their presentations, I found myself emotionally reacting. Especially, the story of the North Korean male was very touching to me. His presence reminded me of my own experience in North Korea, of my father’s family in North Korea, my grandfather’s life, and so on. After the testimonial session, I came to him to talk with him. I cried in front of him, when I told him why his story was so appealing to me, and how much I miss my days of studying in North Korea.

He was very welcoming and warm, as a normal “halaboji,” or a grandfather is like. A lot of our conversations were about local stories such as the school that I attended in North

Korea and the place where he lives now. This local conversation was bounded by the temporal ‘being in a place’ together.

All stories and narratives, including testimonies, professional appeals, and personal conversations, existed somewhere in-between the past and present. The meaning of the present was bounded by that of the past. The people spoke within the present context but the stories themselves were not fully about the present. It was as if all the existences—stories, people, myself—were breathing in a liminal space. Yet, the encounters in this liminal space were strong enough to provide me with stirring reflections.

60

When I look back, I wonder what shaped my own experiences of these stories. It

was not necessarily the stories themselves but the whole experience of seeing the speaker’s embodiment of their stories, talking with them, and the personal engagements that left such a strong impact on me. Certainly, layers of stories are performed, which in turn, shape both my knowledge of the country’s colonial past as well as my experience of

“witnessing” (Frank, 1995) the enactment of stories.

Georgakopoulou (2006) argued for including small stories into narrative research as important sites of inquiry. According to Georgakopoulou (2006), the term “small stories” suggests “an umbrella-term that covers a gamut of under-represented narrative activities, such as tellings of ongoing events, future or hypothetical events, shared

(known) events, but also allusions to tellings, deferrals of tellings, and refusal to tell” (p.

123). Thus, small stories are conversational, and often, an on-site engagement. Because small stories embody a strong sense of the present, looking at small stories is to be aware of the “making” of narratives. Referring to my own narrative example, then, a focus on small stories enables me to understand the constitutive aspect of on-going narrative.

Meeting a North Korean elderly man and a former “comfort woman” from South Korea in a third country by itself gave me a strong sense of being-in-time, especially because it is not allowed in the “normal” context that such encounter typically occurs. The presence of bodies across borders in one place produced various webs of on-site narratives and stories. These small stories probably can be called a performance of solidarity within a presently shared context.

Small stories, however, are not necessarily unrelated to “Big” ones. Freeman

(2006) defined big stories to be “those narratives, often derived from interviews, clinical 61

encounters, and other such interrogative venues, that entail a significant measure of

reflection on either an event or experience, a significant portion of a life or the whole of

it” (p. 132). In his essay, Life “on holiday?:” In defense of big stories, Freeman

explicated different functions of small and Big stories, while explaining how both of

them should be treated as complementing each other. According to him, “small storied”

experiences are often treated as more Real than Big ones because the former emerge

directly from “lived life” (Freeman, 2006, p. 133). However, Freeman cautions us not to

equate immediate experiences with the “Real.” If we try to assess the adequacy of a

narrative’s function based upon its accuracy to the reality, strictly speaking, both of them

are not the Reality itself. Rather, Freeman suggests that we evaluate both modes of

narratives based upon their significances in terms of what we can learn from them. Big

stories have a meaningful function in that they “entail a going-beyond the specific

discursive contexts in which ‘real life’ talk occurs” (p. 133). Then, importantly, the “real-

life talks” and big stories are not something too separate from each other. My talks with

the North Korean halaboji probably were bound with shared knowledge about North

Korea and experiences of having lived in Japan, along with implicit cultural codes

regarding the conversation between a young woman and an elderly male figure. All of

these features that constituted the shared present context were not absent from his “Big” story, given that his story was a reflection of the past from the present context, and given that I was reacting to his story with my own reflection of my Korean past. Indeed, small stories experienced with the South Korean former comfort woman during the three days entailed significant amount of relevance to her own past. Jokes in ordinary conversation often revealed the embedded grudge toward the Japanese within her mind, but this, 62

among the group of Koreans, was consumed almost as an implicit code. As Freeman argues, a Big story might enable a person to be temporarily distanced from the lived experience. However, the components of the Big story can also enter into the person’s

small stories. In this sense, both of them are inter-related, and thus, studying both small

and Big stories as integral parts of one’s being-in-history is important.

Stories, be they small or big, add palpably experienced meanings to history

writing when they are narrativized by people. These meanings, as opposed to facts, add

morally claimed knowledge to history writing. Consider White’s (1980) statement: “The

demand for closure in the historical story is a demand for moral meaning, a demand that

sequences of real events be assessed as their significance as elements of moral drama” (p.

24, emphases in original). In this sense, adding narrative inquiry into history writing is to

recognize the transformative character of story-ing. Narrative transforms a sequence of

events from facts into meaningful acts (Barros, 1998). This telling of personal stories in

turn might contribute to an understanding of larger themes that imply existing social and

material conditions. Salazar (1991), for example, states that “Third World women’s

autobiographies or oral histories of resistance tend to allocate the private and domestic

experiences of the narrator to the historical and public context of their social-political

struggles” (p. 94). In this sense, a narrative of an individual’s past can become a

communal drama, as suggested by Frank (2006).

Along with suggesting a narrative approach to historical writing, I would

emphasize the importance of critical inquiry into the context in which any particular story

is told. The context of any narrative has rather a practical implication. In the final section

of this chapter, I will relocate the practical context in which the subjects of this study, 63

Zainichi Koreans exist. By doing so, I discuss how a narrative and a postcolonial study

are suggestive to each other.

Narrative and Postcolonial Studies

In the previous chapter, I argued that Japanese nationalism based upon the myth

of homogeneity has created a fundamentally different social condition for Korean

minorities when compared to experiences of ethnic minorities in other countries. For the

most part, historical discussion has been framed within nation-to-nation international politics such as Japan and South Korea, or Japan and North Korea. Neither discussion provides a space for Zainichi Koreans to act as active agents in their own history. Due to

this larger contextual constraint, the positionality of Zainichi Koreans had to be marginal rather than central; relational rather than autonomous, always reacting to a larger framework of the national politics.

Revealing stories of first generation Zainichi Koreans in an attempt to record their history, therefore, is to usurp in some ways the national boundary in telling history. It is an attempt to acknowledge complexities caused by the past colonial geopolitics, suggesting that the country’s official liberation does not necessarily terminate colonial conditions. Frank (1995) has positioned modern and postmodern conditions relationally in considering values of stories. To identify the act of telling stories as postmodern, states

Frank, is to react to the absence of storied experiences in modernity. Similarly, given that

“colonization was central to the achievement of modernist medicine” (Frank, 1995, p.

10), revealing personal stories of illness implies the ill person’s wants for “reclaiming”

(Frank, 1995, p. 11) the meaning of suffering. In this way, an approach to hearing stories of the past experiences is postcolonial, suggesting that the “post” of the term 64

“postcolonial” cannot be equated with the meaning “over” (Shome & Hegde, 2002).

Rather, experiences of colonial and postcolonial are relational in that the latter is always

affected by the former. The “post” may suggest past, but remains ever-present in the lived experience of Zainichi Koreans.

In this sense, stories of Zainichi Koreans would blur the modernist notion of national boundary, and this, indeed, is a postcolonial attempt. Importantly, the scope of postcolonial study is beyond a national history. Recognizing functions of power in the authorship of history, a postcolonial study tries to “undo” and then to “redo” history writing (Shome & Hegde, 2002). As Gandhi (1998) maintains, postcolonial work

“endeavor[s] first to foreground the exclusions and elisions which confirm the privileges and authority of canonical knowledge systems, and second to recover those marginalized knowledge which have been occluded and silenced by the entrenched humanist curriculum” (p. 42). Leading one to a recovering of some marginalized and silenced stories, postcolonial voices add untold sides of history to the already told national history.

As Hallward (2001) explains, then, a postcolonial reading is “the explosion of a

‘multiplicity of images, interpretations, and reconstructions’” (p. 20). Given the fact that history has been told from the viewpoint of the privileged, a postcolonial work tries to reveal the “untold” part of the history, thus enabling the multiple interpretations of history.

How, then, would a narrative inquiry of history be compatible to postcolonial studies and vice versa? Grossberg (2002) states the following as the main contributions of

postcolonial research: 1) “Postcolonialism decenters simple notions and distribution of

identity”; 2) “postcolonial studies suggests that much of our commonsense… is deeply 65

implicated in the colonial history of modernity”; and 3) “postcolonial studies delivers the

final blow to an illusory understanding of objectivity” (Grossberg, 2002, pp. 369-370,

emphasis in original). Many narrative and life history works, indeed, have achieved these

(See, for example, Behar, 1993; Menon & Bhasin, 1998; Narayan, 1997; Salazar, 1991;

Trinh, 1989). Here, I would argue, lies a potential overlap between narrative and

postcolonial studies. In the context of Zainichi Koreans, for example, a second generation

Korean professor Kang (2004) has published his autobiographical book, in which he scrutinized his own identity that cannot be fit into any of the national categories. Kang’s life story illustrates his keen observations on several first generation Koreans whose lives and imagined homeland varies. In his stories, he is a witness to his parents’ lives and their

struggles in Japan. At the same time, his autobiography shows how his subjectivity is

governed both by his own living conditions as a Korean cultural minority, and by his

desire to be accepted by the Japanese society. Being a Korean controlled his

consciousness, but as a person who knew only Japan as a living place, his Korean identity

was always conditioned by material conditions in Japan.

This notion of identity as hybrid (Bhabha, 1994; 2002) and complex site of

struggle is often called into an attention by postcolonial writers. Bhabha (2002), for example, recalls his childhood as “filled with India’s struggle for independence, its complicated histories of subcontinental cultures caught in that deadly embrace of

Imperial power and domination that always produces an uncomfortable residue of enmity and amity” (p. 194). The notion of “home” for Bhabha, both in an imaginary and practical sense, has existed “in-between” fixed social, national, and cultural boundaries.

In his biographical essay in 2002, Bhabha writes his experience of displacement and 66

liminality, which enabled him to look at boundaries of academic life. He (2002) states,

“border living is undoubtedly exciting as cultural studies and cultural performance, but

the capacity to cross borders requires social capital, be it a passport, a visa, an education,

a job—the privilege of social and cultural recognition” (p. 196). Recollecting his memory

of studying English in Oxford in the 1970s, he wondered why he could not enjoy what he

wanted to do. An answer lay in his realization that “what one expects to find at the very

center of life or literature…may, in large part, be the dream of the deprived” (p. 195). As

a person of non-Western, postcolonial “citizenship,” he said that he did not share the

canons in understanding literary texts, which were already prescribed by people at the

center. What he could enjoy was “writers who were just a bit off center; literary texts that

had been passed by; themes in great works of literature that had been overlooked”

(Bhabha, 2002, p. 195). Because they reveal a highly contextualized nature of

commonsense in a society, a postcolonial narrative, as Shome and Hegde (2002) eloquently stated, “exists in tension with established institutionalized knowledge” (p.

250). This attention to historical contexts also negates any universal knowledge claims as

well as any claim to objectivity.

It is not surprising that many postcolonial works are, or should be, written in

narrative forms. Narrative’s role is to add meanings to one’s own story, to reveal

particular viewpoints, and to emphasize relational aspects in human stories. All are

compatible characteristics that postcolonial studies endeavor to claim with their works.

This overlap is not coincidental, and I believe, a good postcolonial work must

acknowledge this overlap.

67

Summary

History, when told as a story, is contextualized within particular meaning-making processes. Given both Japanese and Korean scholars’ neglect to tell people’s past outside the realm of national history, stories of Zainichi Koreans would break, and move beyond,

the boundary of nationalism. Works of rhetorical history suggests argumentative forces of

any historical writing as well as the socially constructed nature of making sense of the

past. Narrative and storytelling would add an important perspective to history writing,

especially in moving beyond officially written texts endeavoring to make texts. From a

narrative perspective, one’s daily conversation and reflections on the past are

interconnected meaning-making activities that contribute to larger discussions such as

personal and communal identity and nationalism. Stories would add meanings to history

writing when the people’s narrativized experiences are considered within a larger

framework. A postcolonial perspective would offer an important frame of reference in

paying attention to the framework that is larger than personal yet contextualized within

the particular relationality of past and present geopolitics.

68

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGICAL ORIENTATIONS

Life History Interviews and Self-Reflexivity

In the previous chapter, I discussed the theoretical orientation framing this study.

The notions of rhetorical history, narrative, and postcolonial stance explain how I situate this study of first generation Korean residents in Japan. In this chapter, I will explain the methodological ideas that are employed in this study. The purpose of this study is to discuss some important postcolonial conditions of Zainichi Koreans through listening to the life stories of first generation Korean residents in Japan. As such, the heart of the study is to record the initial history of Koreans in Japan through obtaining life stories of the first generation. Methodological questions, however, entail some important challenges to the researcher, such as how to listen to, represent, and write these stories.

And importantly, what matters the most in the end is what the primary purpose of doing life history interviews was. In this chapter, I try to answer these questions before inviting the reader to review the results of this study. Inspired by the theoretical perspective presented in the previous chapter, I present life history interviews as the core methodology of my study. Furthermore, in conducting interviews as well as in writing their stories, I recognize the importance of self-reflexivity as a researcher.

Life History Interviews

Biographical stories of others, when they are about people who have achieved a lot in their lives, offer readers a doorway to see what made these people do what they did and why their contributions are praise-worthy. Being able to write (or letting others write even after the person’s death) one’s autobiography suggests that the person owns a proof to remain in history. Written biographies and autobiographies of famous people enable 69

not only their contemporaries but even generations after them to remember their deeds

and their thoughts. In this regard, having a written form of one’s life is having a trace of one’s own in history.

An effort to register life histories of ordinary people into a history may not be far

from the rationale of writing a biography of a famous individual. However, a difference

between the two might exist in the reason and motive behind the writing. That is, while

stories of the famous individuals are told because they are/were famous, writing about

ordinary people may be done because their stories were not told despite their importance.

For example, the field of feminist oral history has developed with this spirit “driven by a

sense of urgency to recover women’s words” (Gluck & Patai, 1991, p. 1). Similarly,

when Frank (1995) defined the need of story-telling as a postmodern way of knowing, he

was also reacting to the absence of stories in modern medical discourses. Frank (1995)

points out the overlap this type of story-telling has with “spiritual autobiographies, stories

of becoming a man or a woman, … and finally survivor stories of inflicted traumas such

as war, captivity, incest, and abuse” (p. 69). Absence, not presence, thus is a key in an

effort to register life histories of people who otherwise are excluded from the convention

of historical writing.

From this context, life histories of war survivors, as well as witnesses of other

types of harsh history, become an important site of inquiry. An inquiry into life history,

therefore, could start either from an absence of, or distrust towards, official forms of

documentation regarding particular subjects. Miller (2000), for example, has explained

the social context within Eastern Europe after World War II, where “face-to-face

communication could be a more reliable source of social and historical information than 70

tightly controlled official sources” (p. viii). In Japan too, given the scarcity of official

documents due to the “tight control” by the government,28 when it comes to the cruelty

done to the colonial women and men, oral stories of survivors have been treated as valuable sources of information.29 Since, as Miller (2000) observes, “in biographical

research the past and people’s experience of the past takes on a much more central

significance than usual” (p. 2), life history research can aim to serve as a recovery of the

past through the telling and listening to people’s reflection about the past from within

present context.

According to Miller (2000), two general agreements that characterize life history

interviews are: first, along with other types of qualitative interviews, the data collection

process is less constrained and more exploratory; and second, with its “strong humanist

impetus” (p. 8) to give voice to those who are otherwise excluded from social attention,

the result could be viewed as controversial. The latter point agrees with the earlier claim

that life history writing can be a well-suited tool for recovering either lost or hidden

voices. In this regard, when Etter-Lewis (1991) wrote Black women’s life stories, she

claimed that these stories would also speak about the complex web of domination that

make these women’s stories hidden and unheard, such as the “issue of race and gender”

(p. 43). Revealing stories that are otherwise hidden could be a provocative way to speak

to a society while being proactive in creating a newer version of history.

28 Several sources suggest that official documents were destroyed at the end of World War II by the Japanese Army (Barkan, 2000; Chung, 1995). 29 Kim and Hida (1991, 1992, 1993, 1994), for example, have published collections of Japanese newspaper articles regarding the forced draft and labors. In these collections, newspaper clips rely predominantly on short stories of survivors, be they to explain the court suits the survivors were going through or to serve as witnesses to the historical conduct. 71

As for the first point—about the method of data collection—Miller (2000) explains that “breadth and process” (p. 8) are the two distinguishing features of a life history interview:

The breadth of coverage of a biography that could span all aspects of an

individual’s lifetime over almost a century or of a family history that could cover

dozens or more people held together by a complex network of social relations was

far removed from a variable-based quantitative dataset based upon a probability

sample of individuals taken at a single cross-section of historical time and place.

(p. 8)

As is suggested by the quote, life history interviews enable a researcher to gain holistic knowledge about a person’s life and identity through stories. At the same time, “process” in a life history research, claims Miller (2000), holds “a particular double-edged meaning”:

First, the individual has their own history of personal development and change as

they ‘process’ along their life course. Second, a considerable amount of time

passes as they move along their life course. In this respect, historical events and

social change at the societal level impinge upon the individual’s own unique life

history. (p. 9)

While a life course narrative of an interviewee has its own unique meaning that matters at an individual level, it also parallels a particular span of time period with a series of social

72

events. Life history interviews would reveal both the personal and social and/or national

histories, often indicating these two realms are interconnected.30

These two characteristics of life history interviews significantly inform my own study. I am reminded, again, that my study is motivated by the general lack or absence of records in Japan detaining first-generation Koreans’ experiences. At the same time, paying attention to both, and relations between, the personal meaning of experiences and their social meaning, is important. In terms of the actual doing of interviews, however, I felt perplexed, until I critically thought about such question as: How should I listen to the interviewees’ stories? How should I interpret them? Who am I, who is writing others’ stories? Anderson and Jack (1991) raise similar questions to mine, trying to answer them from their own experience. They posit, upon doing oral history interviews, “we must inquire whose story the interview is asked to tell, who interprets the story, and with what theoretical frameworks” (p. 11). Stressing the importance of remembering a researcher as an “active participant in a qualitative research” (p. 19), Anderson and Jack (1991) urge that the researcher critically think about the way she listens to each interviewee’s story.

What is often missing is an interviewee’s “own interpretation of her experience, or her own perspective on her life and activities” (Anderson & Jack, 1991, p. 19). Researchers would easily impose their agenda in mind upon the utterances of interviewees, without

asking questions as to the meaning the interviewee imposes upon a particular word or any

of deep feeling surrounding a certain life event. By avoiding this tendency, Anderson and

Jack (1991) believe that “we need to attend more to the narrator than to our own agendas”

30 See, for example, Menon & Bhasin’s (1998) excellent work that shows how India’s partition history is transmitted to women’s lives. 73

(p. 12), and in doing so, they suggest three ways of listening that help us understand the

vantage point of the interviewee: first, “to listen to the person’s moral language (p. 19,

emphasis in original); second, to “attend to the subject’s meta-statements” (p. 21,

emphasis in original); and third, “to attend to the logic of the narrative” (p. 22, emphasis

in original).

With this in mind, while I have a prepared set of questions to guide interviewees

(see Appendix A), I tried to pay attention to conversations that freely occur during each

interview. Yet, granted that this particular ‘listening style’ would help me approach the

interviewee’s vantage point, how do I, or should I, listen to my own? How do I negotiate

the ‘true’ meaning of their words, especially when I am writing in English by translating

their words into a language that they do not know? Given this responsibility of writing, I

discuss two important aspects in writing life histories of first generation Koreans in

Japan—issues of translation and authorship.

Language, Culture, Translation

Writing life historical works of first generation Koreans in Japan in English is a

promising as well as challenging task. English, on the one hand, promises broader

readership and accessibility; while on the other hand, it erases the tones of locality that

appeared in the participants’ oral discourses. As Anthony Giddens (1986) noted with

respect to functions of power as enabling and constraining, English provides the speaker/writer/reader with a linguistic power, which can connect cross-linguistic communities and yet bears the danger of disconnecting the local. Translating into

English, therefore, should be a purposeful activity, with clear attention to its complexity.

74

Many of the first generation Korean participants that I engaged for this study were bilingual, knowing and using both Korean and Japanese. Some of them spoke more

Korean than Japanese, and others vise versa, but all of them quite eloquently maneuvered back and forth between both languages. One characteristic that most of the participants shared in their oral discourses were strong Korean accents in their spoken Japanese, which reflected their sociolinguistic background and places of origin. Even those who came to Japan in their early age spoke Korean eloquently. When I talked with other second and third generation Koreans, we often shared this feeling about how charming the language was that these first generation Koreans use in their daily conversations.

Different from our Japanized way of talking, their language frequently repeated code switching from Japanese to Korean and vise versa, and even within their ‘Japanese’ and

‘Korean,’ we can hear their origin of being native Korean. By hearing, I could learn their experience-based languages, which to me seemed a reflection of their borderland identities that include a little bit from each of their Koreanness—be it South or North,

Zainichi or in most cases, all of these.

Translating the discourses that were already bilingual into English, therefore, was sometimes heartbreaking to me. Especially, in writing Mrs. Kanamoto’s story that I introduce in Chapter 5, what I regret the most was my incapacity to reflect her language in the way she talked. Her language, along with many of female participants’ oral discourses, showed quick code-switching between Korean and Japanese. Furthermore, her use of Japanese was in many cases based on Korean grammatical rules, which again, was true in other female participants’ language use. Translation, of these multi-layered as well as multi-coded oral discourses into written English, therefore, has served as a 75 major barrier to me. In order to recover this difficulty, I tried to leave specific Korean or

Japanese terms as they were so that I can be truer to the participants’ own expressions. I put these terms in italics with a translated English expression closest to its original meaning, or inserted explanations in footnotes. Overall, however, the use of English words has covered over the fact that the actual expression reflects a common mixture of both Korean and Japanese words.

Yet, I am not left alone with the concern of translating local texts into English.

Indeed, as Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin (2007) contend, “Translation has become an issue of growing importance in postcolonial studies, particularly with regard to the translation of literary texts from local languages to world languages such as English” (p.

215). They explain the two opposing viewpoints on English as a dominant language among postcolonial critics and scholars. Critics who are unfavorable to the English domination on postcolonial texts believe that it reflects the continuous power struggle between colonizers and colonized. Therefore, translating the local oral culture into an

English text is “seen as problematic in so far as it continues to privilege English texts over those in local languages with a flow-on effect for the status of those languages within their own communities” (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2007, p. 216).

Nevertheless, they argue, postcolonial scholars chose to write in English because they believe that English translation would open up vast readership, and therefore, serve as a

“vehicle of cultural communication” as well as “a mode of cultural survival” (Ashcroft,

Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2007, p. 216).

To me, the above viewpoints are not an ‘either-or’ issue but a ‘both-and’ one. For the sake of this dissertation, I want to believe that writing in English would open up a 76

new possibility, as for Zainichi Koreans, translation as well as bilingualism between

Japanese and Korean is already framed within a power relationship. Writing in English,

from its strategic vantage point, would avoid my choosing either Japanese or Korean as a

dominant textual form. Therefore, while understanding the sacrifice of the native

language, I choose to write in English for the time being so that I can open up silenced stories from Japan to potentially multi-linguistic and multi-cultural audiences. In doing so, I position myself as an active participant in the linguistic communities of Japanese,

Korean, and English, who are partially native and partially foreign, as I believe that the notion of ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ is, and should always be, used in a relational context.

Authorship and Self-Reflexivity

In writing about researcher’s self-reflexivity, I should note that I am influenced by

multiple disciplinary conversations, including rhetorical studies (see McKerrow, 1993 for his discussion of “Critical Rhetoric and the Possibility of Subject”), in sociology (see

Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, for their call for reflexive social studies), in anthropology

(see Trinh, 1989 for her critique of a foreign ethnographer’s ‘gaze’ toward the third world

culture), feminist studies (see Borland, 1991, for her discussion of the researcher’s

“interpretive authority” in post-field work) and in communication studies that are

positioned at the intersection of all of these (see Chawla, 2006, for her discussion of subjectivity/s of a qualitative researcher through her self-reflexive analysis of a stance as

“native”). Scholars in qualitative research are increasingly cautious about the abuse done

or could be done by a mode of writing that represents others with a detached, scientific

tone. At the same time, these scholars are also aware of possible danger of abuse even qualitative researches would cause, either by tightly “modeling” the data-collection 77 methods (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 226), or by overlooking serious discrepancies between the researcher’s interpretation and the intended meaning by the narrator

(Borland, 1991). Increasingly, the researcher’s “interpretive authority” (Borland, 1991) and ethics in data-collection process are questioned.

Given these valuable caution signs, I began with a question, how should I position myself and my subjectivity as a researcher? Fortunately, after a long period of self- questioning, I learned that it is naïve to say that I qualify as a native researcher because I am writing about my own culture. “I speak the same language, share the organizational affiliations, and most importantly I share the ethnicity.” Let’s say that I list a number of reasons why I am “qualified” as an insider. Can they ever be enough to be able to say that

I am a “qualified” native researcher?

A tentative, and incomplete, answer that I had in mind upon starting this study was that I would keep employing an autobiographical stance as a way of enacting a self- reflexive mode of inquiry. Opening up my own familial background, childhood memories, and family stories was not a nostalgic self-indulgence to me. Quite contrary, it often held pains of digging out the forgotten trauma, embarrassment, and regret that our family shares. However, this way of turning to myself and my family stories helped me imagine how my interviewees, regardless of differences existing between their and my own stories, would feel when they open up their past experiences.

Parameters of the Study

As outlined in the Institutional Review Board proposal and approved by Ohio

University, this study records the life histories of first generation Koreans in Japan. The primary participants of this study were the first generation Korean population who 78 migrated to Japan due to the condition of Japan’s annexation of Korea (1910-1945). I employed an in-depth, life history interview approach as a primary method to record the history of the Koreans in Japan.

The participants of this research were first and second-generation Koreans living in Japan. The first generation Koreans refer to those who came to Japan sometime between 1910 and 1945--a period during which Japan colonized Korea. Included in this population are those people whose migrations to Japan were conditioned by the Japanese annexation of Korea. Fieldwork observations and interviews were conducted with the help of four institutions in Japan that are exclusively providing care for these populations.

The locations of these institutions were in Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Kyoto prefectures in

Japan.

The data-collection for this study occurred for a total of eight weeks during

August and September, 2007. The total number of 20 first-generation Korean residents participated in the recorded interviews. I also interviewed the directors and vice directors from two of the four institutions I visited. These recorded conversations, along with unrecorded ones with the directors from the other two institutions, helped me understand background information on the interviewees. In addition, the conversation with the directors, of which three of them were second-generation Koreans and one Japanese, provided me with valuable knowledge in understanding why the institutions solely for

Korean elderly people have become necessary. Of 20 interviewees of first-generation

Koreans, 5 were very active in revealing their life stories. Therefore, I revisited them in private, and had deeper, longer interviews. The hours of interviews for each individual varied from as short as 30 minutes to as long as 7 hours. 79

Throughout the interviewing period, I also worked as a volunteer helper for the

Korean elderly people. By immersing myself in the realm of participants’ daily routines, I tried to pay close attention to the naturally occurring conversations and to understand how these “small stories” are situated in their daily communicative activities. By participating in their daily activities within the limited period of time for my field work, I tried to communicate with the participants in a more natural way than in a formal interview. Importantly, these small talks enabled me to recruit participants for in-depth interviews with fuller consent. Under the approval of the intuitions, I occasionally videotaped social events such as birthday party as well as the invited performances of

Korean ethnic songs and dances. Each interview was audio recorded so that I can properly transcribe and interpret the interviewee’s responses.

Summary

In this chapter, I explained the methodological ideas that I employed in this study.

As the purpose of this study is to discuss some important postcolonial conditions of

Zainichi Koreans through listening to individual life stories of first generation Korean residents in Japan, the heart of the study is to record the life stories of them. Regarding methodological questions, ideas of life history interviews have been reviewed. A life history interview, with its emphasis on first-hand experiences, could be a valuable means of inquiry that responds to either absence or lack of information about a certain aspect of history, especially about the viewpoint of social minorities. As for the data-collection, both breadth—to be able to cover a life span as an object of inquiry, and process—that emphasizes reflection of personal experience that parallel with series of social events during the life span, are something that distinguish the life history interview from other 80

type of research (Miller, 2000). At the same time, matters of how to listen, to present, and to write these stories are important matters that researchers need to critically reflect upon before starting the project. In conducting interviews and importantly, in writing this dissertation, I recognize an importance of self-reflexivity as a researcher. I utilize an autoethnographic stance as a way of enacting a self-reflexive mode of inquiry and writing.

81

CHAPTER 5: CLAIMING THE ‘BIG’ STORIES

“Those who are alive (among the first generation Koreans) now are those who have spent better lives. Those Korean people who experienced the ‘real’ colonial period are not alive anymore.” Mr. Kim (pseudonym),31 who was very gentle and looked much

younger than his real age (80), came up to me and uttered this statement when I visited a

care center located in a Western Japanese city. As I was to begin my fieldwork at this

care center in the next week, I came to greet with the grandmothers and grandfathers

housed in this institution. Encountering this statement in an early stage of my field work,

I was shocked. This statement, he then explained to me, did not necessarily mean that

those first generation Koreans that I would be meeting and interviewing have not

experienced the hardship of colonialism. Rather, he said, it meant that so many people,

especially those who lived by doing physical labor, needless to say those who were

forced to work in coal mines, have passed away without turning into their 70s and 80s.

Thus, what he meant was that it would be difficult for me to hear what really happened

between 1910 and 1945, as the majority of those who lived through this period had

passed away. Indeed, throughout the process of my field work, I constantly had this

feeling of ‘having come already late.’ Many lives have been lost whose experiences

passed without being recognized.

Nevertheless, the participants I engaged in conversations for the purpose of this

study are the ones who experienced the continuity of colonialism; they experienced

migration to Japan, witnessed the transition from the old Korea to the divided one, and

31 As is promised in the IRB form, all the names of interviewees are changed to pseudonyms in order to protect their identities. Also, although some stories included names of specific locations, I tried not to specifically mention them. 82 transformed (or resisted doing so) their positionality/s from that as “Japanese subjects”— or colony/s, whichever term that was a convenient rhetoric—to the permanent

“foreigners” cum “citizens” in Japan. Therefore, while acknowledging this time delay in hearing their stories (and indeed, this fear of delay in bringing insight is included in what

Ruth Behar (1996) calls an anthoropologist’s vulnerability), I tried to learn some personalized stories of the history of Japan’s colonization of Korea. Through the lived experiences of this time period, from the perspectives of the then-colonized, I looked at personal sides of the structural and systematic oppression, the memories that have run through their families, their feelings and emotions that illustrated their memories, and most importantly, their subjective explanations of all of these aspects.

In the process of interviewing, transcribing, and hearing the recorded conversations again, I noticed different tones among my interviewees in telling their life experiences. Some of them were eager and passionate in telling their stories, some just simply answered my questions, and some romanticized their past experiences as poor while affirming the strong social bond that existed within the community. Some were angry—angry toward the Japanese people and authorities who discriminated against them, or toward the fellow Koreans who “betrayed” or looked down upon them, or just toward those whose origins and customs were seen as different from theirs. And many of them, probably because my own cultural background is familiar to them and because my age is close to their grandchildren, talked to me in an educational tone. Statements like “it really happened,” “or things were really like that in those days” were used to stress the

‘reality’ of their experiences, teaching me how hard it was to be a Korean. Each tone of

83

voice, be it emotional or reserved, strong or weak, educational or not, illuminated the

textual, contextual, and performative meaning of the life stories I collected.

By the end of my fieldwork period, I had become conscious that there were

differences in both intensity and duration of each interview across participants. As I

revealed in the last chapter, five individuals emerged as engaged story-tellers of their

lives. These five Halaboji and Halmoni, three grandfathers and two grandmothers,32

seemed more welcoming, willing, and passionate than other interviewees in telling their

experiences in a detailed manner. Because of these “signs of success,” I could interview

each of these five people in more closed and private contexts than other participants in this study. And again, because of these first and second reasons, I could engage in conversations that lead to a more holistic understanding of the narrators’ lives. If there is

a distinction between life history and a life story interview, I would say that I could be

closer to these five people’s life histories rather than partial stories of their lives; although

I admit that the distinction between the former and the latter is blurred and differs among researchers.33

It is due to this rather “accidental” reason that I pay special and spatial attention to the five people in this chapter. However, rather than analyzing “just” these five people’s stories, it is my attempt to focus both on the uniqueness of personal stories and on the external connectivity of the collected twenty people’s life stories. In the present

32 This ratio, when considering that the majority of participants in my study (14 out of 20) were women, is interesting. I will discuss this aspect later in this chapter as a transition to next chapter. 33 A narrative scholar Paul Atkinson (2002), for example, admits “very little difference between a life story and a life history” and notes that “the two terms are often used interchangeably” (p. 125). While I admit the overlapping circles between the two, in this context, my focus is on the term “history” versus “story,” as the former implies an inclusion of a chronological or sequential time period in which multiple life stories coexist. 84

chapter, I narrate and thematize the life stories of the five participants. Then in the next

chapter, I relocate myself in addressing more nuanced, unprepared, situational stories from the participants.

For the sake of naming, I call the five stories I present in this chapter “Big” stories, and those appear in the next chapter “Small” stories. Although I separate these five Big stories from other “Small” interview stories (and this term “Small” is only used in a comparative way, not meaning “trivial”), both “Big” and “Small” stories speak for some common experiences among the population that I am interested in for my study.

The differentiation between the two, therefore, is artificial and strategic.

In Chapter 3, I reviewed how Big and Small stories are defined and used among narrative scholars. In doing so, I emphasized the interconnected, rather than oppositional, nature of Big and Small stories. In presenting the five Zainichi Koreans’ experiences as

“Big” stories, I still bear this perspective in mind, and therefore, I have no doubt that the experiences told by these five individuals reveal overlapping stories/themes across other life stories. Difference, however, exists in the levels of ‘preparation’ on the part of the speakers, along with the degree to which the intent of their speaking bore clear messages of social advocacy.

A “Big” story, as I borrow the term for my study, is a prepared, ‘on stage’ performance.34 In the “Big” stories I present in this chapter, a narrator has had an

opportunity to self-consciously filter what s/he would say before entering into the

interview stage. Promises to talk further in the next recorded interview were initiated by

34 But, it doesn’t mean that “Big” story is ‘fake’ nor “Small” one ‘real.’ See my discussion in Chapter 3. 85

such comments as, “Oh, I forgot to tell you this in last interview;” “Next time if you can

visit my house, I will show you more materials;” “Ok, this is for today. Tomorrow, I will

tell you my story after the [country’s] liberation.” Instead of ‘answering’ the questions

that I prepared, these halabojis and halmonis brought their own ideas on what to tell

about their experiences during the interviews. Reasons for this might be complex and

vary among persons, but the desire to be social advocates, by claiming the meaning of their life course experiences to a larger audience than their community that otherwise

cannot be heard, seemed to me the most visible and viable as a common reason.

The level of the visible ‘filtering’ varied from person to person, and one narrative

context to another, but the five Big stories bear particular messages of social advocacy

through which they hoped that their stories would be translated into English documents.

This hope for transcending the local stories into a global message resonates with what

Fine et. al (2000) call an exploitation of the power inequality on the interviewees’ side.

They noted that in the process of interviewing, the interviewees “recognized [the interviewers] could take their stories, their concerns, and their worries to audiences, policy makers, and the public in ways that they themselves could not, because they would not be listened to” (p. 115). In the same manner, many of my interviewees, particularly these five Big story tellers, enjoyed my presence as an interviewer—a person who is from the same community as they are, and yet studied at the U.S. academy, and is writing the doctoral dissertation in English. For them, I was on their side in reclaiming their lives as

Koreans in Japan as meaningful, while at the same time I was on the ‘other’ side (be it the U.S. academy, English-speaking communities, or simply any community, including academic and the Japanese audience) in conveying their stories. In the following space, I 86 will first narrate the five Big stories. What follows these narratives is my discussion of the social advocacy messages in each of the Big stories. In this discussion, I explicate what makes each story a “Big” story, makes it speak historically, by seeing the particular from the collective.

Mr. Song’s Colonial Experiences

Wonshik Song is a famous Halaboji. Due to his life-long collection of the pieces of evidence of Zainichi Koreans’ lives from the colonial days to the present day, people around him call him a “living history.” Indeed, the ‘call’ for him to share these pieces and his own story is not limited to Zainichi Korean populations. “I’m not good at saving money, but saving documents and pictures is my life work,” stated Mr. Song, continuing as follows:

I started to save these before the [country’s] liberation. Even during the war, I did

not give up in saving these documents. I would hide these in the basement or in

the mountain. I wanted to protect these documents. These are all ‘evidence’ of my

life story. . . . In the past 40 years, I was asked to either tell or show these

documents by several media more than 200 times. . . . Researchers and professors

from South Korea, when they interviewed me, asked me how come I saved these

raw pieces of evidence. Now, from anybody’s eye, there is no doubt that these are

precious historical documents. But 60 and 70 years back, people did not pay

attention to these. They either lost these documents with various life

circumstances or threw them away because of negative feelings and memories

attached to them. I, however, did not think in that way. Ever since I experienced

the country’s liberation in my 20’s, I have believed that someday I might need 87

these documents. I truly believed in that way. Therefore, I have kept these despite

the difficulty. . . . I have shown these documents and pictures to Chongryun, but

for the past five years South Koreans and people in Mindan have shown more

interest to me.

The sense of being ‘called,’ I observed, was creating a great part in Mr. Song’s narrative identity. Mr. Song devoted his life to the pro-North Korean association called

Chongryun, and, like many other first generation Koreans in this organization, he considers it valuable to pass on stories of his generation to his children’s and grandchildren’s generations. He has continued to be a story-teller of his war experiences to the general public for more than 40 years. In doing so, his own experiences, along with what he witnessed with his camera, have served as valuable pieces of evidence from the past.

Importantly, Mr. Song’s self-affiliation with the Communist Chongryun was supported by other material circumstances, as was the case for many other Koreans at that time. To my question, that asked what brought him to be a “pro-North” advocate despite his origin of being from the South, he commented as follows:

Park JuBum, who sacrificed his life in the 4.24 Educational Fight,35 was the

reason. He heard the rumor about me—that I was freed from the prison and

staying at home. I was invited to work with him for the rights of Koreans. In this

sense, I can say that who I am today is thanks to the guidance of Mr. Park.

35 I will discuss this historical fight in a more detailed manner in the next section in this chapter with Mr. Lee’s life story. 88

Indeed, in a picture taken only three days after the liberation, Mr. Song “was crying with

joy, showing off the Tae Guk Ki,” the then Korean national flag. This picture, especially

the presence of Tae Guk Ki in his hand—because this very same flag today stands for

South Korea—spoke to me from those days in which both the physical and psychological

boundary between the South and the North was much less static than it is today. What is

today considered to be “pro-North” or “pro-South” is an artificial creation for him. In Mr.

Song’s case, his observation of various kinds of discrimination toward Koreans during

the colonial period led him to strive for protecting the rights of Korean people in Japan.

This belief, as I will show below, had evolved in his mind based on his own experiences of forced Japanization under the policy that justified discrimination toward Koreans.

About the Name-Change: Sousikaimei

With a close look at this document, you will tell, during the colonial period, how

cunningly they [Japanese] oppressed and discriminated Koreans.

Showing me the official letter of approval for his name change, Mr. Song told me his thought, as expressed above. As the presence of the word “approval” in the letter indicated, it was obvious as to who had the right to “approve” the name changes of

Koreans as well as to whom the name changes benefited. The tricky part, however, is in the ambiguous relationship between the term “approval” and the reality of the forced nature of the name change itself.

In Showa 16(1941), I was only 14 or 15. That was when I was a middle-school

student. Why would I go and ask to change my name officially? This document

looks as if I myself showed my will to change my own name, and was “allowed”

89

to do so. That’s where I say the cunningness of the Japanese Imperialism is

revealed.

The content of the document clearly shows his “old” Korean name and the “new”

Japanese one, including both surname and his first name. With the date in which the

Soushikaimei happened to him, the document says that “Kyokani yori kaimei,” or “by

approval the name change was done.”

This name change, according to Mr. Song, did not mean an inclusion of Koreans

into Japanese in a full sense. In another document he showed me, which served as a letter

to notify him of three years’ probation under a suspended sentence of two years’

imprisonment, his Korean name was put before his Japanese name.

It says my Korean name first. They changed my name into Japanese. Why then do

they reveal my Korean name here? Some authority told me that it is intentionally

showing the Korean name first because, if you see only the Japanese name,

people do not know that I am a Korean. Here, they separate myself from other

Japanese. This is why I cannot forgive their policy.

Work experience at the Japanese Government-General of Chosun

The Japanese Government-General of Chosun was established in early colonial

days with the intent to control Korea. Ever since Terauchi succeeded the position of the

Governor-General in 1916, the Japanese Government-General of Chosun had served as

an absolute political power in Japan-ruled Korea. Mr. Song, surprisingly, was one of a

few Koreans who were recruited to work at the Government-General office, despite the

fact that “the colonial civil service too was dominated by Japanese officials” (Weiner,

1989, p. 34). Showing his hand-written diary from these days, Mr. Song explained how 90

he came to work at the Government-General office, in which he raised his national

consciousness facing the systematized discrimination of Koreans:

The year 1924, when I was born, was the year-one of the military draft. At first, it

was voluntarily. But they did not have enough to fulfill the need and later, it

became compulsory. . . . During the old days, the education was all about military

practice. From morning till night, students had to exercise soldiery. When I

graduated from school, I was awarded as a cadet under the order to recruit more

into the army. Since it was the militaristic era, this award was honored more

highly than the graduate certificate. This helped me later to be employed at the

Japanese Government-General.

Working as an officer for the Japanese Government-General, Mr. Song undoubtedly was elite. Having failed to get any job after graduation, he came to be hired at the

Government-General with the help of his own grandfather. “I wanted to be a superior

Japanese, even more superior than Japanese,” recalled Mr. Song. Under the Japan-ruled

Korea, however, assimilation was encouraged under the condition of reinforcing the social order settled by Japan, and therefore, hierarchy was maintained based on the systematized discrimination that expected Koreans to fill lower rank positions (Weiner,

1989). On the day he was promoted, his diary noted that even after the promotion, the salary for him was far less than his Japanese colleague. Gradually, he developed anger

toward the endless discrimination. In May 1944, he quit his job at the Japanese

Government-General, and in August of the same year, he was arrested with the reason of

“breaking the law and order” for the society. He was forced to change his ideology

91

“back” to support the Japanese Imperialism by reading a pro-Japan book in the prison

cell.

For more than 30 years after the end of the war, Mr. Song had not told the fact of

imprisonment even to his own family. In postwar Japan, he worked for Koreans’ right for

ethnic education and for repatriation home to Korea. After earning a bachelor’s degree in

politics, he had worked since 1978 to preserve an underground shelter in the region.

While actively supporting the lives of fellow Koreans and telling stories of the past, he himself did not open up his own story of trauma. Instead, time visited him first and he started to understand his own personal history as something meaningful only after a ‘call’

to tell:

About 30 years ago, I was approached by a Korean organization that worked to

find out the evidence from the colonial days. The chair of the organization said

that he had found my name in a book at the National Library of Japan. I at first

denied that it was me. But then he brought me the book. So ever since then, I

revealed my history of imprisonment to the public and my family.

He showed me a copy of “the book’s” cover page, along with the page in which his name

was cited. The book, upon which a “secret” label was carefully put, was entitled

“Oppression toward Koreans, 1943-1945.” In this book, he is explained as having

developed a national identity through his own experiences as well as observation as a worker for the Japanese Government-General. In the letter he sent to his friend in Japan,

he expressed his belief that Korea must be independent and that Korean youth must

collaborate for the country’s liberation. He was then 21 years old.

92

Today, Mr. Song is one of the most ‘vocal’ spokespersons, revealing the history

of the colonial period and war from a Korean’s perspective. For example, he is strongly against Japan’s official position to not admit that they imposed a Japanese nationalistic ideology upon Koreans. Showing a small note-sized handbook, he told me as follows:

There was a foreigner’s register at that time. Unlike the foreigner’s identification

card we carry today, it was a handbook at that time. (The book he showed me had

in the first page his father’s name, mother’s name, his name, and the date of

moving to Japan.) The first page of this handbook was Kimigayo and the picture

of Kyu-jo, the old name of the palace where the emperor lived in Japan. The last

page of it is the “oath of the faithful people.” It tells that we are the sons and

daughters of the Japanese emperor. It says that our lives are not precious in dying

for the country. Now, the Japanese political authorities say that they did not

impose the Imperial education upon Koreans and they did not discriminate against

us. Furthermore, they are denying the existence of the Military “Comfort

Women.” But, in the handbook imposed upon Koreans, we clearly see the words

of loyalty to the emperor and to the country. I want to say to them, look at it! It is

a piece of evidence to show who is lying to whom.

Hearing his strong voice of anger, I wondered, what made him be an advocate of the colonial past? There seem to be two contrasting reasons. On the one hand, he tells the story of the past because the Japanese government does not. The attitudes of Japanese officials that still deny the presence of imposition, torture, and hardship on Korean subjects are the major reason to tell the past history. On the other hand, he tells because there are communities who listen, and because he knows that sharing creates solidarity 93

within these communities. This binary reality, which contains both ignorance on one level and awareness on the other, creates hope, although it oftentimes is associated with

disappointment, for social change by acting together does not come easily. Mr. Song

recalled his encounter with one halmoni from North Korea who experienced the sexual

slavery system put in by Japan, sharing the sense of pain:

In 1998, one of the so-called the former “military comfort women” Kyungsaeng

Lee halmoni, came from North Korea for the tribunal. Hearing the story of the

forced labor in a tunnel in the past, she visited here. I guided her and

representatives of North Korea. In the tunnel, the halmoni cried so hard,

collapsing on the floor. She said, “The ladies from Korea experienced all kinds of

shame. These young men were also forced to work in this dark tunnel as if they

were horses or cows.” She could not stand up for a while. . . . I tried to meet her in

Pyongyang later, but was told that this halmoni passed away two years before my

visit, which is five years ago from now.

“It seems like Japanese authorities are waiting for us to die, so that there will be no one

witness left.” This is what Mr. Song said to me over a cup of coffee after our interview.

“That is why I believe that it is important to tell our children and grandchildren about our

experiences. I do not know what they will do with it once I die, but I do believe in them”

(Wonshik Song, personal conversation). The pictures Mr. Song has taken include

200,000 separate photos; he has kept a diary for 70 years. He told me that he would like

to give all the rights for these to his own family. I thought myself to be extremely lucky

to be able to meet Mr. Song. This was the day I wrote in my own diary that I felt blessed

by having chosen this topic. 94

Division in Family, Visiting ‘Home’ after 68 Years

The year 2000 was a special year for Koreans, at least for those who had families living separately in North and South Korea, as well as in Japan. On June 13 to 15 in

2000, the Inter-Korean Summit was held in Pyonyang, North Korea. For the first time after the division of the country, the heads of South and North Korea—Kim Dae Jung, the Former President of the ROK and Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defense

Commission for the DPRK― met to talk about issues of reconciliation and reunification for the divided country. As a result of the Inter-Korean summit, the South-North Joint

Declaration was issued, which promised to make a mutual effort for reunification and reconciliation of the divided Korea, to realize exchange visits of separated families and relatives, and to keep a continuous talk between the South and the North for peace of the

Korean peninsula. After the Joint Declaration, an opportunity was also given for

Chongryun Koreans, whose official road to visit their hometown in South Korea had been cut for more than 50 years, to now visit their original homeland. Mr. Song was one of those people who benefited from this new opportunity.

I visited my homeland only after the South-North Joint Declaration in 2000. I

visited the tombs of my grandfather and grandmother. There I deeply apologized

to them for not coming with their son, who was my father. Around the year when

the South Korea-Japan International Treaty was set, they heard that some people

had secretly visited their hometown. My father and mother also wanted to go.

Only now, people can go back and forth between South Korea and Japan. In the

old days, however, if you wanted to visit their hometown in Korea, we had to do

95

so secretly, by registering their names at a Mindan36 office in a different region.

Before my father passed away in his 70s, he said to me, “my son, please bring me

to my hometown before I die.” It has been more than 50 years since my father

passed away. I never imagined that the country would be still divided after the 50

years. Had I known about this long-lasting division, I would have sent him to his

hometown. But I told him at that time, “Father, we’ve waited until today so let’s

wait for a little more. The country will be reunified, and then, we do not have to

go secretly.” But without sending them even once, I let them die here in Japan. In

that sense, I am a very bad son. I begged for an apology in front of my

grandparents with tears.

For Chongryun Koreans, Mr. Song’s family history was not uncommon. Many families had their origin in places that now are in South Korean land but the pathway to the hometown was cut off due to their social position that supports North Korea. Therefore, for many Zainichi Koreans, and Chongryun Koreans in particular, the land of origin, nationality, and their social affiliation are not necessarily the same. Due to this discrepancy, problems can arise—problems that are sometime tricky to resolve as noted below:

In 2001, I obtained the register record. It gave me such sad feeling for the

country’s division and the reality of an un-unified Korea. I see my father and

mother and anybody older than them in this registry. But see, my father and my

mother, in this registry, are still alive. You know, in general, they are crossed

36 Mindan is an organization that positions itself as a supporter of South Korea, which exists as a counterpart organization of the pro-North Chongryun. 96

upon their passing. If they were to be alive today, they would be more than 100

years old. And, I have 6 children, and 15 grandchildren, but none of them were

put on this registry. By seeing it, I cried so hard. I was sad facing the reality of

division that Jae-Il (Zainichi in Korean) Koreans also have to face. Although it

does not give us any difficulty as long as we live in Japan. However, isn’t it a sad

thing that we are not recognized in the place where we put here as the place of

origin? I went to the Mindan office, and asked them what I should do.

Surprisingly, they said, as a person whose nationality is Chosun, I would not

possess the right to change the South Korean registry. I was, instead, asked to

change the nationality to South Korea. . . .

After a long discussion, they agreed to cross out my parents’ names. But still, my

wife, my children and grandchildren are not put in it. This is where I think that the

country’s division has left Jae-Il (Zainichi in Korean) Koreans the pain and un-

natural reality.

As a person who had changed nationality from Chosun to Hanguk (South Korea), I could share the essence of the complication and the feeling of sadness. What I assumed as to his narrative identity here was that, in his mind, Korea was still Chosun, which does not necessarily mean the North (although many would mean this, because of the same sound as we pronounce the term in North Korea) but the unified country even before the

Japanese colonization. When I asked him how he feels about his own nationality as a representation of himself, he sighed deeply and then answered me in the following way:

It is not that I like the North better than the South. I was born in South Korea. But

when I left there, there was no separation to either South or North. The generation 97

has changed, but I do not want to change the nationality that I was given. It is just

a simple hope that since I was born as a Chosen-saram37, I want to die as a

Chosen-saram. So, no one in my family and relatives has changed it to South

Korea. I do not know how it will change after I die. But all of them are respecting

my will. And, all of them use their Korean names.

Changing one’s nationality seems to be a radical and unfaithful decision to make which, in theory, implies one ‘admit’ the country’s official division. A difficult question remains for Zainichi Koreans as to how one’s nationality represents his/her own identity. At least, one thing that I know by now is that Mr. Song’s narrative history was shared by many other Chongryun Koreans, especially by people of the older generation. Throughout the interview, it appeared as if he was trying to ‘prove’ his narrative identity.

Mr. Lee and the Fight for Education

Mr. Kyungsoo Lee, whose narrative will follow, shared the spirit of ‘fighting for the rights’ with Mr. Song. His family was originally from Jeju Island, the southern island in South Korea:

In the old days, there was a ferryboat called, Goon Dae Wan (Kimigayo-maru in

Japanese), that went between Jeju and Osaka. It comes from Jeju Island to Osaka

directly. For this reason, we have many Jeju people in Osaka area. I came to Japan

with all of my family. When I was 4 years old, I came with my parents, two elder

brothers. Five of our family came together. There was nothing we could do in

Korea. So many people were deprived of their lands and homes. So technically,

37 Chosun (Korean) or Chousen (Japanese) was the name used for Korea until 1945. Saram means people in Korean. 98

we were kicked out (from the country). I went to a Japanese elementary school

until the fifth grade, and then moved to Kobe, Japan.

As was true for several other male participants I spoke with, Mr. Lee characterized his childhood as that of a hardworking student. Our first conversation started with his explanation of his educational background. Comparing the system now and then, he told me as follows:

As for myself, I graduated from an elementary school in Kobe, and went to a

middle school, which in these days, was a five year education system. When I

turned 14 years old, a night school was newly open. I worked during the day time,

went to the school in the evening, and then studied hard after coming home.

The narrative tone emphasized his hard work as well as his effort to do both work and study, but this emphasis seems to be guided by his pride as a Korean to excel in the

Japanese system:

At the school, we studied Japanese. That was same in Korea too. The education

system was based on Japanese. That was when I was 14—work during the day

and go to school at night. Many students were like that at that time. But since it

was so hard, we had only 50 out of 200 students who could graduate. The rest of

150 dropped or failed. It is really a hard thing that for five years you go to school

while you work. I had many Korean student friends; we helped each other and

studied together to pass exams.

Throughout the interviews with the male participants, I could hear this type of identification of Korean selfhood with the archetype of a hard working student. This archetype was communicated through such statements as “We Korean students studied 99

hard,” or “there was no average Korean student at school.” As Mr. Kim, another male

interviewee told me, the driving force for this hard work at school was “so that Japanese

won’t look down upon us.”

Having come to Japan in his childhood and staying in Japan until now, his

socialization seemed to have involved a sense of awareness as a Korean minority in

Japan. Since the country’s liberation, he has been actively involved in Chongryun,

beginning from the League of Koreans, named Choryun (see Chapter 2). He worked as a

full time employee at Chongryun’s Education Department. The largest part in Mr. Lee’s

story that contributed to his own experience-based story was about how he devoted his

life to protect Korean schools in Japan.

Memory of the 4.24 Education Fight

For Chongryun Koreans, Kobe is a famous place for the history of the 4.24

Education Fight. After the country’s liberation in 1945, teaching the Korean language

was a central issue among many Koreans in Japan in order to prepare for repatriation

(Ryang, 1997). Korean general audiences, from elementary students to housewives, were

gathered to learn the Korean language and to overcome their illiteracy. According to

Ryang (1997), records indicate that by the year 1946, the total of 539 schools had been

built in Japan, housing about 50,000 students. Education at these Korean schools

emphasized Korean language and history, in an attempt to decolonize once colonized citizens.

Gaining the right for education among Koreans in Japan, however, was a

continuous process of fight and struggles. Lee (1981) explains the situation surrounding

Korean schools as follows: 100

By April 1948 there were 58,000 students in 600 schools, which had been

established with little financial help from the Japanese government. As private

institutions, these schools were relatively free from stringent governmental

regulation of their curricula, but the situation was beginning to change. (p. 163)

According to Lee’s account, in January 1948, the Japanese Ministry of Education ordered

that Korean schools comply with Japan’s School Education Law in order to be accredited

in Japan. In Korean schools, subjects were taught in Korean language, but complying

with the Japan’s School Education Law meant that all classes would be conducted in the

Japanese language, following the Japanese education curricula. Viewing this order as a

revival of the past colonial experience, many Koreans protested. The Countermeasure

Committee on Korean Education was created under Choryun; an organization preceded

Chongryun, and submitted their demands that they allow Korean schools to continue

operating in the Korean language. The repetitive demands were rejected by the Japanese

authority with the method of silence, and finally, “The uncompromising attitudes of both

Koreans and the Japanese authorities eventuated in violence” (Lee, 1981, p. 165).

“The 4.24 Education Fight,” or “The Hanshin Education Fight38” was the name

commonly used now in Korean schools in referencing this event. The 4.24 Education

Fight has remained as one of the most famous and memorable events in the history of

Korean schools in Japan. As Mr. Lee’s life story unfolded, I realized that he was in the

middle of this fight. In the following space, I will cite a story of this historical event from

Mr. Lee’s own perspective:

38 The name Hanshin indicates the area that includes Osaka and Kobe in Japan. As this area was the center of this fight, the incident was remembered in this way. 101

I was living in Kobe after the liberation. Fellow Koreans in Kobe were mainly

workers in small rubber factories. Even in one area in Kobe, there used to be

20,000 to 30,000 Koreans. After the country’s liberation, Korean schools were

spreading out all over Japan. Choryun39 was putting its emphases on the national

education and economic development for Koreans. In 1948, the Japanese

government ordered each prefecture that they would not allow schools for

Koreans. They ordered each prefecture to ban national education for Koreans.

Soon after that, officials came to the school and started to put papers on the wall,

and said that they should close the school. Our school in Kobe was in the same

situation. It was absolutely an unfair order, which once again tried to erase our

national identity. During the colonial period, they changed our surname by

imposing Japanese names. They dragged our people to Japan for forced labors

and to their military through imposed militarism. Millions of Koreans were

dragged to arsenals. Because of these experiences, it was so natural for us to have

desire to have our own. We thought that we should not be deprived of our nation,

our national identity. Therefore after the liberation, the national education started

with the people’s will to take back our own nation—the language, knowledge, and

culture. The schools put the emphases on language and history education. What

kind of act is it to ban this natural will among Koreans? It’s not different from the

militarism during the colonial days, although we were liberated. We thought we

were the liberated people, but is it allowed to treat us in this oppressive way? We

were very angry at this decision.

39 The name of an organization preceded Chongryun. 102

Mr. Lee’s narrative above explains that protecting the rights to teach Korean language

and history was the “natural” will among Koreans at that time. The country’s liberation from Japan’s colonization meant that Koreans now regained their sovereignty. The hardship imposed upon Koreans both physically (e.g. the forced military labor and sexual slavery) and psychologically (sense of inferiority and shame through bullying, name

change, and discrimination) was conditioned by “eras[ing] our country.” Therefore,

according to Mr. Lee, people thought that they “should not be deprived of our nation, our

national identity” again. The sense of ‘our-ness’ seems to be a way of symbolizing Mr.

Lee’s narrative identity here as a “liberated” person. The action of the “liberated people”

is justified through the memory of past hardship under the systematic ‘domination.’

Protecting Korean schools, therefore, was to protect ‘our’ identity from the colonizer’s

hands. So:

Many Koreans stood up, and decided to protect Korean schools together. So,

fellow Koreans took a position of opening the schools as usual, while the

Japanese government insisted on closing them. This was the beginning of the 4.24

Education Fight. During that time, hundreds and thousands of students and

faculties gathered at the schools and stayed there in the spirit of protecting the

schools. They would even cook and eat there so that no one could do anything

while they were out.

However, in March of 1948, the government forcefully occupied our

schools, starting in big cities like Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, and Tokyo. They put

papers at the schools and insisted that we should close the schools. But there was

no way we could give in. These were schools that Korean people built by our own 103

hands. They have no right to oppress us. We did road protests, and protested at the prefectural office. Thousands of fellow Koreans gathered in a park named

Minatogawa or Okurayama park and protested against the March legislation.

Then, the representatives went to the prefectural office again, to meet the governor and tell him that we would not accept the legislation. I also went there

(as one of the representatives). Although we waited for the governor in front of his office and tried to negotiate with him, the Japanese police came in and arrested all of us. Even that time, the American military, the MP—Military

Police—they also came and pointed their guns at us and told us Koreans go out.

We did not follow them. I sat on the floor and insisted that we could not follow the order. But finally we were all arrested, and I, was also arrested. I was about 20 or so.

That time, American armies were occupying most of the important buildings. The Japanese police building in Kobe was occupied with (Korean) people (they were arrested), so they also put us in the American facility. I was put in the Ikuta police building. I believe that was March 15, somewhere in mid-

March. In total, about 2 thousand Koreans were arrested. So you can’t put them all in one place!

So that was the beginning of the 4.24 Education Fight. The people outside gathered and protested to the Hyogo prefectural office, the city hall, town hall, and so on, appealing that they should free those who were arrested. As time went by, the protest, which started in Hyogo prefecture, had grown bigger and bigger.

Not only in Kobe, but people protested in Osaka and Tokyo. Then it spread over 104

to each place in Japan where there were Korean schools. People protested to

protect the education for Koreans. There were about a million Koreans left in

Japan, so you can imagine the scale of this protest.

And then on April 24, by that time, I was transferred from the police to a jail. I stayed in the police for 3 or 4 days. Those who were in jail (when I was in the police station) were now put in the prison cell. The fellow Koreans continuously visited the police and asked to abolish the ban on Korean schools.

Other representatives of Choryun went to the governor’s office and submitted the

letter request, and then, it seems like they could not win the high spirit among

Koreans. They reluctantly agreed to our request. They agreed to abolish the ban,

to allow Korean schools, and to free those who were arrested.

On the day before the release, we were told that they would free us. You

must have a command letter from the chief. As for Kobe, the chief of the Public

Prosecutor’s office should sign. We received that letter from him on April 23.

With that letter of approval, people gathered in Korean schools, and the

representatives came to the jail. The chief of the jail and the Korean

representatives, and about 10 people in jail were called. I was also one of the ten.

It was really a rare occasion, in which the chief of the jail and prisoners would

meet in one place.

So on April 24, we were released. April 24 in 1948 was the day in which

the ban on Korean schools was abolished, those who were arrested were released,

and the victory of Korean schools came into reality. When we stepped out of the

jail, there was a truck waiting for us. There were about 50 people put in that jail. 105

We rode the truck with the Choryun representatives, and went to the yard in front

of the Hyogo Prefectural Office. When we arrived there, thousands of people

were already waiting for us. It became a party to welcome us back while at the

same time to protect our education. I still remember the day so vividly that I can

picture the scene in my eyes even now.

The sense of protecting ‘our’ language and schools from the colonizer’s hands meant empowerment for a once oppressed people, and then ultimately emancipation from their oppressors. This empowered crowd, however, was dangerous to not only the Japanese government, but to the United States, who wanted to block the spread of Communists in

Japan. In fact, as I noted in Chapter 2, the anti-Japanese feelings among many Koreans at this time corresponded better with the socialist North Korean ideology than that of the U.

S. occupied South Korea. Reacting to this “revolt,” it was the U.S. that acted to close

these Korean schools. Here Mr. Lee continues:

The problem is that, a big thing happened after April 24. After that, the American

military, GHQ, came in. The occupation army had a headquarters in Yokohama,

but they announced the crisis. The GHQ announced the declaration against the

Hanshin crisis40. That was a historical event. They printed out the declaration, and

started to distribute. They faxed to Kobe, and then next day to Osaka. The content

of the declaration was that first, Korean schools should be closed again, and

second, the released “prisoners need to be chained to the original jail.” The

American armies came with their trucks (to the schools and the offices). Anyhow,

40 The counterpart name for 4.24 Education Fight. “Hanshin” in Japan refers to the area that includes Osaka and Kobe. 106

we got to know the declaration at the night before. “The American army declared

the crisis and they would come to capture us. Those who can get away should do

so.” Luckily, I came [here], and could avoid being caught. On the next day, they

came in and caught the workers of Choryun. They came with many trucks to the

areas where Koreans lived—Koreans lived very poorly gathering in one area. To

that place, not only the American armies but the Japanese police came and helped

the Americans. The scene in which they captured people was so cruel. They even

captured innocent people. Thousands of Koreans were again captured. Those who

were arrested before 4.24 were sent to the Japanese court. Those who were

arrested after 4.24 went to the [American] Military court. One youth even died in

the jail. His name was Jubum Park. After continuous effort to free them, these

people were finally released, but it was a very important issue in our history—the

issue of education.

An official record by the Japanese Police Department reads that 1,800 Koreans were arrested in addition to the already arrested 3,000 (Shinozaki, 1955, 163). Two were killed during the U.S. military suppression, and many were severely injured. Sonia Ryang

(1997) has interviewed one woman, Mrs. Hong, who witnessed this tragedy, and cites how Mrs. Hong recalled the day she visited the mother of one victim:

We were utterly depressed when we went into her house. She was calm, and do

you know what she said to us? She said, “My son was very glad when he went to

the school for the first time. He did not have enough opportunity to learn before

liberation. He was looking forward to teaching me Korean, as I am still a mushik

jaengi [illiterate]. Now that I cannot have him teach me, I shall learn our language 107

myself. I shall learn as much as he would have done. We will never let our

schools go; we shall defend them, and if the enemies were to destroy one school

today, we will build two tomorrow.” Even today, after many decades, whenever I

think about her, I gain new strength to continue my struggle. (p. 86)

The Japanese policy toward the operation of Korean schools follows complex changes

after the suppression of Choryun, facing the oppositional reaction among Koreans. Lee

(1981) reports that, “following the government’s dissolution of the Choryun in September

1949, all Korean schools were ordered incorporated into the Japanese public school

systems under the direct supervision of the prefectural government” (p.167). At Korean

schools, no Korean would be allowed to be a principal, but instead, Japanese principals

were sent by the prefectural governor to head these schools. Curricula were adjusted

based on the Japanese education system, and Korean children were counted into the

Japanese compulsory education system. Under this strict governmental policy, Korean

schools were reduced, and by the year 1952, “there were only 157 schools with 14,000

students” (Lee, 1981, p. 167). Yet in 1952, reacting to the Japanese Peace Treaty, the

government excludes the once accredited Korean schools from the list of governmental

financial aid, announcing the position that Koreans in Japan were not Japanese citizens

anymore. “Not till Chongryun’s emergence in 1955 were Koreans [officially] able to

resume their education program” (Ryang, 1997, p.86),

Mr. Lee’s last statement, “but it was a very important issue in our history—the

issue of education” struck me as an important message. After reading some outside

sources that explained the 4.24 Education Fight, I learned that from the then Japanese

authorities’ eyes, it was not an “issue of education” but of national security. More 108

specifically, it was an issue of suppressing Koreans’ self-awareness as ‘free’ citizens so

that they could eliminate forces that would escalate into the Communist swing in Japan.

But from Mr. Lee’s perspective (and apparently from many other Koreans’ at that time)

protecting Korean schools was to gain dignity as human-beings, and to pass this dignity

on to descendents. But it seems that ‘under whose territory’ Koreans in Japan should be

guarded has been a site of struggle. And, as is the case for Mrs. Hwang, this issue still is

an unresolved struggle, especially because it hits the once-colonized citizens’ personal lives.

Positioning Poverty and Segregation as Continuity: Mrs. Hwang’s Appeal

Toward the end of my field work, I was introduced to Mrs. Hwang, Soon-Yeong.

In introducing Mrs. Hwang to me, the secretary-general of the center told me about the reality of many Korean elderly people in Japan who are not eligible to receive social welfare. The participants that I met for this project, including Mrs. Hwang, are those who

are excluded from the national care system called Kaigohoken. Due to this exclusion,

many Korean elderly people in Japan, approximately about 71 percent of the Zainichi

Korean population above 65, are without social pensions (Chung, Inoue & Kho, 2006, p.

36). I had heard her name before entering into the field site. Mrs. Hwang was a person

who participated in a trial, as I discuss below, against this discrimination as the leading

plaintiff. Since she is not eligible to receive an old-age pension, Mrs. Hwang, her age

being 81 years old, is still supporting herself with small amount of wages gained by

weaving traditional Japanese cloth called Nishijin Ori, living together with her physically

challenged son. She kindly agreed to talk with me if could come to her house. So I visited

her house to interview her. On entering her home, the first thing that I noticed was her 109

small ‘factory’ that was attached to a room. In the tiny room next to the ‘factory,’ our conversation started.

“Our family was deprived of all of our property.” Mrs. Hwang opened up the story of her family’s move to Japan with this statement that, for many Koreans in Japan, is common. The detail of it, however, is what personalizes her familial memory, beginning with an event that occurred while they were still living in Korea.

We were asked to pay tax. When my father explained that he did not have any

way to pay it since the family had been deprived of everything, the person said

that he should have a guarantee person for him. He said that even with a guarantee

person, there would be no way he could pay. Then the person explained to my

father that he should work in Japan because there he would get a good job. He

said to my father that he would take him to Japan. Then a Japanese guy took my

father to Japan, and he arrived at Shimonoseki.41 As he arrived there, that person

had already disappeared. My father did not have money, nor did he know the

language. So he walked and walked, eating cats’ and dogs’ food until he finally

got to Kyoto, where he met one Korean who introduced him a job.

Under the Japanese colonial rule, the policy of land ownership had been drastically

changed from the traditional Korean way to the newly adopted Japanese rule. Many

Korean land owners, who then were ignorant of the newly adopted Japanese rule, were

deprived of their land and property (Park Il, 2005). Mrs. Hwang’s personal family story,

regardless of whether the above paragraph illustrates the truth of her father’s own

41 A harbor city in Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan. Nearest from Pusan, a major harbor city in Korea, Shimonoseki was a gate for many Koreans to Japan. 110 experience or it represents an exaggerated version, speaks about her familial history. The desperate circumstance led her father to leave home in Korea to find whatever job he could possibly get by coming to Japan. Once her father settled in Kyoto Prefecture, her mother took her 7-year-old daughter to Japan. Moving to Japan for her family, however, in her parents’ minds was far from being called migration. Instead, the move was actualized with a hope to go home after a certain period of time.

Segregation of Koreans at that time was prominent. Historically, Zainichi Koreans have had a harder time to rent places to live than the Japanese would. Due to this hardship, many Koreans formed ghetto-like living arrangements where no Japanese would want to live, such as under bridges, near rivers, or near the railroads. Mrs.

Hwang’s family was no exception in facing this discrimination. Her childhood memory was illustrated with segregation that entered into children’s lives, which formed her narrative identity that connects the past experience of segregation with discrimination in the present context. The following conversation addresses this issue:

Mrs. Hwang: After several years, my father’s job changed from construction labor

to a drayage. He would load coal and bring them to a factory. For that job, the

company gave us a room. But when our family moved to that room owned by the

(Japanese) company, every Japanese family had already left (because a Korean

family would move in). Even just by hearing the rumor, they left. I heard this

story from a snack shop owner nearby the house. One day I talked to the owner

that I did not see any Japanese around me, but she told me that many people used

to live here but all left.

111

I: I wonder in [where you live now], like in Tokyo (where I am from), Koreans

live together for that reason?

Mrs. Hwang: Yes, yes. That’s the reason. All Japanese would go out, and then the

town becomes a Korean ghetto. However, there was only one family who did not

leave. I still remember the surname of the family. It seemed that they had one

little girl, who was possibly one or two year younger than me. Her parents would

lock her inside when they went to work. You know, in old days, people would

work 12 hours, or 14 hours including the commuting time. During that time, the

little girl was locked in the house. Outside her house, she would hear the sounds

of Korean children playing. Then she would hit the door from inside, shouting

“let me join you!” But you know, there was no way we children could do that

from the outside. So, during the 6 years my family lived there, I never saw that

(Japanese) neighbor’s face even once. Even in Summer time, when people open

the windows, they would shut them down. Even in a one story house, where we

would share the water, they would use it after Koreans (who mostly did labor

work from early morning) went to bed.

The systematic segregation formed psychological separation between Koreans and

Japanese so naturally that they also shaped geographic isolation of Korean residents from any ‘decent’ living conditions. Indeed, the very region where the daycare nursing center was located was named as the “number zero area.” When I asked about the reason for this name, some staff told me that this area does not appear in a map. For many years, there was no name for this region. “Even a navigation system does not indicate this area. Many

‘underground’ organization such as Yakuza live here!” Therefore, when many Koreans 112 were gathered in post-war Japan, it was necessitated by their hard life circumstances. The memories of this segregation run through Korean families and communities. And these memories of segregation, as Mrs. Hwang’s appeal as a trial witness shows, set an emotional tone among Korean elderly participants in thinking of the present-day discrimination.

I asked Mrs. Hwang to explain her motives for engaging herself in the trial against the exclusion of Korean elderly people from the national care insurance system,

Kaigohoken:

I wanted to ask (Japanese) what Korean did wrong. Even when I ask them,

nobody can answer. It’s been 100 years since we were deprived of our country.

Even if one did really a wrong thing, is there any sin that receives punishment this

long? During the war time, the first thing we learned was that “Japan is a good

country, God’s creation. Korea is a bad country.” But I once said in front of a

Japanese politician when I was invited as a speaker, that “Korea is one. My

country has a 5 thousand year history, but has never colonized any other country.”

Then the people in the room stood up, shouting that they “didn’t realize that.”

They were also educated that Koreans were bad, but they did not even doubt the

reason. So they were saying that Koreans in fact were not bad, but they did not

realize. I told them my childhood stories of being insulted and beaten by

Japanese, my father’s experience, and my husband’s experience of forced labor.

My husband was dragged from Korea, and forced to work at a gunpowder factory.

He worked while being beaten with a long stick since he was hungry and weak.

113

I once spoke in front of the South Korean government officials. I met them and

told them about the situation of Korean elderly people. Nobody knew the

situation, even the governmental officials. I said to them, “it is not enough even

should we receive all of the Japanese land. My grandparents’ generation was

deprived all of their properties. My father spent all of his life paying tax to the

Japanese government. I spent 80 years of my life, being mocked, looked down

upon, and discriminated.”

After hearing the change in her tone of voice, and saw obvious rage in her face, I asked her what would be the message she wanted to express the most. She answered honestly and strongly.

The thing I want to tell the most—the truth of what the Japanese did to Koreans in

the old days. The hardship that I experienced was nothing. It is not included in the

name of hardship. So many Koreans lost lives. Those people, who worked as

forced laborers to dig out dams, really suffered. And my husband’s, and my

father’s lives were always put in danger. They were brought to Japan even

without knowing the language, without having money. My family was well off

until we were deprived of our land. We owned the land, so we lived well. Then

we became poor and homeless all of the sudden. How much of hardship he

experienced, how terrible treatment he faced in Japan – it is regretful that I cannot

write in detail by myself.

As for my husband, he was the oldest of the 7 siblings. One day, he

received a sheet ordering him to go to the (Japanese) military. He needed to work

for his family of 8, since his father was sick and mother had already died. But 6 114

soldiers came to bring him. His father begged them, but they kicked him and said

“you unfaithful citizen!” Why should Koreans be called “disloyal” to Japan? That

was a terrible feeling to him. Once he was brought to Japan, no time-off and no

money was awarded. They tried to make Koreans to be Japanese. They had

Koreans sit in the way Japanese would, and if they couldn’t, they would hit them.

They had Koreans eat in the way Japanese did, and if they couldn’t they would hit

them. This kind of psychological, on top of physical, pain, I want people to know.

All kinds of discrimination have remained. They don’t treat us equally. I went

to resister for the pension. My Japanese neighbor told me about the new system

and asked me to go with her. She could register for it right away, but I was told

that “you have a different nationality. You don’t belong to this system.” During

the wartime, they used Koreans as Japanese. And then once the war is over, they

say “you are not Japanese.” I don’t understand. So I appeal.

An origin of the problem Mrs. Hwang explains is complicated. The reason why the majority of elderly Koreans are not included in the caretakers of this policy traces back again to the time when the legal status of Koreans in Japan was ambiguous (see

Chapter 2). In 1959, the Japanese government launched a national pension plan called

Kokumin Nenkinhou. With this pension plan, the government aimed that every Japanese citizen would be covered with the pension plan for their life after retirement. This plan, however, was limited to the Japanese citizens who owned Japanese nationality. Having been automatically withdrawn from the Japanese nationality in 1947, Zainichi Koreans were excluded at this point for this national pension plan. In 1985, a new policy for the

“refugee” was issued in Japan, and with this, Koreans in Japan became eligible for the 115

pension. However, those who were over 35 years old at this point, which most of the first

generation Koreans were, were excluded again, saying that they would not be able to meet the required 25 years’ entry to this plan before they receive the money. In the next year, the government again changed the policy, and put a temporary permission for

Zainichi Koreans to register for this plan. However, many Koreans who were left uninformed about this temporary change stayed excluded from eligibility.

The point of argument for this systematic exclusion for the majority of first generation Koreans in Japan seems to be an issue of how to treat those “foreign” populations who crossed the sea during the colonial period. Mrs. Hwang’s last statement,

“During the wartime, they used Koreans as Japanese. And then once the war is over, they say ‘you are not Japanese.’ I don’t understand,” is telling. Yes, they are foreigners, but aren’t they ‘special’ foreigners? In contrast to this case, according to Chung et. al (2006), the Japanese government has issued several relief plans for Japanese, such as

“Okinawans [in] 1972,” “the returnees from China [in] 1994” as well as to the “returnees from North Korea” (p. 36). This systematic exclusion of many of the Korean elderly people, whose presence in Japan are due to the ‘Japanization’ of Koreans in the past, who have not been excluded in the citizenry duty of taxation, and who actually need the money most, upset the participants of the trial.

The results of any of this type of trials were disappointing. The claims of the

Korean elderly people in two trials as well as the voices of Zainichi Koreans with disability were rejected in 2008. The common reasons for the rejection are due to “the limited financial resources,” “the allowance of prioritizing Japanese citizens over the residential foreigners,” and that “regarding the realization of social welfare, the primary 116

caregiver should be the individual’s native state” (Chung, 2008, p. 4). Chung (2008),

however, problematizes the last point with an argument that the Japanese government

herself does not meet the social welfare needs of oversea Japanese citizens. Obviously, we need a better explanation.

While Mrs. Hwang’s appeal is emotional, the answer given by the government is cold and detached. After talking with Mrs. Hwang, and learning a little bit about this systematic problem, I questioned whether there was any way in which this ‘legal’ answer could respond to Mrs. Hwang’s emotional cry? This seems to be a methodological error to me. With this question in mind, I will turn to a next Big story.

An “Ordinary” Korean School Teacher: Mr. Hong’s Story

Mr. Hong, Ilsoo was one of the most enthusiastic co-participants in this study. His enthusiasm to tell his personal story, I thought, coincided with various factors. When I first visited the care center where Mr. Hong resided, I found out that he was the former principal of the elementary school from which my mother graduated about 40 years ago.

He, in fact, remembered my mother as well as my grandmother. Having been introduced

to the daycare institution by one of my mother’s old friends, it probably was not too big a surprise. However, the nostalgic moments shared between my mother (who was present

in the first day of my visit) and Mr. Hong opened up the gateway to my interview so

smoothly.

Mr. Hong was born in 1935 in Kyung-Sang prefecture. As was the case for many

other Koreans, his family moved to Japan searching for a job opportunity. What

distinguishes Mr. Hong’s experiences as a unique story is his adolescent period in which

he returned to his hometown alone, and then “returned back” to Japan. In 1946, one year 117

after the country’s liberation from Japan, when he was 12 years old, Mr. Hong returned

alone to his family’s hometown in Korea. The decision was made in his family to educate

him in Korea as the oldest son of the family. However, observing the country’s turmoil that later led to the war, Mr. Hong strongly wished to return back to Japan, where he had

grown up. The bulk of his personal narrative reveals his adolescent life of being back and

forth between Korea and Japan, which in turn helped form his borderland identity. His

explanation below shows the family identity of anti-Japanese and anti-colonialism, which

led him to grow his own self-identity as a Korean:

You know, the country was liberated on August 15, 1945. I started learning

Korean language since August 16, writing in particular. I knew how to speak

Korean. I lived with my grandmother, my father and mother (indicating the

pictures of them hung on the wall). My grandmother, who lived in Japan for more

than 40 years until she become 92 years old, never spoke Japanese, even

Konnichiha (hello in Japanese). She did not want to speak Japanese even when

my family had Japanese guests. Because she had the feeling that she lost her

husband as a victim of Japan. She raised me, but she did not smile. She kept

speaking Korean even during the time under Japanese colonization.

I am certainly a first generation, yet grew up in Japan. Then I returned to my

homeland in Korea after the liberation. Because I am the oldest grandchild, I was

expected to know the culture better. My grandfather was an anti-Japanese activist,

and due to that, our family was deprived of all our property. Simply speaking, he

died of madness, with enormous anger. So, for my grandmother, her husband was

killed (by Japan). They were deprived of ALL of our property—the house, the 118

land, the farm, and even the works of my grandfather. He was a good writer, but

everything he wrote was confiscated. That time, it was ordered that every Korean

should report the content of their property to the Japanese authority. My

grandfather was leading the anti-Japanese activity against that law, and

persuading Koreans not to report. So, he did not report his property to them, and

he was deprived of everything by Japan. His farm was considered to be

“ownerless,” and taken by Japan. They obviously knew that the land had the

owner. But it was like, “if you don’t obey us, then you will be punished.”

The spirit of anti-Japanese Imperialism had run so deeply in his familial culture that he was quite vocal in telling me what he observed in his childhood:

What’s so cruel about the way they colonized us is that, you know, like in the

war, we say that inner-community spies are more dangerous than enemies in front

of us. They make Koreans oppress Koreans, so that we are apart and hate within

our own nation. They make pro-Japanese Koreans. They say, “we know that your

son is clever. We can make your son study. Instead, you should obey us,”

something like that. In many cases, siblings are apart too.

His childhood memory in Japan, like many other first generation Koreans, shaped his antagonism toward Japan. When the country was liberated, therefore, it seemed natural

for his family to return home. Having lost the way of living in their homeland, however,

returning home was not an easy decision to make. Mr. Hong’s father instead decided to send his son alone to his brother’s place in Korea, so that he at least would not have to

miss an opportunity to learn.

119

Returning ‘Home’—Schooling, War, and Mobility

‘Returning’ home alone was a hard experience for Mr. Hong. Every family in

town, and of course his uncle’s family was, poor.

I went back to Korea to study after the liberation, but I could not ask for tuition

fee to anybody in the family. If my teacher asked me to return home and bring

him the money, I would say “yes” and left the school. But it did not mean that I

would get it. I hated to tell a lie. So, I would go home and ask for the school fee

from my uncle. Knowing that it was a hard favor to ask, I cried. And then my

uncle also cried, apologizing for his incapacity. So I went to the school without

money. That day, after school, the teacher asked me to stay and we talked. He

said to me that he would pay all the fee for me from then on, so don’t worry and

come to the school. He paid my tuition for three years. The feeling of happiness

was indescribable. This was how I leant that I had to help poor students study, and

developed my dream to become a teacher.

Telling the above story, Mr. Hong shed tears. I could speculate how miserable he felt for

not being able to pay the school tuition, and, that was why he was moved by the teacher’s thoughtful gesture. Because the biggest tragedy of poverty is deprivation of hope in a child’s heart, the teacher not only helped Mr. Hong financially but also saved him from giving up his hope to learn. To my probing question that asked him about the biggest turning point in his life, Mr. Hong told me it was when he could become a teacher despite his poverty. “When I became a teacher, I swore in my heart that I would help poor

120

students to study with all of my ability.”42 His eagerness to learn and thankfulness to have

been able to study, has helped him develop a dream to become a teacher, so when he

actually had become a Korean school teacher in Japan, this experience shaped a core part

of his personal identity. Promising that I will discuss his identity as a teacher in a later

section, for now, let me return to his experiences in Korea, which eventually would lead

him back again to Japan.

The Korean War started in 1950, and lasted until the cease fire in 1953. As Liem

(2007) has posited, the Korean War played a devastating role in Koreans’ post-World

War II mentalities:

No event of the modern era has had more enduring significance for Koreans

throughout the diaspora than the Korean War, with perhaps the exception of the

era of Japanese colonization. . . . The war sundered prospects for Korean

independence afforded by liberation at the end of World War II, yoked nation

building to the geopolitics of the Cold War, and caused mass dispersion of the

Korean people, domestically and internationally. (p. 154)

Observing the post-World War II political turmoil and the outbreak of the war, the number of Koreans repatriating to Korea from Japan had dramatically decreased, but instead, many people had to ‘re-return’ to Japan. And, Mr. Hong was one of them.

Because the legal route between Korea and Japan was controlled with the circumstance of war, thousands of Koreans attempted to evacuate illegally. For Mr. Hong, the memory of the War was associated with that of his effort to return to his ‘home’ in Japan.

42 Mr. Hong told me that this was why he remembered my mother and grandmother until now. My grandmother and my mother witnessed his devotion to teaching and his full hearted care to poor students and their families. 121

I returned to Japan in 1952. But before then, I witnessed the Korean War. I saw

the North Korean army fighting in the town I lived. Then the American army came. I saw jet planes for the first time in my life. Seeing the planes flying over my head, I talked to my friend, “did you see the plane now? They didn’t have

propellers!” Later I learnt that it [Korean War] was the first time in the history of

war to have used jet planes.

That time, we had to carry our resident (social security) card, but I left the

card at my hometown, thinking that I wouldn’t need it in Japan. While I kept

failing returning to Japan for three times, however, the Korean War started. Soon

later, the martial law was proclaimed, roads were closed due to the No

thoroughfare law. I couldn’t go anywhere and do anything. If I moved without the

resident card, I would be suspected as a North Korean spy. I thought, “what

should I do, what should I do.” Luckily then, I could hide myself in a farmer’s

house.

One day, the South Korean army came to the house to investigate. I don’t

clearly remember how old I was that time, but I believe that I was 16 or so. A

soldier dragged me, asked how old I was. I told him honestly. He brought me to

the backyard of the house, and took off my pants. He tried to see my pubic hair to

check if I did not tell him a wrong age. Had I told a lie to him, I was close to

being killed. Then he returned to the house and investigated one after another.

They asked for anyone who was not from the town to raise their hands. I would

almost raise my hand, but the owner of the farm stopped my hand firmly. So I did

122

not raise my hand. Had I raised my hand, I would have been shot. I saw several

people being shot in front of my sight.

He said that he missed his home in Japan so much. After failing three times, he succeeded in coming back to Japan, by smuggling onto a fishing boat:

I thought I had nothing to lose. I might die here in anyway. So I decided to try

again. I jumped into a ship in December. It was a very small ship. I put myself in

a box for fish. Sea water, very cold one, would beat me. I was very cold, but think

that I could survive because it was cold. An old man next to me would vomit and

my face was covered with what he threw up. I think that I was used to riding a

boat. If only I went to Tsushima,43 I thought that I would be safe. But I failed

three times. Every time I was told that it’s Japan, and landed there, I saw the

South Korean marine guard, and was caught by them. But this time, when I saw

the land, I could see Japanese cedars. There were Japanese cedars in Tsushima. I

remembered seeing these trees in Japan, so I thought that this land for sure was

Japan.

Mr. Hong’s narrative here, which constitutes the war experience and the story of coming back again to Japan, represented to me his feeling for Japan as a safe ‘home’ for him. In his story of “returning” to Japan, there exists an irony that Zainichi Koreans still live with today—on the one hand, at least in rhetoric, we identify Korea as the land we will

“return” to someday; yet on the other hand, we know Japan as the most comfortable place to live. The “home” Mr. Hong wanted to go back and did return to was the one in Japan.

By choosing to be a minority again, he gained psychological stability:

43 An island that is located at the west end of Japan and nearest from Korea. 123

After coming back to my house in Japan, I was so relaxed that I could not do

anything. I was hungry, and sleepy. I wanted to eat, and sleep. That was all I was

interested in.

But after a while, I studied very, very hard. I did not want to lose against Japanese

students. I studied hard because I did not want to be mocked as “Chosun.”

Life as a Korean School Teacher

As his earlier narrative has revealed, Mr. Hong had kept his will to be a teacher and indeed fulfilled this dream. Like Mr. Lee and Mr. Song, Mr. Hong also was one of early members of Choryun, who engaged himself in the process of founding Korean schools. But unlike them, Mr. Hong’s contribution was more a local one as a founding principal of an elementary school:

Santanda was the place where Korean people thought that they could live. The

name “Santanda” sounded like “Sandanda” in Korean, meaning that “I heard that

they live.” Many Koreans moved to Santanda, believing that they could live and

survive there. The elementary school I taught was nearby-just 500 meter further

from Santanda. The school was first a branch school of a Japanese elementary

school. At first, when Hyogo prefecture banned Korean schools, we fought

against it. Then they accepted our school as a branch institute of a Japanese

school. We had a Korean school in the Japanese elementary school. So in one

school building, we had two principals—a Japanese and a Korean—and two

school systems. That was how we could continue teaching Korean kids. And, it

was the first experience for us Koreans that our sons and daughters could go to

school to learn our language. Then that [school] has become independent. It was a 124

very small one-story house, though. I added six portable classrooms, which served

for annex classes.

I had taught at that school for 21 years. It was hard to gain money with

teaching. It wasn’t easy—teaching with such little money. It’s hard to make a

living teaching at a (Korean) school. My ex-wife worked hard and she had gone

through hardship because of me (not making money). But you know, it’s weird to

say this theological thing, but now I feel as if that was my destiny.

Here, what we see in Mr. Hong’s narrative is the figure of a typical Korean school teacher—devoted, passionate, and full of love for children despite the forfeit of earning money. All Korean schools under Chongryun have not been approved in Japan as official academic institutions. It means that these schools are excluded from receiving subsidies from the state. Due to this exclusion, a large part of the money needed to run Korean schools has been based on donations from alumni, parents, and sponsors, in addition to student tuition. This is why Korean school teachers earn much smaller salaries when compared to the standard for Japanese school teachers.

And, because of the financial difficulties, Mr. Hong one day was asked to “pursue another career.” I could sense Mr. Hong’s internal struggle in defining what the right job for him was, and his challenged fidelity to the system of Chongryun.

(Since I was so passionate about teaching) I thought that it was some kind of

mistake that I was fired. Every day, I was expecting a call, and they would ask me

to come again. I could not walk away from the phone. I waited for three years,

believing that the educational board would let me return to the job. But not getting

the phone call, I gave up. That time, one of my former colleagues helped me out 125 by offering me a Pachinco job. I did office work for them for a couple years. But

I was so miserable, just working only for money. Working just to eat. I was wondering why I have to live like that. So I started to study. I thought of gaining money for a good reason. I wanted to donate money to the elementary school where I taught.

One day I met with a person with money. We teachers used to meet these people to ask for some donation to the school. He then agreed to donate, and asked me out. He took me to a Cavalet club. I saw him paying for several hundred thousand yen (several thousand dollars), only for one night of drinking. I was thinking, if only had we several ten thousand yen, we could afford salaries to teachers. I was not happy at all being treated worth several hundred thousand yen.

Since then, I hoped inside my heart that I would earn money for the school. After quitting the school, I thought of gaining money by working in real estate. I studied and obtained the license. While I studied, I worked as a taxi driver. If you drive a cab for one day, then you get one day off. You are supposed to work every two days. Instead, you really work for all day. From early morning till the evening, and after dinner, you work until the next day morning. I studied hard after coming back from the work. I would go to the library to study. I got the real estate license by studying this hard. But the reality for the work was not that easy. To gain money, you are sometimes expected to do morally bad thing, like entertaining wealthy people. . . .

126

Fidelity to Chongryun: The Reason NOT to Tell

I didn’t go to my hometown (South Korea) for twenty years. I was invited

to come from here and there. I sometimes was asked to write, but I did not do that

either. That was because, if I would write, I couldn’t avoid sounding like I was

criticizing Chongryun. “I wanted to remain as a teacher throughout my life, but I

was forced to quit the job.” This can be interpreted as criticism depending on who

read it. And I couldn’t do that, because the Korean school within Chongryun is

the home for all of my life and my heart. I devoted everything in me to this place.

I really loved this job, so I did not write about my experience, not wanting to

sound like an attack.

Mr. Hong’s life as a Chongryun Korean teacher, which was revealed to me by hearing his life story, silenced me. I could not find any good reaction, other than just to be silent.

This was probably because I could identify, at least through observing and witnessing, with the source of his struggle. Chongryun’s social representation as a pro-Communist organization in the Capitalist Japan has consistently been a source of attack. Facing their realities, that were mainly bound by their material conditions in Japan, many Chongryun

Koreans need to choose whether they would protect their identities or to sacrifice these for the sake of living well off in Japan. These two in many cases did not go well together, at least for the first generation Koreans. Their identities were so bounded with

Chongryun’s communal identity that losing it means abandoning their respective identity.

During the interval of our interview at his house, Mr. Hong made noodles, saying that he would be thankful for me to eat what we cook together at home rather than buying lunch outside. While cooking noodles together, he explained to me, “this noodle is 100 127

yen (about 90 cents) and this pack of bean sprouts is 70 yen (about 50 cents). This way, I can manage living. Japan is the world’s richest country, but it’s the reality of the bottom of this society.”

Reclaiming the Meaning of Hardship: Mrs. Kanamoto’s Story

Tatsuko Kanamoto is a Korean woman. As was the case for several Korean elderly that I encountered, Mrs. Kanamoto goes by her Japanese surname. As soon as I explained to her the reason for my presence, she became eager to be heard. Mentioning about her illiteracy in both Korean and Japanese, she asked me to give her the transcript of her interview. This way, she said, would help her “prove” the meaning of her life to her daughter and grandchildren. After a few days from our first conversation, I conducted an interview with her in a separate room. As if she would present the script for a memorized speech, she told me the episodes that occurred in her life following a specific chronological order.

Mrs. Kanamoto, born in 1923, is from Jeju Island, which is off the southern end of Korea. Surrounded by the South Sea of Korea, Jeju Island is known for sea-related business. Traditionally, women in this Island would learn diving from their early age, not only for fun but also for guaranteeing sources of income for their families. Not surprisingly, therefore, as a woman born and raised on Jeju Island, Mrs. Kanamoto spent half of her life as a professional woman diver.

“Ever since I was 16, I had dived; I have visited various Islands in Japan to dive.”

Mrs. Kanamoto started her life story that was clearly “prepared” to tell me “officially.” I started my interview to her with an “officially prepared” question of, “How old were you when you first came to Japan?”: 128

I was 19 years old. In 1940, I dived for 6 months. I came to Hihuri-Island.

I did “diving.” Then went back to Jeju-Island. I went back once. And then in the

next year I came to Kochi Prefecture, and dived, then came to Tokyo. This time, I

did not go back to Jeju, and instead went to Tokyo. Because my mother was in

Tokyo, I went there.

In October, in 1941, I got married. Then in the next year, I went to

Miyake-Island, and dived. It was before the war, so I could dive. It was when I

was 21 years old. I was 20 when I went to Kouchi Prefecture. After the marriage,

I lived with my husband for a short time, but went to Miyake-Island in right next year. Then after two years from our marriage, my husband went to the military.

Once the war is over, my family went back to Korea. Only I remained in Japan.

My husband came back [from the war] once it was over. In 1947, I gave birth to my daughter. While arguing often, I had lived with my husband. But when I was

29 years old, I ended up separating from my husband.

Since 1951, I went back and forth between Tokyo and Miyake-Island. For

5 years, in each summer, I went to Miyake-Island with my daughter to dive. For the rest of each year, I sold Tobacco on the street. It lasted for 10 years. In the year of Tokyo Olympic, I could sell “inside.” By 1961, I sold “outside.” But in the year of Olympic, they said that I could sell “inside.” Since then for 11 years, I could work inside to sell tobacco. When I was 49 years old, I sent my daughter off for a marriage. Since then I have lived by myself. I had various part-time jobs to support myself. I became ill 5 years ago, so since 5 years ago I have been playing around. 129

When I think of Mrs. Kanomoto and the life story she told me (only after returning from

my field trip and facing my computer to write this chapter), the first impression that

comes to my mind is that, she seems to be one of the most typical first generation

Zainichi Korean ladies. The narrative told by Mrs. Kanamoto was short, and repetitive.

Her life, which I can only experience in my imagination, is full of survival knowledge and skills, without being taught at a school. As if she accepts her ‘fate’ of having been oppressed in multiple ways—being a Korean, being a woman, and being disabled in her

late life—she always welcomes people with her unconditional smile. And this

unconditional acceptance, which I could find in many other Korean elderly women

during my field work, is something that makes her life enormously respectable to me.

I like you because you learned at a Korean school. Persons from Korean school

are warm-hearted. But persons from Japanese school are a little bit cold. I can tell

the difference even among my grandchildren. You are very kind because you

went to a Korean school. I like you because you did Korean school.

She repeated this expression on the comparison between the “persons from Korean school” and those from “Japanese school.” This simple correlation she made, which equates graduates from a Korean school with “kind” personality, was telling for me. I did

not disagree with her, but I knew that it would be too ‘naive’ a correlation to make. But

rather, I took her statement as an expression of her experience-based observation. I

thought that, as a person who was positioned in the ‘have-nots’ in Japanese society, she

would easily recognize who respects her and who looks down upon her. From a

“standard” perspective of Korean school students, Mrs. Kanamoto’s life would be seen as

a strong Korean mother who survived through all the hardship in Japan. “Other” possible 130 perspectives toward her, however, maybe the woman who cannot speak Japanese well, and is poor, divorced, uneducated and illiterate. This simplified dichotomy, of course, is both worth being criticized, because the former would dramatize thus erase the reality of the latter, while the latter would hinder people from listening so that connections between the personal and the political can be seen.

Upon Sharing Memories and Experiences

So far in this chapter, I have narrated the five ‘Big’ life stories that I collected in private settings. The first story that I narrated was Mr. Song’s life experiences. Through

Mr. Song’s life story interviews, I sensed his strong narrative identity as a social advocate. With a number of documents and pictures, Mr. Song has tried to ‘prove’ multiple kinds of oppressions imposed upon the colonized subjects, such as his experience with respect to name changes and unequal job opportunities. His strong anti-

Japanese (or anti-colonialist I should say) spirit was communicated through his social advocacy discourses, and were accepted by the community in which, these discourses are shared as model stories from the colonial past. At the same time, Mr. Song’s national identity as a Korean subject was complex in that his multiple identities as a Zainichi

Korean, a North Korean supporter, a Chongryun member, and as a person whose family record still is in South Korea, have originated unwanted immobility in his and his family’s life. In fact, this issue of immobility among Chongryun Koreans was shared as burden of modern Korean history, and therefore, I will discuss this issue in the next chapter in the framework of social representation and ideological conflict.

The second life story, that of Mr. Lee, bore an oral historical account of a time of social turmoil. The end of the Second World War brought different meanings for 131

Japanese and Koreans: For the former it meant surrender but for the latter it meant

liberation. This different interpretation of the time created a social conflict. In the

aftermath of Japanese surrender, for Koreans, protecting Korean schools was to get “our”

rights back by recovering “our” language and history. From the eye of the Japanese

government, and especially from the U.S. political interests (since these two countries

were then tied to a winner-loser relationship), however, this empowered Koreans groups’

identities were dangerous—dangerous when their emancipatory rhetoric was identified

with Communism. Mr. Lee’s oral history on the 4.24 Education Fight showed how the

expected rights in the “present” context (i.e. right to educate) are grounded from the past

memory (i.e. deprived opportunity to be educated). Importantly, the past memory, which

rationalizes the present condition, is a site of struggle of meanings among the colonizers and the colonized.

As the third story, Mrs. Hwang’s narrative text has revealed her voice that problematizes discrimination and social segregation toward the postcolonial subjects within the present context in Japan. Her childhood memory, along with her familial history, functioned as something that supported her motive to raise her voice against the discrimination she and majority of Korean elderly people in Japan are facing yet today. In this narrative context, Mrs. Hwang considered the past colonial experiences and the present postcolonial experience to be connected; discrimination, for Mrs. Hwang, was positioned at the continuous flow from the past.

In the fourth and fifth narratives, Mr. Hong’s and Mrs. Kanamoto’s life stories disclosed the characteristics that are common among first generation Koreans in Japan.

Mobility enabled through illegal methods was justified as their survival tools. As was the 132

case for Mr. Hong, this mobility, originated from the colonial experience, blurred the

boundary between the ‘home’ imagined and lived. Japan for him, as is for many Zainichi

Koreans, is foreign but home. And, a socioeconomic position shared between Mr. Hong

and Mrs. Kanamoto—working class and poor—also corresponds to traditional

representation for “ordinary” Koreans in Japan. Finally, as Mrs. Kanamoto’s case

illustrates, illiteracy and hybrid language usage are something that characterize most of

first generation Korean women’s life world.

Each of the five ‘Big’ stories narrated in this chapter is by itself a unique story yet

implies the presence of collective experiences. Importantly, the collectivity in life history

interviews speaks to our historical understanding of Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea

from the emotional side, while at the same time implying the continuity of the

problematic social relationships after the liberation. Benmayor (1991) posits that

“testimony, life history, and other forms of oral history research often lead to a reexamination of theory and method” (p. 160). In the same manner, I would argue that the textual and performative messages emanated from these people’s life stories collectively ask for reconsideration of social, ethnic and class structure within the

Japanese society, not only because these are socially undervalued voices and memories but also because this silence originated from systematic segregation and structural separation based on nationality, ethnicity, and/or social affiliation then and now.

How, then, can one make interviews voice the history of a time? Many qualitative researchers now acknowledge that there is a close relationship among a personal narrative, the person’s social positions, and one’s historical standpoint (Miller, 2000;

Sakurai, 2006; Sakurai & Kobayashi, 2006). And, scholars such as postsmodernists, 133

feminists, and postcolonial writers problematize these contextual forces, be they colonial

condition, gender-based discrimination, class structure, or all of these, as something that

justifies personal struggle and power relationship (Behar, 1996; Benmayor, 1991;

Beverley, 2000; Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong, 2000; Menon & Bhasin, 1998; Salazar,

1991). I echo these scholars’ critical observations, and for the sake of this discussion, I

will consider the meanings of what we call ‘personal experiences.’

Claiming the Historicity through Narrative Identities

The five Big stories I extracted from my life history interviews and presented in

this chapter speak to history through both the direct and indirect experiences, while

implicating what can be called ‘popular memories’ within the community. And, I would

argue that these Big stories speak to at least the following three ‘relationships’: 1) the

past relationship between colonial rulers and subjects; 2) the present relationship between

postcolonial subjects and the society; and 3) the power relation between popularly acknowledged memory and oppressed ones. In the remaining space in this chapter, I will unpack these points.

First, the five “Big” stories the narrators shared with me reveal their experience- based, emotional side of storied reality and memories of the colonizer—colonized relationships. Mr. Song’s personal memory of the colonial days, wherein he told me how being a Korean meant that he would be treated “naturally” inferior to Japanese in any aspect of the social realm, speaks the oppressive side of colonial occupation which, until today, is not officially acknowledged by the Japanese government. The memory of oppression sets the emotional tone among the colonized so strongly and deeply that it is transformed to national consciousness among the oppressed, as was seen in Mr. Lee’s 134

narrative identity. Therefore, memories of colonial experiences, be they personal or

communal (and in most cases both of these), are sites of struggles for the meaning between the colonizer and the colonized. Japan, as the context of this struggle, is the location in which a social incident was originated by different notions of history—in this case the colonial history. Mr. Lee’s storied history of the fight for Koreans’ educational right has led me to the time in which transformation occurred among Koreans’ consciousness from the oppressed to the liberated, while Japan continued to be their master country. This relationship between the once colonized and the master country has rather succeeded within the “Big” stories told by these Korean elderly people.

Thus secondly, when Mrs. Hwang’s appeal was rejected by the Japanese authority, it implies the current relationship between the once colonized Koreans and

Japan as a nation state can be positioned at the continuous line from the past relations.

Indeed, as Stuart Hall (1999) eloquently states, independence does not necessarily mean going back to the original state before the colonization:

The independence and postcolonial moments, in which these imperial histories

remain actively reworked, are therefore necessarily moments of cultural

struggle, of revision and re-appropriation. However, this reconfiguration cannot

be represented as a ‘going back to where we were.’ (p. 8)

Explaining the case of Caribbean settlement in the United Kingdom, Hall contends that,

“there is always something else between.” Korean diaspora in Japan, especially experiences of the first generation, also witnessed this “something else between.” In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, in Japan, social positions of Koreans were ambiguous

(see Chapter 2). Their culture, education, reason to be Japanese as well as the reason not 135

exactly to be Japanese have been conditioned by the colonial rules. After the

independence, their conditions are restricted not because of the previously existed rules

but rather, due to the absence of any reasonable postcolonial treatment. Therefore, Mrs.

Hwang’s plea for equal treatment for Korean elderly people in the present context, as individuals who have been obliged to be Japanese, is not her demand to “go back to where we were” but her cry in search of plausible explanation for the ever-present mistreatment of the postcolonial subjects.

Hence, thirdly, the connected nature between the past and present oppressions communicated in the “Big” stories hints the ever-present power relationship in the

Japanese society. Poverty and insecurity of life I witnessed through communicating with

Mr. Hong and Mrs. Kanomoto showed me a common trajectory of Zainichi Koreans. As

one of the world’s richest countries, we do not see in everyday media poor working

families in Japan. But poverty among Zainichi Koreans, for a long time, was a ‘common

sense’ origin. What is implied by this ‘double standard’ existing in Japan is the presence

of a Japanese version of the “glass ceiling myth,” in which reasons and responsibility for

the poverty, struggle and hardship are put on the agents themselves rather than the social structure. But, as the work of Fine, et. al (2000) suggests, it is too naïve to just accuse the socially weak and financially broken people as solely responsible for their living conditions. As they posit through their reflection on the study of urban working-class poor men and women in a U.S. city, “That individuals engage in activities or behaviors deemed illegal, unethical, or immoral in contexts in which justice and fairness have no role is evidence of social injustice—not a reason to blame victims” (p. 126). Mr. Hong’s story of riding a boat to come to Japan for survival during the Korean War, along with his 136

self-reclaimed ‘fate’ of being poor, is an example of this. Furthermore, Mrs. Kanamoto’s

life of selling Tobacco on the street is another ‘typical’ storied example among female

Zainichi Koreans. Although it seems ridiculous to ask, “Who is responsible for my poverty? (In most cases my interviewees did not), I know that it is equally wrong to place the whole responsibility of the poverty on the poverty victims.

If these ‘relations’ were drawn from the Big stories as a big picture of the

Zainichi Koreans’ historiography, there are six ‘then and now problems’ specified in these stories, and exemplify specific struggles among many Korean elderly people in

Japan. Recognizing these ‘then and now problems’ is to draw a connection between the themes within the Big story and the acknowledged collective experiences among elderly

Zainichi Koreans, within their “Small” stories.

From “Big” to “Small” Stories

The six ‘then and now’ problems for first generation Zainichi Koreans I consider to be revealed in these five “Big” stories and function as intersections with Small stories are: 1) name change; 2) limited job opportunities; 3) issues of education; 4) exclusion from the sociopolitical realm in Japan; 5) illiteracy; and 6) poverty. Detailed descriptions of these will appear in next chapter; here, I will briefly summarize how I view these ‘then

and now problems’ to have been revealed as themes that connect Big and Small stories.

Name: Mr. Song’s narrative on the name change, Soushikaimei, revealed Japan’s past

colonial attempt to make Koreans gain Japanese names. The actual impacts of this

colonial policy of re-naming the colonized do not end up in mere symbolic change. The symbolic change is a process of re-defining the Korean self. For Zainichi Koreans, the

name use remains an important personal/familial/communal concern, originated from the 137

Sousikaimei. As with other participants’ stories, name is a site of both resistance and

subjugation.

Job: In Mr. Song’s narrative, we witnessed his complaint on unequal job opportunity. In

the postcolonial social frame, job insecurity, discrimination, and inequality can be

another form of struggle imposed upon the once colonized bodies. An issue of work,

especially its category and condition, cannot be separated from matters of ethnicity,

gender, and class.

Education: As Mr. Lee’s narrative showed in his personal memory of the fight for protecting ethnic education for Koreans in Japan, education was at the center of other

participants’ stories. Education was situated within stories as something that regains

Korean dignity. Absence of ‘our own’ in the colonial education, and importantly the absence of education itself among female interviewees, helped them believe the significance of education for the postcolonial generations.

Social segregation: As with the themes revealed in the Big stories, all of the participants’

life worlds were in some way segregated from ordinary Japanese citizens. This social

segregation, presumably, was due to complicated reasons such as the linguistic barrier the

first generation Koreans mainly have in Japan, due to the force from the Japanese to

‘push away’ the past colonizees, and/or Koreans’ own will to choose the lives separated

from Japanese. In all cases, the colonial past is positioned as an origin for their social

segregation. What remains problematic within this, however, is the connectedness

between the social segregation and systematic exclusion of the postcolonial subjects, as

Mrs. Hwang’s case illustrated.

138

Illiteracy: As Mrs. Kanamoto’s case directly spoke to, illiteracy was something that affirmed self-definitions among Koreans in Japan as postcolonial subjects. Importantly, the problem of illiteracy among the first generation Zainichi Koreans could not be separated from the issue of gender. Illiteracy, therefore, was a gendered problem rather than a class issue. A lot of Small stories referred to this in nuanced ways.

Poverty: Poverty was something that both textually and materially ties Zainichi Koreans’ personal and collective experiences. It was ever-present in their collective identities as well as in the majority of the participants’ living conditions. Also, poverty was present in their memories of the past time in which both Korea and Japan were poor as countries.

Therefore, poverty was explained as something that defined social condition of Koreans in Japan as well as conditions of the time.

The Big stories in this chapter set the tone for more nuanced, context-based discussions on Small stories in the next chapter. What will follow in the next chapter are

Small stories that unpack a messier side of studying the first generation Zainichi Koreans, whose conditions were positioned within the web of class, ethnicity and gender. The

Small stories communicate their national, communal, and gendered identities in both interview settings and in their daily conversations. Especially, for female participants in this study, I found it important to see their Big stories through Small stories—more nuanced, context-based, naturally occurring conversation. While male participants, as is implied by the three male interviewees’ Big stories in this chapter, were overall eloquent and active in narrating their lives and defining collective identities among Koreans, reactions among women in this study are varied and diverse. Although I entered into the field with an eye to see class, ethnicity, and gender issues together, in the process, I also 139 learned that Korean women’s experiences are fundamentally different from those of

Korean men. Learning stories of these women’s experiences required me to listen more carefully. To put it more precisely, as Anderson and Jack (1991) point out, “To hear women’s perspectives accurately, we have to learn to listen in stereo, receiving both the dominant and muted channels clearly and tuning into them carefully to understand the relationship between them. (p. 11) Therefore, what I discuss in the next chapter are stories whose rhetoricity in history are certainly meaningful but require more careful analyses on context than text, and sometimes silence than utterance.

Summary

In Chapter 5, I gave special, and spatial, attention to the five selected life stories as “Big” stories. The five Big stories I extracted from my life history interviews and presented in this chapter speak to history through both the presenters’ direct and indirect experiences, while implicating what can be called ‘popular memories’ within the community. And, I argued that these Big stories speak to the three ‘relationships:’ 1) the past relationship between colonial rulers and subjects; 2) the present relationship between postcolonial subjects and the society; and 3) the power relation between popularly acknowledged memory and oppressed ones. I also specified the six ‘now and then problems’ as the themes that connect Big stories with Small ones in the next chapter, exemplifying specific struggles among many Korean elderly people in Japan. The six

‘now and then’ problems for first generation Zainichi Koreans I consider to be revealed in these five “Big” stories and function as intersections with Small stories are: 1) name change; 2) limited job opportunities; 3) issues of education; 4) exclusion from the sociopolitical realm in Japan; 5) illiteracy; and 6) poverty. Recognizing these ‘now and 140

then problems’ is to draw a connection between the themes within the Big story and the

acknowledged collective experiences among elderly Zainichi Koreans, within their

“Small” stories. The Big stories in this chapter set up the tone for more nuanced, context- based discussions on Small stories in next chapter.

141

CHAPTER 6: BUILDING UP THE ‘SMALL’ STORIES

Setting the Scene

In opening this chapter as another version of my analyses of the discourses I

engaged myself with, I set the scene which, as I noted in the last chapter, is messier than

that of the Big stories. While each of the life histories I collected revealed uniquely

different characteristics, these first generation Koreans shared particular patterns in their

experiences before and after the country’s liberation. Broadly categorized, these elderly

Korean grandmothers and grandfathers shared the time period in which their country had

gone through an outsider’s rule, experienced World War II, became lost in the post-war

turmoil, and were entwined within Cold War ideology. Due to these circumstances, their

post-war settlement in Japan, whether they were ‘willing to’ resolve into this option or not, made the notion of “our country” a tricky question to ask. Instability, abandonment,

and the Cold War antagonism, in the divided Korea and in their life experiences within

Japan, unavoidably shaped the experiences of Zainichi Koreans. In this regard, these

elderly women and men share particular kinds of kurou, or hardship, in their life course

experiences, be they psychological or physiological, personal or political. Even though

each would experience the word kurou, which I translate as hardship, in different degrees, there is a sense of collective memories and experiences, when they repetitively claim this word as something that entails its meaning beyond a personal level.

My encounter with Small stories, along with writing about them, was constantly a negotiating act. An activity of searching for narrative identities of the participants was

to recognize myself as a participant in constructing them. At the point I entered into this

142

project, I knew that I was both simultaneously the known and unknown on this subject.

As the unknown, I was trying to learn about the lives of first generation Koreans in Japan as unfamiliar experiences to me. Having gone through the colonial period followed by postcolonial social turmoil after the war, the life experiences of the participants were undeniably different from mine; I am a third generation woman, who grew up in Japan after the country had achieved economic development. However, while recognizing the fundamental difference that experientially separates me from the participants, in another way, I was also trying to find traces of my own familial and communal history within the participants’ narratives from an insider’s perspective. I wanted to make sense in me of the complicated reality of Korean diaspora in Japan as a committed participant, by tracing back its history. In learning from the first generation Koreans in Japan, therefore, I was on the one hand an ignorant outsider for the historical issue, but on the other hand a

‘descendent’ of this history. Upon hearing the participants’ stories, at one point I was viewed as an ignorant researcher and yet at another point as their grand daughter. This position as a partial outsider/insider shaped the bulk of what I heard/saw/found/analyzed, and ultimately, made the boundary between a position of a researcher-cum-observer and a participant-cum-observed blur.

In discussing the first generation Zainichi Koreans’ life histories, in this chapter,

I focus on their “Small” stories44, employing the following three analytical perspectives.

These three perspectives that guide me in writing their Small stories are: 1) categorical

mode of comprehending life histories; 2) inter-connected nature of Big and Small stories;

44 I have used the upper case letter for “Small” story throughout my discussion to avoid an impression of hierarchical order between the “Big” and “Small” stories. 143 and 3) proactive or performative function of life storytelling. First, the categorical mode of analyzing multiple life stories focuses on categories that include common experiences among the participants of this study. Louis Mink (1970) has elaborated on three

“different ways in which a number of objects can be comprehended” (p. 549). He named these three modes of comprehension “theoretical,” “categorical,” and “configurational.”

A theoretical mode of analysis treats a number of narratives as “instances of the same generalization” (p. 550). Mink calls this mode of comprehension to be “powerful but thin,” because it deals with different narratives “only in virtue of their possession of certain common characteristics, omitting everything else in the concrete particularity of each” (p. 550). Quite contrary, in a configurational mode, experiences are comprehended

“as elements in a single and concrete complex of relationships” (p. 551). This mode of analysis would consider a particular web of relationships within one person’s life course experience, asking “how [a thing] belongs to a particular configuration of events like a part of a jigsaw puzzle” (p. 551). Finally, positioned between the theoretical and configurational, the categorical mode would see themes in different narratives as examples within the same category. A “set of categories,” asserts Mink (1970), “is what is now often called a conceptual framework: a system of concepts functioning a priori in giving form to otherwise inchoate experience” (p. 550). What counts for an analysis in the categorical mode, therefore, are ideas that connect concrete and seemingly different experiences together.

Mink posits that these three modes of comprehension are mutually exclusive approaches to a study of narrative. Each approach possesses its own “world of fact” (p.

552), thus revealing a perspective on reality that is incompatible with others. I argue, 144 however, these three modes can be paralleled in a serial sequence. In Chapter 5, I called particular attention to individual narratives. Throughout this project, I have employed an attitude that each individual’s story on his and her own life is by itself very unique. That is, there are no two stories that are identical. Yet at the same time, in terms of the meaning of their own experiences, many of them shared particular sets of language and vocabularies in explaining their feelings and reasons for one’s particular act. The particular categories, and theories, might not be the same in subject matter, but can be considered as a sequence, in which one approach suggests the possibility of another.

Second, as I also noted in previous chapters (Chapter 3 and 5), I recognize an interconnected relationship between the Small and Big stories. I start with an assumption that there is no clear-cut line between Big and Small stories. Instead, the boundary is drawn artificially for the sake of fuller discussion recognizing the differences that can exist in the participants’ narratives. Small stories here are recognized in their nature of being highly conversational, spontaneous, and situational. If the Big story is to be analogous to an onstage or a “front stage performance” in Goffman’s (1959) term, Small stories include some “back stage” performances. Each Small story, when compared to each Big one, is shorter in its length, but rich in its nuanced texture. Meanings within the narratives and stories are constructed between me and the participant, but these meanings are sometimes slippery thus required more careful listening. I paid attention to recurrences of words across each story, and tried to categorize themes that emerged in multiple stories.

Third, with a performative perspective on narrative telling of the past, I ask how performing one’s own narrative as a Korean in Japan seems to bring a transformative 145

function in one’s own narrative identities that are positioned at the complicated web of

cultural, gendered, and ethnic factors. That is, with a performative perspective, I try to see what narratives would do, as opposed to what they are. Peterson and Langellier

(2006) explained the performative nature of narrative, stating that, “narrative is both a making and a doing—both poiesis and praxis” (p. 173). Similarly, practical functions of narratives are acknowledged by other narrative scholars (Gergen & Gergen, 2006;

Ramirez-Esparza & Pennebaker, 2006). For example, Gergen and Gergen (2006) emphasized contextual forces that enable narratives to function in transformative ways.

Their work acknowledges the importance of thinking theory “in action,” considering its functional relation to praxis, but the praxis is bounded by particular contextual categories.

Further, Ramirez-Esparza and Pennebaker (2006) has dealt with narrative’s function within the narrator’s psychology. Especially, their discussion on the positive function of narrative writing for bilingual or bicultural bodies was persuasive enough to think about the Korean elderly that I interviewed. Telling the narrative of one’s own experience could help these people put meaning to their complex realities. This particular focus on the practical functions of narrative story-telling implies what narratives can do for those who enact them or hear them.

Entry to the Sites: The Interview Contexts

Mrs. Koh: “Tell you about myself? You ask like what my grandson asked me.

One day, he came to me and said, “Grandma, I want to hear about your life.”

Min Wha: What did you say to him?

Mrs. Koh: Like how I came to Japan and how I have lived. I don’t know why

you are interested in such a thing. I came in my 21st year. 146

Mrs. Lee: Oh, did you come when you were 21? I came much earlier.

Min Wha: When did you come?

Mrs. Lee: In my teens. It’s such an old story.

Mrs. Koh: You’re right. Such an old story.

Mrs. Huh: We’ll all die here.

Mrs. Koh & Lee: We’ll die here.

Mrs. Lee: In old days, I would think that I wanted to go back to Korea. But now

I know that there is no place I can be in South Korea. They don’t treat us as

Koreans. I know that Japan is a foreign country, but Korea is also a different

country. We will all die here.

Mrs. Koh & Huh: Yah, we will die here.

Mrs. Koh, Lee, and Huh have been good friends. They came to the care center on the same days during the weeks I was there. It is their routine to play cards and sing

Karaoke with the rhythm of a Korean traditional instrument called Chango. While playing cards, they told me in turn brief stories of their lives. Although the three of them were close friends with each other, it seemed that they have never shared their personal stories of displacement. Perhaps, I thought, they did not need to do so. It probably was I, and Mrs. Koh’s grandson, who looked peculiar in front of their eyes to be interested in

“such a thing” as their personal lives.

In considering the difference between the Big and Small stories, interview contexts would be the most important defining factor that shaped the bulk of what I heard from my participants and how I heard them. Different from the Big story interviews that I separately analyzed in the previous chapter, many of the Small stories that appear in this 147

chapter were short, on-site conversations that were recorded during their visit to the care-

giving facility called “Daycare Center” in Japan, at which each elderly spend two or three days in a week. While the Big story-tellers seemed to have known (or at least tried to

persuade) that their personal stories did matter, many of the Small story-tellers, like Mrs.

Koh in the above dialogue, thought their lives were ‘too trivial’ to tell. Yet, I could notice

a sort of silent agreement existing between these elderly Koreans and the care-giving

staff. That is, that they all know how different these peoples’ lives were from those of

Japanese elderly.

As I have noted in Chapter 4, I visited four ‘Daycare Centers’ for Korean elderly

in Japan, but the atmosphere of these care centers is considered to be unique. All four

sites were located in the major cities of Japan, but the locations of the sites were known

as places where Koreans live in closer proximity, thus making it easy for them to gather.

Through my conversation with the directors of the centers and my observation at each

site, I came to realize that there were particular reasons for why the Korean daycare

centers were necessary in these places. Since these reasons primarily defined the

interview contexts of the Small stories, in the following space, I will provide the readers

with some contextual factors that underlined the Small stories.

Shared Mixed Feeling to Japanese

As one reason for a separate place, these Korean elderly shared complex feelings

toward Japan and Japanese people, and many of them refused to join any of the Japanese

nursing homes. These Korean elderly shared the complicated feelings that include both

willingness to co-exist in Japan and strong resistance in letting Japanese people enter into

their life world. That is, while acknowledging them as otonarisan, or neighbors, they 148 shared a strong sense of anger toward Japanese people, thus preventing them from mingling with the Japanese elderly. For example, Mrs. Kim, Yoon-Ja, an 83-year-old woman from Jeju Island, responded to my question of what her feeling toward Japanese people was:

That’s, that’s…. That’s of course complicated. They were not just different but

too different, and not just wrong but too wrong. I have never argued with my

Japanese neighbors, though. My Japanese surname is Kuroki, but we are the

only Kuroki in our town. So people know that we are Korean. But we get along

well with them. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell them that I am a Chongryun person.

Although things were worse in old days, they became much friendlier. So I get

along well with them. BUT, Koreans are Koreans and Japanese are Japanese. I

should always remember this. I come here because it’s run by Chongryun.

Otherwise, I don’t come. I don’t want to mingle with Japanese elderly. All of my

grandchildren and grand grandchildren go to the Korean schools, so I still am in

Chongryun. This is the only place I can be. Where else could I go?

In Mrs. Kim’s statement above, Japanese people are considered to be the social ‘other,’ and this discriminatory feeling serves as a main reason for not allowing herself to mingle with them. This discriminatory feeling, however, originates from the memories of their experiences in which they themselves were discriminated against in Japan. Another participant, Mrs. Myungsun Park, who I met in the fourth institution I visited, also revealed her mixed feeling toward Japan, indicating the necessity of the Korean Daycare

Center she visits three days a week:

149

Without this type of institution, there is no place the first generation Korean

women can survive. And, an important fact is that this place was not made by the

Japanese government. It started with two Korean women, as a result of their

enormous effort. Things have always been like that for Koreans in Japan. For

example, there were big demonstration marches against the Japanese government

in this area about three months ago, but they were never reported by the media. If

these were done by Japanese citizens, they of course would report them. Isn’t that

discrimination? Because they never publicize these things, the Japanese citizens

are left ignorant about their history. When I think about this, I sometimes cannot

sleep at night. The memory from the past would attack me and I cannot resist my

anger. … But, you know, the closest people around me are Japanese. Our

neighbors are Japanese. So I want to live friendly with them as long as I live here.

The anger toward Japan for discriminating against Koreans was such a shared feeling among the participants that it would enter into their daily conversations. Stories were shared among these elderly people, like that of Mrs. Kanamura in the following statements that they refused to join Japanese institution with the fear of discrimination:

Mrs. Kanamura: I became ill a few years ago. Being alone at home is lonely. But

I did not want to join any of the Japanese nursing homes, because they

discriminate. So I had been refusing to go outside my home. But one of my

neighbors told me about this center. Hearing that this center is for us, I joined.

Min Wha: I see. I bet this place is different from other nursing homes in Japan.

150

Mrs. Kanamura: So different. We can even sing Arirang45 here. Here, I don’t

need to kill myself.

Mrs. Kanamura’s statement that “I don’t need to kill myself” was seen as a shared feeling

among many Korean elderly I met, and was shared by several users of the Korean

daycare centers. The shared feeling toward the Japanese as those who look down upon

them was the primary reason why these types of institutions, solely for Korean elderly people, were necessary they functioned as a shelter-like place for them.

The Need for the Protected Space

The impact of discrimination sometimes remains as psychological trauma, troubling these elderly people. Some people would have had to quit a Japanese nursing home because of their strong resistance to the Japanese nursing staff. Some other elderly person was reported to have been panicked at a Japanese nursing home, when she was

stared at by other Japanese elderly for not being able to fold Origami properly.

Differences in the playing cultures, not knowing how to join in a Japanese way of

recreation, and a sense of inferiority due to their Korean accents when they spoke

Japanese were a few reasons why these Korean elderly wanted to quit the Japanese

nursing home they once joined. Many of the users, according to Sunja Kim, a general-

secretary at the fourth care center I visited, had their own stories of ‘failing’ to be

accepted at Japanese institutions. Many of them, even after more than 60 years have

passed from the colonial occupation by Japan, would rather stay at home than join any of

the Japanese nursing homes, if these types of institutions—solely for Korean elderly

people—were not established.

45 One of the most well-known Korean folk songs. 151

According to Sunja Kim, even running the Korean care center following the

Japanese rule sometimes would be interpreted differently by these Korean elderly, thus creating a difficult time for the employees at the center:

Dealing with these first generation Halmonis and Halabojis sometimes gives us a

difficult time because of their memory from the past. As a non-profit organization

in Japan, we are obligated to fulfill the standard requirement set by the Japanese

government. But sometimes these rules, like asking for putting personal seal on a

document, help them recall trauma from the past. One haraboji stubbornly

refused to put his personal seal on our daily document, saying that 70 years ago he

was deceived to become a forced laborer because of the seal. It is quite common

for our users that traumatic memories from the past hinder them from getting

along smoothly with Japanese, and due to this they transfer from a Japanese

nursing home. (Sunja Kim, 45 years old, general-secretary at a Korean care

center)

In an old saying in Japan, there is an expression that translates into, “If sardine is a fish, if

Korean is human.” With this way, Koreans as the colonized were the subject of mocking and insult both in neighborhoods and at schools: “At school, you do not see any ‘average’

Korean students. They were either excellent or troubled ones. In either case, they tried to be recognized, be it by studying or by troubling” (Mr. Yongsoo Cho, 85 years old). The memories from these experiences certainly have shaped the identities of the first generation Koreans in Japan.

Therefore, knowing the context of where they were from was an important requirement. In many cases in my conversation with them, the participants did not 152

provide me with enough explanations, as my conversation with Mrs. Kanai, who was 80

years old and from Kyungsang Prefecture, shows:

Mrs. Kanai: Every year, I went, but this year, I can’t.

Min Wha: Where do you go?

Mrs. Kanai: To Shibuya

Min Wha: Ah, for 8. 1546?

Mrs. Kanai: Yes, I have not missed the ceremony. But I can’t go this year. I gave

up. I can’t do anything now. [Crying]

Min Wha: Do you live with your family?

Mrs. Kanai: No, by myself. I am a burden for my family. [Crying so hard. Then

she showed me the pictures of her grandchildren living in South Korea.]

Other than ‘just listening’ to what is told and explained, listening to their emotional tone

was required of me. And, since most of the interviewees were over 80 years old, aging

was a factor that could not be ignored. Sometimes, my conversation was shared with

other participants, and other times, conversations were interrupted because of their daily routine at the center, such as singing Karaoke, dancing, and eating snacks. Many of the

Small stories were short and broken both due to these contextual factors and other reasons, such as the participants’ short memories as well as their reluctance to tell me the personal matters in the public space. In providing the readers with the Small stories, therefore, my hope in this chapter is to present these stories as highly contextualized

46 8.15 is the day of liberation for Koreans. In Japan ceremonies are held among Koreans in major cities of Japan to celebrate the date of liberation. 153

stories. In the following space, I will present the collective themes that I found in the

Small-stories.

Memories of Colonial Experiences that Shape Korean Identities: Addressing the Six

‘Then and Now’ Problems

For the participants that I interviewed, observed, and engaged in conversation

with, memories of the colonial period was characterized in terms of ‘have-not.’ The

oppression that was conditioned with the ‘have-not’ situation in many cases were doubly

or triply layered—based on the issues of ethnicity, sex, and class. Their narratives of the

colonial days revealed some consistency in the tone of telling their past memories. I have categorized the sources of these negative feelings, implied in the twenty narratives, into six themes. These themes—in which I include issues of name, education, work, segregation, poverty and illiteracy—provide the framework for unpacking the story-lines of the participants’ narratives on their life course experiences.

Claiming name as the site of negotiating self-representation and identities

Name was an important colonial tool for Japanization in the past that has

remained prevalent for Zainichi Koreans yet today. As Mr. Song’s narrative in Chapter 5 has implied, gaining Japanese names was implemented forcefully and systematically in the colonial period. Mr. Kim, who told me that he had to change his name into Japanese

“because [he] was repeatedly persuaded to do so (personal conversation), supported the forceful aspect of the name change called Sousikaimei. Indeed, the forceful aspect in this colonial policy made most Koreans, especially those who returned home regain their

Korean names after the liberation. For Zainichi Koreans, however, the usage of Japanese names has been left as a situational choice. Therefore, whether consciously or 154

unconsciously, they use either of their Korean or Japanese names, an issue of name, or

that of naming, functioned to me as an entry-point to their narrative identities.

Mrs. Kim Yoon-Ja, a pro-North Chongryun affiliate who had turned 83 years old,

explained how she employs her Japanese name depending on each situation:

Min Wha: Have you gone with your Korean name?

Mrs. Kim: Yes, but I also go with my Japanese name. My Japanese name is

Kuroki Masako. That time [in the Japanese era], we all used Japanese name. So

even now, I go with Masako when I go to official space like police. I sometimes

use my Korean name, and sometimes my Japanese name.

Min Wha: So then you chose which name to use depending on the situation?

Mrs. Kim: Yah, that’s right. My husband would use Kuroki a lot, but I would go

with my Korean name in many situations.

Min Wha: I see. I feel like I understand because I saw my parents and my

grandparents do the same.

Mrs. Kim’s statement, “That time [in the Japanese era], we all used Japanese name. So

even now, I go with Masako when I go to official space like police,” implies continuity in her use of the Japanese name. Her use of Japanese name was necessitated by the Japanese colonization (as supported by the statement, “That time, we all used Japanese name.”), and the consistency in the necessitated use of the Japanese name (as supported by her words, “So even now, I go with Masako when I go to official space like police”) when under the eyes of Japanese officials.

This feeling of ‘being necessitated,’ to some extent however, is a generational matter. In my own reaction to her, I later found my attitude to distance this feeling by 155

saying it as “my parents’ and grandparents’” practice. I, as a third generation Korean who mainly use my Korean name rather naturally, am a descendent of those who have fought

to “restore the national pride” (Wagatsuma, 1981) and shamelessly enjoy the privilege.

According to Wagatsuma (1981), restoring national pride among Zainichi Koreans has

long been an important communal project, starting “with the use of Korean names” (p.

319). In the postwar Japan, “Prevailing reluctance among parents to let their children use

their Korean names suggests not only how harshly they have experienced discrimination

but also how intensely they fear such social injustice” (p. 319). Therefore, for those who

know the harsh reality of discrimination and social injustice because of one’s choice of

revealing their Korean identity, living as Koreans any time, anywhere is a courageous

behavior. Nonetheless, many Koreans did so as a solution to regain their dignity

(Wagatsuma, 1981).

During my field work visit to the four care-giving centers, I have also noticed the

institutional differences regarding the users’ names. In three out of four institutions,

which housed more pro-North Chongryun Koreans than those from pro-South Mindan,47

a majority of the Korean elderly care-takers were using their Korean names. Only in one

institution, which was run by a Japanese owner, and had a stronger connection to the pro-

South Mindan, the usage of names varied from person to person. I have observed that the

majority of the participants there, except the former Chongryun workers, used their

Japanese names.

47 Different characteristics between the two organizations, pro-North Chongryun and pro-South Mindan are explained in Chapter 2. Later in this chapter, I discuss the participants’ different life experiences as they were both enabled and constrained by these two political affiliations. 156

For most Chongryun-affiliated first generation Koreans, using their Korean names

seemed to mean the recovery of identities which they once were deprived of due to

colonial rule. Mrs. Cho, Sun-Ae, a 80-year-old woman who is proud of having sent her

children to Korean schools, mirrored her desire to restore her oppressed identity as a

Korean in the past days with her descendents’ consistent attitude to use only their Korean

names:

I am very proud of my children and grandchildren. They never use their Japanese

names in any circumstance. All of them understand the shame and oppression that

I experienced in the past and care for me because of that. I had such a bad time in

the past, but now my life is like in heaven. (Mrs. Sun-Ae Cho, 80 years old)

Mrs. Cho’s statement that contrasts her descendents’ dignified manners in using their

Korean names from her discriminated life is seen as a method to transform her past

negative experience. One day, I saw that Mrs. Cho was quietly sitting on a couch

isolating herself from her friends. When I approached to her and asked her why she

would not play with other halmonis, she told me that she was “saving her energy” in

order to observe the next day’s sport festival of a Korean school her grandchildren

attended. Two days later from that day, I asked her how the sport festival was, she answered with smile that “the Korean school’s festival makes me so happy in each year.”

Perhaps, I thought in myself, this halmoni approves her life through the lives of her grandchildren.

Yet for the 85-year-old woman named Mrs. Arai, who I met at the first field work site where many of the users employ their Japanese names, adopting her Japanese name was more “natural, because I live in Japan.” This “natural” feeling, indeed, seemed to 157

have come from her will to be treated as an equal, as this Mindan-affiliated Halmoni repeatedly said, “I did not do anything wrong.” This statement, which was supported by her other statement that she “tried to become better Japanese than Japanese,” reveals the pressure to be a model minority person and the fear of being an object of surveillance as a colonized subject. Therefore, the use of the Japanese name from the will to be seen as a polite minority in Japan is not too distanced from the feeling of fear attached to the use of

Korean names. Another halmoni explained to me:

Using Korean names for us was unthinkable. So, although I envy my

grandchildren when they don’t show any hesitation in using their Korean names

in public, I cannot. To me, that is courageous but too radical. (Mrs. Shimamura,

78 years old)

As one’s memory from the past controls the behavior in the present, the memory from the colonial period was continuously present in these participants’ minds.

Based on my observation on the participants’ name usage, I came to understand that names for the Korean elderly in Japan are one way to control their social

representations with their self-awareness to them. What is indicated through their usership of dual names is their complex and hybrid identities, as conditioned by the colonial rule. Some resist using a Japanese name, yet some feel natural in using their

Japanese names. Yet to some, not using their Japanese name and revealing their Korean identity is perceived as dangerous. This conscious choice makes them either resist or comply with the colonial polity of becoming Japanese. And to many, both their Korean and Japanese names are important social capitals in managing their identities. In either case, the usage of either Korean or Japanese names for these first generation Zainichi 158

Koreans reflects one’s conscious choice corresponding to each situational call which, in

most cases, comes from their memories from the colonial past.

An act of re-naming is a remaking of identity and it is an important site of

meaning-making to the larger study of subjectivity in postcolonial studies. Their

inevitably hybrid representation of self with the use of both Japanese and Korean names implies the power relation connoted in the use of Japanese and Korean names. The use of

Korean names can be indicated as a conscious choice to be the objects of political gaze,

putting oneself into the position to be interpellated. Interpellation, according to Ashcroft,

Griffith, & Tiffin (2000/2007), can be explained as “apparatuses that ‘call people forth’

as subjects, and provide the conditions by which, and the contexts in which they obtain

subjectivity” (p. 203). They contend that the notion of interpellation is “useful for

describing how the ‘subject’ is located and constructed by specific ideological and

discursive operations, particularly formations such as colonial discourse” (p. 203). Any

post-colonial diaspora is inevitably a multicultural, complex society that can never return to the pre-colonial condition (Ashcroft, Griffith, & Tiffin, 2000/2007; Hall, 1995). Lives of people within the Korean diaspora in Japan are not an exception to this condition.

Name, for the participants of this study, the once-colonized Korean elderly, is one of the

pieces of ‘baggage’ from the colonial days that is no longer easily undone.

Addressing discrimination, managing the segregated lives

Naming is not the only method by which one may be interpellated. The

participants’ familial memories suggest that a Korean body, with their hybrid language

uses, can also be a site of political gaze. Mrs. Hong, Moon-Ja’s childhood memory with

159

her mother witnesses the imposed nature of this Japanese ideology, often appealing to

violence, especially to uneducated women:

My mother, when she was walking on the street in Korea, was stopped by a

policeman and asked to sing Kimigayo,48 but there was no way she could sing it.

So when she said “I don’t know [about the song],” the policeman hit my mother

with a wooden stick, saying “you, unfaithful citizen!” Therefore, when I was a

little kid, as soon as she saw a policeman, my mother would take me to the

bathroom in my house to hide. To my question to her, why we should hide even

when we were innocent, she would answer, “The police would hit us with a

wooden stick when he sees us.” She was always scared of the police and would

hide.

Mrs. Hong, an 82-year-old woman I met at the second center that I visited, told me the above story with a highly emotional tone. Understanding neither Japanese language nor the appropriate behavior as “faithful citizens” of Japan, these Korean women had kept feeling that the Japanese would hit them without any particular reason. Mrs. Hong’s emotional personality and her fast and fluent Korean, with a Kyungsang dialect, would sometimes give the center staff a difficult time, and makes her isolated in many situations. Hearing her story carefully, however, I came to notice that the women’s stories, such as Mrs. Hong’s and her mother’s, along with some others that I introduce here, are important sites of memories that communicated their experiences of discrimination.

48 The current Japanese anthem. Kimigayo literally means “on behalf of You,” in which “You” represents the Japanese Emperor. The song was also used as a way to reinforce the ideology of Imperial Japan. 160

The word ‘hardship’ was an overarching theme that underlined many of the 14 female participants’ stories I heard. A Japanese term, kurou, was one of the most frequently uttered nouns when they reflected on their lives. And, discrimination, based on both gender and on ethnicity, was explained as a matter-of-course reason for the hardship that the Korean females faced. Mrs. Lee, Jung-Yoon, who I met at the third daycare center I visited, was a quiet old lady. Having come from Kyungsang Prefecture to where she lives now “without knowing where that was,” she said that she witnessed “all kinds of hardship.” Among them, she described the post-war turmoil in Japan as the most vivid scene in which Koreans became the subjects of violence.

Mrs. Lee: Even the reason we moved to Amagasaki, we tried to escape from

Japanese military policemen. They would beat Koreans so badly. Koreans would

gather in Amagasaki to escape from this bad treatment. Once they [the Japanese]

were defeated in the war, they became crazy. You know, what would they be

afraid of, when they didn’t have anything to lose anymore? They took their

anger out on us. When the Japanese Emperor gave up, he announced by radio.

That time, each family did not own a radio, so people gathered in one place to

listen to his voice. So he announced the defeat of Japan, and then the Japanese

military policemen went crazy. After hearing it, they got guns and shot

randomly. They also ran in the town with knives. They became crazy. They

became crazy.

Min Wha: Was that because they lost in the war?

161

Mrs. Lee: Yah, because of that. Because they lost in the war. Aigo49, they

shouted, shot, and killed many people. Many Koreans were killed that time.

Min Wha: They killed Koreans?

Mrs. Lee: Yah, they killed. So we were afraid, and went to where Koreans live

together. Many Koreans decided to go back to their hometown.

Another woman I interviewed at the third center I visited, Mrs. Taeko Ohtani, was the

person who actually returned home due to the same reason that Mrs. Lee addressed

above. Mrs. Ohtani said, after the liberation “everyone has returned, and then [her]

husband said, ‘It’s scary when everyone has returned.’” For the reason of being scared,

she shared a story that had been spread among Koreans in the region where she used to

live.

Mrs. Ohtani: One day, a (Japanese) soldier returned (to Japan) from Korea. That

time, Korean families could rent rooms from Japanese people. The soldier asked

his mother who was living in the annex house. So his mother said, she was

leasing a room to a Korean family. He said, “I see.” And then one night, his

mother tried to see her son, since he was acting peculiarly. Then she saw that he

was wiping a knife. She became scared, and went to the annex. Since nobody

from the annex would answer, she went inside, but then she saw all of the

Korean family members were dead, with their throats being cut. He killed them.

Since he was bullied (by Koreans) in Korea, he had hatred toward Koreans. I

heard that Koreans bullied him, saying that “You Japanese took our country and

49 Aigo is a Korean term used mostly in colloquial situations that reflects one’s highly emotional state of being. Used mostly at the beginning of or at the interval between sentences, Aigo indicates one’s sad feeling, substituting or supplementing sigh, tear, and cry. 162

made our lives hard. Because of that experience, he killed all five or six

members in a (Korean) family, by cutting their throats. So hearing this story, my

husband was scared. Every night under his pillow, he would keep a kitchen

knife. And he said, “Why don’t we go to our brother’s place.” My brother-in-law

lived in a next Prefecture from ours. So we went to their place, without even

having enough time to take our stuff. But when we went to their place, they were

also trying to return. Since everybody would return, my husband thought that it

would be better for us to return. So we returned.

The tone of Mrs. Ohtani in telling this story was different from that of Mrs. Lee. While

Mrs. Lee told me the story as something that definitely happened, Mrs. Ohtani shared the

story as something she heard as a rumor. More importantly, I could notice that in Mrs.

Ohtani’s story, her husband plays a major role in the decision-making to return home

after the liberation. In her life story, Korean male figures appeared as the main reason for

the family’s hard life.

Mrs. Ohtani: My marriage was done in Japan. My husband had already been in

Japan. He came to Kyushu Prefecture with his mother when he was little, and

then I came here to get married to him. My mother-in-law had gone through

enormous kurou because of her husband. My father-in-law used up his money

and ran away. My husband was second son, and his older brother became a

guarantee person for his father. It was the Japanese era and very strict era. He

was very worried, because there was no way he could pay off his father’s debt.

So he decided to come to Japan. He decided to earn money in Japan and then

pay to the credit union. So my mother-in-law, older brother-in-law, my husband, 163

and his 6 year younger brother came to Japan. It was when my husband was 10

years old.

Min Wha: I see. Then it was way before you came over to Japan.

Mrs. Ohtani: Yes, that was in much older day, when my husband was little. So

my brother-in-law came to Japan to work, but the only job he could get was work at a construction site. Because he was Chosenjin (Korean). And then, his father and uncle were not willing to work. Although he was thinking to save some money and pay to the credit union in Korea, these two men would come and take the money.

Min Wha: Huh …

Mrs. Ohtani: So his brother was disappointed. There was not much difference in

their ages. His parents got married at 14 and 17, and he was their first son, so

they had him even before 20. My brother-in-law then thought to run away from his father and uncle. He crossed a mountain, thinking that they would not follow

him. He later told me that his experience of crossing the mountain was scary and

dangerous to death. Anyhow, he crossed the mountain, and again worked as a

construction worker, and saved money. When he returned to Korea and paid off

the credit union, everyone seemed to have been surprised. They said that he was

a loyal son to the family. So, when I came to his family, my husband even did

not talk with his father. He even did not want to see his father’s face, and did not

talk. But even after that, my mother-in-law and brother-in-law lived with him.

They returned to Korea and lived together. My mother-in-law died first in her

70s. And then my father-in-law passed away three years later. Despite his kurou 164

because of his father, I saw my brother-in-law cried when his father passed

away. So I thought that’s a tie between father and son.

In Mrs. Ohtani’s statement above, the Korean family value, the power of the seniority in particular, is communicated as problematic. Discrimination toward Koreans is also addressed as the reason for her brother-in-law’s inability to find a decent job to pay off the family’s debt, but this situation was communicated rather as a ‘condition’ or an

‘environment’ in which all Koreans at that time were put. When Mrs. Ohtani stated the

Japanese era as the “strict time,” this statement emphasized her brother-in-law’s hardship because of the troubled father-in-law. This way of self denial among Koreans was as frequent as their accusations against the Japanese.

Another important message within Mrs. Ohtani’s narrative was her depiction of men as oppressors, the main reason for the hardship. The statement that, “My mother-in- law had gone through enormous kurou because of her husband” seemed to be a way to sympathize with her mother-in-law as a woman who also had to go through a hard life

‘because of’ her husband. Once they returned to Korea after the liberation, her husband had returned again to Japan, and this, according to Mrs. Ohtani, was the beginning of her second life in Japan.

Mrs. Ohtani: So he asked me to return (to Japan) so I returned with my daughter.

But when I went to his place, he already had three kids there. I was told that five

were born but two died. I was like … (sighing), I regret that I came. I cried there.

The Japanese woman was also crying. But I had to live with that reality. I

became pregnant when I was 30. But as soon as I became pregnant, my husband

died. That woman lived with another man from the month my husband died, a 165

Japanese man. And then trying to keep my husband’s property, she informed

against me to the police.

Min Wha: Ah, by saying “informing against,” what do you mean?

Mrs. Ohtani: She said to the police, “this person came from Korea illegally.”

Later, when I was working for sewing Chogori (Korean traditional dress), a

person from the Ministry of Justice came to investigate. We were living in a

two-storied house, and I was on the second floor on that day. He asked my

daughter to call her mother. She came up, when I was with one of my close

friends, and told us that the man was here. My friend asked me to hide in the

next room that was attached to our room. We went there and then locked the

room. Later that night, I moved to [another place], where a person from the same

town was living. Then, it looked like that he gave up a few days later, since he

could not find me. I thought that I was lucky.

In Mrs. Ohtani’s statement above, I see Korean women’s bodies as doubly vulnerable positions: in front of Japanese and also of Korean men. And indeed, this way of self- blaming is common among the poor and oppressed people (Fine, Weis, Wessen & Wong,

2000). Self-blaming within one’s own family, between the same gendered people, and within the same ethnic group temporarily would hide the presence of other oppressing forces. As I will discuss later in this chapter, the participants’ narratives exemplified this type of blaming each other within the Korean diaspora in Japan. And, the sense of blaming, due to the past experiences of discrimination, was also present in their stories on education.

166

Problematizing (both presence and absence of) education

Education was an ever-present theme among the participants’ self-stories. If depriving Korean farmers of land meant changes that came along to these populations in materialistic senses, depriving of cultural tools, such as Korean language, and education, can be considered to be a dangerous psychological knife that would kill their internal culture. The participants recalled education as an important site where the forced

Japanization was seen as another kind of disruption of lives for the Korean families. “At that time, Korea was Japan,” an 80 year-old grandmother, Mrs. Hwang, whose narrative appeared in last Chapter, recalled the colonial period in the personal conversation with me. She further explained:

My friend, who came from Korea, told me that in Korea, it was allowed to use

Koreans for the first year. In the second year, however, if you use Korean, you

would be asked to stand outside the classroom. In the third year, when you

uttered even one Korean word, you would be punished. When you go to school,

the first thing that students were asked to do was to say “We faithful children of

the Great Emperor’s nation.”50 Even when you walk down to the street in Korea,

a policeman would hit and arrest you if you could not say it.

Lee (1981) has stated, in colonial days “Koreans were not encouraged to send their children to school and sometimes were even prevented from doing so” (p. 141).

Regretting that she could not attend an elementary school, Mrs. Hwang told me that it

was impossible for a Korean woman to attend a school safely, without being hit by peers.

“If you have a brother, then he would protect you, but without having a male sibling, you

50 The doctrine imposed upon citizens of Japan and Korea in Imperial Japan. 167

can’t even dream to attend a school” (Mrs. Hwang, personal conversation). Mrs. Hwang’s observation supports the above statement on the low education rate among first

generation Koreans in Japan.

Memory of violence at schools often entered into the conversations among the

first generation Koreans. Both in interviews and in the naturally occurring conversations

within their daily interactions, they shared the memories of being mocked and bullied by

Japanese peers. Mr. Kim, Joon-Shik, who came from Jeju Island with his mother in his

early age and went to schools in Japan, told me about his childhood memory of severe

bullying at school. His statement that Koreans were forced to be Japanese but were never

treated the same, was shared by other participants who have attended schools:

Until I graduated from a middle school, I did not even know a single word in

Korean. It is ironic, because I was raised near Mimizuka in Kyoto.51 Not knowing

that history, that place was my play ground. Not knowing the reason, I always

wondered why I was treated different. I still remember the song that I often hear

in my childhood. … [Singing with rhythm] “Stink, stink, Chosen [Korea, Korean]

stink.” …Another is, “Senjin, senjin52 what’s different. Eating the same, but

what’s different. The smell of garlic, that’s different. Stink, stink, Chosenjin

[Korean].” … Whenever I join them to play, I was treated different. When I sang

with them, even a teacher said to me, “Don’t sing with your dirty mouth!” There

was only one teacher who said to the kids that they shouldn’t mock Koreans. . . .

But the violence was a daily matter. For example, when I won an athletic game,

51 The place where many Koreans’ ears were brought to and displayed as triumphs of the soldiers, when Japan invaded Korea in 1592. 52 A derogatory term that depicted Koreans. 168

20 or so Japanese kids would beat me afterward and then put sand in my mouth.

[Showing me the scar on his face] To explain about this, you know an iron bar,

right? It was under construction for repair, and was not fixed into the concrete.

They asked me to climb to the top of it, since they would hold the bar for me from

the bottom. I thought that I had to do it; otherwise they wouldn’t play with me.

When I climbed to the top, they released their hands, and I fell off to the concrete

ground. Immediately, I lost my consciousness. The kids ran off, but a teacher

came to me. I came to my consciousness only after I had been taken to the

hospital. Then my parents came to the hospital and took me home.

Mr. Kim’s story was echoed by other participants’ childhood memories. Being a Korean

meant becoming Japanese, but you are constantly reminded of your inferiority to

Japanese because of being a Korean. Mrs. Sun-Ae, Cho, a woman I met at the fourth

daycare center I visited, told me her memory of old days as follows:

My short school days memory was illustrated with the color of pain. When I

opened my lunchbox, Japanese kids would come around me and put it upside

down. Then somebody would bring sand from outside and they packed full of

sand into my lunchbox. I hated them and the school. I did not finish the school.

Gender bias was one of the prevalent forces that hindered Korean women from studying more so than men. None of the fourteen female interviewees in this study graduated from an elementary school, while all of the six male interviewees proceeded to post-secondary education, of which two even were college graduates. This gender-based split seemed to have originated from various reasons. In Mrs. Kanamoto’s narrative introduced in the last chapter, I could hear her narrative identity as a woman in her family 169

to fulfill the financial need to educate her male sibling first, when she proudly said, “I had my [younger] brother study.”

Needless to say, poverty was the primary reason. Mrs. Kanamura, an 86 years old

female I met at the first daycare center I visited, came to Japan from Chul-la Prefecture

when she was 14 years old. With regretting tone and tears, she recalled her past:

Mrs. Kanamura: I came to Japan, following my sister. She wanted to be a nurse

and to study for it. But neither my sister nor I could study in Japan. They mocked

us because we were Koreans. My sister wanted to get a certificate to be a nurse,

but she couldn’t. But as soon as we came to Japan, we were brought separately to

Japanese families as domestic laborers. We became apart. A few years later, in the

middle of the war, my sister died. She became ill while she was working and

trying to be a nurse. I was left alone. I had three brothers but they all died in the

war. I have not been able to keep in touch with my family since then. After the

liberation, I wanted to go back home, but could not find a way to do so. I ended

up being mugaku.53 So, since I could not study, I wanted to send my kids to

Korean school.

When I asked her to remember the hardest experience in her life, she said that her life

itself was the continuous succession of hardship. I regret my ignorant question. Toward

the end of my field work period, I could recognize that Mrs. Kanamura’s honest expression was the shared basis for the female first generation Koreans. Therefore, as 82-

year-old Mrs. Moon stated, to be able to study in the first place “was like a dream”

(Personal conversation).

53 A Japanese term that refers to the uneducated. 170

As for the reason for Korean women’s low education rate, Mrs. Ohtani told me that their parents would say “girls would become arrogant if they go to school.” They instead had to learn language through their male siblings or through their fathers. But in many cases, study was put off for them due to the reason to work first.

Marriage was another shared reason among female participants for not being able to study, and this was not separated from the financial reason. Girls in a family were to be married off to another family, and sooner or later to become ‘outsiders’ of the family. For several female participants, their migration to Japan coincided with their experiences of being married off. “At that time, marriage was an unavoidable option to me,” said Mrs.

Kim, Yoon-Ja, an 80 year old female from Jeju Island. In Mrs. Kim’s case, her parents had her get married to avoid being drafted into the war—what would later be known as

“comfort women”:

Mrs. Kim: When I was 15 years old, the rumor said that they would draft any

single female older than 16. So my parents sent me to a family from the same

town. In those days, we would just follow our parents’ decision.

Meeting their husband for the first time on the day of marriage was a common custom.

Marriage was rather considered to be an “unavoidable” path for women to take as a survival tool. On the day that counted as a traditional Korean holiday, I was at the fourth daycare center I visited. I witnessed tears in one halmoni’s face, saying that “my holiday ended when I crossed the sea to come to Japan for my marriage” (Mrs. Lim, Hwang-

Soon, 80 years old, personal conversation). The halmoni’s tears appeared to be as traces of harsh reality for Koreans in those days, especially those women, whose “husbands would not treat their wives as human-beings,” as Mrs. Kim recalled as the general 171

experiences among the first generation Korean women. While education was the site in

which memories of discrimination were formed, the absence of education was

communicated among the female participants as also problematic. This absence of

education in their narratives was closely related to their self perceptions regarding work, poverty, and illiteracy.

Defining work

But I have not done anything shameful in my life. We were poor, but I never

delayed in paying our kids’ tuitions. I educated our kids, and did not do anything

shameful. I worked here and there, and managed money for my family. –Mrs.

Hong, Moon-Ja—

Ever since I came to Japan, I have worked. I’ve done all kinds of work. I even

built this kind of house, digging the ground, grinding cement. Ever since I came

to Japan in my 20’s, I have worked day and night. Since work is everything that

I have done in my life, I sometimes shed in tears thinking about my life. I have

never sat down in a coffee house, nor have I eaten at a restaurant. If I go alone

there, I can’t order, because I don’t know the name of each food and drink.–Mrs.

Kim, Yoon-Ja—

In discussing the relationship between work and the Korean elderly, I feel that textual descriptions can never be enough. Especially, for the Korean women who come to the daycare centers, work is almost the most important factor that defined their lives.

Work is a term that connects other themes in their narratives together. In many of the female participants’ narratives, in particular, work was considered to be something that they could not avoid, something that hindered them from learning, and something that put 172

meaning to their existence. Work, for these first generation Koreans, was not conceived as a matter of personal choice but as the method of living.

Mrs. Yoon-Ja Kim, a person from Jeju Island that I interviewed at the third daycare center I visited, revealed her work-related experiences as the main aspects in her life narrative. Losing her husband when she was 42 years old, she raised two children as a single mother. The following long conversation reveals how she managed both housework and the multiple jobs she constantly had:

Min Wha: Aigo, then did you raise your children by yourself since then?

Mrs. Kim: By myself. I used to constantly have two or three jobs, because one

was not enough to live with my kids. So I did not have even one day to rest in

peace. While I worked as a part timer at a town office, I also worked for two

other jobs switching in every 15 days. Even if nobody knows my hardship, I

praise myself for having lived until now. I make myself a big person, saying that

“you raised your kids, worked hard, and are still alive until now.” I never

imagined that I would live until my 80s. You never know what happens in your

life. When I was ill, I would go to a hospital on a rainy day, because I worked at

construction sites. I would take two days off at most and then go back to work.

So I thought that I would die in early age. But now I am 83.

Min Wha: Can you tell me a little bit more about the jobs you have had?

Mrs. Kim: I dived for a while after coming to Japan. But I quit and changed my

job to Docata [the construction labor]. I would go diving for three months while

I was raising my kids. My kids were happy when I buy things for them with the

money I got through diving. But I quit and changed to the job I can do here. I did 173

a construction job since then. . . . Well, sometimes I dived with my pregnant

body, and put my baby’s life in danger. I lived with courage to die. So I really

wonder why I live until now.

Min Wha: I think that your fate is destined to live long.

Mrs. Kim: Yah? How do you think my fate will turn out from now on?

Min Wha: From now on, your life should be good, don’t you think so?

Mrs. Kim: I don’t want to live that much longer. You can live while you can

work. But since I can’t work anymore, I don’t want to be a burden to my kids. If

there is nothing I can do at home, that’s a tragedy. If you can’t live like a normal

human being, then it’s better to die. But you can’t control your life.

Min Wha: But as for us, you know, your life along with other halaboji and

halmonis here is so precious. We would be so sad when you and they all will

have gone. So being here, you are making people here happy.

Mrs. Kim: Thank you. I am the happiest now, though. Now I can come here to

hang out. Before this center was built, there was nowhere I could go. Because I

just worked in my life, I cannot play.

The latter half segment, when she communicated the reason for not wanting any longer life (despite her later statement that she now is the happiest in her life) implies her own understanding of the self as a working body. Her body is self-defined as meaningful as long as she could work, thus negating the possibility of work would lead to the simultaneous negation of the meaning of her life. Indeed, this type of self-definition was echoed also with Mrs. Kanai, whom I introduced earlier in this chapter. She cried saying that ‘life without work is life wasted.’ Also, Mrs. Kanamoto, whose narrative appeared in 174 the last chapter, described her life now at the center as life to ‘play around.’ So many women I met at the centers had experienced work that was equally as hard as or sometimes much harder than their husbands’ jobs. Seeing some women’s tired bodies, especially thinking of the physically tough experiences they have had throughout their lives, I found myself mindlessly uttering “women are strong.” Mrs. Kim, kindly agreeing with me, stated:

Mrs. Kim: Women are strong. You are right. Women are stronger than men.

Even without things to eat, women can live seeing the smile of their babies.

Without a husband, women can live. But when a wife would die, that husband

needs another wife to take care of him. Women can live without men, and

without money. Men work outside, but that’s it. Korean wives also work, but

they also need to work at home. Men don’t care. Women take responsibility for

the home. I think this way. Even when they drink, women would do all the

housework before drinking. That’s responsibility that I think of as a woman.

Min Wha: Then as for your life, did you all do the housework after working for

construction?

Mrs. Kim: Yes, after the work, I did laundry and cooking. After my children

went to bed, I would do other house work such as ironing, and went to bed. And

I would wake up early in the morning, and cook my kids’ and my lunchboxes,

while preparing breakfast. You know, nowadays, you can buy Nigiri outside.

But in those days, there weren’t such things sold outside.

Min Wha: Yes, I see, in those days… I guess laundry also was hard work in

those days. 175

Mrs. Kim: It was hard work. But I did all the work by myself. So my daughter,

because she is alike me, doesn’t buy outside for her kids. She also cooks for

them, and cooks their lunchboxes. She never eats food outside, nor do I. I am

happy for my life now. I am happy with my daughter and my son.

The value of ‘strong woman’ was certainly communicated in the Korean women’s narrative of work. This grand narrative of strong womanhood, as will be shown in the discussions of the last two themes, is also told in a problematic tone. The work for these

Korean women was conditioned by poverty, but in their families the necessity of work for women justified their illiteracy as well as their endless sacrifice in postwar Japan.

Making Sense of The Poverty

The poverty characterized a big part of Koreans’ dislocation. A common reason for Koreans’ dislocation to Japan during the colonial period was due to the deprivation of their lands. The displacement to Japan, necessitated by the poverty among Korean farmers, in fact, was characterized by the sense of suddenness. Suddenly the lands they used to own had become ownerless. This sense of disruption in Koreans’ lives was apparent in the many interviewees’ family narratives.

Hence, poverty was communicated as the stories of dislocation among many participants’ narratives. Mr. Shin, Cul-Soo, now in his 90s, told me briefly yet emotionally about his family’s story of dislocation from Kyungsang Prefecture:

Mr. Shin: My father was deprived of the land by Japan due to their colonial rule

in Korea. I myself came to Japan with my mother when I was 24 years old,

searching for my father. My mother had died in Korea by that time. My sister

had also died without growing because of the poverty. I wrote the travel 176

certificate by myself, and came through Pusan and Shimonoseki. When I arrived

at [where my father lived] and first saw him in Japan, I could not call him ‘aboji’

(father). He looked too miserable and different.

Mr. Shin’s family history was shared by other interviewees. Mrs. Lee, Jung-Yoon’s narrative on her and her husband’s family history also shared the sense that poverty was the major condition among the colonized:

Mrs. Lee: That time in Japan, they would bring rice from our land.

Min Wha: Were Koreans then able to eat rice?

Mrs. Lee: We ate rice too, but they brought our rice [to Japan]. So they invaded

our land, and changed it as they wanted during their 35 years’ occupation. I still

remember those days. We used to live in a very big house. But after that, we had

to move to a small, dark room, because our old house was mortgaged. I

remember my mother was crying so hard. I did not know why she would cry so

hard, but now I know she cried because of that. Thinking about her, I feel so

poor… (Crying) Her life was continuous hardship and suffering. We also had

hardship, but at least can live now seeing this better world. Really, our parents

all died after enormous suffering.

Min Wha: Yah … I believe not only your parents but you also have gone through

real hardship.

Mrs. Lee: I too have witnessed all kinds of hardship. My husband too, he only

did study in his hometown. But his father, so my father-in-law was a person of

good heart, and became hoshounin (sponsor). So my husband’s family too

collapsed in this way. He became a hoshounin, and you know, you can’t pay tax 177

by farming. So his family was deprived of all their property, from the land to

tools. So they came to Japan, finding his uncle who was selling ice in [Japan]. In

old days, an ice person would carry a big cube of ice on a large wooden pan, and

cut it to sell. Japan too was poor at that time. They became rich due to us, you

know, due to the Koreans’ poverty. . . . You know, I am from a farmer’s family.

That time, producing cigarettes was illegal in Korea, but my aunt had planted it

and it was very successful. We also planted cabbage and it was successful too.

So we were very busy making these and hiding! But you know at that time, there

were people hiding and informing against illegal things. So both my family and

my aunt’s family collapsed. So we could neither live nor die, and my brothers

came to Japan.

Japan’s colonization of Korea was explained as the main reason for the downfall of the farmers’ families.54

War was another reason for the addressed poverty and the site of discrimination

for Koreans. Mrs. Jung-Yoon Lee’s narrative held a long story of her war experience in

Japan. Often times, the first generation women’s narratives communicated the absence of

men, and therefore, poverty and hardship was explained as gendered experiences. I will

insert the rather a long conversation with Mrs. Lee here:

Mrs. Lee: … Aigo…I can’t describe it with words. That time my oldest son was

less than 1 year old. Holding my son, I would run to a dugout every time we

heard the yellow alert. Holding my son, I would also lie on my face on a large

54 See Chapter 2 for the systematic change Japan made on farming in Korea. Due to the new colonial rule, many farmers in Korea became landless people. This was the main reason why many people who migrated from Korea during the colonial period were from farmers’ families. 178

field. And then once it’s over, I would go home. … Aigo…I can’t tell. … Even

the little boy knew that we would run once the alarm was on, then he would bring me his hat, you know the hat to cover his head. And then he would see me saying, bring him with me. Even he couldn’t speak; I knew what he tried to say.

Even that little boy knew… aigo…So one day; we had an attack here [by the

U.S. army]. We were busy running away, from one field to another. When they

threw incendiary bombs, with the sound of ‘pang!,’ the whole place became

bright, and people died. And then in next day, once it was gone, people came

out, and … aigo … those who tried to find mothers and those who wanted to

find their kids cried and cried. On my way back home, there were so many

people dying on the road, and I had to cross by them. They died from the

incendiary bomb, even though they tried to escape. Aigo, the indescribable pain

and suffer. There’s no food to eat. You know, that time food was supposed to be

distributed, but there was no food to be distributed. There was no food. So we

would go find farmers, and ask them to sell us some vegetables, but they

wouldn’t. They looked down upon Koreans so badly.

Min Wha: Did your husband then go to the war?

Mrs. Lee: Yah, he was brought to the war. We had 7 Korean families as our

neighbors, but only my husband was picked. One day, people came to our house.

We could see them walking to our house. They apologized to me, saying sorry

and sorry. Only my husband was picked. My daughter and I cried so hard. They

gave us things like tooth paste, tooth brush, and so on. Since it was a difficult

time, these were given as reward to the family who would send their members. A 179

party was held for those were picked as soldiers, and they were treated as if it’s

honor. But my daughter cried so hard, thinking that he might not come back

alive. I was like … aigo. He could even avoid doing forced labor, but now,

going to the war was scarier for me. Aigo, war is not something humans should

experience. So scary, horrifying … We would cover the house with thick black

curtains, but when we opened it, we would see fire. Aigo, I’ve gone through

whole kinds of kurou, and thinking about my husband’s life . . . When my

daughter got married, he was fifty something years old, but looked like her

grandfather. Nowadays, fifty something (years old) is still young, but he was

already like an elderly man. I couldn’t sleep from feeling horror during the war

time.

Min Wha: Did you have only one kid at that time?

Mrs. Lee: I was pregnant at that time.

Min Wha: Aigo, then you must have been scared so much.

Mrs. Lee: Yes, really. I was so scared and feared. So I gave birth when he was

gone, and with the little baby, I had to run away in the war. It’s indescribable.

HyunA Kim (2004), in her book entitled War and woman, has described the relation between war experience and language:

There are stories that never can be told enough. How one would tell the story,

the experience of the day cannot be described enough. The story which, as soon

as it is described, makes one’s heart uneasy. The story which, with any kind of

words and expressions, never can be accurate. The discourse which, despite the

180

fire ball in my heart, is as cold as ice and would fade away. Discourse, in this

situation, betrays the memory. (p. 42, the author translated)

In her ethnographic writing on women’s experiences during the Korean and Vietnam

Wars, Kim contends that women are hidden story-tellers who do experience the war but

silently live with the memories. Mrs. Lee’s story, on the poverty and horror at the time of

war, seems also to be such a thing as an indescribable and slippery memory.

So, sometimes, these women live with their poverty as the way it is. They laugh at their poverty. Poverty was figurative and metaphoric as in the three women, Mrs. Kim,

Cho, and Park’s words:

Mrs. Kim: I have never put on lipstick, never. I would put on cream but never

put on lipstick. I didn’t have time for that, nor did I have money to buy it. I don’t

know how to wear makeup. My kids would say that I am not good looking but

there is no way poor persons can be beautiful, so don’t worry! They would say it

and laugh!

When we laugh at the poverty, we learn how to transfer the meaning of it. Mrs. SunAe

Cho contrasted poverty in a materialistic way, with the psychological richness:

Min Wha: Returning to my question earlier, what kind of things do you

remember most?

Mrs. Cho: Hardship. That in the old days, I had to walk even without shoes

because I was poor. That I would work without shoes so my foot were so

painful. This kind of kurou in my younger days. I don’t think of any recent

things. Life now is luxury. People buy everything now. But in the old days, I

couldn’t buy things, so I didn’t think of throwing things away. 181

Min Wha: I think that we should learn from that spirit.

Mrs. Cho: As for your generation, that’s the way it is. So it’s not to blame you. It

was a different era. Everybody has difficulty in life. It’s just the matter of

different kinds, needless to say the hardship of my era. In those days, even

seeing my blood from my foot, I couldn’t buy shoes. But nowadays, people

throw away shoes even if they are still usable. That’s luxury. But I feel poor for

people in these days. Because they can’t deal with kurou.

Min Wha: Yah, you are right. People in this time do not have as much wisdom to

live as you have gained.

Mrs. Cho: Yah, so I think that they are poor.

Poverty in the old lady’s mind holds its value. Mrs. Cho paralleled the materialistic way of living in the form of consumerism with the poverty of the mind. To the contrary, Mrs.

Kim, Yoon-Ja addressed the value of sharing in the poverty she has experienced in her life:

Min Wha: This is my last question. How do you want others, say your next and

next generations, to remember about you?

Mrs. Kim: If I would be remembered as warm hearted, and a person who never

let others cry, that’s the best way I will be remembered. Even if you have had

money, if you put a scar on other’s heart, that scar will remain in that person’s

life. That’s a very a sad thing. But even though we lived without money, first

generation [Koreans] are a warm-hearted people. I want to leave my heart to all

of our kids. I want to give everything that I have to them. That’s the best thing.

There is no good in eating only by myself. You should share things with others. I 182

want to leave this heart to them. By sharing, people learn to understand with

each other.

As poverty preconditioned these women’s lives, sharing was their way of living together.

And, according to Myungsun Park, helping each other was a survival tool for Koreans to

overcome hunger and discrimination:

Min Wha: Do you think that lives as Koreans were harder than Japanese people?

I know that it was the time Japanese people also had a hard life.

Mrs. Park: Of course! Lives as Koreans were fundamentally different, because

we were different. Because there was discrimination. How strongly they deny it,

they can’t hide this.

Min Wha: Yah, I see. So the reason why Koreans live together like this is

because of that discrimination, right?

Mrs. Park: Yes, we gathered because of that. Together we feel strong. So we

gathered. We just needed to live, to overcome hunger. So it was natural to help

each other among Koreans. We just lived to live. That’s it.

For many first generation Koreans I met for this study, poverty was both memory and

reality. The poverty was the reason for their displacement, the conditions during the

colonial days, and the ever-present reality in the postcolonial era. Further, poverty was

the site at which they recognize the presence of discrimination and yet the value of

sharing. Finally, as I have focused on describing and as I will in the next section on

illiteracy, poverty can be defined uniquely in a gendered history.

183

Positioning the Illiteracy as Gendered History

Illiteracy was a prevailing phenomenon among Koreans by the year of liberation.

For the major part, the general tendency of illiteracy among the first generation Koreans

in Japan is due to the discriminatory colonial policy, as Lee (1981) notes:

Japanese governmental policies were not effective in raising the educational

level of Koreans, either in their native land or in Japan. Korean children in Japan

were subject to compulsory education, as were the Japanese, but little effort was

made to enforce the applicability of this provision to Koreans. Even by 1936

only one out of three Korean children was attending school of any kind.

Statistics on Koreans in Osaka and Tokyo taken from surveys of 1931 and 1936

classified almost half of them as illiterate. (p. 38)

Instead, Koreans in Japan were mainly the target of exploitation. As was seen in the

discussion on education, the absence of education for many Korean elderly in Japan is the

still-prevalent reality in the form of illiteracy. And importantly, illiteracy was mainly a gendered reality.

Many of the Korean female elderly that I communicated with at the four daycare centers I visited were living with the consequence of their illiteracy. I have witnessed several moments when the illiteracy led to self-denials among these women. One old lady that I met at the fourth site I visited thought that the reason why her Japanese daughter-in- law “looks down upon” her was because of her illiteracy. This old lady, whose hearing was severely challenged, said to me that “I am as tiny as a bug. I can’t hear, I can’t speak

[Japanese], I can’t write.” Even though I could not interview her because of these too

184

overwhelming challenges, her gesture of hitting her chest with her fist55 voiced her sorrow strongly.

The illiteracy among these women not only leads to self-denial but also limits their communicative methods. One day at the fourth care center I visited, the center staff received a letter sent by the students of a Korean school. These students had visited these halmonis and halabojis one month ago, and they wanted to express their gratitude to them. With the messages written in colorful pens, I could tell the students’ sincere hearts.

In fact, these elderly often receive letters from young students who visit the center.

However, as soon as the letter was announced and shown by a staff member, it was put in front of one male elderly. Many of female elderly, addressing their illiteracy rather shamefully, showed their interest in the letter only for a short time but soon stayed away from it. The staff told me that it was a common behavior among these female elderly.

Observing this scene gave me an opportunity to think about the notion of care—why is it, those who certainly love these elderly and are in the position of caring for them, unconsciously behave mindlessly (both the students who wrote the letter probably with happy minds and the care staff who took these grandmothers’ behaviors for granted and failed to find another method to communicate the students’ messages)? What makes them stop from thinking twice about a way in which these illiterate elderly do not end up denying their personal self-esteem?

55 In Korean context, this gesture is often used with the word ‘Aigo,’ expressing one’s sad feeling both verbally and nonverbally. 185

I have observed that, illiteracy, for these women, was not ‘the matter of course.’

It conditions their lives, shuts their mouths, and yet makes them hope for the literacy.

Mrs. Kim, Yoon-Ja in her interview conversation with me described these aspects:

Mrs. Kim: I came from Jeju Island, but I can’t speak the dialect of Jeju. I came

here when I was a little girl, and I did not go to any school. I had to dive ever

since I was a little girl, so I couldn’t go to school. I can’t even write my name.

My language is all a mixture of this and that. I didn’t go to even an elementary

school. Not even an elementary school, nothing, nothing. I don’t know anything,

even the Korean alphabet.

But it doesn’t mean that I cannot think. I think that the Japanese politicians are

too superficial. They look down upon us. Whenever I see the Japanese

politicians on the TV, I talk to the screen, “you are too arrogant!” They are too

mindless and superficial in dealing things with Koreans. They don’t think

deeply. . . . But there is no way that I can tell them directly. So I tell toward the

TV screen. . . . So I want to study if I would be reborn once again as a human.

You never know what to become in your next life. But if only I become a human

being again, then I want to study. Really want to study.

Min Wha: Huh… That touches me.

Mrs. Kim: Really, that’s what I want to do most. You know, anywhere I go, be it

supermarket or train station, I can’t read so I don’t know the names of things and

places, nor do I know prices of things. Even when I watch TV, I can only

understand with motion pictures. That’s it. I am so dumb. So I wonder how I did

‘living’ in a human society until now. 186

As work and poverty defined their lives, illiteracy was a social condition shared by many of the elderly Korean women. The illiteracy leads to the self-denial among the poor and oppressed. Rather than blaming the bigger social forces that hindered them from studying, these women blame themselves and their families for their inability. And, every time it is told within the conversation, illiteracy is a personal matter rather than spoken as a social problem.

Thus far in this chapter, I have discussed the six themes as the ‘then and now’ problems, which originated in and were conditioned by the colonial rule of Japan and yet still are prevalent as the living conditions of these first generation Koreans in Japan that I have met, conversed with, and/or interviewed for this study. To the extent the memories of the colonial era enter into the participants’ daily lives, the past is reshaped within the present context. Importantly, for these elderly Zainichi Koreans, as far as these six themes were to be communicated, the boundary between the colonial past and the postcolonial present was blurring. Instead, their stories positioned these six themes— name usage, discrimination, education, work, poverty, and illiteracy—within the continuity from the colonial past.

Yet, contextual changes in the postcolonial world were communicated among the participants, for the most part, in the form of their communal identities. As time went by,

I came to notice that there was a dual aspect within their communal identities—one that is rooted in the Japanese sociopolitical context, and the other conditioned by the national politics of Korea. That is, while they identify themselves as Koreans, they also share a sense that Japan is the country they will end their lives in. Therefore, while they long for their own country as the homeland in their heart, they also admit that they belong more 187

appropriately in their marginalized community in Japan. Observing this tension between the sense of longing and belonging, one in local and another in the distanced land, one

question arose in me—what does country mean to them? How have they perceived, and do they perceive the notion of ‘their own country,’ after repeating loss and gain of it in the complex modern Korean history? In the following space, I will discuss the participants’ communal identities as one aspect of their narrative identities, focusing mainly on the postcolonial era in Japan-Korean relations.

Liberation and Forming of the Diasporic Communities: Communicating the Communal

Identities

Reflecting on the history of Zainichi Koreans in the post-liberation era, one of my co-participants in this study, Mr. Junshik Kim, expressed his thought as, “Abandoned people. What else would be a good expression to describe Koreans in Japan? After the liberation, we were abandoned by both Japan and Korea.” The narrative identities the co-

participants in this study have revealed as to the post-liberation period were more

dynamic, compared to the rather homogenous collective memories of the colonial period.

This dynamism probably was due to the dramatic shifts and turmoil that surrounded their

homeland country after the liberation. As I have articulated in the last section of Chapter

2, Korea after its liberation in 1945 has experienced the unwanted division, which was more solidified with the Korean War. And, observing this turmoil and unsettling condition of their native land, the lives of Zainichi Koreans now had become fragile and insecure in a much more confusing way than before. Observing the ambiguous social status of Zainichi Koreans after the World War II, Ryang (2000) states as follows:

188

For two decades after the end of the Second World War, the legal status of

Koreans in Japan was peculiar. They were migrants remaining in Japan after the

end of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea. On the one hand, they were no longer

Japanese citizens owing to the forfeiture of their Japanese nationality as an effect

of the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty between the Japanese and US

governments. On the other hand, owing to complications in the Korean peninsula,

notably the partition into the US governed south and Soviet – and Chinese –

backed north, there was no unified homeland with which they could identify after

the war. (p. 32)

The shared sense that I observed among the participants as to their experiences in the post-liberation era was unwanted ‘losses’ of their homeland, conditioned by the postwar turmoil of Japan, along with the breakout of the Korean War.

This feeling, the struggle of ‘losing’ their hometown in the postcolonial era, seemed to have transformed into the zeal to ‘gain’ their diasporic communities in Japan.

The communal identities were communicated by the participants in at least three forms:

Koreans vs. Japanese: The biggest and the clearest boundary communicated in many of the interviewees’ narratives was that between themselves and the Japanese.

Pro-North Chongryun vs. Pro-South Mindan: As their home country had gone through the division into the South and the North, Korean communities in Japan also divided into the two politically conflicting organizations. Chongryun and Mindan, as the main two

‘representative’ organizations for the divided Korea, strongly defined the affiliates’ perceptions to be Korean selves, along with their behaviors.

189

Kohyangsaram or the people from the same town: The ‘hometown identities’ were sometimes hidden, yet were prominent within the narratives of the participants. The town identities were often revealed within gendered conversations, in such forms as “Jeju men don’t work and Jeju women would work hard.” This way of defining self and other based on origin was on occasion a method of ‘Other-ing’ among Korean diasporic communities. I will explain these three factors as something that defines and claims self and other by using a few interviewees’ exemplar stories.

Community as a Way of Living

Did we ever want to live like this, poor and separate? If we did not have

Japanese occupation, wouldn’t we have to live like this? So after our

organization was created, I have devoted my life to it. I have never put even one

step outside of our organization. (Mrs. Lee)

Mrs. Jong-Yoon Lee was one of the most devoted Chongryun Korean women I met during the fieldwork. Having been involved in the organization that preceded

Chongryun, Mrs. Lee with her husband have committed to this pro-North Korean group for more than 50 years. In her statement above, her blame, cast on the Japanese occupation as the main reason for Koreans’ poverty and displacement, leads to the statement that claims her fidelity to the organization. Among the Chongryun Koreans, this way of transformation from the ‘because of’ story to a ‘thanks to’ narrative, was common. In order to understand this reasoning process, it is worth noting how forming the organization was accepted by these people. Mrs. Lee, by answering my question of how she became a member of the pro-North organization Chongryun, told me the organization’s founding story: 190

Min Wha: Could you tell me how did you get involved in Chongryun? Was your

husband also a Chongryun person?

Mrs. Lee: Yes. We became members in the Ryunmeng time.56 My husband was

the general manager. You know, since being liberated, we fought for our rights

with the Japanese Communist Party. Japanese didn’t like that, but we fought to

protect our schools and our rights. Some people even died while fighting. So

then the Chairman Han Duk-Soo, observing the situation, wrote a letter [to North

Korea]. And then our Chongryun was created. He was a great man. We gathered

and studied together about the policy given from the top. United, we became

strong. So then we Koreans even built power to march against the Japanese

government, against discrimination, and so on. Before then, we had to work with

Japanese Communist Party. My husband was a very devoted Chongryun worker.

Once new policy was released, he would go for a study camp. For us, study

camp was an important duty. For full time workers, it was for a month, and for

part timers, it was for a week.

Mrs. Lee’s statements above narrate the ‘model story’ on the foundation of Chongryun from an experiential perspective. “Fighting for our rights” has been a major objective among the supporters since the country’s liberation. It was at first done in the name of

Choryun, which announced its establishment on October 15, 1945. However, once the

U.S. backed Japanese government claimed Choryun as anti-governmental and thus an illegal organization, it was forcefully disestablished on September 8, 1949 (the website of

Chongryun). Then since 1951, with the help of the Japanese Communist Party, Minjun

56 This refers to Choryun, which was an earlier version of Chongryun. 191

was built. Mrs. Lee’s narrative described the process in which the Japanese-backed

Minjun has transformed into the North-supported Chongryun, and by stating that studying

the organizational policies was an “important duty,” she implied the fidelity to the

organizational culture of Chongryun.

Indeed, as is implied in the tone of Mrs. Lee’s narrative, the formation of

Chongryun, originated from Choryun and Minjun, meant a gain of ‘our community’ among Koreans, thus welcomed by many Koreans in Japan (see Chapter 2). According to

Seo (1992), “More than 80 % of Koreans supported the doctrines of North-supporting

Choryun and Minjun,” and to the contrary, “the power of South-supporting organization

Mindan since 1945 throughout 50s was weak” (p. 14). Support was mainly because the

Chongryun’s organizational policy that claimed independence from the Japanese policies, rather than naturalization in the Japanese society as Mindan offered, appealed to the general sentiment among Koreans in Japan, whose lives were directly affected by Japan’s colonial occupation. Mrs. Hwang, whose narrative appeared as a ‘Big’ story in the last chapter, shared the process in which she became involved in Chongryun in our post- interview conversation. In explaining it, she emphasized how this decision was rather

‘natural’ for her to make.

Mrs. Hwang: My children were little and we were very poor, so we needed to

help each other. When I got into trouble, people from the organization would

come help me. That was the only organization we had. I heard that Lee, Syung

Man would come to rule the South, and he would become the president. And I

also heard that the reality of the Communist Party would also not allow freedom. I

did not want us to be oppressed again, after the Japanese Imperialism. But at that 192

time, Choryun57 was the only organization we had, and really was helpful to us.

But after Mindan was created, the fight (between the South and North) has begun.

I did not support Lee, Syung Man (the first President of South Korea). He lived in

America during the time the country was struggling. Once liberated, he came back

and wanted to be the president. I didn’t like that. After all, I do not allow the

division itself. Why should you divide such a tiny country like Korea? In its

original stage, we did not hear anything like Kim Il Sung. It’s been after for a

while we started to hear his name. I volunteered in the community. That time, we

all helped each other. The division came later. It is very regretful that we missed

good times of reunification.

Her narrative introduces Chongryun as a community that existed as a way for Koreans to

help each other. Mrs. Hwang’s claim that, Choryun “was the only organization we had,”

is a statement that expressed her personal observation on the trend among Koreans in

post-war Japan. By stating the observation in a definitive tone, it can be seen as her

emphasis on the zeal among Choryun Koreans as a main organization to protect Koreans’

rights in Japan. Secondly, her disfavor on Syung Man Lee, the first South Korean

President, despite her reluctance to support the Communist North, made her keep away

from becoming a South Korean supporter. Neither being a South-supporter nor in favor

of the North, she seemed to find her identity in the ‘community’ in the form of Choryun.

Her statement that, “After all, I do not allow the division itself,” is seen to be shared by

many other Korean elderly who have experienced colonization. Both South and North

57 For the origin of the pro-North organizations and their characteristics, see my discussion in Chapter 2. 193

Korea have appeared as the symbols of the newly divided country, and the division itself was another form of tragedy. And finally, her statement that, “It’s been after for a while we started to hear [Kim Il Sung’s] name,” seems to be her observation on the transition process from Choryun through Minjun to Chongryun. In fact, the major transformation from Minjun to Chongryun, as I explained earlier, was the latter’s political independence from the Japanese Communist Party and declaration of the organizational supporters as oversea citizens of North Korea. Despite these organizational policies that were imposed on the members from the hierarchical top of the organization, however, in Mrs. Hwang’s narrative, its function as a community to help each other was considered to be the main characteristic that she and others identified with.

The organizational lives seemed to have functioned as a way to support their diasporic settlement in Japan. Many participants witnessed Chongryun’s magnetic power on its supporters in postwar Japan. Specifically, in the interview conversations, the zeal to support Chongryun workers was communicated among some female participants. Mrs.

Lee emphasized their hard work ethics, and Mrs. Kim mentioned her husband’s passion for the organizational work:

Mrs. Lee: Aigo, our workers worked so hard. They worked so hard without being

paid. Even though they worked so hard for a year, they sometimes were not paid

for several months. They would eat at other Koreans’ houses. You know, so in

their houses, their wives worked hard. They worked and supported their

husbands while raising their kids.

Poverty was the social conditions for many Koreans even after the Japanese colonial rule, but ‘working hard’ for something worth devoting their energies even “without being 194 paid” was a shared sense among the elderly Chongryun supporters. Mrs. Kim, Yoon-Ja, another woman who has long been a member of the organization, stated as follows.

Mrs. Kim: We have been all Chongryun members. My husband really believed

in Chongryun. Even during his work, he would play with kids when he met

Korean school kids. It was the time Chongryun was very active. In old days, it

was very good. People really believed in it.

In these narratives, the two women explained their husbands,’ along with other Koreans,’ zeal for the organization as it connected to their familial stories of the past. In the previous chapter, Mr. Song’s narrative also revealed his work identity as a Korean school teacher who was ‘poor but devoted.’ These women, as the wives of those ‘poor but devoted’ Chongryun workers, both witnessed and shared this value. Especially, Mrs.

Lee’s comment on the wives of Chongryun workers, in that “They worked and supported their husbands while raising their kids,” supports the value of the ‘strong women’ that is explained in Mrs. Kim’s earlier narrative.

As the organization functioned as a community, it has had power to define the people’s life world. Mrs. Kim, in responding to my question “are most of her friends

Chongryun people?” answered that “all of [her] friends are Chongryun people.” She said that she did not have any close friend outside of Chongryun nor among the Japanese. “So among (Chongryun) Koreans, we would go for a picnic under the cherry blossoms.” I could learn that for many first generation Koreans, the organization functioned as their way of living together, while managing their segregated lives and boundary from

‘outsiders,’ be they Japanese or ‘other’ Koreans. “Koreans.” for Mrs. Kim, seemed to directly mean the Chongryun Koreans, and this boundary to the outside world had both 195

protected her communal identity as a member of the organization, while at the same time

justified her segregated life in the Japanese society.

Chongryun Koreans and Disconnection to the Homeland

Joining Chongryun meant gaining a community, but that also meant constraining

their life in a certain way. In turn, it shaped unwanted separation within the family. In

several Chongryun supporters’ personal narratives, the empowered aspect through their devotion to Chongryun sometimes was contrasted with the negative tone associated in their telling of the disconnection to their homeland in the South. I will first introduce

Mrs. Hwang’s personal reflection as I believe her narrative below well-represents the shared story of the family separation communicated by several other elderly.

Mrs. Hwang: I have never been to (South) Korea since 1931. My family went

back to the hometown during the wartime. We had bombs here and there, and my

father decided to bring the family back to Korea, thinking to return the rest of the

tax he owed. I was thinking to go back too, but did not want to go back with no

money. As the oldest daughter in my family, I wanted to give my younger brother

and sister one or two sweaters, and give my father some money. I had a job at that

time, so I borrowed some money from the owner and my friends, so that my

family can go back first with some money. I lied to my father about the reason

that I could not go with them. But inside my heart, I was thinking to go back after

2 or 3 years, when I could return the money I borrowed. Then I could not go back

until now. Once the war was over, we were cut off from the way to go home.

I never imagined that was the permanent farewell with my parents. I believe that

they even did not think in that way. My father told me to come back soon, and I 196

was also thinking to go back after 2 or 3 years. I did not think that was the last

moment for us. However, that was the very last when I saw my father and my

brother.

Mrs. Hwang, because of her affiliation as a Chongryun Korean, had lost the way to return

or even visit the original homeland. Since the country’s division invited the strict

ideological antagonism between socialist North and capitalist South, having the pro-

North Korean identity meant abandoning any opportunity to visit South Korea. Indeed,

many Chongryun Koreans, as was hinted in Mr. Song’s narrative in the previous chapter,

chose the word ‘waiting’ rather than abandoning. That is, like Mr. Song, Mrs. Hwang

said that she was ‘waiting’ for the day she would visit her hometown in South Korea, and

‘the day’ in the grand narrative among Chongryun people meant the day of Korea’s

reunification. But ‘the day’ did not visit them as easily and as soon as they anticipated,

and many of Chongryun Koreans lost their way back to their Southern homeland.

While their motivation to join Chongryun was based on their longing for the

community and was conditioned rather by each individual’s financial and material

circumstance, the social representation for being Chongryun Koreans was a strong reason

to deprive them of an opportunity to visit the South. The 38th parallel also existed in

Korean families as a symbol of fear. Telling me about her ‘official’ visit to the South in

2001, the year Chongryun Koreans’ visit to their hometown was officially allowed

(though permission was temporary) as a result of the historical joint declaration announced in 2000, Mrs. Hwang explained to me how her family member was afraid of meeting her with the fear of punishment.

197

Mrs. Hwang: I met my younger sister after 58 years has passed. In 2001, I went to

South Korea with other groups of Zainichi Koreans visiting their families. By that

time, my parents had passed away, so did my brother. So, there was no ‘home’ for

me. I had one younger sister, who I raised since she was two years old. But I did

not know where she lived. So I wrote a letter to my aunt. While he had also

passed away, his son, so my cousin contacted my sister. At first, everybody was

afraid. They were afraid to be punished.

Min Wha: Is it because you were a Chongryun member?

Mrs. Hwang: Yes. I heard that my sister was also afraid. Her son asked her if she

really did not want to meet me. My sister said that she was dying to meet me, but

she was afraid to be punished after having met me. Then her son told her that now

that the president had been changed, there was no danger, so she could meet me.

Then she was relieved and agreed to meet me. I received a phone call from her

son. I had written my phone number in the letter. I asked to bring a white board

on which they wrote my sister’s name and my name. We were afraid we could not

recognize each other. So finally, we could meet.

During my interview with her at her house, she received a phone call from her South

Korean sister. While waiting for her and silently listening to her conversation with her sister, I thought about this irony in life. Because the way she conversed with her sister sounded so natural—as natural as any two sisters’ conversation—not having been able neither to talk nor to meet emphasized the sadness in it.

For Chongryun Koreans, not visiting their homeland in the South has been an issue of keeping their fidelity to the pro-North organization. In the narrative of Mrs. Lee, 198

Jung-Yoon, the fidelity was connected to keeping her North Korean nationality, which is

directly associated with her ‘national identity.’ And, as was the case with Mrs. Hwang,

this national identity is considered to be a ‘troubled one’ in South Korean families.

Min Wha: So then you have been North Korean supporter throughout your post-

liberation life?

Mrs. Lee: Yes, so I have been a part of our organization since early time, since I

was 23 year-old. And I have been the Chosun (North Korean) national. So I had

never been to my hometown ever since then. Because of us, my brother-in-law’s

family has had hardship. Only recently I could visit my hometown.

Min Wha: Oh, did you, through Chongryun after 2000?

Mrs. Lee: Yes, through Chongryun, in 2001.

Min Wha: So that was your first visit after the liberation, right?

Mrs. Lee: Of course, it was the first time. I could go only because it was allowed.

I met sons of my brother-in-law. I was told that his father died when he was 10.

You know in South Korea, men should go to military when they became 20. He

told me that he was bullied so badly in the military because of us, saying that he

had the Commy relatives in Japan. I met him for the first time, but he was a very

good man. My husband went back once, but I went there for the first time (after

the liberation). So the son of my brother-in-law said that he was thinking that we

must have been such cunning people.

In the narrative above, Mrs. Lee’s fidelity to the organization can be seen

through her statement, “I could go only because it was allowed.” This attitude, with which the Chongryun Koreans put their organization before their hometown, was shared 199

among many other elderly I met. Some have intentionally cut off communication with

their South Korean relatives in order to protect their fidelity to Chongryun, saying that

keeping their connection to South Korea is considered to be a betrayal of the North. In

many situations, however, the existence of Chongryun Koreans has not also been

welcomed by their South Korean relatives, as the above case of Mrs. Lee indicated.

Chongryun, for many years until recently, has been a symbol of Communist North

Koreans in front of South Koreans’ eyes, while for Chongryun Koreans themselves,

being Chongryun Koreans meant more than ‘just’ being North Koreans. In the postwar geopolitics between Japan and Korea, in which the political antagonism between capitalists’ and communists’ forces was ever present in each society, the organizational affiliation to Chongryun has exercised definite power to restrict the members’ social arena, while among the members it meant more ‘gaining’ of their communal lives than of

‘losing’ their homeland through their political representation of North Korea. As can be

contrasted from the mobility communicated by a Mindan affiliate, however, the

Chongryun members revealed their narrative identities that were rather associated with their immobility.

A Mindan Supporter and the Story of Mobility and Displacement

Mrs. Ohtani was one of few Mindan Koreans I could meet for this study. I met

her at the third daycare center that I visited. Contrasted from my frequent chances to have

been able to meet Chongryun Koreans, meeting Mindan Koreans and hearing their stories

was not an easy task for me. It was mainly because of my own familial and personal

social connection to Chongryun, rather than Mindan Koreans’ relative invisibility in

200

Japanese society.58 Yet, for Mrs. Ohtani, my U.S. academic background seemed

attractive, and she showed an interest in hearing my story. In polite Japanese, Mrs. Ohtani

shared with me her life experiences. In contrast to the Chongryun Koreans’ narratives in

which the native country was communicated as their ‘imagined’ land, her experience in

the post-liberation era was characterized by her mobility, not necessarily in a positive

way, but mostly in a way that defined her struggles.

Mrs. Ohtani: I at first returned home (to Korea) but my husband had come back

here. So I had had to work, making Chogori (Korean traditional dress), for ten

something years while raising my daughter.59 That time, we could not go back

and forth between South Korea and Japan. When former Prime Minister Sato

opened the diplomatic meeting with South Korea, we became able to go. Facing

enormous attack by the Opposition Parties, he proceeded to do this meeting.

Thanks to this, it became possible to go back and forth.

MinWha: Was it possible (to go back and forth) only after that?

Mrs. Ohtani: Yes. But I came to Japan even before that, in the period of Syung

Man Lee, illegally, around 1957.

Min Wha: How old were you that time?

Mrs. Ohtani: That time, I was 27 years old.

Then she shared with me her story of riding an illegal boat to come back again to Japan.60

58 Due to the organization’s naturalization policy in Japan, Mindan Koreans are comparatively more invisible in Japanese society than Chongryun counterpart. In my observation, Mindan-affiliated Korean elderly tended to represent themselves with their Japanese names, and would relatively use more fluent Japanese than Chongryun Koreans. 59 I could notice a sense of disappointment here, when she expressed in Japanese, her “husband had come back” to Japan. 60 Although it is a long quote from Mrs. Ohtani, as the only person who can represent Mindan with a 201

Mrs. Ohtani: So, after we went back, I worked on a farm, but mainly made

Chogori. I would go down to PuSan and make the clothes. That time, everyone

wore Chogori, so it was a busy job. I was very busy. I sewed Chogori day and

night, and this way I made living. And then my parents died and my husband

called me, so I went again back to Japan. There was one sister from Jeju Island.

And he asked me to come back through her. So I went to the island near BuSan

that he asked me to come. Then many women from Jeju Island were there. They

were so used to this type of thing, illegally going back and forth between Japan

and Korea. They would go to Japan and buy things and return through illegal

methods and then sell these in Korea. I was so surprised to see this many

women. But from there, they let me and my daughter take a ship. I paid them

40,000 or 50,000 yen. This money at that time was very big money. I paid from

my savings. From Pusan, only one young husband and wife took the boat, but

later, so many people came. They asked the wife to pretend as if she was a wife

of the captain. When we stopped at another island, the ship was supposed to load

some kinds of seaweed, but many people came onto the ship. That time, the

people came into the bottom space of the ship. There was a space made below

the ship. They entered into that space, and then closed the entrance with some

kinds of boxes. And then when we came to Tsushima (Japan), the ship was

caught. The ship was caught, and would not move from there. They told us to be

quiet, since the ship was caught. Even a small cough was not allowed. Then we

spent a night there, but the next day, somebody came to investigate. They hit detailed narrative, I insert the uncut version of her story of illegal entrance to Japan. 202

here and there, from a box to the next, asking what was inside. They came

repeatedly to investigate. I was so terrified, thinking what I would do if my

daughter coughed. But she understood the situation, and stayed as quiet as a

dead person. Then at night, they would bring us rice balls. But you know, there

were supposed to be only a few people including the captain and the crew. But

since they would bring many rice balls inside the ship, they were again

suspected. Then the officers came again to investigate, and hit here and there.

But luckily, we were fine. Then after a few days, we were asked to come off, and

take another boat. It was as tiny a boat as a box. We took that boat and spent a

whole night in that boat, until we finally reached an island in Kyushu Prefecture.

After we landed, we took a cab with one lady. Her family was very rich, and she

helped us hide in her place. And then my husband came to that house.

War was a succeeding reality that Mrs. Ohtani had to experience through mobility and displacement.

Mrs. Ohtani: So I experienced a War (WWII) here, having had 250 km bombs

dropped here and there. After that was over, I went back to South Korea, and

then another War in Korea. I did not have a kid then (during WWII). I got

married when I was 18 but my child, a girl, was born when I was 27. I could not

have a child when I was in Japan. But my brother’s wife had two children. But

both my brother and my husband were drafted into the (Japanese) military, so

they were not there. So two women—my brother’s wife and myself, although we

lived in different houses—escaped together, taking the two nephews, one boy

and one girl, here and there. Then the War was over, and both of them returned 203

home. And then my brother went back (to Korea) before my husband and I did.

My husband was at first saying that he would not go back. When I asked him

why he was in no hurry to return, he said that all of his property would be

deprived, when Japanese people would be back. That did not happen, though.

Throughout her narrative, I could sense the negative sentiment attached to her way of telling me the story of returning to Korea. She said that the reality of her hometown that was “so rural,” after coming back from Japan, struck her. Especially, her experience of the Korean War, losing her brother in the war in particular, shaped her memory in the

“liberated” Korea in a negative way.

Mrs. Ohtani: We went back in 1945, and then in 1950 North Korea attacked us,

on June 25. That’s why we call it the 6.25 War. But then American troops came

and fought, so they went back. I had only one brother, but he went to the war for

Japan (WWII) and then returned. But when North Korea came down to DaeGu

(during the Korean War), he went out (to the war). Then he died soon. They

(North Korea) even came down to Pusan. In my town, many American soldiers

came. They would not fight in daytime. Since American Army had jet planes.

But every night, they would start with gun fire, asking for a fight. Then our side

would answer with gun fire. I heard the sound of gun fire every night from over

the mountain. When I asked a friend of my brother what they were doing in the

mountain, he would say there were just constructing the road. Since my brother

was in the war, he cared for me and lied so that I would not worry for my bother.

He never said it was because of the war. They came even close to our town, but

our town was safe. 204

In her story, who was ‘our side’ and who was the enemy was clear. In Mrs. Ohtani’s

experiential narrative on the Korean War, which overlapped with the model story of this war in a South Korean version, the war was fought between ‘our people’ and North

Korea. The United States is represented as a big brother who helped the North Korean enemy to ‘go back.’ The ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ dichotomy was used to separate the ‘We-South

Koreans’ from ‘They-North Koreans.’ In this context, the United States, as has been the case for South Korea ever since the country’s foundation in 1948, is another giant political ‘umbrella’ that would substitute the past Japanese Imperial power, but now is represented favorably in front of the political danger of North Korea. The rhetoric of attacking the ‘other’ is applied rather within the domestic context. And, that between

Mindan and Chongryun was not an exception.

Mrs. Ohtani: I also want to hear your story; your story of America.

Min Wha: Oh really?

Mrs. Ohtani: I heard that many of our people live in America.

Min Wha: Yes, many people from South Korea live there. Have you been a

Mindan affiliate since the beginning?

Mrs. Ohtani: Yes, yes, since the beginning. I am a (South) Korean since the

beginning, so I am South Korean. But when I used to live in Osaka, one Jeju

person would say to me, “Aigo sister, you shouldn’t work this hard from day till

night.” And he asked me to change … my political affiliation … to North Korea.

He said, “Then you can live better without working this hard!” But I was like,

how can I live without working? He said that he would make my life easier! He

205

probably said to me like that because I looked miserable. But I said to him, “I

was born as a South Korean, so I am a South Korean for whole my life.”

Her narrative identity as a South Korean affiliate is seen to work favorably toward my

academic status of being in the United States, while it at the same time separates her from

other North Korean affiliates. Her resistant identity was directed toward Koreans, and this

resistant narrative identity aimed inward at the diasporic community differentiated Mrs.

Ohtani’s narrative from many other Chongryun Koreans’ narratives, in which the

attacking tone was directed to the ethnic ‘other’—mainly to Japanese people. Indeed, as I

will note in the following discussion, her self-other separation was communicated also in the form of Kohyang identities which, traditionally in Korean diasporic communities, functioned both as geographical and psychological boundaries among them.

Kohyang means one’s place of origin. Across Chongryun and Mindan Koreans, for first generation Koreans in Japan, Kohyang is an important communicative vehicle.

Sharing the Kohyang means having come from the same province in Korea, and it means that they share many of the traditional customs that had been rooted in their native place.

Vice versa, not sharing the Kohyang sometimes functions as a way of ‘othering.’ For

Mrs. Ohtani, who is from Kyungsang Province, the ‘other’ appeared in the name of “Jeju people,” who were from the southern island in Korea.

Mrs. Ohtani: And then, I did not have a card (foreigner’s registry card), and had

a baby. I borrowed a room, but I had to use a sewing machine at home. Then a

person from Juju Island would shout, “Get out!” The persons I rented from at

first were the land persons. They kindly said ok to me. But later, the family had

returned to North Korea. And then the Jeju persons bought the house. But they 206

always came and shouted to me, “Get out! Get out!” I don’t know how they live

now, though…

Min Wha: Do you think that persons from Jeju Island are different?

Mrs. Ohtani: Ah, yes. They are so acrid. They are very different from the land

people.

Min Wha: My grandma told me the same thing.

Mrs. Ohtani: Ah, they have no heart! So, since that, I moved to a different place,

when my son began to toddle, because I had to work from day till night sewing

Chogori.

The boundary was drawn both symbolically and psychologically to the ‘Jeju persons.’

The term ‘land people’ symbolically segregates the Jeju people as “different.” The Jeju

people were represented in a negative way, and for the sake of this ‘othering’ method, the

family who “returned to North Korea,” so obviously the ‘political other’ for her, was explained as kind people who at least shared the kohyang value with her. In fact, the value difference was emphasized by Mrs. Ohtani’s narrative that further explained her gender value.

Min Wha: I would like to return to the story a little bit, but could I ask you when

your husband passed away?

Mrs. Ohtani: In 1960. In that year, there came a big typhoon called Isewan

Typhyoon. He died because of that.

Min Wha: Due to the typhoon?

Mrs. Ohtani: Yes, many people died due to the typhoon that time.

Min Wha: Huh, … then you lived by yourself since then. 207

Mrs. Ohtani: Yes. So my Kohyan-saram [town fellows] would say, “You have

neither a (foreigner’s) card nor any money. How will you live?” Many people

around me said to me that I should get married again. But I said, I can’t get

married unless I become mad.” A man from the same Kohyang even said to me

to abort my son. I told my friend the other day, “Sister, I hate that man even

now. How could he say to me like that?” Since he lived well, he could have

helped me with his money, if he really wanted to help me. But without helping

me, he said, “You should get married.” How can you say marrying another man

will be good? If you become crazy, you might be able to do so, but with sane

mind, you can’t do that. Even a dead soul, husband is husband. We would say

that Jeju people and Japanese share different value on women’s chastity, but we

the land people share this value that when you are told by your parents to get

married, you should do so when that even means death.

‘The land women’s value’ was implied through her communication with the Kohyang- saram, or the town fellows. In this narrative, her gendered value on marriage emphasized women’s fidelity to their assigned husband, and importantly, this value was explained as the ‘we the land people’s thing.’ Mrs. Ohtani’s narrative revealed the existence of

Kohyang identities as another form of community among the Koreans in Japan that can sometimes function as a method of blaming the ‘Other,’ be they Japanese or Koreans who identify with North.

Organizational affiliations that shaped one’s mobility and immobility

The formations of diasporic communities in Japan in the postwar, postcolonial era brought a new method of self-identification among Koreans themselves. The lives 208 within the two organizations, Chongryun and Mindan, have been shaped around the

‘model discourses’ of these organizations. On the one hand. for Chongryun Koreans, the communal effort in taking ‘our’ rights back, which once ‘we’ were deprived of due to the colonial policies, transformed their sentiment of ‘have not’s’ in the past into the empowered citizens of an independent country. The participants’ narratives along with their reflections witnessed this zeal among Chongryun Koreans at that time as

“something that we really believed in” (Mrs. Kim). The organization was conceived of as a strong vehicle that shaped the communal bond among the people. On the other hand, for the Mindan elderly that I interviewed and conversed with, the sense of community was more loosely formed around geopolitics in Japan and based on their place of origin.

The communicated South Korean identities were based on their roots or hometowns in

Korea. Different from Chongryun Koreans, they all have kept the kin connection with their South Korean families and relatives relatively easily, when compared with the

Chongryun Koreans’ inability to return to their South Korean hometown after the country’s division.

The membership within the organizations functioned, for the participants, as another sociopolitical force that both enabled and constrained the person’s life world. The narrated image of the relationship between the organizations and individuals in the

Korean diasporic communities is organic and dynamic, in which agents actively participate in the process of forming the norms and their routines. Therefore, even when

Chongryun Koreans communicated about their inability to travel to South Korea, the physical constraint they had to endure due to their membership in the organization was rationalized differently from the limitations once put on them through the Japanese 209 colonial policy. The participants’ storied reflections on postwar, post liberation Japan seem to support an idea that the Korean diaspora, after this period, have been the sites of conflicting meanings on their homeland. If in the Japanese colonization era their bodily representations were subjected to the power relationship in Japan in an essential way, in the post-liberation era, their social and political representations are more complicated ones that cover not only the issues of gender, ethnicity, and class but their choice on their affiliation to the newly built nation-state.

The ‘Small’ stories I narrated in this chapter, as the first generation Koreans’ personal narratives on their experiences throughout the colonial days, war, and post- liberation era, have revealed their cultural identities multiply layered and situated within an intricate web of historical contexts. The themes that I discussed under the name of six

‘then and now’ problems, with their stories of the community lives, address an important issue of subjectivity positioned within the continuance of the colonial and postcolonial context. That is to say, when their narrative identities are revealed in the telling-act of their cultural experiences in Korean diaspora, they are simultaneously the consequence of the colonization. The stories are told ‘here and now’ in each sociopolicial context within the Japanese society, but they are projecting ‘backwards,’ reflecting on their dislocation as to their origins. In this sense, as Stuart Hall (1999) has observed on the Caribbean diasporic experiences in the UK, after the colonial displacement, an issue of “identity is irredeemably a historical question” (p. 5).

The ‘Small’ stories, along with the ‘Big’ stories, give voice to the history of colonization, imperialism, and the Japan-Korean relationship from the standpoints of those in the Korean diaspora in Japan. In the ‘Small’ stories, history is told and shared 210 through the participants’ discursive practices from an experiential perspective. In these discursive practices, the history was told as fragmented stories that were contextualized in the forms of on-site conversations. De Certeau (1984), commenting on narrative practices, has noted that “The narrativizing of practices is a textual ‘way of operating’ having its own procedures and tactics,” and therefore, “a theory of narration is indissociable from a theory of practices, as its condition as well as its production” (p. 78, emphases in original). As such, I would argue that the rhetoricity in history is inseparable from the practices of telling-acts. By listening to the ‘Small’ stories as situated discourses and performances, despite their fragmentation, history has been revealed.

In the next chapter, I address the significance of what I have found in this study— first, by telling the ‘Big’ and ‘Small’ stories; second, through connecting them to the bigger historical framework. I employ a critical consideration of the textual and performative consequences of these situated narratives upon history writing. I will emphasize the rhetoricity of history and address the importance of recognizing it through a narrative approach.

Summary

In this Chapter, I have thematized the ‘Small’ stories as on-site, situated, contextualized conversations. I first specified the sociopolitical contexts, within which the ‘Small’ stories were situated, along with my observation on the participants’ psychological statements that made their stories unique. The shared negative feeling toward Japanese people and the society led these Koreans to gather in the daycare centers that were solely for the Korean elderly, which functioned as shelter-like spaces for these elderly. The bulk of discussions were on the themes within the collective ‘Small’ stories. 211

The themes I found through interviews, daily conversations, and observation were

discussed as the six ‘then and now’ problems among the fist generation Koreans in Japan,

which included the issues of name, discrimination, education, work, poverty, and

illiteracy. I called them the ‘then and now’ problems because these six issues, rooted in

the historical context of Koreans’ colonial displacement, were perceived among the

participants as the still-prevalent conditions they live with. In this sense, these themes

connect their colonial and postcolonial experiences together, while reshaping the nature

of them. In the latter sections of the chapter, I focused on the participants’ notion of

‘community’ in the post-liberation era. Chongryun and Mindan were the two main

organizations that formed the participants’ life worlds. The focus was on the discussions

of how self and other were defined within the narratives on their organizational lives, and how the organizational affiliations functioned as both enabling and constraining forces upon the participants’ lives, especially on the aspects of mobility and immobility.

212

CHAPTER 7: RETHINKING HISTORY THROUGH ‘BIG’ AND ‘SMALL’ STORIES

Re-Entry with an Idea of ‘Displacement’

Dear Aboji

On the day I was to leave my house for my field trip, I accidentally found your father’s picture. In the black-and-white photograph, he was staring at the front sitting in his wheel chair. Finding that picture, I was silently excited. I thought as if this journey of writing about the first generation Koreans had led me to discover some hidden treasure about my own grandfather. It was ten months later that mother informed me of the story behind that photo. She said this photo was the one you, dear Aboji, had your brother in

North Korea to send to you about 30 years ago, on hearing your father’s death in North

Korea. The photo was enlarged and kept at home, but I had not had a chance to look at it. Now, I am looking at your photo, the one enlarged for your funeral. The photo reminds

me that I lost you during this journey.

About a month after your sudden departure from us, the year 2008 started. Upon

the beginning of the New Year, we received one letter. Opening the letter, my mother, my

sister, and I cried again. The letter was from your brother’s family in North Korea.

Contrasted from all other letters and cards of condolences we received, this letter from

North Korea was for new year’s wishes—Wishes for your good health. What an irony is

that. This lag in the time, indeed, made me unbearably sad. When I reflect your life from a daughter’s perspective, this kind of lag was something that characterized our family’s experiences, such as the story that it took us 3 years to find out the death of one of my cousins in North Korea. I remember that you wanted to visit your brother in North

213

Korea, but it now has turned out to be your unfulfilled final wish. And, again, this lag in conveying the news of your departure is killing our family twice.

Certainly I was not ready to lose you, father, but saying good bye to you in this world made me think about a lot of things—things from the past in relation to things in present. The issue of time lag, or that of timing, was one of them. The biggest irony in my life now is that you father, provided me with a core basis in launching this project, but before reaching to your life story, you are gone. I wanted to make sense of our family life, which mostly was conditioned by the colonial history and displacement, by returning back to the origin of it. In order to do so, I thought of talking to the first generation

Koreans first, because for some odd reason, I thought that I would have more time with you. But, without waiting to be heard, you were called to heaven. This irony of time, the issue of timing in learning about the past, seems to be guaranteed by existence of a gap— between knowing and not knowing; the presence of the story ‘not having been told.’

Indeed, I could also hear this sense of gap by hearing from the first generation Zainichi

Koreans.

During my field work away from my home, I stayed at my maternal grandmother’s place. Feeling happy with the theme of my project, she showed me a stack of letters from my maternal grandfather, who also was a first generation Korean in

Japan. In the large box on her desk, the letters were put in a tidy and neat manner. These letters, said my grandmother, were the ones she corresponded with my grandfather when he had been away from home to work in Hokkaido Prefecture, the very northern end of

Japan. Being so far away from each other, these letters showed me how they communicated with each other about various family issues and news in their daily lives. 214

Of many, some short and some long letters from my grandpa, there was one, according to

grandma, that she felt as if it was a love letter from him. Despite his taciturnity and

shyness, in this letter, he seemed to have had courage to express his inner thought. While

my grandma read this particular letter to me (as his handwriting was difficult for me to

read), I could feel my grandfather, with whom I don’t remember communicating, for the first time in my life as a person. “. . . I sometimes wonder for what I was born into this world. I work, work, and work, but we are always poor. I feel as if my life has meaning only as a machine to work. I guess this is my fate as a Korean man in the Capitalist

Japan. . . . ” Thinking about his short and rough 52 years’ life, I became sad. I wondered, if he at last found an answer to the question he himself raised to his own life— for what he was born into this world, and for what he spent his whole life working in

Japan. I, as a granddaughter who is in search of the meaning of his life, wrote in my field

note that night as follows:

But I wanted to tell grandpa this: You certainly live in my life through these

letters and memories that grandma could tell me. One thing that I learned by

doing this dissertation project is that, the life of my grandpa and the things he

felt through his life were the very things that many other Koreans had felt, and

these experiences indeed, were their lives too. In this sense, I thought, along with

those people who are alive now, I was learning the lives of many other Koreans

who already have passed away.

Hearing the content of my grandfather’s letter, I experienced psychological

transformation in myself. It was transformation of my perspective toward my own

grandfather. The letter undoubtedly revealed the “present” concerns he was going 215

through at the time. The “present” experience written in the letter, of course, is the

“past” of which I even did not know the existence of and would not recognize otherwise.

The letter unfolded my grandfather’s life story as ‘life lived through the past,’ and this opening of the past in the present moment showed me the continuity of the past and present, the past as what Carr (1986) called “ever-changing present.” This sense of continuity, I believe, gives life to any historical research, by bringing us realization that past is not dead but can be called into being with exigency of the present. Certainly, my interviews with the first generation Koreans entailed this nature of unfolding of the past as lived in the present.

I believe, father, your life from now on will be experienced only through stories.

And the ‘gap’—between what I know and don’t know, and stories told and untold about your life—will be something I will consciously try to narrow by my endeavor to learn, not only your own past but also others,’ whose essences of experiences can be shared with yours. It is unfortunate that your life story is conceived of as something ‘over’ in the world, but I hope, as we remember you and share your stories with others, the meaning of your life, as did my grandfather’s, would be transformed from the ‘dead’ as the past to the ‘life,’ so that it can leave message to the future.

**

Atkinson (2002) defines life story as a “way to understand the past and the present more fully, and a way to leave a personal legacy for the future” (p. 125). This means that a life story interview, according to Atkinson, is a telling-act in which one’s past stories are consciously called into being in the present context, in an attempt to record them for the future. In this context, the past, present, and future are consciously 216

aware of as and put on the line of continuity. As such, this telling-act is the site where

these three tenses meet together.

Throughout this project, I experienced this sense of continuity of the past,

present, and future, with the notion of displacement. The word ‘displacement’ here can bear multiple meanings. Let me unpack it from its personal meaning to me. In the personal letter above, I dealt with two persons,’ my father’s and grandfather’s, death.

Strictly speaking, the time sequence of ‘experiencing’ these two family members’ death was opposite. I approached my grandfather’s life story with his letter before my father’s

death. To me, the absence of my grandfather was rather natural, having passed away

when I was so little. Therefore, when his ‘life’ approached to me with the letter, I entered

into the storied life of my grandfather with a new perspective. The death of my

grandfather, in other words, was an entrance to his life. Quite contrary, when my father passed away from a heart attack soon after my return from the field, the meaning of his

‘death’ approached me in a newer perspective. For a while, his death erased every meaning of his life, as if the meaning of death in this sense was the ‘end point.’ For the purpose of this research project, I had to negotiate different meanings of ‘death.’ Ever since then, I displaced my father’s death onto this project.

Displacement, in this personal sense, meant temporal psychological detachment from my father’s death as personal, and metaphorically applying it to communal experience. I re-read every transcript, re-listened to my interview conversations, and studied my field notes with a new glass. In these taped interviews and notes, even “I” as an interviewer was a different person. And, when I applied the perplex meaning of

‘death’—whether it was done emotionally, metaphorically or textually—onto these 217

‘documents,’ I heard voices of death everywhere in them. Many of the life story

interviews along with the on-site conversations, by reflecting each individual’s life

experience, spoke one’s life as the past event within the present context, making it

connected to the future. Death was something very close to these harabojis and halmonis,

both within their stories and within their lives. Importantly, I came to a realization that

through this project to record their footsteps, in a way, I was probably preparing for the

‘communal death’ of this community—the first generation Koreans in Japan.

Indeed, Ruth Behar (1996), in her influential work of writing her ethnographical

endeavor self-reflexively, has dealt with this sense of displacement of feeling on the part

of the researcher. While honestly revealing her struggle of putting her ethnographic work

first to her dying grandfather, Behar made a connection between her grandfather’s

upcoming death and that of the elderly participants of her study, along with the

community that was fading away. On this continuous line between the private and public,

death is discussed as all of the personal, communal, and metaphorical. That is to say, she

found herself asking questions that she feared to ask her own family, and by doing so she studied death as collective experience among the people of her grandfather’s generation.

At the same time, death is metaphorically an issue the town of Santa Maria, as a rural traditional culture in Spain, was experiencing.

Behar (1996) writes on this way of displacing the personal to the communal as follows:

While my own motives were not altogether clear at the time, with hindsight I

have come to realize that my quest to understand “the presence of the past” in

218

Santa Maria was but another link in the parallel quest to recover my own, and

my family’s past. (p.78)

For her study of the town whose culture exists at the border between the old and new, her

own grandparents were a “key link” (p.78). Both physiologically and metaphorically, the

‘death’ was positioned at the binary between the ‘end’ and the ‘beginning’:

Writing history from the perspective of those who are approaching the end of

their lives seemed to me a way of extending those lives, of mourning and

remembering their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and of

escaping and laughing at death. (p. 79)

Toward the end of my project, I also had the clearer sense of the ‘parallel quest’ that I

myself was searching for. To me, her interests in the generation who were “approaching

the end of their lives” seemed grounded in her desire to define their stories as the meeting point where the past, present, and future coexist in a much closer proximity than those of any other populations. As for my case, my own father’s sudden death was a trigger to my

feeling of displacement.

Yet, on a historical level, displacement was at the foundation of the population

that I engaged with. The main purpose of this study was to trace the history of Koreans in

Japan, called Zainichi Koreans, and their displacement was the starting point of their

stories. By focusing on life experiences of first generation Koreans who are still alive and

reside in Japan, I tried to explicate the unique culture of the diaspora community

positioned in a continuum from the Japanese colonization period to post-liberation era.

Accordingly, I posed the research questions for this project:

219

RQ 1: What are some shared life course experiences among the first generation Koreans

in Japan as the population whose lives are conditioned by the colonial displacement, and

how are they narrated by them?

RQ2: How would the first generation Koreans’ stories on their displacement explain their

material and sociopolitical circumstances that were uniquely conditioned by the colonial

history and diasporic experiences?

In this dissertation, I have approached these research questions in multiple

ways—with my autobiographical reflections, with a historical discussion, with a

combined theoretical orientation, and with actual stories. For the purpose of clarification,

and to set up my final discussion, in the following space, I will first summarize how I

approached the issue of displacement as diasporic experiences with these research questions.

In Chapter 1, I opened up this dissertation writing my own narrative. Through my autobiographical reflection on my personal experiences as a Zainichi Korean in Japan and my family background, I have drawn a connection to the theme of this study. I argued, conditioned by the geopolitics of and between Korea and Japan, the history of Zainichi

Koreans certainly can be seen as something related to national politics. However, equating their experiences with the nationally categorized histories—be it “modern

Japanese history” or “Korean national thought”—might miss a slippery gap ‘in-between’ them, within which Zainichi Koreans history of displacement is positioned. In this project, I tried to find the traces of Zainichi Koreans so that I can make sense of ‘where we are’ and ‘what we are’ today through an understanding of the history from a reflective perspective. The nature of this study, therefore, was intersubjective and simultaneously 220 self-reflexive. By asking the first generation Koreans in Japan to tell their own personal history, my attempt was to understand various connections—connections between people’s personal stories and communal stories which, in turn, leads to an analysis of a larger political structure; connection between history in the past tense and the doing of history from a present context; and finally that between embodied experiences and discursive formation of collective history and memory.

In Chapter 2, I discussed a big picture of Zainichi Korean history in the framework of Japanese annexation of Korea, as well as in the post-World War II turmoil and division of the country after 1945. As many stories about displacement represent either processes or products of the nation’s political turmoil, the history of Koreans’ migration to Japan, along with their diasporic lives in Japan, was situated within a dynamic modern national history of the Korean peninsula. In providing an overview of

Zainichi Korean history, I reviewed and discussed several published documents, including visuals and speeches. I have examined the rhetoric of Japanese annexation of

Korea through an analysis of the national ideology represented in it. With the fear of

Western domination, Japan proposed to integrate East Asian nations for the purpose of

“prosperity.” As Weiner (1994) has stated, however, the method of this integration was through an attempt for an “absolute acculturation,” and therefore for Koreans’ part, it meant “the complete abandonment of an independent Korean identity and its replacement by Japanese institution and forms of behavior” (p. 5). Supported by this ideology,

Koreans were integrated into Japan rhetorically as the “Emperor’s children” but realistically, were the nation’s sources of labor. Later in the postwar time, several scholars have problematized the serious human rights violations that were imposed onto 221

the colonized (Hicks, 1994; Horn, 1997; Park, 2005; Shim, 2000; Shin, 1995), among

which migrations and labors enforced on Korean male youths as well as the sexual

slavery system enforced on young female Koreans have been the major focuses of

discussion until today. Needless to say, the displacement of Zainichi Koreans has its

origin in this Japanese annexation period, but to date the ‘ordinary’ stories of

displacement among this population has not been a primary focus of attention.

Therefore, in Chapters 3 and 4, I have argued the theoretical orientation, along with the methodology I employed in this study, as an important defining force in this study. Positioning this study as a communicative inquiry, I tried to find a common ground between theories of rhetorical, narrative, and postcolonial historical inquiry. I have drawn the connection among them in terms of their modes of ‘framing’ the past; in their perspective for history writing as an intersubjective, dynamic mode of inquiry. I share my theoretical orientation with rhetorical history scholars because of their understanding of argumentative forces in writing history (Clark & McKerrow, 1998) as well as of power of writing. By drawing from the rhetorical historical perspective, I acknowledge the connections, rather than the split, in and between finding, analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and creating a text. Next, I rely on a narrative mode of inquiry in terms of making sense of meanings through bits and pieces of storied experiences. I have discussed how ‘Small’ stories and ‘Big’ stories can play a complimentary role (see

Chapters 3, 5 and 6). While ‘Big’ stories emphasize the presence of a bigger frame of reference in their narratives, ‘Small’ stories only imply it with the embodied interactions in the ‘present’ context. Therefore, looking at both ‘Small’ and ‘Big’ stories is to focus on the product as well as the meaning-making processes, while admitting their interactive 222

nature. And finally, a stance that I have drawn from postcolonial studies reacted to the

contextual framework that I discussed in Chapter 2. The term “postcolonial” means to me

the presence of ever-shifting yet never-settling struggles in meaning making among the

once colonized subjects. Therefore, I agree with Shome and Hegde (2002) when they

stated that the ‘post’ of the term ‘postcolonial’ cannot be equated with the meaning

‘over.’ Neither, as Hall (1999) suggests, return the conditions of the ‘post’-colonial

subjects into the pre-colonial state of being. Rather, as Bhabha (1994) posits, the

significance of the term ‘post’ in the postcolonial (be it that of ‘postmodernity’ and

‘postfeminism’) should lie in its “awareness that the epistemological ‘limits’ of th[e]

ethnocentric ideas are also the enunciative boundaries of a range of other dissonant, even

dissident histories and voices—women, the colonized, minority groups” (p. 6). These

boundaries, asserts Bhabha, are “the place from which something begins its presencing”

(p. 7, emphasis in original). There is no doubt that my work in this project has dealt with

the ‘post’-colonial subjects in this way.

As explained in Chapter 4, in this study, I employed a life history interview

approach that was also informed by ethnographic field work. People’s experiences are the

site of meaning-making. For this study, I spent eight weeks doing fieldwork, during

which I met approximately 75 Korean elderly. Throughout this period of time, I

conducted individual recorded interviews with 20 first-generation Koreans who reside in four cities in Japan. I employed a semi-structured and open-structured interview protocol.

That is, I did enter the sites with my interview protocols (see Appendix A), but in many cases questions were answered just by following the participants’ stories in their chronological order. The format of each interview was conversational, and the length and 223

depth of interviews varied. I conducted multiple occasioned interviews with five people,

who were more willing to talk about themselves. In addition, conversation with the

directors and staff of the care-giving centers that I visited, of which two were recorded,

helped me understand background information on each participant and interviewees,

including their family background, way of living, and health-related information. Finally,

my analyses were based on each interview transcript, my fieldwork notes, written both

during interviews and during a post-interview period. Many times, I had to listen to the recorded tapes repetitively to get the tone of each individual’s narrative.

In Chapters 5 and 6, I discussed the collected personal narratives and life stories of the participants of this study. The participants’ narratives were told in both ‘Big’ and

‘Small’ story forms, in which the former meant a more prepared, and closer to an on- stage performance than the latter. For the ‘Big’ stories in Chapter 5, I gave a special focus on the personal stories from the five participants, who I could interview more exclusively multiple times. For the ‘Small’ stories in Chapter 6, I tried to thematize what I heard, learned, encountered, and analyzed from some ‘shared experiences’ among the participants.

The Big and Small stories of the first generation Koreans, as my discussion on the ‘postcolonial’ subjects suggests, witnessed the continuity of colonialism. Their experiences of the forced Japanization—in the methods of changing names, at the educational sites and work place—conditioned many participants’ family lives in Japan.

The consequence of the systematized colonial policies was disruption and loss of “our things” for these Korean families. Importantly, these types of negative feeling as well as the oppressed psychology led these Koreans to create shelter-like spaces for themselves 224

and for their children in postwar Japan. The social segregation for the Korean diaspora

has both been passive and active ways of reacting to discriminations. After spending the

majority of their lives in Japan, once as discriminated “Japanese” and as “foreigners” after the liberation, their awareness to their own social representations and identities are reactive to the sociopolitical conditions that defined their bodies.

The life stories of the first generation Koreans I interacted with are suggestive of the history of colonization, and their acts of telling one’s own standpoint in this history are equally suggestive of the study of history writing. In this closing chapter, I will discuss what I could conceptually and theoretically conclude from these Big and Small stories.

Personal Reflections, Collective Memory and Historicity

The narrative texts of the first generation Koreans in Japan held many people, places, and events. In Kennith Burke’s (1969) pentadic analysis, the scene-agent ratio reveals agency, but as such, the situated nature of the actors in the stories within their sociopolitical contexts implied potential meanings of their actions. And these meanings, as in the form of agencies, are something that would add significance to historical writings. Throughout this project, I tried consciously to be aware of the relationality between personal experience and sociopolitical context as something that suggests the historicity of the participants’ narrated lives. Yet, including these people’s ‘lives’ into the category of ‘history writing’ would depend on how we define the significances of their experiences and memories in relation to what the convention of ‘history writing’ has been. In an attempt to claim the historicity of the narrated as lived in this project, I discuss the ‘relationality’ between the participants’ life course experiences and the 225 history in a collective sense. The three forms of ‘relationality’ I discuss are: that between a person’s direct experience and history; between indirect experiences and history; and between collective memory and history.

Claiming the personal as historical (learning from direct experience of the colonized)

How could one person’s autobiography speak to a larger history? How would a storied self in an autobiography, life history, and/or life story correspond to, or sometimes problematize, a larger social structure? Luckily, these are the questions now asked in historical studies (Carr, 1986; White, 1987), and the historical scholars acknowledge that personal reflection can be a location of inquiry from which socially and historically meaningful texts are produced. Also, from a slightly different perspective, discussions on these questions can be found in postcolonial feminist works (Menon & Bhasin, 1998;

Narayan, 1997; Trinh, 1989) as well as works on social advocacy and activist scholarship

(Benmayor, 1991; Beverley, 2000; Fine, Weis, Weseen, & Wong, 2000). As a feminist understanding of the term “personal is political” suggests, autobiography, personal narrative, oral history, and testimony can all bear sociopolitical and historical rhetorical meanings.

Of course, along with the ‘how’ questions, asking why and for what these inquiries are important, should be a central focus. Claiming the personal as historical, I argue, becomes a central issue with the researcher’s senses of commitment and responsibility. For example, when a person’s experience would voice to the readers as testimony or testimonio, the researcher would bear social responsibility to be a co- interlocutor with the story-teller. According to Beverley (2000), the term testimonio bears heterogeneous nature in itself. “Its unit of narration,” claims Beverley, “is usually a ‘life’ 226

or a significant life experience” (Beverley, 2000, p. 555). What distinguishes a testimonio

from the genre of life history in Beverley’s discussion, however, is the intention of

narrating a subaltern life history:

[I]n testimonio, … it is the intention of the direct narrator, who uses (in a

pragmatic sense) the possibility the ethnographic interlocutor offers to bring his or

her situation to the attention of an audience … to which he or she would normally

not have access because of the very conditions of subalternity to which the

testimonio bears witness. (Beverley, 2000, p. 555)

By telling the life history which otherwise has limited access to the public, a testimonio is a negotiated text between the teller and the listener who, ideally, share the purpose of speaking to a larger audience. Given this committed purpose, claims Beverley, the narrative identities in testimonio seldom are “separate[d] from the subaltern group or class situation that it narrates” (p. 556).

Within the context of historical writing, claiming the personal experiences of those who were poor, colonized, and illiterate as historically meaningful texts is in a way to usurp the “legitimacy” of history texts. Yet, the very notion of this “legitimacy” in history, notes Guha (2002), is by itself about the matter of drawing a boundary. From the perspective of the colonizer, the “World-history” is everything that is written and writable. Thus for them, writes Guha, the history is about those who has writing, and therefore, “the people without writing were [considered to be] people without history” (p.

8). Guha poses moral questions to this colonial claim with the notion of “historicality,” the term that suggests the existence of historiography that have not been reduced into written forms. Guha argues that recovering the past for the colonized is a project done by 227

the colonized. In this project, an effort to make texts with the actually colonized

populations was made by this kind of recognition to recover history of the colonized by

their own words.

Learning from Indirect Experiences: Shaping Familial Memory

Personal narrative can speak to history not only with one’s direct experiences but

also from a position of witness. In both Big and Small stories, the participants shared

their familial stories with me, and by doing so, they spoke for their family members who

were not present or alive. In this recognition for the presence of someone who is not

physically present, as was Behar’s claim earlier, the lives of those whose stories not heard

were extended, called into being within the stories. An implication of this notion that,

memories run through, circulate within family, and pass down to the next generation is

explained well by what Frank (1995) calls the “circle of witness.” As Frank (1995) posits,

“when someone receives the testimony of another, that person becomes a witness”

(p.142), and this communicative action in turn creates an endless circulation of stories among multiple witnesses. Explaining the survival story of a child of a Holocaust survivor, Frank shows an important aspect of testimony in that “none of us can be detached spectators to others’ witness.” The son could “come to terms with his father by eliciting his testimony, recording it, interpreting it, and ultimately presenting it to a broader audience of witness” (p. 142). In this way, a narration of one’s life is

simultaneously a testimony of the lives of related individuals.

Frank claims that this “circle of witness” is postmodern in its imperative. Within this context, the meaning of a testimony is relational, and therefore, “the witness’s uncertainty of what is being received” is an inevitable part in this testimony. “What is 228 certain,” however, is the witness’s “own inescapable place in the circle of testimony.

Testimony is distinct from other reports because it does not simply affect those who receive it; testimony implicates others in what they witness. This reciprocity of witnessing requires not one communicative body but a relationship of communicative bodies” (p. 143, emphases in original).

This ‘related’ nature of one person’s subjectivity is suggestive in understanding postcolonial bodies. Many participants positioned the conditions of their poverty and hardship as the continuous experiences shared with and succeeded from their parents.

And, many people compared their experiences with these people who were dead without being recognized. “There are ashes and bones of many Koreans that were just thrown away,” so claimed Mr. Kim Yong-Soo, who I met at the third field site I visited. He continued, “You should count these people’s lives as the true history of Koreans.”

‘Speaking for others’ (Alcoff, 1991), in recognition for the membership of the struggle, poverty, and hardship as the colonized, was ever-present narrative strategies within the interviews.

Learning from the Retold Experiences: Sharing Collective Memories

Oral history of the participants communicated the popular memories—although it may not be the ‘official’ history—among Koreans in Japan. Other than from their direct and family experiences, many participants emotionally identified their own past with other Koreans in the form of collective memory. History of the colonization was the shared past reality among Koreans in Japan as the story of their origin and displacement, which shaped their social conditions in Japan. In telling about their own past, many participants went beyond their personal experiences. To my questions that asked their 229

individual stories, they sometimes answered in collective forms, such as “Things were

like that in old days” or “we-Koreans all suffered.” Also, without directly experiencing

violence in the post-war turmoil in Japan, stories of murder as what they heard as rumors

shaped some families’ decisions to return to the hometown in Korea. These stories,

having circulated in the form of memories, appeared in personal narratives. In this sense, collective memories are closely related to narrative identities.

Many scholars acknowledge the close relation between memory and communication, admitting the former as a powerful communicative essence that creates sense of connection within a community (Blair, 2006; Bruner, 2000; Gronbeck, 1998;

Hasian & Frank, 1999; Hasian, 2005). Even without sharing their direct experiences, people learn from others’ experiences. Significant experiences, or those that would characterize collective experiences among the majority of a population within the community, are remembered as collective memory. This practice of remembering is a way to recognize history through communication; thus, the scholars of collective memory have shared an understanding that history is socially and communally constructed. This is not to believe, however, that social agents have total power to ‘make up’ history. Rather, a belief that history is a social construction supports an idea that how people try to remember the past collectively would shape the ways in which history is recorded within the community.

Collective memory scholars have studied discursive processes in which meanings of the past are expressed and recorded in societies through various textual forms. One approach to analyze the rhetoric of history is through analyses of verbal texts such as speeches that shape public memory of the past (Bruner, 2000). At the same time, memory 230

scholars also have paid close attention to ways in which rhetorical messages are constructed through visual artifacts such as museums (Blair, 1999, 2006; Prosise, 2003;

Dickenson, Ott, & Aoki, 2006). In other situations, construction of rhetorical meanings comes

from the part of audience (Hasian, 2005; Hasian & Frank, 1999). Studying these works

on sites of memory teaches us both similarities and differences among these scholars

regarding what constitutes an appropriate object of a study and who participates in the

meaning-making process.

In this study, I paid special attention to the orality of history. Collective memories

of the diasporic communities were found within the participants’ personal historical

stories. Their telling bodies, therefore, were the sites of practicing collective memories.

The participants’ stories, both ‘Big’ and ‘Small,’ invited some ‘related others’ through

the form of collective memories. This is how the limited numbers of people’s narratives

could imply the presence of webs of other related experiences, in which the lives of

“those Korean people who experienced the ‘real’ colonial period [and who] are not alive

anymore” (Mr. Kim) are remembered. And, as a person whose family history ‘witnesses’

the bulk of what has been told by these Korean elderly men and women, I committed

myself in telling their story from within the “circle of testimony” as an interlocutor.

Bodies Tell Stories

From Objects of Care to Subjects of Telling

The life stories that I collected revealed a great degree of ‘emotionality.’ However

partial the unfolded life experiences represented the whole realities of their lives, their

narratives seemed to me as each elderly person’s effort to add meaning to the past events

in one’s own life. By the act of telling, it seemed as if they were transforming the values 231 of their lives from being merely functional to something meaningful. Even now, I vividly remember both female and male interviewees’ tears during and after the interviews, expressing the joy of being heard. The “unfolding” of the past did have a transformative power not only to the listener but to the tellers themselves.

The ‘emotionality’ textually embedded within the participants’ narratives can be explained conceptually through the therapeutic nature of oral history (Ramirez-Esparza &

Pennebaker, 2006), the narrative’s transformative functions (Barros, 1998), and the empowering aspect of oral story telling of one’s own life (Benmayor, 1991). When they, whose lives historically have been positioned as powerless through their ethnic, class and/or gendered positionality/s and representation/s, tell their stories with the expectations to be heard, their bodies transform their meanings from the objects of care to the subjects of telling. As the telling subjects, their tone in speaking changes in an empowered way, as the following segment from my last conversation with Mrs. Kim, whose narrative I inserted in chapter 6 in detail:

Min Wha: Thank you so much. I learned so much from you today.

Mrs. Kim: No, no. I don’t know anything, since I couldn’t learn.

Min Wha: That’s not true. I can’t say it well, but I think that each word in your

generation has wisdom. That wisdom probably can only be gained by living your

whole life. I learn a lot from that wisdom.

Mrs. Kim: Yah, you shouldn’t forget that. You are like my grand grand-children.

My grand grandson is in Tokyo, working as a doctor. Young people like you and

him should learn from us and succeed the good hearts to younger generation.

That’s the best thing that we can give. We don’t have any other thing to give. 232

Min Wha: But I think that’s the most important thing.

Mrs. Kim: Yes, the most important.

When they are listened to, their sense of self-negation was transformed into self-

approval. Starting from saying “I know nothing,” Mrs. Kim changed the tone of

speaking into educational, when she said, “you shouldn’t forget that.”

Even without revealing the psychological transformation textually in a clear manner, it can be seen performatively. Telling the stories of their past, many participants cried, as did Mrs. Kanai in the following segment:

Min Wha: How often do you come here?

Mrs. Kanai: Two days in a week. Here, I don’t need to kill myself. (Crying)

Min Wha: I guess you can’t tell your story without tears.

Mrs. Kanai: You’re right. I came here [to Japan] following my sister. But I

couldn’t speak Japanese well, nor did I study at school. Even I wanted to go

back, I couldn’t.

Min Wha: What kind of work have you done?

Mrs. Kanai: I did any kind of job, like selling things on the street. I can’t tell this

because I would cry. Thinking about all the kurou (hardship) I’ve gone

through… My kids know my kurou, so …

The sense of self-pity existed among the participants as the oppressed, whose lives were severely damaged by living as the postcolonial subjects. It is important to note the participants in this study as the muted social group within both Japanese and Korean societies. This is not to trivialize their subject-positions; but rather, it is to recognize their unique position as the “forgotten” populations from the two nations. In many cases, the 233

first generation Koreans’ social positions were challenged by the social disadvantages

they shared. The ethnicity, class, and gender issues bound their material conditions as the

more disadvantaged populations than Japanese citizens. Therefore, sharing their stories

was to open up the voices forgotten in both their ‘home’ and ‘foreign’ countries.

Opening up the stories from the positions of multiply segregated and thus neglected within a society has provocative and transformative power both to the telling selves and the listeners. Etter-Lewis (1991) speaks on this point with a perspective on black women’s experiences in the United States. She states, “articulation of black women’s experiences in America is a complex task characterized by the intersection of race, gender, and social class with language, history, and culture”; therefore, adds Etter-

Lewis, applying the motive and significance of narrative story-telling onto this population, “it assumes added significance as a powerful instrument for the rediscovery of womanhood so often overlooked and/or neglected in history and literature alike” (p.

43). Listening to black women’s stories, Etter-Lewis asserts, is to recognize their life worlds uniquely communicated through the narratives, specifically leading to their sociohistorical roots. At the same time, speaking on themselves with their own language is a way to search for black women’s subjectivity/s. Similarly, for the first generation

Koreans in Japan, speaking on their own lives with their own language was seen to be an act of claiming legitimacy in their lives, however weakly positioned within the society.

Yet, telling was not all the answers I received. With many complex reasons, many people I met voiced their struggle with silence. Because the silence, probably more strongly than telling, challenges the ethos of rhetorical and narrative scholars, thinking about the meaning of silence was important to me. 234

Politics of Telling and Meaning of Silence

“You have not experienced these hardships so you might be curious to hear, but now that I have become close to die, I never want to tell anybody about all of my hard life.” While playing a card game, one grandmother expressed this sentiment to my abrupt and unprepared question of “Could you tell me about your life?” In fact, I knew that I was addressing a wrong question in a wrong context. “This young lady wants to hear about Halmonis’ life experiences.” A chief of the staff interrupted a group of grandmothers who were playing cards in an open tatami room at the corner, and introduced me. And I, even knowing that this was horribly a wrong timing to ask anyone to open up one’s life story, could not undo the ‘offer’ by the chief of the staff. Then my wrong question came out from my mouth.

At the last fieldwork site, I could sense that I was not ‘welcomed’ as a researcher. That care center was open to the outside community, actively appealing about circumstances of first generation Korean halmonis and halabojis. Due to this connection to the outside world, the users are more familiar with visitors. I was referred to this site as the “model case” institution for Korean elderly, whose contribution also has been recognized by outside communities. So, when I first visited the center and explained the purpose of my project to the chief director of the center, she agreed to accept me and introduced me to each staff on the same day. What was interesting and simultaneously challenging to me, however, was that this familiarity let them create a ‘prepared’ attitude toward the visitors. They were either prepared to tell what was ‘supposed to be said’ or determined to shut themselves off from revealing their past. The title given to me, of a

‘researcher who is from the United States,’ acted to distance me from them. 235

The powerful aspect of telling one’s own experiences can be assured by its

refusal. In an article entitled, Silencing historical trauma: The politics and psychology of memory and voice, Ramsay Liem (2007) has revealed the narratives on silence among the

Korean American community regarding their experiences of the Korean War. By interviewing Korean Americans on why they had not told their experiences, he contextualized the reasons behind the silence into “state, community, family, and individual dynamics” (p. 156). Confusions and trauma on parents’ sides, and the fear of asking what their parents’ traumatic past might have been, have created an ‘agreement’ to silence the past. In this sense, “silence is the product of th[e] protective collusion” (Liem,

2007, p. 165).

Therefore, the two seemingly opposite concepts, silence and telling, function as the opposite side of the same coin. According to Adler & Adler (2002), the socially disadvantaged group of people, such as the poor and minorities, are the “people who lack the power to withdraw from researchers,” and therefore, “may simply distrust the intentions and meanings of academic research” (p. 521). As the populations who are distanced from the researcher socially and financially, the poor “still have many reasons to be careful about what social science discovers about them” (Adler & Adler, 2002, p.

521). Because the subjects of a qualitative research are human-beings, and because this

type of research deals with the private sphere of individuals, writing personal stories on

those people whose bodies are vulnerable through their social positions and historical

roots requires careful thought. In this sense, writing through personal experiences would

require enormous challenge, when the act of telling personal stories is at the same time to

reveal one’s shame and regret. And of course, in some cases, silence is powerful as 236 rhetoric in its own right, of which the case of the “Comfort Women” debate, having been revealed after more than 50 years’ silence, is the closest model.

I knew that I myself was a participant in this circle of silence and silencing. The self-reflexivity employed as a core mode of inquiry in this project, ironically, made me commit to this secret circle. In many situations, I learned to see my own vulnerability through encountering others’ vulnerability, of which Ruth Behar (1996) in The

Vulnerable observer self-reflectively assured the importance. In the process of interviewing, transcribing, and analyzing the stories I often witnessed the meeting point between my own and the participants’ vulnerability, and displaced my own vulnerable emotion onto the participants’ stories. The participants’ stories on the past that includes shame and regret, and some ‘behind stories’ of the family lives, were examples of situations in which I struggled with the “crisis of representation.” To what extent am I obligated to reveal personal hardships, trauma, state-induced crimes, regret, irony, and so on that I heard and witnessed? How dangerous it is, if these narratives are not over in one’s life, and the act of telling opens up another set of trauma and hardship in life.

Am I obliged to tell every part of their lives, including these negative feelings? If so, for whom do I try to speak about others’ suffering, and if not, what would be the dangers of omitting these negativities in the narratives for the sake of searching for “good stories?” Linda Alcoff (1991) deals with the first question on the researcher’s responsibility with the notion of “the crisis of representation” in speaking for others, while Fine, et. al (2000) spoke on the latter “for whom” question. All of them assert the moral and ethical responsibility of the researcher in representing others not in the form of withdrawing from them but through their commitment to ethos. ‘Speaking for others’ 237

should be carefully done (Alcoff, 1991). And, avoiding telling about other’s suffering and yet romanticizing it is problematic (Fine, et. al, 2000).

Given the difficulty in linking the personal and historical, I would like to discuss what ‘possibilities’ this study could offer. In doing so, I offer a critical postcolonial perspective in rethinking history through the personal.

Toward Understanding the Rhetoricity of History through Narrativity of Life

A critical understanding on the rhetoricity of history starts from an awareness

on the “possibility of the subjects” (McKerrow, 1993, p. 51) as the tellers and performers

of history. I assert, the most important implication of the project resides in the

intersection between a theoretical issue and a practical one. The critical consideration that

rhetoric/narrative could have a “possibility” to transform problematic power relations

both in our knowledge and in reality radically deals with a practical issue of Korean

diaspora in Japan. This effort was made within a postcolonial contextualization of

history, present and future. It is my argument that by hearing form those who do not appear in history textbooks, thus whose suffering has been negated in Japanese society, a space of sharing could open as a potential site of transforming the meaning for the once

colonized people’s bodies and memories. Yet, it is not to emphasize the subjectivity/s of

the colonized in an ethnocentric way, since this merely brings a new type of division, creating another form of domination. I believe that an analysis within the framework of

‘postcolonial’ should be done in an effort “to re-read colonial relations through different and complex modes” (Shome, 1998, p. 205).

In his work entitled Critical rhetoric and the possibility of the subject, McKerrow

(1993) sets up a question; “to what extent can the subject recapture the center as the 238

originator of thought or action?” (p. 51) McKerrow seeks an answer for this question by

contrasting modern and postmodern notions of the subject. In the modern era, the subject

is understood as “already preexisting” (p.54). The modern notion of subjectivity is thus considered as the “center” of the self, a site of knowing truth. In the modern understanding of the subject and subjectivity rhetoric has been presupposed to have an

ability to affect the audience as an outcome of persuasion. In contrast to this modern

notion of subject, McKerrow articulates “displacement as the key term in the analysis of

the [postmodern] subject” (p. 55, emphasis in original). An important aspect here is an understanding that “displacement” does not mean an absolute “death” of the subject.

From a Foucauldian perspective, the subject has been “removed” from a center of

knowledge and a creator of meaning, but that does not necessarily mean abandonment:

The subject should not be entirely abandoned. It should be reconsidered, not to

restore the theme of the originating subject, but to seize its functions, its

intervention in discourse and its system of dependencies. (Foucault, 1977, p.

137 as cited in McKerrow, 1993, p.56)

The subject, then, should be re-situated in the discursive system, context, and history, within which the representation of the subject emerges. Here, the notion of “rhetorical history” is compatible to the critical rhetorical notion of subjectivity.

Earlier in this project, I addressed “rhetorical history” as a strategic term to emphasize the processes, rather than products, of making a moral claim by revealing, constructing, making sense of, and recording memories of past. Since the subject, as an agent within these processes, is not dead but “decentered,” s/he can serve as both a passive audience of rhetoric and an active agent of radical change. Herein exists the 239

“possibility of the subject” (McKerrow, 1993). The subject is allowed to “constitute” subjectivity within its culture, social system and historicity, but not in a sense as an

“originator” of it. This way, “independence does not constitute removal from dependence” and “the subject, as actor, is not the center of all experience and change; rather, it is constituted as one facet of all the possibilities of change within social relationships” (McKerrow, 1993, pp. 59-60). The possibility of change is in the

“constitution” of subjectivity, or as McKerrow calls it, “self-reflexivity.”

Thus in a critical rhetorical approach to history, the subject is an active agent of social change while being displaced to the position of an object for critique. As

McKerrow concludes:

The speeches are not given by subjects acting as originary beings at the center

of a universe of discourse. Their words do not move outward from the center in

concentric circles. …The invented text is produced by a subject constituted in

and through the same contingent social practices of those for whom the critique

is performed. Hence, it exists as a fragment in its own right. …The goal is to

pull together those fragments whose intersection in real lives has meaning for

social actors—meaning that confines them as either subjects empowered to

become citizens or social actors with a potential to enact new relations of

power. (p. 62)

Subject and its subjectivity are positioned in their constructions, leaving room for a continuous change and critique. Ethos of narrators, along with a purpose of a critic, then, become not for “truth” searching but for temporarily “naming” a certain rhetoric given the contextualization and historicization of the text as well as critics’ own bodies. 240

Hence, the subject and subjectivity of Zainichi Koreans are contextualized in the historical construction of the self and the communities. It is a hopeful as well as a transformative method to situate the subject in a site of continuous change and critique, especially in the context of ever-continuing ethnocentric discrimination and division in

Japan.

With a rhetorical historical, narrative, and postcolonial perspective, history is

dynamically undone and redone. The dynamism suggested through this perspective

speaks to the history as in fixed and official in a relational way. That is, by hearing the

stories on personal as well as collective memories and experiences from the positions of

the colonized, displaced, oppressed, and discriminated, the revealed voices show the potential as texts to negotiate meanings of the past. I hope, throughout my writing in this

dissertation, I have shown some reasons why hearing personalized stories is required as a

postmodern inquiry, and why this is the case particularly in postcolonial studies. Further,

as for the participants of this study, I believe that approaching them and hearing their life stories was meaningful to me, to them, and for the communal good. After speaking with the participants of this study, I would like to argue that individual stories would possibly connect bits and pieces of local stories together. By hearing stories about one culture, one is likely to hear another story relevant in one’s own society. This is how a marginal story from Japan can have potential to open up a discussion among the U.S. readers. Let me

‘close,’ and open a possibility of another dialogue, with the comment from Mr. Kim, one participant of this study:

I suspect that we Koreans share the history of oppression and discrimination

with African Americans in the U.S. The U.S. is a more multicultural nation 241

than here, and I believe that people have better knowledge about the history

of discrimination as well as about cultural minorities and slaveries. I wish you will let them know that a similar thing happened in Japan, by telling the history of Zainichi Koreans. (Mr. Kim, 78 years old male)

242

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adler, P. A., & Adler, P. (2002). The reluctant respondent. In J. F. Gubrium & J. A.

Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of interview research: Context & method (pp. 515-

535). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Alcoff, L. (1991). The problem of speaking for others.Cultural Critique, winter, 1991-

1992. 5-32.

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of

nationalism. New York: Verso.

Anderson, K. & Jack, D. C. (1991). Learning to listen: Interview techniques and analyses.

In S. B. Gluck & D. Patai (Eds.).Women’s words: The feminist practice of oral

history.(pp. 11-26).New York: Routledge.

Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G.., & Tiffin, H. (2000/2007). Post-colonial studies: The key

concepts (2nded). New York, Routledge.

Atkinson, R. (2002). The life story interview. In J. F. Gubrium& J. A. Holstein (Eds.),

Handbook of interview research: Context & method (pp. 121-140). Thausand

Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Barkan, E. (2000).The guilt of nations: Restitution and negotiating historical injustices.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Barshay, A. E. (1988). State and intellectual in imperial Japan: The public man in

crisis. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.

Barros, C. A. (1998). Autobiography: Narrative of transformation. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press.

243

Behar, R. (1993). Translated woman: Crossing the border with Esperanza’s story.

Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston,

MA: Bacon Press.

Benmayor, R. (1991). Testimony, action research, and empowerment: Puerto Rican

women and popular education. In S. B. Gluck & D. Patai (Eds.), Women’s words:

The feminist practice of oral history (pp. 159-174). New York: Routledge.

Beverley, J. (2000). Testimonio, subalternity, and narrative authority.In In N. K.

Denzin& Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.).Handbook of qualitative research. (pp. 555-566).

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London, New York: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. K. (2002). Afterword: A personal response. In L. Hutcheon and M. J. Valdes

(Eds.), Rethinking literary history: A dialogue on theory (pp. 194-204). New

York: Oxford University Press.

Blair, C. (2006). Communication as collective memory. In G. J. Shepherd, J. St. John, & T. Striphas (Eds.), Communication as … Perspectives on theory (pp. 51-59). Blair, C. (1999). Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric's

Materiality. In J. Selzer & S. Crowley (Eds), Rhetorical Bodies (pp. 16-57).

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Bochner, A. P. (1994). Perspectives on inquiry II: Theories and stories. In M. L. Knapp &

G.R. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 21-41).

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

244

Borland, K. (1991). “That’s not what I said”: Interpretive conflict in oral narrative

research. In S. B. Gluck & D. Patai (Eds.).Women’s words: The feminist practice

of oral history. (pp. 63-76). New York: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. &Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago,

IL: The University of Chicago.

Briggs, L. (2002). Reproducing empire: Race, sex, science, and U.S. imperialism in

Puerto Rico. Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA: University of California.

Bruner, M. L. (2000). Strategies of remembrance in pre-unification West Germany. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 86, 86-107. Burke, K. (1969). A grammar of motives. Berkely /Los Angeles, CA: University of

California Press.

Carr, D. (1986). Time, narrative, and history. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Chawla, D. (2006). Subjectivity and the “native” ethnographer: Researcher eligibility in

an ethnographic study of urban Indian women in Hindu arranged marriages.

International Journal of Qualitative Methodology, 5(4), Artile 2. Retrieved March

1, 2008 from

http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_4/pdf/dhawla/pdf.

Chung, C. (1995). Korean women drafted for military sexual slavery by Japan. In K.

Howard (ed.), True stories of Korean comfort women: Japan’s brutal regime.

Seoul: Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.

Chung, M. (2008). Zainichigaikokujin “shougaisha”no nenkinsoshouno

saikousaihanketsu [The final judge on the trial on Zainichi Koreans’ welfare].

Kohuria, 11, 3-8.

245

Chung, S., Inoue, S. &Koh, K. (2006).Tomoniikirushakai:

ZainichiKoreannojinkenwokangaeru. [The society we live together: Thinking the

rights of ZainichiKoreans]. Ikuno-ku, Osaka: KMJ.

Clark, E. C., & McKerrow, R. E. (1998). The rhetorical construction of history. In K. J.

Turner (Ed.), Doing rhetorical history: Concepts and cases (pp. 33-46).

Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Crofts, A. & Buchanan, P. (1958). A history of the Far East. New York: David McKay

Company.

Cumings, B. (1981). Origins of the Korean War, vol.1: Liberation and the emergence of

separate regimes-1945-1947. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendal, Trans.). Barkley, CA:

University of California.

Dickinson, G., Ott, B. L., & Aoki, E. (2006). Spaces of remembering and forgetting: The

reverent eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum. Communication and critical/cultural

studies, 3, 24-47.

Dudden, A. (2005). Japan’s colonization of Korea: Discourse and power. Honolulu, HI:

University of Hawaii.

Ellis, C., &Bochner, A. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity:

Researcher as subject. In N. Denzin. & Y. Lincoln (Ed.s), Handbook of

qualitative research, 2nd ed (pp. 773-768).Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Etter-Lewis, G. (1991). Black women’s life stories: Reclaiming self in narrative texts. In

Gluck, S. B. & Patai, D. (Eds), Women’s words: The feminist practice of oral

history, (pp. 43-58). New York/London: Routledge. 246

Fine, M., Weis, L., Wseen, S. &Wpmg, L. (2000).For whom?Qualitative research,

representations, and social responsibilities.In N. K. Denzin& Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.),

Handbook of qualitative research. (pp. 107-132). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Publications.

Frank, A. W. (2006). Telling the dramas of suffering. (Critical essay).The Hedgehog

Review.8, 7-20.

Frank, A. W. (2004). Asking the right question about pain: Narrative and phronesis.

Literature and Medicine, 23 (2), 209-225.

Frank, A. W. (1995). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness and ethics. Chicago, IL: The

University of Chicago Press.

Freeman, M. (2006). Life “on holiday”?: In defense of big stories. Narrative Inquiry, 16

(1), 131-138.

Gandhi, L. (1998). Postcolonial theory: A critical introduction. NY: Columbia University

Press.

Georgakopoulou, A. (2006). Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity

analysis. Narrative Inquiry, 16 (1), 122-130.

Gergen, M. M. &Gergen, K. J. (2006). Narratives in action. Narrative Inquiry, 16. 112-

121.

Giddens, A. (1986). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.

Barkley, CA: University of California.

Gluck, S. B. & Patai, D. (1991). Introduction. In Gluck, S. B. & Patai, D. (Eds), Women’s

words: The feminist practice of oral history, (pp. 43-58). New York/London:

Routledge. 247

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday.

Gronbeck, B. E. (1998). The rhetoric of the past: History, argument, and collective

memory. In K. J. Turner (Ed.), Doing rhetorical history: Concepts and cases (pp.

47-60). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Gronbeck, B. E. (1975). Rhetorical history and rhetorical criticism: A distinction. Speech

Teacher, 24 (4), 309-321.

Grossberg, L. (2002). Postscript. Communication Theory, 12, 367-370.

Guha, R. (2002). History at the limit of world-history. New York: Columbia University.

Hall, S. (1999). Thinking the diaspora: Home-thoughts from abroad. Small Axe 6. 1-18.

Hallward, P. (2001). Absolutely postcolonial. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Han, M., Singhal, A., Hanaki, T., Kim, D., and Chitnis, K. (2007). Forced invisibility to

negotiating visibility: Winter Sonata, the Hanryu phenomenon and Zainichi

Koreans in Japan. Keio Communication Review, 29, 155-174.

Harter, L. M. (2005). State-induced illness and forbidden stories: The role of storytelling

in healing individual and social traumas in Romania. In L. M. Harter, P. M. Japp,

& C. Beck ( Eds.), Narratives, health, and healing: Communication theory,

research, and practice (pp. 149-168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Associations.

Hasian, M. J. & Frank, R. E. (1999). Rhetoric, history, and collective memory: Decoding the Goldhagen debates. Western Journal of Communication, 63, 95-114. Hasian, M. J. (2005). Authenticity, public memories, and the problemativs of pos- Holocaust remembrances: A rhetorical analysis of the Wilkomirski Affair. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91, 231-264. 248

Hicks, G. (1994).The comfort women: Japan’s brutal regime of enforced prostitution in

the second world war. New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company

Horn, D. (1997). Comfort Women. Endeavors, 1. Retrieved on June 12, 2003 from

http://research.edu/endeavors/win97/comfort.htm/

Hukuoka, Y. (1993). ZainichiKankokucho-senjin: Wakaisedaino identity [Zainichi

Koreans: Identities of young generations]. Chuoku, Tokyo: Chu-ko-shinsho.

Kang, S. (2005). Zainichi: Hutatusunosokokuenoomoi [Zainichi: Longing for the two

“native lands.”]. Bunkyoku, Tokyo: Kodanshashinsho.

Kang, S. (2004) Zainichi.Bunkyoku, Tokyo: Kodansha.

Kim, C. (1994). Zainichitoiukandou: Shinrohakyo-sei [Happiness being Zainichi:

Toward the future of co-existence]. Shinjuku, Tokyo: Sangokan.

Kim, H. (2004). Junjeng-gwayeosung. [War and women]. Seoul, Korea: YeorumEunduk

Kim, I. (1975). Minjok-Tongiljunseonmoonjaeedehayo.[The problems of the national

reunification]. Pyongyang, Korea: ChosonRhodongdangChoolpansa.

Kim, I.(1976). Tennouno guntaito chousen ianhu. [The Emperor’s military and Korean

‘comfort women’]. Chiyodaku, Tokyo: Sanichi Shobou.

Kim, K. (2000). Hanbandouiboondangwajunjeng: Minjokboondangwakookjaekeip,

kaldeung. [The division and the war on Korean peninsula: The ethnical division,

international intervention and conflict. Seoul, Korea: Seoul University.

Kim, Y. &Hida, Y. (1994) (Eds.). Kyouseirenkou, kyouseiroudoushiryoushu[Collections

of forced draft and forced labors document]. Kobe: KoeGakuseiSeinen Center

Shuppanbu.

249

Kim, Y. &Hida, Y. (1993) (Eds.). Kyouseirenkou, kyouseiroudoushiryoushu[Collections

of forced draft and forced labors document]. Kobe: KoeGakuseiSeinen Center

Shuppanbu.

Kim, Y. &Hida, Y. (1992) (Eds.). Kyouseirenkou, kyouseiroudoushiryoushu[Collections

of forced draft and forced labors document]. Kobe: KoeGakuseiSeinen Center

Shuppanbu.

Kim, Y. &Hida, Y. (1991) (Eds.). Kyouseirenkou, kyouseiroudoushiryoushu[Collections

of forced draft and forced labors document]. Kobe: KoeGakuseiSeinen Center

Shuppanbu.

Lee, C. (1999). Modernity, legality, and power in Korea under Japanese rule. In G..Shin

& M. Robinson (Eds.), Colonial modernity in Korea (pp. 21-40). Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University.

Lee, C. (1981). The legal status of Koreans in Japan. In C. Lee & G. De Vos (Eds.),

Koreans in Japan: Ethnic conflict and accommodation (pp. 133-158). Berkeley,

CA: University of California.

Lee, S. & Campbell, K. K. (1994). Korean president Roh Tae-Woo’s 1998 inaugural

address: Campaining for investiture. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 80. 37-52.

Lee, T. (2001). Rhee Syung Man: Sangsildwencarismauibikuk. [Rhee Syung Man: The

tragedy of the lost charisma]. In The South Korean Association of Politics (Eds.),

NambookhanuiChoihojidoja.[The political leaders of South and North Korea].

(pp. 367-396).

250

Lee, Y. (1991). Koreans in Japan and the United States.In M. A. Gibson & J. U. Ogbu

(Eds.), Minority status and schooling: A comperative study of immigrant and

involuntary minorities. New York &Longdon: Garland Publishing.

Lewis, E. G. (1991). Black women’s life stories: Reclaiming self in narrative texts. In S.

B. Gluck & D. Patai (Eds.).Women’s words: The feminist practice of oral history.

(pp. 43-58). New York: Routledge.

Liem, R. (2007). Silencing historical trauma: The politics and psychology of memory and

voice. Peace and Conflict Journal of Peace Psychology, 13 (2), 153-174.

Manning, P. (1986). Hitohito: The war years. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

Maruyama, M. (1964). Gendaiseiji no shiso to koudou.[The modern political thought and

attitudes]. Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo: Miraisha.

McKerrow, R. E. (1989). Critical rhetoric: Theory and praxis. Communication

Monographs, 56. 91-111.

McKerrow, R. E. (1993). Critical rhetoric and the possibility of the subject. In I. Angus &

L. Langsdorf (Eds.), The critical turn: Rhetoric and philosophy in postmodern

discourse (pp. 51-67). Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University

Press.

Menon, R. &Bhasin, K. (1998). Borders & boundaries: Women in India’s partition. New

Brunswick/New Jersey, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Metha, R. S. (1999). Liberalism and empire: A study in nineteenth-century British liberal

thought. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

Miller, R. L. (2000). Researching life stories and family histories: Introducing qualitative

methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 251

Mills, C. W. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

Mink (1970). History and fiction as modes of comprehension. New Literary History, 1

(3). 541-558.

Narayan, U. (1997). Dislocating cultures: Identities, traditions, and Third-World

feminism. New York/London: Routledge.

Narragoa, L. &Cribb, R. (2003) (Ed.s). Imperial Japan and national identities in Asia,

1895- 1945.RoutledgeCurzon Taylor & Francis Group, New Fetter Lane:

London.

NHK (2007, October 8).KitachosenKikokusen: ShirarezaruHanseikinoKiroku.[The

repartriation ship to North Korea: The record unknown for a half century]

[Television broadcast]. Tokyo: NHK.

Oberdorfer, D. (1997). The two Koreas. Indianapolis, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Osaka Kokusai RikaiKyoiku Center (1999) (Eds.). Kikigaki: Zainichi Korean no

seikatushi.[Interviews: Life histories of Zainichi Koreans]. Kita-ku, Osaka: Osaka

Kokusai RikaiKyoiku Center

Park, I. (2005). Zainichi Koreantte Nandennen? [What is Zainichi Korean?] Bunkyoku,

Tokyo: Kodansha.

Park, K. (1992). ZainichiChosenjin, kyoseirenkou, minzokumondai. [Zainichi Koreans,

forced labors, ethnic problems]. Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo: SanichiShobou.

Peterson, E. E. &Langellier, K. M. (2006).The performance turn in narrative studies.

Narrative Inquiry 16, 173-180.

252

Potter, D. M. (1973).The tasks of research in American history.In D. E. Fehrenbacher

(Ed.), History and American society: Essays of David M Potter. New York:

Oxford University Press.

Prosise, T. O. (2003). Prejudiced, historical witness, and responsible: Collective memory

and liminality in the Beit Hashoah Museum of Tolerance. Communication

Quarterly, 51, 351-366.

Ramirez-Esparza, N. &Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Do good stories produce good health?

Exploring words, language, and culture. Narrative Inquiry, 16, 211-219.

Ryang, S. (1997).North Koreans in Japan: Language, ideology, and identity. Oxford:

Westview Press.

Ryang, S. (2000).The North Korean homeland of Koreans in Japan. In S. Rynag (Ed),

Koreans in Japan: Critical voices from the margin (pp. 32-54). New York:

Routledge.

Ryang, S. (2005). Introduction: On Korean women in Japan: Past and present. In J. J.

Kim, Hidden Treasures: Lives of first-generation Korean women in Japan. (pp.

xiii-xxx). Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield Publishers.

Sakurai, A. (2006) Interview no shakaigaku: Life story no kikikata. [Sociology through

interviewing: How to listen to life stories]. Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo: SerikaShobou.

Sakurai, A. & Kobayashi, T. (2006). Life story interview: Shitutekikenkyunyumon. [Life

story interview: An introduction to qualitative research]. Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo:

SerikaShobou.

253

Salazar, C. (1991). A Third World woman’s text: Between the politics of criticism and

cultural politics. In S. B. Gluck & D. Patai (Ed.s).Women’s words: The feminist

practice of oral history. ( pp. 93- 106). New York/London: Routledge.

Schechet, N. (2005). Narrative fissures: Reading and rhetoric. Cranbury, NJ: Associated

University Press.

Shinozaki, H. (1955). ZainichiChosenjin Undo [The Korean Movement in Japan]. Tokyo:

Reibunsha.

Schmid, A. (2002). Korea between empires, 1895-1919. New York: Columbia

University.

Shim, Y. (2000).Chimmookesochungunero: Koonuianboopihejadul [From silence to

testimony: The lives of the “military comfort women” after the liberation].

Chungshin-MoonwhaYungu. [The Cultural Analysis], 23, 115-146.

Shin, G. (1995). Kankokuheigo to dokuritu undo. [The annexation of Korea and

independence movement]. Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo: Rodo-kezaisha.

Shome, R., & Hegde, R. S. (2002). Postcolonial approaches to communication: Charting

the terrain, engaging the intersections. Communication Theory, 12, 249-270.

Shome, R (1998). “Caught in the term ‘postcolonial: Why the “postcolonial” still matters.

Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 15(2), 203-212.

Thomas, J. E. (1996). Modern Japan: A social history since 1868.Hawlow, Essex:

Longman.

Trinh, T. M. (1989).Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism.

Bloomington/Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.

254

Turner, K. J. (1998). Introduction: Rhetorical history as social construction. In Turner, K.

J. (Ed.), Doing rhetorical history: Concepts and cases. (pp. 19-32). Tuscaloosa,

AL: University of Alabama Press.

Ueno, C. (1998). Nationalisumu to genda [Nationalism and gender].Chiyodaku, Tokyo:

Seidosha.

Unno, H. (1995) (Ed.). Nikkankyoyaku to Kankokuheigo: Chosen

shokuminchishihainogouhouseiwotou [The Japan-Korea treaty and annexation of

Korea: Asking the legality of Japan’s colonization of Korea]. Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo:

Akashi Shoten.

Wada, H. (1998). Kitachosen: Yugekitaikokkanogenzai. [North Korea: The present of the

partisan country]. Tokyo: Iwanamishoten.

Wagatsuma, H. (1981). Problems of self-identity among Korean youth in Japan. In C.

Lee & G. De Vos (Eds.), Koreans in Japan: Ethnic conflict and accommodation

(pp. 304-333). Berkeley, CA: University of California.

Weaver, R. M. (1953). The ethics of rhetoric. Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery Company.

Weiner, M. (1989). The origin of the Korean community in Japan 1910-1925. Atlantic

Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International.

Weiner, M. (1994). Race and migration in imperial Japan. New York: Routledge.

White, H. (1980). The value of narrativity in the representation of reality. Critical

Inquiry, 7, 5-27.

White, H. (1987). The content of the form: Narrative discourse and historical

representation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

255

Yoon, K. (2002). Kindai/Datukindai to datushokuminchishugi: Kenkyu no kadai to

houhouronnikawatte. [Modernity/postmodernity and postcolonialism: Suggestions

for future research and methodology]. In International Research Center for

Japanese Studies (ed.), Sekai no nihonkenkyu 2002: Nihon tochikano chosen:

kenkyu no genjo to kadai. [Japanese studies around the world, 2002] (pp. 3-15).

Nishikyo-ku, Kyoto: Dohosha.

Zainichi-Korean Women Council for the Issue of the Drafted Women (1991).Tyosenjin-

Jugunianhu [Korean Comfort women: A perspective from the Koreans in

Japan].Tokyo.

Zainihon Daikanminkoku Seinenkai (1998). AbojiKikaseteAnohinokotowo:

WarewarenoRekishiwoTorimodosu Undo Houkokusho. [Tell us, father, about that

day: A report on the campaign to regain our history]. Minato-ku, Tokyo:

ZainihonDaikanminkokuSeinenkai Chuo Honbu.

Zarefsky, D. (1998). Four senses of rhetorical history. In K. J. Turner, (Ed.), Doing

rhetorical history: Concepts and cases. (pp. 19-32). Tuscaloosa, AL: University

of Alabama Press.

256

APPENDX A: LIFE HISTORY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. When and where were you born?

2. Who were your family members when you were born?

3. How did your family come to live there? (Had your grandparents and their ancestors

also lived there?)

4. Please describe the personalities of your family members.

5. What was your relationship with each of your family members like?

6. What stories about your parents, grandparents, and ancestors have been passed down

to you?

7. What was your childhood like? Please tell me any story from your childhood

memory.

8. What kind of games did you play as a child?

9. What were your favorite songs and music?

10. What type of education did you have?

11. Please tell me any story from your school life.

12. What type of event most impacted your childhood? Did that event have a direct

impact on your family?

13. How did you (or your family) come to move to Japan (which prefecture)?

14. How old were you (or your parents) when you (or they) came to Japan?

15. What made you come to Japan? Was the decision-making voluntary or forced?

16. What was your first impression of Japan?

17. How did you live in Japan? Please describe your living condition in Japan.

18. What was your Japanese name and how was it given to you? 257

19. What do you know about your Japanese family surname?

20. Did you speak Japanese? How did you learn Japanese? (If she or he is second

generation, ask how s/he leaned Korean)

21. What are some stories that would describe your life in Japan until the liberation?

22. What made you (or your parents) stay in Japan after the liberation?

23. Have you tried to go back to Korea?

24. Has any of your family members returned to Korea?

25. If you have any family member living in Korea (either South or North) what are their

lives like?

26. What is your nationality, and how has (or has not) it changed since the country’s

liberation?

27. What was, and is, your social affiliation (i.e. Chongryun—The pro North Korean

group, or Mindan—The Pro-South Korean group, or none of them)? Please describe

your relationship with that particular organization. Or if not, why did you not choose

any of these?

28. What was you and your family’s political affiliation in Japan?

29. When and where did you get married?

30. Please describe about your spouse.

31. What kinds of decision-making did you and your spouse have to make in terms of

education for your children?

32. Looking back upon your own life, when and/or what do you think was the biggest

turning point for you, and why?

33. What have been your feelings about being a Korean in Japan? Does it mean pride or 258

hardship?

34. What are some things that you want others to remember about you?

35. Please describe your feelings for North Korea, South Korea, and Japan.

259