Park Ji-won is a writer for The Korea Times who has been covering a wide range of topics from Korea’s culture to its politics. An avid journalism enthusiast to the core, Ji-won brings a thoughtful and unique perspective to every topic she covers. On weekends, you'll often find her contemplating life’s purpose on a yoga mat — with a cup of quality tea in hand. A native Korean speaker by birth and fluent in English through her work, she went to college in Japan and is learning Chinese and French — hoping to add Polish, Russian and Thai to the mix.
Korean residents in Japan suffer anti-Korea sentiment amid trade tensions
President Moon Jae-in, right, shakes hands with a participant at a meeting with Korean residents in Japan, Osaka, in this June 27 file photo. Korea Times file.
By Park Ji-won
By Park Ji-won
More Koreans living in Japan are expressing worries about reigniting anti-Korea sentiment amid worsening South Korea-Japan relations, and are calling for the government to build friendly relations with Tokyo.
“One of our restaurants located in Shinokubo, a district known as Tokyo's Koreatown, was packed with customers last year. But now, its numbers have largely dropped during weekdays,” said a 35-year-old Korean who works for one of chain restaurants in the Tokyo neighborhood.
“The company has seen sales drop and is holding frequent meetings with its employees to look for ways to find a breakthrough for the current situation,” he said.
There could be many reasons behind the decrease in sales at the restaurant, but he pointed to anti-Korea sentiment as a possible major factor. Still, it is not a general issue in the area; many Korean restaurants and shops selling Korean products are crowded with comparably young Japanese customers aged in their teens and 20s, insiders say. But many workers there are paying extra attention to the fallout from the ongoing spat over the trade restrictions Japan imposed against South Korean companies.
It is not the first time for shops in the area to face such difficulties caused by the troubled relations between South Korea and Japan. In 2012, when then President Lee Myung-bak visited Dokdo islets, anti-Korea sentiment emerged, freezing the market there and provoking extreme-right wing activists' anti-Korea protests.
As well as newcomers to Japan, South Koreans who moved there in the late 1980s and ethnic Koreans living in Japan are also worried about the current sour relations evoked by the Korean Supreme Court's ruling in October that ordered Japanese firms to compensate South Korean victims who were forced to work for them during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
Ethnic Koreans in Japan are largely divided into two: the Korean Residents Union in Japan (Mindan), an organization with close ties to South Korea, and Chongryon, or the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, an organization with connections to North Korea. Most of them, or 292,878, hold special permanent resident visas.
Some 452,701 people with South Korean nationality are living in Japan as of June 2018, according to Japan's Ministry of Justice, which includes ethnic Koreans belonging to Mindan. A total of 30,181 people hold Chosen-seki status, which means they lack South Korean or Japanese citizenship but live in Japan on a special permanent residency visa.
Regardless of their ideological orientation, ethnic Koreans there have expressed concern about the trade restrictions and discrimination against them which is expected to surface in the future.
One of key officials in Mindan, who declined to be named, said, “Many ethnic Koreans in Japan related to Mindan criticize the Moon Jae-in administration for the current situation. Both Seoul and Tokyo are in a constant low-level battle. Ethnic Koreans are caught in the fight and suffer from it.”
A fourth-generation ethnic Korean with Chosen-seki status said, “There were constant anti-Korean rallies to spread hate speech near high schools for ethnic Koreans in Tokyo. Luckily, the Tokyo metropolitan government has stopped it but many are still worried about the situation and afraid some serious incidents could happen in the community.”
It is nothing new for the ethnic Korean community to be afraid of being a target of ultra-right activists whenever the neighboring countries' diplomatic relations worsen.
An ultra-right group known as Zaitokukai opposes what it says are privileges for Korean residents in Japan, often taking to the streets near schools for Koreans throughout Japan since around 2006. At these rallies, some participants have called Koreans “cockroaches” and shouted “Kill ethnic Koreans.”
More Japanese city governments are introducing ordinances to ban hate speech against the minorities since the Japanese government passed its anti-hate speech bill in 2016, but in reality, the perpetrators are rarely punished for their hate speech or violent acts.
Meanwhile, many South Koreans working for Japanese firms in Japan feel there is no visible discrimination against them and cultural exchanges between the two countries remain active.
“A Korean restaurant that I went to yesterday in Akasaka, central Tokyo, was full of people. One of my Japanese friends is sad about failing to go to a fan meeting of BTS,” a 33-year-old South Korean who works for a Japanese entertainment firm said.
“I don't see any huge differences in ordinary lives maybe because I don't work in a company which runs a business related to South Korea,” a 34-year-old South Korean who works for a Japanese headhunting company said.
An alliance of South Korean civic organizations related to forced labor victims and ethnic Koreans in Japan criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration for endangering peace in East Asia by taking the retaliatory move against Seoul, urging it to stop imposing tightened economic regulations and compensate the victims.
Ethnic Koreans living in Japan have urged the two countries to settle the issue as early as possible and build cooperative relations with each other.
Yeo Geo-ni, the chief of Mindan, said during a meeting with President Moon Jae-in in Osaka last month that “South Korea-Japan relations can be a matter of life and death directly influencing Koreans living in Japan. There would be ups and downs in relations as the two are neighboring countries, but they should hold hands together for the future.”
Oh Yong-ho, the chief of Mindan's Osaka branch, said, “The worsening bilateral relations will largely affect ethnic Koreans in Japan. There will be no development in the ethnic Korean communities in Japan without building friendly relations between Seoul and Tokyo.”