Thoughts on Korea and Discrimination

In a post I made to J-List’s Facebook page about Tokyo winning the 2020 Olympics, one reader from South Korea posted a comment saying that he hoped Japan would not show discrimination to Koreans during the games. I was surprised at his comment — while there’s no such thing as a country totally free from discrimination, the Japan I see every day is certainly not that kind of country. The second largest ethnic group in Japan are zainichi (“residing in Japan”) Koreans, who were born in Japan and often don’t speak more than a few words of Korean but who for historical and cultural reasons choose to maintain South or North Korean citizenship and passports. The Japan I see is very sensitive to criticism about how this group is treated and has tackled issues important to them, such as removing the old rule that anyone taking Japanese citizenship also adopt a Japanese name (which would be unacceptable to Koreans) and removing fingerprints from the foreign registration cards all foreigners carry. Our prefecture of Gunma even provides funding to two North Korean private schools which display pictures of Kim Jong-un in classrooms and indoctrinate their students against Japan, though some other prefectures decline to extend this funding to similar schools. If there’s a discrimination problem between Japan and Korea, maybe Koreans — the ones in Korea, I mean, since zainichi living here are essentially Japanese with a heightened appreciation for kimchee — should look in a mirror. They’ve created a culture of hatred for Japan that goes beyond what may have once been appropriate based on history, obsessing over every misdeed done to them in TV dramas and encouraging their children to create terrible anti-Japan art. (Amazingly, South Korea has convinced itself that it hates Japan more it hates North Korea, a country that randomly kidnaps and/or kills its citizens.) Maybe for the sake of peace and commerce, South Korea could lighten up a little, and realize that nothing good can come from poisioning future generations.

Hoping for Happier Times between Japan and Korea