From: Majordomo@guardian.co.uk Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 4:39 PM To: Bove, Roger Even Subject: Majordomo file: list 'guardian-weekly' file 'gw-international/2003.9.7/200309042501.txt' -- Le Monde / Where Koreans put a common culture before ideological differences / Philippe Pons in Osaka Where Koreans put a common culture before ideological differences Philippe Pons in Osaka "There's no 38th parallel here," said the cafe owner, referring to the latitude of the demarcation line between the two Koreas, the cold war's last remaining border. In the working-class district of Tsuruhashi, in Osaka, Koreans from both north and south live on neighbourly terms with each other.Everyone knows everyone else, shops at the same shops and consults the same fortune-tellers. There are more and more marriages between the two communities. When the police pursue an illegal Korean immigrant, everyone closes ranks on the grounds that the person concerned is "a compatriot". Life in Tsuruhashi reflects the complexity of the ties between members of Japan's 650,000-strong Korean minority, who broadly belong to two organisations, Chosen Soren (pro-north) and Mindan (pro-south). Chosen Soren, which was for a long time a monolithic organisation loyal to Pyongyang, is now in total disarray. Its divisions mirror the crisis of a regime at bay and a disintegrating country whose inhabitants have to endure terrible hardship. Ever since North Korea admitted in September 2002 that its agents had kidnapped 11 Japanese nationals two decades earlier, members of Chosen Soren have suffered from mounting discrimination and their children come in for more bullying than ever. On August 25 a homemade bomb placed in front of the organisation's Fukuoka branch was defused. That same day the ferry that sails between Japan and North Korea was greeted by hostile demonstrators. Above all, many North Koreans in Japan feel at odds with Chosen Soren. Its long-concealed internal dissensions are now plain for all to see, and despite its appeals to the patriotism of North Koreans, more and more of them are taking out South Korean nationality. The meeting held in February to support the families of the kidnapped Japanese, organised in Osaka by Koreans from both north and south, revealed the rifts within Chosen Soren. Paek Song-Bo, president of a local branch, apologised to relatives of the victims on behalf of those, like himself, who had refused to believe that their country could commit such an act. Until the end of the 80s Chosen Soren, which claims to have 56,000 members and 200,000 sympathisers, was a highly politicised organisation cemented by a powerful sense of national identity. It succeeded the League of Koreans Residing in Japan (Joryun), which had ties with the Japanese left and was banned during the "anti-Red purges" initiated by the American occupying forces at the end of the 40s. Chosen Soren consists of a confederation of 12 organisations (such as women's and youth associations, and chambers of commerce). In the 60s and 70s Pyongyang financed new schools and a university where classes, in the Korean language, showcased the national culture. At that time its allegiance to Pyongyang was total. Membership is not dependent on Koreans' geographical origins. Although the vast majority of Koreans in Japan are from South Korea, many southerners joined Chosen Soren in order to retain their sense of identity, yet did not espouse its ideology. Mindan, the southerners' rival organisation, has kept a much lower profile. The two associations were at daggers drawn during the cold war. Membership was a patriotic decision on the part of a generation whose parents had been deported to Japan: between 1910 and 1945, when Korea was a Japanese colony, 2.5 million Koreans worked as slave labourers in Japan. In their view the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (PDRK) embodied the Korean identity at a time when the south was ruled by pro-American dictatorships. At the end of the 50s, more than 100,000 Koreans living in Japan needed little prompting to emigrate to the "promised land". Those who remained behind in Japan were considered to be "overseas compatriots": they formed the largest North Korean minority abroad, except for the community living in China near the North Korean border. Today that ideological and patriotic edifice has begun to crack. A gulf has opened up between Chosen Soren and its rank and file, as well as between generations. Regional chambers of commerce and women's asso ciations are scathing in their criticism of the organisation's leadership. Even its official publication, Chosen Shinpo, apologised for having long denied Pyongyang's involvement in the kidnappings. Parents have demanded that education be depoliticised, and portraits of the successive Korean presidents, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, have been removed from schools. "We now look at the PDRK more critically," says Hong Gyong-ui, president of the Association of Human Rights Jurists in Chosen Soren's Kansai branch. "After the kidnappings, we discovered that we, the children of the victims of Japanese colonisation, were the oppressors. We want to get rid of attitudes inherited from the cold war, but the Chosen Soren leadership is too rigid. We want to forge an identity for ourselves that is independent of Pyongyang." That said, North Koreans remain nationals of a country that is not recognised by Japan, do not have passports and remain the victims of deeply rooted discrimination. The need to maintain networks of solidarity and to preserve their Korean-language education system is now the chief motivation for not leaving Chosen Soren. August 27 The Guardian Weekly 20-3-0904, page 25