Attempt to Challenge Japanese Law Rebuffed

Choi Sun-Ae’s attempt to challenge a Japanese law requiring the fingerprinting and registering of “foreigners” was rebuffed Tuesday when airline officials at Los Angeles International Airport refused to allow her to board a flight to Tokyo.

Choi, 28, is one of an estimated 20,000 Japanese-Koreans who have refused to be fingerprinted in the 1980s since a protest movement began. Koreans, numbering about 700,000, are by far Japan’s largest ethnic minority group.

The graduate student had chosen Tuesday to return to Japan because the fingerprinting law has been liberalized somewhat to require a resident alien to be fingerprinted only once in a lifetime, instead of once every five years. Since Choi had already been fingerprinted twice, she said she hoped the government might alter its position if she were to return the day the new law took effect.

Because of her prior refusal to be fingerprinted, Choi’s alien residence certificate was taken from her the day she left Japan in 1986 to fulfill a years-long dream to come to the United States to study piano at Indiana University. She was told that day that she had no permit to reenter the country and might be unable to do so. She has a lawsuit pending in Japanese courts protesting the action.

When Choi tried to get back her alien certificate, she was refused. She said her father told her Sunday that officials would grant her only a “special stay” visa of the sort granted to exchange students and missionaries. As a matter of political protest, she rejected that offer.

Choi went to the airport with only her original Korean passport Tuesday and hoped she would be allowed to return home without an entry permit.

But a Singapore Airlines clerk, acting on the advice of the Japanese consulate, refused to let her board the flight.

Choi and her supporters said they plan to continue to protest the law, perhaps at the United Nations.

“For us this is an issue much like the issue of apartheid that faces the South African government,” said Rev. Dong Gun Hong, minister of the Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, who ministers to a Korean congregation.