Koreans in Japan Targets of Hostility

She was riding the morning train to school when the middle-aged Japanese man came up behind her and slashed her traditional Korean uniform. She kept her mouth shut because she was afraid he would attack her more if she screamed.

But the 11th-grader could not hide her terror as she described her experience on national television Wednesday. “I was so scared,” she recalled. “I couldn’t say anything.”

Her mother, also interviewed, declared in anguish, “I’m worried that the next time it will be a threat to my daughter’s life.”

As tensions escalate over the international standoff with North Korea over inspection of its nuclear facilities, the fallout is affecting a vulnerable target in Japan: the 700,000 Koreans here, especially the estimated 200,000 supporters of the Communist regime of Kim Il Sung.

The pro-Pyongyang Koreans have been thrust into the spotlight over claims they supply as much as $600 million in money and materiel that may have helped North Korea’s nuclear program. Japanese police are bearing down on them as possible terrorist agents; some Japanese worry they may carry out Kim’s threatened “declaration of war” in Japan should the U.N. Security Council later this month approve sanctions, which Tokyo has pledged to support.

The fear and distrust of Koreans here has been heightened by sensational reports of 600 North Korean spies in Japan, of mysterious radio waves broadcast to Japan from Pyongyang every night to transmit marching orders, of secret money flows and of elaborate espionage rings.

As a result, some Japanese are using the crisis to give vent to anti-Korean feelings through a growing number of hate crimes and protests. More than isolated events, the harassment, Koreans say, underscores the entrenched animosity they have experienced since their people began migrating--or were conscripted--for work after Japan colonized Korea in 1910. Most Koreans arrived here between 1920 and 1944 and their offspring have stayed through postwar repatriation waves.

Since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, their image and status in Japan have improved considerably, Korean officials say. Korean traditions--from language study to dining on their spicy foods, such as pickled vegetables known as kimchi -- are gaining wider acceptance in Japan. But Koreans say they still suffer discrimination in jobs and housing, education and marriage.

Choe Kwan Ik, spokesman for Chongryun, the pro-Pyongyang residents group in Japan, said: “Historically speaking, in Japanese society there has been a strong bias and prejudice toward Koreans. Each time something happens on the Korean peninsula, you will see this kind of aggravation.”

Since April, at least 20 students--mostly female--attending pro-Pyongyang schools in Japan have been terrorized by skirt slashings, name-calling, beatings and theft, Chongryun said. A Korean boy in Osaka was riding his bike home when five Japanese students threw rocks at him and shouted, “We will kill Koreans!” The group also reports a rise in anti-Korean graffiti.

Last week, about 1,400 Kyoto police raided a North Korean school and 26 Chongryun offices and homes on the pretext that the group had failed to notify the city about a land deal. After a 10-hour search, police admitted they had erred and the transaction had been properly reported. But that did not stop officials from confiscating boxes of documents that Chongryun says detail the group’s finances and personnel.

Although Japanese authorities have denied having political motivations and say officers made an honest mistake, “it’s quite apparent that the police wanted inside information about our organization,” Choe said. “It’s quite obvious that they are trying to suppress our organization.”

Privately, some Japanese officials say the alleged threat posed by Koreans here is exaggerated.

On the controversial issue of remittances of money and materiel to Pyongyang, for instance, Japanese sources say the amount seems to have dropped recently. The widely reported figure of remittances of $600 million to $800 million is based on a 1990 estimate of 15,000 visitors each year to Pyongyang hand-carrying $30,000 per person, in addition to bank transfers and other financial aid.

But Japanese sources say the latest figures indicate the remittances may be as little as $100 million. They speculate that Koreans in Japan have reduced sums they are sending home because of nervousness over the political furor, the recessionary pinch in their own finances and a reported order from Pyongyang not to send money directly to relatives but to the government.

Chongryun itself says the contributions amount to only $23 million and that the number of visitors to Pyongyang has dropped from 8,691 in 1992 to 5,157 last year. “Our businessmen have been hard hit by the collapse of the (Japanese) economy,” Choe said. “Who dares send money free of charge?”

Japanese economic sources also say that Koreans in Japan have in the last year drastically reduced their business investment, which had provided critical machinery and equipment to Pyongyang.

Japanese officials are divided on how great a security risk Chongryun is. One police source said Japanese radical organizations pose a greater threat than Chongryun, whose members, when compared with the group’s founders, are younger, less nationalistic and more assimilated.

But others dispute that assessment and say Chongryun members will be forced to cooperate in acts of terrorism, because Pyongyang holds their relatives hostage in North Korea.

No one knows that better than individuals like the frail woman who showed up earlier this year at a Tokyo meeting that aimed to aid North Koreans with stranded relatives. In a tearful interview, the woman, who gave only her Japanese surname of Yamada, said her elder brother, a biology professor, had repatriated to North Korea in 1961 at age 23.

Dazzled by Pyongyang’s propaganda depicting North Korea as a paradise for Koreans, he was one of more than 90,000 Koreans who repatriated from Japan, mostly in the 1960s. “He wanted to be a bridge between Japan and Korea,” Yamada said. “But once he arrived he found there were no microscopes, no books. There was no milk for newborn babies.”

Over the next few years, his parents, at his request, sent him--via the Chongryun organization--science books, research equipment, clothes and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, Yamada said.

But six years after he left, they got their last letter from him, saying, “I can’t live like this any longer.”

The demands for money from Chongryun continued, Yamada said. “They would promise if we donated money, my parents would be permitted to go to North Korea and visit and his treatment would improve.” And after he stopped writing, officials told them they would investigate his case if donations continued.

Eventually, Yamada and her family learned he had been sent to “something like a prison” and died. Now she is driven by a promise to her dying mother that she would search for his wife and three children, still believed alive in North Korea.

The discrimination that led Yamada’s brother to repatriate to North Korea still exists, Koreans say, noting a history of ugly incidents. In 1990, scandals involving Korean-owned pinball parlors prompted an outbreak of hostility; there were earlier problems, after the November, 1987, bombing of a Korea Air jet by North Korean agents off the coast of Burma (now Myanmar). Such harassment dates to 1923, when the Great Kanto Earthquake set off rumors that Koreans were poisoning water supplies. The tales instigated mob violence that left 6,000 Koreans dead.

Koreans here say they also suffer social and economic discrimination. Although more big Japanese companies are hiring Koreans--including the Bank of Tokyo, trading giant Mitsubishi and Yamaichi Securities Co.--most still work in small businesses, such as restaurants or pinball parlors, because they cannot easily get jobs in major Japanese firms.

Reiko Lee, 38, said she never personally felt discrimination because she attended Korean schools in Japan and generally associated with other Koreans.

But she said she has no expectation that her three children can land jobs with major Japanese firms or enter top Japanese universities. The Ministry of Education still does not allow graduates of Korean schools in Japan to enter national universities.

Lee laments that her Korean education at the Chongryun-sponsored school taught her ideology but few useful skills for succeeding in Japanese life. “I feel I am an incomplete person,” she said.

Many Koreans also complain that they are ineligible for pensions, voting rights and employment as public school teachers and government workers. Discrimination is not the only reason: Japanese citizenship is a requirement and most Koreans do not naturalize, even though eligible to do so.

Legally, the Japanese government settled the major outstanding issue for Koreans here in 1991 when it extended the right for their people--many technically stateless--to live permanently in Japan under Korean citizenship. That status had been granted only to first-generation Koreans, not their descendants. (Unlike the United States, citizenship is automatically granted only to those with a Japanese parent.)

Although some Korean activists are pressing on other issues, such as the right for non-citizens to vote, others are being lulled into the increasingly comfortable life in Japan. As one indication, more Koreans are naturalizing as citizens: 7,698 in 1993, compared to 4,759 in 1989.

Chiaki Kitada and Megumi Shimizu of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.