Japanese authorities have raided the offices of Chongryon, a Korean residents association and the home of one woman in connection with the abduction of two Japanese children in 1974.
-
English Books on Korea... and More!
-
Visit My Brother's Film Review Site
11 Comments
Chongryon is a Korean residents association loyal to North Korea. 25% of about 600,000 Koreans in Japan belong to Chongryon. Their kids go to schools run by Chongryon where they are brain-washed. That is why they are still loyal to North Korea although they have free access to the information on what is going on in North Korea. Chongryon should be banned and their schools should be closed.
And all the NK residents shouted “Get out of here! Human rights! Human rights!”
I really want to know how they think about the human rights in North Korea.
I was at a beer festival in Osaka a couple of years ago and ran into a couple of zainichi chicas at the Korean booth (they were selling Exfeel; ack!) and asked if they had gone to Chongryon schools. They had, but they were in no way beholden to Little Elvis by any means. You can try brainwashing all you want, but to someone growing up in a place as capitalistic as Japan, a tinpot commie personality cult won’t get a whole hella lot of traction.
“I really want to know how they think about the human rights in North Korea.”
Actually, in the 90’s, they were worried that the UN would send in peace keepers as it did in Kosovo to prevent human rights abuses, so they tried everything they could to divert our attention away from its abuses. In fact, it’s quite possible that everything North Korea has done since the mid 90’s was part of a strategic effort to divert our attention away from its human rights abuses. You could say they were testing the waters when they sent the subs and launched a missile over Japan. Once it was clear to them that the US, Japan, and South Korea would not retaliate, they continued to raise the ante. Before you know it, nearly 15 years has by and negotiations are now concentrated on getting concessions from North Korea on disarmament. Human rights abuses? Peace keepers? We’ve got bigger problems to deal with. They have the bomb.
It’s amazing Japan even allows that group to run a school–it’s like if the U.S. let Pakistan open “al Qaeda University” in America.
“Chongryon should be banned and their schools should be closed”
Well obviously NOT in a democratic and free society, having free speech and freedom of assembly, and a right to an education, which Japan does. Tell us, tocchin, which form of dictatorship are you recommending? Actually, even Korea may not have these things in full yet, due to its Park Chung-hee era National Security Law, but Japan moved beyond that stage a long time ago. Chongryun has been allowed to operate since it was founded in 1955. It still perplexes many of course and there are plenty in Japan who exercise their freedom to hate it. But the current police crackdowns can be seen as official trumped up harassment in that vein (hey, the statute of limitations for alleged crimes ran out decades ago… and NK citizens going to the DPRK is not a crime or “abduction” by any reasonable definition), but let’s not make Japan into more of a right-wing dictatorship than it is already! You will have to wait for Abe’s new constitution to do that.
I also would dispute your characterization of Zainichi Koreans as “brain-washed” on the whole. How many do you actually know? Most of the ones I know loath the Kim regime and are waiting for it to collapse and become free and prosperous, rather than the starving hell they know it to be. A shrinking minority are quite zealous ideologues. Most are concerned with human rights, particularly in Japan, and want their kids to have a Korean ethnic identity. But the truth is that they ALL have more free access to information than even South Koreans and obviously more freedom to decide anything than folks in the DPRK. Think about it. In Japan they have no limits on media, books, internet, or THOUGHT. There is no blocking of pro-North websites or books, as there is in South Korea. Everybody is free to read, think, and decide what they want. I’d like to keep it that way, and instead of rounding up and arresting ethnic Koreans, sending them “home,” or persecuting them in other ways, how about using FREE SPEECH to debate them on actual issues and persuade them to give up misguided politics, or working to ensure that Japanese schools someday become more acceptable to the majority by teaching something closer to the honest truth about history?
Uri Onara:
Chongryon AND democracy? I hadn’t thought of the two going together myself. The U.S. has a law against sedition which which was used against some Communist leaders back in the 1960, so I don’t see any contradiction in a democracy cracking down on it’s enemies. No university accepts a diploma from a Chongryon school. Nor does learning how to worship Kim Jung-il qualify you for a job in a the mainstream economy. They students are basically being trained to be gangsters, so IMO these schools are a form of child abuse. Every state in the U.S. has regulations governing private school teaching credentials, curricula, and so forth. Chongryon is part of a deal the Japanese politicians made with the Yakusa. A journalist in Japan did an expose a few years back about how Japanese landlords and lenders hire people like this to evict tenets and beat up deadbeats.
This will answer some questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongryon
This will answer some questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongryon
.
This might answer some questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongryon
Sorry for the double post, crazy error message and all!
One Trackback
[...] Chongyron headquarters in Tokyo suggest that Japan is likely to resist American pressure (ht: The Marmot). Those raids could reveal new evidence of significance to this [...]