Portraits of North Korea’s late leaders hang proudly in the classrooms of the Korean High School in Tokyo, where the recent surge in tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme have seen faculty and staff subjected to death threats.
It is one of 60 so-called ‘pro-Pyongyang’ schools in Japan catering to an ethnic Korean community that has maintained a link to North Korea despite never living there.
There are 500,000 ethnic Koreans in Japan — mostly descendants of civilians taken from their homes during Japan’s colonisation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 until Tokyo’s defeat in WW II in 1945.
The division of the peninsula into North and South and the 1950-53 Korean War divided the community. Schools like Korean High emerged with backing from pro-North organisations and Pyongyang funding.
They continue to teach Korean language and history under the guidance of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, which acts as the North’s de-facto embassy in Japan in the absence of formal diplomatic relations.
Ethnic Koreans have long suffered discrimination in areas like employment and social welfare, and principal Shin Gil-Ung said anger over North Korea’s nuclear programme has only made things worse.
“Every time news (about North Korea) breaks, we get anonymous calls threatening to bomb the school or kill students at a nearby station,” Shin said. Japan has been at the sharp end of recent provocations from Pyongyang. With Pyongyang threatening to “sink” Japan into the sea, the sense of anxiety has left many ethnic Koreans feeling conflicted — especially the younger generation.
One Korea High student, 17-year-old Hwang Song-Wi, says he watches the news with “mixed feelings”, and that he both “trusts and doubts” reports from both sides in the crisis.
Ri Chun-Hui, a Tokyo-based lawyer, said the anger directed at his community as a result of Pyongyang’s provocations are nothing new — noting a similar backlash that followed the abduction of a number of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents in the late 1970s and early 80s.
For Korean parents in Japan who want their children to learn the Korean language and history, a ‘pro-Pyongyang’ school is virtually the only option. “Because they are not Japanese, I want my children to go to a Korean school... and learn the language and the ethnic spirit,” said Hwang’s mother, Oh Jong-E. — AFP
Harumi Ozawa
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