JAPANESE governments’ CONTINUED but HIDDEN COLONIAL DISCRIMINATIONS against KOREANS

Almost the whole world, except a very few populations around the globe, seem DO NOT KNOW anything about the consecutive JAPANESE governments’ CONTINUED but HIDDEN COLONIAL DISCRIMINATIONS against certain groups of KOREAN PEOPLE for over 60 years.

Not only those world populations but also even many Koreans themselves both in South and about 8 million Koreans in overseas’ communities around the world seem do not know either about it in depth.

<##IMAGE##> In fact, neither most Japanese population, too, seemed to have known about their own governments’ CONTINUED DISCRIMINATIONS against Koreans, PARTICULARLY against those about A HALF MILLION KOREANS (in 1940s and 50s), called “Chongryon” people in Japan.

The Chongryon means a nationwide organization in Japan which has been persistently nationalistic, i.e., anti-imperialistic, self-determined and independent Korean organization which has identified their national affiliation not with Japan but Korea, particularly with the North.

The history of JAPANESE governments’ CONTINUED but HIDDEN COLONIAL DISCRIMINATIONS against KOREAN PEOPLE for over 60 years is PARTICULARLY TRUE in the case of 25 million population of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.[i]

However, it’s ABSOULTELY and UNDENIABLY TRUE in the case of about a three quarter million Korean population in their FORMER COLONIAL SUZERAIN STATE, JAPAN.

FLAGRNT VIOLATIONS OF the UN HUMAN RIGHTS DECLARATION!

According to the PREAMBLE and most of the 30 ARTICLES of the UN Human Rights Declaration, the consecutive governments’ continued but hidden racial discriminations against Koreans in Japan should have been condemned as FLAGRNT VIOLATIONS of the UN HUMAN RIGHTS DECLARATION!

By anyone’s open-minded observations and objective readings on the history of Chongryon people, those racially-motivated, legally-forced, and systematically-institutionalized discrimination policies by Japanese governments are very much identical with numerous types of COLONIAL CRIMES which had been committed throughout close a half century-long vicious colonial rule.

For over 60 years, Japanese governments have particularly violated the UN Human Rights Declaration Articles 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 15, 19 and 20.

However, most inhumanly thereby most cruelly, what they’ve repeatedly violated was, something the whole international community should be aware of, the Article 26 which talks about the Right to Education.[ii]

For their political choice in Japan, those hundreds of thousands of Chongryon Koreans have had to pay extremely high, often beyond imagination, price for the whole duration of their life, not only during their own generation but also the following generations even up to the present one, the Fifth Generation today.

One of the unbelievably high prices they are paying right now is the issue of “Exclusion of Koreans from Free High School Education.” This ugly, probably the ugliest type of racially-motivated discrimination policy in regard to EDUCATION is one of the latest discriminations Koreans in Japan have suffered with.

In short, JAPANESE governments’ DISCRIMINATION POLICIES which must be identified and condemned as their INSTITUTIONALIZED RACISM which does still continue even against those 5TH GENERATION of Chongryon Koreans.

The Japanese government has EXCLUDED KOREAN STUDENTS from government’s educational (financial) supports which are freely given to all other schools in Japan except those Chongryon-affiliated schools.

Again this is a flagrant violation of one of the most fundamental human rights regarding the “Right to Education.”

The former colonial state Japan has repeatedly discriminated a formerly colonized population who’d been mostly brought by force either to Japan islands or to imperialist’s losing battle grounds, to their military factories (such as Mitsubishi), to their mines, or even to their infamous “military brothels” as “forcibly-conscripted imperial army (Korean) soldiers,” “slave laborers” or “military sex slaves” until the demise of Imperial Japan in mid 1945.

That unimaginably “high price” the Chongryon Koreans have had to PAY TILL THIS VERY DAY must be understood in the form of CONTINUATION OF COLONIAL CRIMES the “JAPANESE IMPERIALISTS” HAD COMMITTED not only against Koreans for almost a half century back then but also many Chinese and other East Asian populations in the 1930s and 40s.

As mentioned in the beginning, the world seems to have assumed those heinous colonial crimes committed by Japanese did stop then at the end of Imperial Japan in August 1945.

However, unlike GERMANS, the so-called “PEACELOVING, FREE, DEMOCRATIC AND ECONOMICALLY-PROSPEROUS NATION” JAPAN DIDN’T STOP THEIR COLONIAL CRIMES then but HAVE CONTINUED EVEN THIS VERY DAY.


Dr. Kiyul Chung who is Editor-in-chief at the 4th Media is also a Visiting Professor at School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. He is also a political commentator at CCTV-9.

NOTES

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[i] Its acronym should be “DPRK.” However, it’s been known hitherto as “North Korea” in most parts of the world. This name North Korea, together with South Korea, denotes and further implies the continued DIVISION of Korean peninsula. So the whole population in north and many self-determined reunification-oriented population in south don’t use these divisive names.

[ii] UN Human Rights Declaration Article 26:

•(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

•(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

•(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
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