Japanese Immigration and the Korean Minority - Transcript

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This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

Duncan McCargo [00:00:00]

Thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. I'm Duncan McCargo, director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen. It's great to be joined today by Sara Park, a lecturer in Japanese culture at the University of Helsinki. Sara’s a sociologist by training who's worked on issues of gender, minorities, the family and immigration in Japan. She's also published three books in Japanese, most recently one on her experiences during the COVID lockdown in Finland. Sara, welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast.

Sara Park [00:00:47]

Hello Duncan, it’s nice to see you and it's really nice to invited to your podcast, thank you.

Duncan McCargo [00:00:53]

So this is the second podcast I've recorded with speakers from the recent Japanese Studies Conference that was held in March 2022 at the Copenhagen Business School sponsored by the Sasakawa Foundation. So Sara, the topic of Japan's immigration policies has long been a controversial one. Famously, during the Edo period between 1603 and 1867. Japan was largely isolated and foreigners had to live on the island of Dejima near Nagasaki. And that's a long time ago. But this idea that immigrants are not entirely welcome in Japan still persists. What's the historical context to the Japanese government's attitudes towards immigration?

Sara Park [00:01:30]

Well, one of the most the recent example is the entrance requirements or entrance restriction of the over hordes of people from overseas into Japan after the COVID crisis, which is often criticized as the latest Sakoku, maybe.

Duncan McCargo [00:01:46]

Yes, right an isolation period of the new isolation period.

Sara Park [00:01:50]

Yes, of course, even before this COVID crisis, restriction on foreigners or tourists or even to the students, of course the immigration policy of Japan has been criticized by Japanese people or foreigners by themselves. Well, they say the low asylum recognition rate, which is very notorious and also the denial or disregard of human rights in the detention centers, which sometimes put people into death in the worst cases. And also that two years ago there was an revision or trial to revise the Immigration Control Act and Refugee Recognition Act, which actually kind of peaked two years ago by the activist or the scholars on its implications in Japan. But maybe this year these revision of Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act, which further, makes Japanese government facilitate the forced deportation of foreigners easier so this law can be submitted to the Japanese diet this year.

Duncan McCargo [00:02:52]

So yeah, the legal framework is obviously very important here. Could you explain something about the main legislation that's used to control immigration to Japan and how that legislation works?

Sara Park [00:03:03]

Originally, when we date back like 70 years ago, there was two laws or in the beginning it was only one law is actually imperial ordinance. So Japanese Empire legally existed. So in 1947 there was of Imperial Ordinance ministration and then this imperial ordinance was reform into Alien Registration Act, Immigration Control Act. After both went through both was somehow combined into one law. So Immigration Control and Refugee Commission Act in 2012.

Duncan McCargo  [00:03:38]

So the present legal framework is actually quite recent, but it's a sort of amalgamation of the legislation that's been around for a while. So what's the political context for this immigration control regime that Japan has? As a political scientist, I'm always going to ask this; does it have anything to do with the geopolitics of the Cold War?

Sara Park [00:03:59]

It was defeated in 1945 by foreign powers, and immediately after that, Japan had to deal with the liberation of the colonies and as well as the repatriation of Japanese people from different colonies and also the war occupied areas, as well as the people from the colonies who already had lived in Japan. So some Taiwanese, Koreans moved from Taiwan or Korean Peninsula to the mainland of Japan during these places were colonized. So there were some Korean people, there were millions of them when Japan was defeated. So Japan and also, of course, the allied powers, or the Occupation forces, had to deal with these two groups of people all together. So on one hand the big group of Japanese repatriates. And also on the other hand, there is a Korean and Taiwanese people who were at this time still Japanese citizens or at least the subjects of Japan Empire. And of course, in 1945 and in five, four years in Northeast Asia, we started to have a People's Republic of China. And in 1950 there was a Korean War. So this is, of course, during the Cold War in East Asia. So the Japan's immigration control policy target was trying to figure out who could do some harm to Japan's occupation policy by the allied powers. And looking at the countermeasures towards a communism in Northeast Asia.

Duncan McCargo [00:05:31]

Right. It's a complicated story, isn't it? Well, talking to you and reading a little bit more, I hadn't fully grasp just how complicated it was. I mean, the most important group that we're talking about here is really the Korean minority. These are people, some of whom came to work in Japan before the war, but very large numbers of whom were forced to move to Japan to provide labor and then in some cases to join the military during the war. And a lot of those people in that second category were then repatriated to Korea. So how did the immigration control policy relate to these movements of Korean minority?

Sara Park

So when the Japan was defeated, there were two groups of Korean people. One is the laborers and their families who migrated somehow a little bit before Japan’s defeat, or Japan’s at least participation in the Second World War or the Pacific War. The people who were forced to work or forced to join in the labor in Japan, they repatriated by the end of 1945 or 1946. Most of these forced laborers to Korea. However, there are a certain amount of Korean migrant workers who had families, some have works, some have settled in Japan like five or even some ten years, they are a little hesitatant to return to Korea. And there are several reasons. One is there was a kind of severe requirement posed by the occupation forces to bring back to their home countries the Korean people when they tried to repatriate to Korea they cannot bring back anything more than 2000 Yen budget. 1000 yen value is something like four people's household monthly expense, right? So it's very difficult for most of them to abandon everything they already made up in Japan and to repatriate it Korea with as just one month's expenditures. And the second is, of course, this severe, harsh political economic situation in Korean Peninsula. So it was divided by USSR and the United States in the North. It was, of course, the severe political crash or assassinations crash between the political groups, especially the North Korean Labor Party and also other nationalist groups as well. And in the South, of course, there was also maybe a little bit worse situation than North Korea because some smaller political groups made terror at the time. And plus, there was a huge inflation and the loss of workplaces as well, and partly due to the huge repatriation from Japan. Even before the outbreak of the Korean War, there was famously austerity or April 3rd incident in Jeju island in the southwest part of the Korean Peninsula. So there was not really a civil war, but the crash between the local islanders or South Korean Labor Party and the local police and even including the American forces, the exact number of the casualities still actually unknown, but at least according to the studies towards a survey by the South Korean government, around 30,000 people were killed in that island. And the total population at that point was 220,000. So it was not really the situation for many Korean people in Japan to return to, or at least it was not really the paper report, period. So many of them, especially those who had migrated well before the outbreak of the Second World War and had families, children, workplaces, homes in Japan, they were not really happy to return. And besides of that, there are actually some people who tried to migrate from Korean Peninsula to Japan looking at these political and economic instability and some of them who migrated to Japan in the late 1940s to early 1950s, or the people who had lived in Japan before they were repatriated to Korea. In Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were yes, Korean people, Taiwanese people, Okinawan people or people from Amami islands who were deemed to repatriate, but actually who gave up or well, once tried, but found out that this was not really the place to live or even to survive, re-migrated to Japan as a secret at least.

Duncan McCargo [00:10:07]

So this is an incredibly complicated story. But let me just focus on a couple of key things that come out of this narrative and this analysis. So we've got within a couple of years of the end of the war, most of the Koreans, for example, still half a million or more left in Japan. But you also hinted at some tensions within that community. I'd read before that some of the Korean population in Japan was effectively loyal to what became North Korea. Some of the population was loyal to South Korea, which is a curious situation because you've got groups of people who are minorities and are in a very difficult situation within Japan. But there's also a kind of contestation between these two groups inside Japan, which is a very messy situation. Is that still the case that the Korean minority inside Japan is split between those, quote unquote, loyal to either North or south?

Sara Park [00:10:59]

I’m now in my middle thirties and in my generation or younger, I do not really think it is the case. However, it was really an issue for my parents generation, so let's say in people of 60. So of course these people were the generation that experienced more political activism, student activism of course in the 1960s and seventies, but also in 1960s, 70s, 80s. So they faced more ethnic discrimination or racism in Japan. And these ethnic organizations are almost the only way for these people to survive. So if you are going to buy a house and try to make the loan, Japanese banks did not lend you money or operate any loan. So there is greenback or pro-North Korean people saying which school you should, for example, send your children if you hope to help your children to inherit Korean language. It was actually late 1950s that these Korean organizations became more pro-North and pro-South . So we had two ethnic organizations. One is Chongryon and another Mindan and Mindan is from the very beginning it has been very pro South Korean government organization. But the Chongryon is originally kind of an whole ethnic Korean civilization in Japan. But after the split from Japan Communist Party, it became more pro-North Korean organization in Japan. After the separation of the Chongryon from Japanese Communist Party Chongryon became more pro-North Korean organization and the Mindan is from a South Korean government organization. Still, of course, these days these two organization exists, but and it has been spreading in the crust kind of fold corralled each other. But I hope it is easier among younger generation.

Duncan McCargo [00:13:00]

Right. Yeah. To return to our core topic of immigration, I guess most people would assume that people of Korean descent who've been in Japan in most cases descended from people who moved there before the Second World War, they should have become Japanese citizens long ago because that's been the case with most immigrant communities in developed nations around the world. Why is it that it's been so difficult for people of Korean descent to gain Japanese citizenship, or did they not want to gain Japanese citizenship?

Sara Park [00:13:31]

The biggest reason is originally Japan's immigration control policy was made up in order to supervise or control the Korean minorities in Japan. So the Korean and of course the Taiwanese are the original target of Japan's immigration control policy. So usually when we say immigration control policy, you usually imagine the people who come to Japan to leave 10 or 20 year, maybe five years later. But historically, Japan's immigration control system was designed to control the people from former colonies. So people who had Japanese citizenship before they don’t want to suddenly become foreigners who doesn't really have some residual status at the time. So these people came to Japan without any passport or visas because they were not required to have it because they were Japanese citizens when they migrated to Japan and suddenly they lost both citizenship or residential status in Japan and suddenly became the target of immigration control.

Duncan McCargo [00:14:34]

And when exactly did that happen? Does this coincide with the end of the Japanese empire?

Sara Park [00:14:40]

So Japan was defeated in 1945, Japanese Empire legally demolished in 1947. And at the time, these Koreans and Taiwanese were in very much ambiguous situation. They were not really recognized by foreigners, by Japanese government because Japan was occupied. And it doesn't really have any diplomatic leadership by itself. And in Korea or in China there was still no government at all, at least until 1948 and 1949 there were no governments in the Korean Peninsula or mainland China or Taiwan. So these people became very ambiguous situation in terms of nationality and citizenship or belonging to the countries. So Japanese government claim to the occupation forces and also to these Taiwanese and the Koreans that they had Japanese nationality so that they have to obey Japanese laws, legislations, jurisdiction as well. But after 1952, when Japan became independent, after the peace treaty with Japan, these people suddenly lost their Japanese nationality because, according to Japanese government's explanation, now Japan is independent and Japan accepted the independence of its former colonies. So suddenly, I'm sorry, Koreans and Taiwanese. You are now not Japanese. Congratulations.

Duncan McCargo [00:16:04]

Wow. So that was something of a mixed blessing. The recognition of independence for people in that category. So you're left with guess it's more than 800,000 people to this day who continue to be very, very long term resident aliens, but not citizens.

Sara Park [00:16:19]

Yes, that's true. So actually, these people, both Korean and Taiwanese, regardless of which Korea or China you are loyal to, people lost Japanese residential status and until 1991. In 1991, Japan reformed its Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act and started to issue a special permanent residency status for those who lost Japanese citizenship or Japanese nationality upon Japan's independence in 1952. So after almost 40 years, these people from former colonies obtained permanent residual status in Japan, but not really recognized as Japanese citizens at all.

Duncan McCargo [00:16:59]

So does this mean that when I first went to live in Japan in the 1980s and I had what we used to call the gaijin card, this little blue book with our fingerprints in it, it's basically people of Korean descent had a similar kind of status.

Sara Park [00:17:11]

Yes, exactly. So at the time these people, some of them especially, who did not choose to be recognized as citizens of Republic of Korea, if these people does not want to be recognized, then these people was in a stateless situation.

Duncan McCargo [00:17:27]

Right. So that's much worse than those of us living there as foreigners because we had another nationality. But people loyal to the North had no real effective nationality at all.

Sara Park [00:17:37]

No, not at all.

Duncan McCargo [00:17:39]

And that meant they couldn't go anywhere, presumably, it would have been very difficult for them to travel?

Sara Park [00:17:43]

Very difficult for them.

Duncan McCargo [00:17:44]

Right. So that continued until as recently as 1991?

Sara Park [00:17:47]

Well, I still would like to say that most of them are not really super particularly loyal to the North Korea, but they just…

Duncan McCargo [00:17:55]

Now, indeed, it's just a kind of technicality that they face in this situation.

Sara Park [00:17:59]

Yes. Right. So those who remain, to stay, the Korean nationality. Not North nor South Korean, as the place of origin who wish to be registered as just Korean. Yes, they are still actually in the same state as stateless people because Japan does not recognize North Korea. And also to be registered just as Korean in Japan doesn't really mean anything, except you have special permanent resident status in Japan. So it does not facilitate you to apply for any passport, for example.

Duncan McCargo [00:18:35]

So there are people even now who can't get passports?

Sara Park [00:18:38]

Yes, exactly.

Duncan McCargo [00:18:39]

And how many of them?

Sara Park [00:18:40]

Not that big numbers. Now it's estimated around 30,000.

Duncan McCargo [00:18:45]

But still a significant number of people. It's a small towns worth of people in Japan who can't leave.  And you mentioned that there were an interesting category of people who left Japan mostly for Korea, then decided they didn't really like it there because things were extremely difficult at that time and came back illegally to Japan. These are people that you talked about in your presentation as irregular migrants. What happened to them? Did their status get regularized later on?

Sara Park [00:19:10]

Yeah, actually, in my PhD thesis, I conducted interviews to these people who secretly returned to Japan, faced with these incidents or Korean War, and most of them later obtained or regularized by obtaining area registration card or, you know, the gaijin card. So it was really arbitrary. So they, for example, forged their registration card. For example, my grandfather, who was also irregular migrants from Jeju Island, according to my uncle's explanation, he'd just bought somebody else registration card in black market and added his own photograph on that card. So when he passed away, well, his funeral had to be conducted in a different name than his own because it was his registered name. So my family name is Park. So my grandfather's family name is also Park. However, in his alien registration card, he bought somebody who's family name is Lee, and he just, you know, had his own photo on that restriction card using the whole his life. And when he dies at about 73 years old, when he had his funeral, it was Mr. Lee's funeral. And everybody knows that it's not his name.

Duncan McCargo [00:20:31]

Right. So the people who were living with the realities of these strange hybrid identities for decades, it's really an extraordinary situation.

Sara Park [00:20:40]

Well, when my grandfather passed away, I was just one year old, so I do not remember his situation at all. But that kind of story was not really extraordinary to Korean community in Japan, especially not in a community which accepted these irregular migrants after the war. So from my childhood, I was really fascinated by the question of identity. And I always think about that. But I already knew in the beginning that people can live in such a strange situation.

Duncan McCargo [00:21:11]

Absolutely. Of course, identity has become a very sort of academically fashionable topic to talk about these days. But for people like you, you've really been living it your whole lives. In the current day and age, Japan faces a labour shortage. We have very serious problems of an aging society with falling birthrate. It really does seem that Japan needs immigration quite badly at the moment, and yet this has not been at the forefront of government's agendas. Do you think there's any prospect for any substantive, not just negative reform or making things more difficult, which you were alluding to earlier, but any sort of progressive moves in the direction of more liberalization of immigration policy in the future?

Sara Park

Actually, I don't really have any positive idea about the Japanese immigration policy because there are many countries that accept a lot of migrants but does not really facilitate the basic human rights of these migrant labourers like the case in Singapore, for example, or other countries. So these countries have a lot of labor migrants to make up the labor shortage, but they usually have very poor citizenship or very poor human rights standards, and I'm afraid Japanese government might follow this way. So accepting the migrants not necessarily means that the country becomes, say, an immigration society. So from the early 1990s, Japanese governments sometimes refer to European countries, for example, like Germany, that they are failed case of accepting immigrants, so they accepted labor migrants, and now they have the social problems. So we cannot follow their ways and what now Japanese government is doing is accepting students and trainees, technical intern trainees, well and also, for example, the wife or husband of Japanese people, permanent resident status holders. And these people are the biggest sources of the labor migrant in Japan. In Japan, we have a lot of  registered statuses that enables you to work in Japan. But these labour migration visas are not the main sources of migrant labor in Japan. So with its students, technical intern trainees, they do not really stay in Japan, whoever. They usually students aims at studying in Japan for one, two, four or five years and they are expected to return to the country after just to study abroad and technical intern trainees in their cases, they originally are designed to stay in Japan only two years and many successfully five years. That's the longest. And then they have to return to the country. So what Japanese government now tries is to accept students or accept trainees, accept foreigners and rotate them like all year round to fill up the field that faces serious labour shortages like agriculture or fisheries. And Japanese government thinks that these theories, lets say tactics, works quite well in recent years.

Duncan McCargo [00:24:26]

Right. So the solution has been to roll out a variety of programs that allow for temporary residence and temporary opportunities to work without really opening the door for people to migrate permanently to Japan. So that's the way of dealing with this labor shortage problem.

Sara Park [00:24:44]

Yes, so I actually quite sure that the Japanese government will open up migrants or it will try to increase the population of these students and technical intern trainees in the future. But it does not really mean that Japan's really open up or started to accept foreigners or nono-japanese people in Japan.

Duncan McCargo [00:25:04]

Right. This is a fascinating topic. Are you planning to publish anything about the issues that you talked about in your CBS presentation and in this podcast?

Sara Park [00:25:13]

Thank you very much. I am actually preparing a book, which hopefully will be my first English monograph. It deals with Japan’s immigration cultural history and its policy and tries to relate all these issues into Japan's current social problems like xenophobia, racism, nationality Act, and so on. And also, yes, the other plan is to write or re-write the very famous book of you Duncan, Contemporary Japan.

Duncan McCargo[00:25:43]

Right. Now, I should say that Sara and I have a plan to work on the fourth edition of the textbook Contemporary Japan, and insert some of these themes and issues more prominently into that textbook so that they may be more widely read about and understood by students and others. So thanks so much, Sara, for taking the time to discuss your ideas about immigration, minorities and all sorts of related issues in Japan today.

Sara Park [00:26:06]

Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm sorry that maybe I talked about it really complicatedly, but thank you very much for inviting me.

Duncan McCargo [00:26:14]

No, you did not. It was all very, very clear. So I'm Duncan McCargo, director of NIAS. I've been in conversation with Sara Park, a lecturer in Japanese culture at the University of Helsinki, about her fascinating research on immigration control policies in Japan. Thank you for joining the Nordic Asia Podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia.

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