[Cankor] Report #239

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear subscriber,

Welcome to issue #239 of the CanKor Report.

None of our readers felt inspired to respond to the question in last week's 
QUIDNUNC:
Why do DPR Koreans put so much emphasis on agriculture, when every
specialist knows they will never be self-sufficient?

Still hoping for an answer to that question, we nevertheless pose a new one:
What is the reason South Koreans prefer the term "unification", whereas 
North Koreans always use the term "reunification"?

Please send your answer (maximum 150 words) to: editor at CanKor.ca

The CanKor team.

For articles not original to CanKor, direct links are available in the
Contents section, should you wish to consult the originals on the internet.

If the links no longer function, you may refer to the full text articles
appended to the issue.

For back issues, archives and other content, please visit our website:
http://www.cankor.ca

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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 239

Tuesday, 7 March 2006
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The much-anticipated military talks between North and South Korean generals, 
aimed at preventing further bloody clashes in the West Sea, ends without 
agreement on the long-standing dispute over the Koreas' maritime border. The 
Northern Limit Line, drawn up by the United Nations Command at the end of 
the Korean War, has never been accepted by the DPRK.

The North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 stipulates that DPRK nationals may 
seek asylum in the USA. However, the extensive investigations required by 
the federal Department of Homeland Security have meant that not a single DPR 
Korean applicant has yet been granted refuge. Under instruction from 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, officials say they are ready to process 
up to 200 applications this year.

Japan creates a subcommittee under the abduction task force in the Prime 
Minister's office to restrict the illegal flow of people, commodities and 
money between Japan and the DPRK. Comprised of senior government officials 
from various government ministries, the subcommittee will use existing legal 
means to increase inspection and police investigations of commercial and 
financial transactions, and clamp down on illegal exports and smuggling.

Both the USA and Canada are currently in Free Trade negotiations with the 
ROK. One sticking point has been whether to allow tariff-free imports of 
goods produced by South Korean firms in the DPRK's Kaesong Industrial 
Complex. This week's CanKor FOCUS, "Kaesong -- made in which Korea?" 
examines the emerging inter-Korean relationship on the shop floor of the 
industrial park.

In CanKor's BOOK REVIEW, "Assimilation or Exclusion," R. Mark Frey presents 
a book by Sonia Ryang entitled "North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology 
and Identity." This review originally appeared in the Korean Quarterly.
*************************************************

Contents:

1.   COMPROMISE DIFFICULT FOR MILITARIES OF TWO KOREAS
     http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200603/200603040003.html

2.   RICE SAYS US READY TO TAKE REFUGEES
     http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/default.cfm?Action=ReleaseDetail&ID=11828

3.   JAPAN INCREASES PRESSURE ON DPRK
     http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20060305TDY01006.htm

FOCUS: Kaesong -- made in which Korea?
4.   MADE IN DPRK -- OR IS IT?
     http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=1672312

5.   TWO KOREAS LEARN TO WORK AS ONE
     http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701335_pf.html

6.   SOUTH KOREANS COMMUTE TO NORTH
     http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.commute05mar05,0,5255836.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

BOOK REVIEW
7.   ASSIMILATION OR EXCLUSION
     North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology and Identity, by Sonia Ryang
     Reviewed by R. Mark Frey (Copyright Korean Quarterly, 
www.koreanquarterly.org)

QUIDNUNC: Readers ask and respond to common and uncommon questions.
*************************************************

1.   COMPROMISE DIFFICULT FOR MILITARIES OF TWO KOREAS
     Chosun Ilbo, 4 March 2006

The much-anticipated talks between South and North Korean generals have 
ended without progress. Stuck on a long-standing dispute over the maritime 
border in the West Sea, the two sides had to wrap up the talks after 
sessions reconfirming their established positions. Military talks at the 
truce village of Panmunjom ended on Friday reinforcing one point: just how 
difficult compromise is for the two Koreas. There were high hopes ahead of 
the two-day general-level talks, hopes that officials would be able to agree 
on measures to prevent bloody clashes at sea like the ones in 1999 and 2002.

Both those naval conflicts happened in the West Sea during the May-June crab 
season when fishing vessels from both the North and the South crowd the 
waters, often leading to breaches of the Northern Limit Line or NLL. The NLL 
was drawn up by the United Nations Command at the end of the Korean War in 
1953. North Korea has never accepted this border and this was what again 
bogged down the military talks.

Pyongyang reportedly demanded the maritime border be redrawn before it 
agrees to Seoul's tension-reducing proposals. So there was no joint 
agreement, no press communiqué, no plan for the next meeting but the South 
Korean delegation left the talks saying, this was not unexpected since it's 
the first time they've discussed anything in close to two years.

The North Korean side has also left the door open for further negotiations, 
saying it agreed with the South on a number of points including the need to 
stop illegal fishing by other countries. At this point, it doesn't look like 
another round of military talks will happen anytime soon but the two Koreas 
are set for their 18th round of ministerial talks later this month, a time 
when this issue could surface again.
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2.   RICE SAYS US READY TO TAKE REFUGEE-DEFECTORS
     by Sungwon Yang, Radio Free Asia, 3 March 2006

The United States is expected to accept up to 200 North Korean 
asylum-seekers this year despite the unique difficulty of conducting 
required background probes into refugees from the world's most tightly 
closed country, a US source has told RFA's Korean service. Under the 2004 
North Korean Human Rights Act, North Korean nationals may seek US asylum 
even though South Korea considers North Korean refugees to be South Korean 
nationals.

The US source, who asked not to be named, said Washington hasn't yet 
accepted a single North Korean refugee because of the extensive 
investigations required by the federal Department of Homeland Security. 
North Korean refugees are most likely to seek asylum in the United States by 
transiting through Southeast Asian countries, the source said, since 
China -- to which thousands of North Koreans have fled in secret -- doesn't 
allow North Koreans to flee to the United States from inside the country.

US officials expect they could process up to 200 North Korean asylum 
applications this year, the source said. A State Department official said 
Washington is ready to begin processing North Korean asylum applications, 
adding that the procedures for North Koreans would be the same as for 
nationals from other countries.

"We will consider any North Koreans brought to our attention by the UN High 
Commissioner for Refugees, by US embassies and consulates, and by reputable 
nongovernmental organizations," the official said. US officials are working 
now on how exactly to go about processing North Korean asylum applications. 
"It's a new undertaking," the State Department official said, noting that US 
refugee processing abroad requires the consent of the host country.

Michael Horowitz, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute 
and an influential US conservative on North Korea policy, suggested to 
reporters here that the US might be expected to process far more than 200 
applications this year.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a congressional panel last week 
that Washington would make its North Korea human rights envoy more active in 
pushing other countries to speak out on the issue. Speaking to the House of 
Representatives International Relations Committee, she also said Washington 
and Seoul disagreed on how to address North Korean human rights abuses, with 
Seoul balking at the prospect of raising the issue publicly. Jay Lefkowitz 
was named US President George Bush's point man on North Korean human rights 
issues in August last year. "We are going to get him out more. We need the 
rest of the international community to also pay attention to this issue," 
the secretary said.
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3.   JAPAN INCREASES PRESSURE ON DPRK
     Yomiuri Shimbun, 5 March 2006

The government intends to enforce existing laws more strictly to restrict 
the illegal flow of people, commodities and money between Japan and North 
Korea, sources said Saturday. The planned policy is designed to further 
pressure North Korea to solve problems relating to the abduction of Japanese 
nationals by the reclusive state's agents before the government goes ahead 
with economic sanctions, the sources added.

The government has decided to set up a subcommittee under the abduction task 
force at the Prime Minister's Office. The subcommittee will comprise senior 
figures from the National Police Agency, the Economy, Trade and Industry 
Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Financial Services 
Agency and the Japan Coast Guard. Subcommittee members will share 
information so they can improve immigration controls and clamp down on 
illegal exports to, and smuggling from, North Korea.

The Finance and Justice ministries will boost staff numbers at immigration 
control and customs respectively to inspect North Korean officials and their 
belongings more thoroughly, the sources said. Police officers fluent in 
Korean and with experience of investigating crime related to North Korea 
will be also posted at immigration control and customs, they added.

METI plans to carry out surprise inspections of about 100 domestic companies 
dealing in dual-use commercial products by the end of the year under the 
Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law. The sources further added that the 
FSA will report to investigators financial transactions they consider 
suspicious, such as money laundering related to North Korea or terrorist 
cash transfers.

Meanwhile, the Japan Coast Guard plans to increase its number of staff and 
conduct more rigorous inspections of vessels traveling between Japan and 
North Korea. Patrols seeking to clamp down on stimulant drug smuggling and 
other controlled items will be increased. The government also plans to 
create an intelligence subcommittee to regularly exchange intelligence on 
North Korea. The subcommittee will be under the abduction task force. 
Sitting on the subcommittee will be the NPA commissioner general, the 
cabinet secretary for information and research, the Public Security 
Investigation Agency secretary general and the administrative vice foreign 
minister, the sources said.

Under Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, government ministries and agencies 
have been informally discussing stricter law enforcement of the illicit 
activities of North Koreans since December. These discussions led to the 
clampdown on Yamaha Motor Co.'s illegal export of remote-controlled 
helicopters to China and the illegal export of a freeze drier to North 
Korea.
*************************************************

FOCUS: Kaesong -- made in which Korea?

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4.   MADE IN DPRK -- OR IS IT?
     by Donald Kirk, Christian Science Monitor, 5 March 2006

In gleaming new factories amid hills stripped bare for fuel, six thousand 
North Korean workers toil for South Korean companies.

"Workers from North Korea and South Korea are committed to work hard under 
the slogan, 'One for all, all for one,'" says Moon Chang Seop, president of 
a company producing shoe parts for its parent company in South Korea. "We 
operate under a very unique system for North Korean workers. They get $57.50 
a month regardless of position" -- plus overtime pay. Mr. Moon admits that 
figure is 1/10th or 1/20th of what South Koreans are paid.

However, South Korean managers say privately that North Koreans see only a 
tiny fraction of the amount stated in glossy handouts given to foreign 
visitors. Instead, the money goes to the North Korean agency that is 
responsible for hiring them. The issue of how much the North Korean workers 
are paid is, as one manager puts it, "a delicate question" as South Korea 
negotiates with the United States for a free trade agreement. Under the 
agreement, South Korea wants products made here in the Kaesong zone, just 
across the border from South Korea, to be classified as made in South Korea. 
The United States insists they're made in North Korea and beyond the scope 
of the agreement.

"The bottom line is goods made in Kaesong should be designated as South 
Korean-made," says Kim Song Keun, president of the Kaesong Industrial 
District Management Committee, made up of South and North Korean officials.

The Kaesong zone, still a small-scale project compared to South Korea's 
enormous industrial complexes, ranks high in the South's policy of 
reconciliation. If the grandiose publicity is any judge, both South and 
North Korean leaders see it as emerging as a regional hub by 2012. They 
envision hundreds of thousands of workers, most of them North Koreans, 
working in hundreds of companies - most of them South Korean.

"The reason the Kaesong industrial park is special is South Korean companies 
don't have to go to Southeast Asia any more," says Ha Jung Byun, senior 
manager with Hyundai Asan, the South Korean company developing the complex. 
A South Korean company, he explains, can hire North Korean workers for the 
same low wages it pays workers in Southeast Asian countries - and then will 
be able to price its products low enough to compete with those made in 
China.

North Korean strictures pervade the zone, as is clear in any attempt at 
questioning workers operating industrial sewing machines in the ShinWon 
textile factory, one of 15 enterprises now operating here. In response to 
queries about their wages, a young woman murmurs, "I cannot say anything," 
and another says only, "We get enough."

A bus tour inside the tall green wire fence that marks the zone's 
8.6-kilometer-long boundary reveals the contrast between life inside and 
outside the zone. Beyond the fence, the land stretches barren on every side 
except for clusters of white-walled homes. A few goats and chickens are seen 
around a handful of small apartment buildings, decaying and in need of 
repairs. North Korean workers, forbidden from any contact with South Koreans 
except when necessary on the job, enter and leave the zone through a single 
checkpoint manned by North Korean soldiers. Inside the zone, managers from 
South Korea live in single-story temporary quarters that resemble military 
barracks. Typically, they go home twice a month.

"It's very difficult," says Kim Ki Hong, general manager of a branch of the 
only South Korean bank in the zone. "We cannot go outside," says Mr. Kim. 
"We are almost prisoners."
*************************************************

5.   TWO KOREAS LEARN TO WORK AS ONE
     by Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, 28 February 2006

Inside a modern new industrial park two-thirds the size of Manhattan, 
hundreds of North Korean textile workers kept heads down and eyes focused 
Monday as South Korean managers patrolled the assembly lines. But Kim Eue 
Hye, an effusive young woman wearing generous makeup, proudly looked up at a 
visitor to pronounce her verdict on an experiment that is bringing back 
together two societies separated for half a century.

"I have learned that it is possible to work with the South Koreans," said 
Kim, briefly putting down the blue pinstriped blouse she was finishing for 
dispatch to a department store in Seoul, the South's capital. "It has 
brought Korea closer to reunification. Together, nothing can stop us."

That, at least, is the official hope of the two Koreas, which view the vast 
Kaesong Industrial Complex just north of their shared border as the seeds of 
the peninsula's economic future: South Korean capital, technology and 
management matched with the North's low-cost labor. Moving the project ahead 
has brought extreme challenges from the start. After the first busloads of 
North Korean workers arrived at the gates 16 months ago, weeks passed before 
people from the two societies could even understand each other's dialect, 
said Lim Dong Ryul, a section manager for Taesun Hata Corp., a cosmetics 
company that came north to set up in Kaesong last year. He had to explain 
virtually every aspect of modern life to his fresh-faced communist 
charges -- down to how to use the factory's Western-style toilets. Today, 
Taesun Hata is exporting compact casings for Clinique and eye shadow holders 
for Bobbi Brown from its multimillion-dollar plant, located just five miles 
north of the barbed wire and minefields of the world's most heavily 
fortified border.

"By standing with the North Koreans side by side and not giving up, we were 
able to make things work," Lim said. "Just look at what we've built."

Southern companies making shoes, textiles, auto parts and kitchen implements 
employ more than 6,000 North Koreans here. The workers put in long hours at 
often grueling tasks, but life here nonetheless seems a cut above the 
poverty that is common in most of North Korea. This year, officials in Seoul 
project that an additional 15,000 North Koreans will start work as more than 
20 South Korean companies move in. By 2012, plans call for as many as 
700,000 employees -- 4.5 percent of North Korea's entire workforce.

The 1950-53 Korean War left both North and South in ruins. They never signed 
a peace treaty. Now, with detente softening the tensions, the Kaesong 
industrial zone is the largest effort at economic cooperation to date. It is 
also key to South Korea's strategy for lessening what is bound to be a 
massive economic jolt if it reunites with the North. With North Korea's 
per-capita income at roughly $1,800 a year, 10 times less than the South's, 
South Korea faces a far greater wealth imbalance than West Germany did when 
it took in the communist East. So Seoul is hanging much of its hopes on 
gradually bridging the gap by offering its neighbor something it needs more 
than anything else: jobs.

The idea is to "keep the North Koreans up there and avoid heavy migration 
south by bringing in stable investment," said Marcus Noland, a senior fellow 
at the Washington-based Institute for International Economics. "So they are 
turning to projects like Kaesong, which presumably will only be the first of 
a series of such economic enclaves" funded by South Korea. Officials say 
Kaesong is also meant to keep on course a program of market-oriented 
restructuring that the North is undertaking in its domestic economy.

The industrial park remains a work in progress, with only a fraction of its 
real estate developed. Officials here say factors such as an unresolved 
dispute over North Korea's nuclear weapons program could derail large-scale 
expansion. But on Monday, earthmovers stood at the ready in cleared patches 
of land between the 13 factories already operating. A South Korean telephone 
company has installed the first 300 of thousands of planned phone lines; a 
branch of a major South Korean bank is open for business, as is a Family 
Mart convenience store staffed by two North Korean women.

Thousands of workers live in on-site dorms, while others arrive by bus from 
the nearby city of Kaesong. South Koreans are not permitted beyond a bright 
green perimeter fence that is guarded by armed soldiers and separates the 
complex from a decaying North Korean village rife with communist slogans, 
including one telling all residents to "celebrate the greatness" of North 
Korea.

While conceding they are here to promote North-South ties, South Korean 
executives also say the project makes economic sense. The companies, which 
have received low-interest loans and security guarantees from the South 
Korean government, are paying most North Korean workers a fixed salary of 
$57.50 a month. That is about 20 times less than the pay of a South Korean 
worker of the same skill level, but it is a welcome sum in North Korea.

It is unclear how much of that money actually goes to the North Korean 
workers. The dollar-denominated checks issued by the South Korean companies 
are paid to a North Korean government agency. Na Un Suk, director general of 
North Korea's Central Special Economic Zone Control Agency, said the 
government makes deductions for room and board provided to the employees 
before paying them varying amounts in North Korean currency.

"But it is clear that our workers are not doing this to make money," Na 
said. "They are doing it because it is their duty for the greater good of 
the nation."

Although South Korean managers have some say in promoting workers, they have 
little role in choosing who arrives on their doorstep. Many employees are 
from Kaesong city -- the ancient capital of the Goryeo kingdom that first 
united much of the Korean Peninsula. But all are picked by officials from 
the North Korean government.

Because of the communist state's chronic shortages of electricity, the South 
Koreans have had to run power lines across the border to serve their 
factories. And some company representatives concede that the North Koreans 
are not always ideal business partners.
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6.   SOUTH KOREANS COMMUTE TO NORTH
     by Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, 5 March 2006

It takes barely an hour to drive from downtown Seoul to the other side of 
the demilitarized zone, but the culture shock is such that you might as well 
be commuting to the moon. Mobile telephones, newspapers, books, videos, 
laptops, magazines, MP3 players and many other appurtenances of 21st-century 
life have to be checked on the south side of the border. Also best left 
behind are any wisecracks about the North Korean regime or in particular its 
leader, Kim Jong Il.

"You've got to watch what you say," said Kim Yi Gyeom, a South Korean 
telecommunications worker standing in a long line of Monday-morning 
commuters waiting to go north. "The spirit of openness has not come to North 
Korea yet."

South Koreans are assuming all the financial risk, having invested more than 
$2 billion. The South would like to reduce political tensions and reap the 
benefit of cheap North Korean labor so its manufacturers can compete with 
China. For North Korea, the Kaesong experiment is a way to build its economy 
with only the most limited openness to the outside world. But the political 
risk is all for the North Korean government, which fears that contact with 
the better-fed, better-clothed South Koreans could endanger its grip on 
power.

"It is natural that there is a culture gap," said Hwang Boo Gi, director of 
the Kaesong Industrial District, who led a group of foreign journalists 
through the park recently. "We are talking about the difference between 
capitalism and socialism."

The contrast is particularly glaring when coming from Seoul, the high-tech, 
neon-lit capital of the world's 12th-largest economy, a mere 36 miles away. 
Around the industrial park, which lies outside the center of the city of 
Kaesong, there is little but dried-out rice paddies and yellow hills denuded 
long ago by people scratching for firewood. Nearby is an abandoned 
agricultural college, its crumbling facade decorated by a faded red sign 
trumpeting the achievements of the North Korean Workers Party. Scrawny goats 
graze outside two-story whitewashed houses with windows made of plastic 
sheeting.

The industrial park itself is surrounded by five miles of perimeter fencing 
and poker-faced, rifle-toting North Korean soldiers. Inside the fenced 
compound everything from the toilets to the machinery are South Korean made, 
mostly the latest, state-of-the-art models. Although all 11 companies in the 
23-acre pilot project are South Korean, the North Koreans keep a tight rein 
over the work environment. No South Korean money is accepted here, even at a 
convenience store set up for the exclusive use of South Korean employees.

North Korean patriotic music in praise of Kim Jong Il blares over the 
loudspeakers of a futuristic warehouse where North Korean women in crisp, 
royal blue uniforms stitch athletic shoes using brand-new sewing machines. 
The monthly salary of $57.50 for each North Korean -- regardless of 
position -- is paid directly to the North Korean government, which gives the 
workers about $8 an hour, more than double the average monthly salary. South 
Korean companies have asked repeatedly to pay the workers directly and to 
give bonuses for better work but have been refused. Even New Year's gifts 
such as extra food and warm clothing could be given only after elaborate 
negotiations to make sure everybody was getting the same.

South Koreans, many of whom live for weeks at a time in modular housing in 
the complex, have their own cafeteria and their own medical clinic, all 
off-limits to North Koreans. Last year, articles appeared in the South 
Korean press about the Romeo-and-Juliet romance of a North Korean woman and 
a South Korean man. But people at Kaesong said the story was apocryphal 
because the North Korean women are never alone.

"They even go to the toilets in pairs," said a South Korean employee who 
asked not to be quoted by name. "There are big social differences between 
us. There is no sense of the individual in North Korea."

There have been countless cases of culture shock. "Almost every day 
something happens, some small quarrel or misunderstanding. But because 
Kaesong is so important to Kim Jong Il, the North Koreans chose to ignore 
it," said Lim Eul Chul, a scholar at South Korea's Kyungnam University who 
has written extensively on Kaesong. "Everybody is focused on the goal."

Both sides have ambitious plans for Kaesong. When complete in 2012, the 
enclave is supposed to encompass 25 square miles and employ 700,000 workers. 
The biggest impediment to the project's success might be North Korea's 
continuing nuclear weapons program and its hostility to the United States. 
The tensions have limited the nature of the products manufactured at Kaesong 
to low technology -- with anything having potential dual use for military 
purposes prohibited -- and mostly confined sales to the domestic market 
within South Korea. Although Shinwon Apparel, for example, supplies clothing 
to K-Mart and Wal-Mart, among others, those garments are largely produced in 
Vietnam. US officials, who earlier this month announced negotiations toward 
a free trade pact with South Korea, have said they would not consider 
Kaesong products to be labeled "Made in South Korea."
*************************************************

BOOK REVIEW

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7.   ASSIMILATION OR EXCLUSION
     North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology and Identity, by Sonia 
Ryang, Westview Press Boulder, 1997, ISBN# 0-8133-3050-5
     Review by R. Mark Frey, Korean Quarterly, Winter 2006.

The world is changing. As populations migrate to locales which historically 
have not dealt much with differences, they struggle with their host 
countries in trying "to fit in." Does one assimilate into the mainstream 
culture with the prospect of losing collective identity? Is segregation and 
exclusion from the dominant culture while maintaining strong group identity 
best, or perhaps a mixture of both"? That is the subject for study by 
anthropologist Sonia Ryang in her 1997 book, "North Koreans in Japan: 
Language, Ideology, and Identity," a fascinating investigation of the 
strategy for "North" Korean survival in Japan, a society historically known 
for its homogeneity and resistance to differences.

Ryang, herself Korean born and raised in Japan, examined an organization 
known as the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (in Korean, 
Chaeilbon Chosonin Chong Ryonhaphoe) for about two years in the early 1990s. 
The Association (known in short as "Chongryon") is a support organization 
for Koreans who are a minority population in Japan. Given the historical 
colonial relationship between Japan and Korea and resulting migration of 
Koreans to Japan, relations have been strained.

The vast majority of Koreans in Japan were found by Ryang to have been born 
there, but those who did migrate to Japan hailed primarily from South Korea. 
Interestingly, Chongryon has identified with North Korea since its founding 
in 1955. Membership in Chongryon was not so much dependent on origins from 
North or South Korea, but rather identification with the political leanings 
of leftist North Korea or rightist South Korea. (Chongryon's counterpart 
with an orientation towards South Korea is Mindan, the Association of Korean 
Residents in Japan). Chongryun's precursor was the left-leaning League of 
Koreans, which was both nationalistic and anti-Japanese. (Mindan was already 
in existence as the rightist alternative but every bit as nationalistic and 
anti-Japanese).

During the late 1940s, the League experienced hostility from the Allied 
powers and Japanese authorities, given its active interest and involvement 
in Japan's affairs. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, Korean support 
for North or South Korea and the League or Mindan had solidified. By 1955, 
Chongryon emerged as the successor of the League and sought to avoid any 
involvement in Japan's affairs as well as close scrutiny by the government.

But why Chongryon's interest in North Korea, if its members were 
predominantly from South Korea? According to Ryang, The northern region was 
attractive in the eyes of Korean leftist nationalists in Japan primarily 
because it looked more like an indigenous regime. Those who sided with the 
South were nationalists as well, but their strong anticommunist stance led 
them to support the southern half, which was placed under the direct control 
of the American military government. Chongryon identified its members and 
potential members as "overseas nationals" of North Korea, thereby respecting 
Japan's sovereignty. The split into North and South camps in turn provided 
Chongryon with a certain stability and with a niche to build its own space 
for social reproduction inside the Japanese state system.

Defining Chongryon as belonging to North Korea, not to Japanese society, was 
convenient for the Japanese government, in that it could turn a blind eye to 
the social, legal, and economic deprivation of Koreans in Japan. Indeed, 
partly as a consequence of this, the Japanese government pretended until the 
1980s that there were no ethnic or other minorities in Japan, which was 
implicitly but successfully supported by academic discourse on Japanese 
society as a unique and homogeneous entity. In short, Chongryon was a 
strategy for survival in Japan by a certain segment of the Korean minority 
population there. This strategy entailed a degree of isolation from the 
dominant culture; an arrangement implicitly agreed upon with the Japanese 
within the historical Cold War context of relations between North and South 
Korea and Japan.

Chongryon itself is an umbrella organization composed of a network of 
associations. Each prefecture in Japan contains a local chapter. There are 
also eighteen affiliated associations in the country; the Youth League, 
Women's Union, Young Pioneers, Teachers Union, Merchants and Industrialists' 
Union, Artists' Association, Scientists' Congress, etc. In addition, 
Chongryon has a professional soccer club, theater companies, various 
businesses, as well as one university, 12 high schools, 56 middle schools, 
81 primary schools, and three nursery schools. Chongryon schools in 
particular played a critical role in fashioning a group identity through 
language and ideology. That group identity in turn contributed to a greater 
sense of self.

With this infrastructure, those Koreans identifying themselves with North 
Korea based on their ideological identification with that country sought to 
fashion a collective identity. This is especially the case for first 
generation Koreans who believed it was only a matter of time before they 
could return to the Korean peninsula, most specifically North Korea, which 
had avoided the tentacles of Western imperialism. Hence their 
self-identification as overseas nationals displaced by historical events and 
facing ethnic discrimination in Japan. Chongryon served as a mechanism to 
ensure their survival until they were able to return. This collective 
identity as overseas nationals had a certain virtual quality to it, given 
that "no real transaction was possible between North Korea and Japan, and in 
symbolic negation of South Korea, where Chongryon Koreans originally came 
from."

For second generation "North" Koreans in Japan, Chongryon continues to play 
a critical role in contributing to group identity, but things begin to 
change. Although individuals identify with North Korea and view Chongryon as 
a North Korean organization, the prospect of repatriation to North Korea 
seems more remote.

By the third generation, there is a transition away from collective identity 
to self identity. Their identity as North Koreans living in Japan does not 
necessarily rely on relations between North Korea and Japan. Because of 
their awareness that they may continue to live in Japan, they can sever 
their North Koreanness from state-level politics and become Japanese 
residents whose fatherland may be North Korea, but who may not support it as 
a state.

Ryang observes that living in modern society involves a multiple identity 
consisting of many roles to play. "The space over which one individual's 
activities take place is much broader, requiring mastery of a variety of 
highly specialized vocabularies." With each succeeding generation, one finds 
ever-greater agility at moving back and forth between Chongryon and 
non-Chongryon spheres, to such an extent that the third generation moves 
about with relative ease, a critical skill necessary for survival in any 
culturally pluralistic society.

This is an important book. Although geared towards an academic audience, 
given its technical terminology and style of presentation, it addresses 
several important issues faced by societies as they become less homogeneous. 
It addresses group and individual identity for those living in a different 
land and how that evolves through time.
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QUIDNUNC
In this section of CanKor, we invite readers to send questions, answers, or 
responses. Answers should be under 150 words and may be edited for space.

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None of our readers responded to last week's question: WHY DO DPR KOREANS 
PUT SO MUCH EMPHASIS ON AGRICULTURE, WHEN EVERY SPECIALIST KNOWS THEY WILL 
NEVER BE SELF-SUFFICIENT?

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WHAT NOW?

What is the reason South Koreans prefer the term "unification", whereas 
North Koreans always use the term "reunification"?

[Answers should be e-mailed to: editor at CanKor.ca]
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End CanKor # 239

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