As part of the Lecture Series at the Institute for Korean Studies (IKS) of Freie Universität Berlin, which is organized by DAAD-Star-Professor Hyo-Je Cho, on January 4th Professor Suh Kyung Sik from Tokyo Keizai University gave a special lecture on the topic "Who are ´Zainichi´-Koreans?".

 

Lecture report

"Zainichi" is a jargon term currently used in Japan to refer to permanent alien residents. Due to the fact that most of the permanent alien residents in Japan are of Korean ethnicity, "Zainichi" is used synonymously to indicate the ethnic Korean residents of Japan. "Korean residents in Japan," pronounced "Zainichi Chosenjin" in Japanese, refers to all Korean people and their descendants that live in the former colonist country of Japan as a consequential result of history, that which concerns the annexation of their nation Chosun/Korea, committed by Japanese imperialist forces.

"Zainichi" are people who relocated in Japan due to colonial rule, and stayed there even after the Japanese surrender in 1945. And yet, as a result of multiple factors such as the North-South division of Korea, the birth of and subsequent tensions between the two political entities, and the absence of diplomacy between Japan and South Korea (from 1948 to 1965) and Japan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (from 1948 to now), the "Zainichi" are refugees confined within the enclosed space of Japan and acknowledged as nothing more than "the Other" within that space. Knowing about "Zainichi" is very important to have a proper comprehension of Korea and Korea-Japan relation. As a final analysis the existence of “Zainichi” must be seen as a human rights issue, i.e. an infringement of fundamental rights of every human being to lead a decent life on the basis of equal worth and equal respect.

 

Backgrounder

Mr. Suh Kyung Sik is professor of Tokyo Keizai University, Japan, at the Faculty of Contemporary Law.  Born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1951, he was brought up and educated in Japan as a second-generation Korean. His grandfather and father had come to Japan for work when Korea was under the rule of imperial Japan.

Graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo, professor Suh has written numerous books on the subject of Zainichi Koreans. Among them are “On the violence of Colonialism” (Kobunken, 2010). He has also extensively written on the various problems arising from Holocaust experience. His award-winning essay ”A Journey to look for Primo Levi” was published to highly critical acclaim (Asahi Shimbun Publishers, 1999; Changbi, Korea, 2006). Some of his major works have also been translated and published in Korea.

 A prolific writer and a renowned expert on the questions of identity, diaspora, and the problem of the ‘nation’, professor Suh has taught human rights at Tokyo Keizai University, Japan.