My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer who has
published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.
Recently, I saw a news story here by the American news and opinion website Vox.
Started in 2014, Vox tries to provide another source of independent journalism. While I applaud that, I have
to disagree with one of their news stories. The news story, Inside Borth Korea's Bubble in Japan," it tells
about the organization Chongryon and its attempts to maintain the "Korean identity" among the Zainichi
Koreans who still live in Japan. The whole video talked about the Koreans in Chongryon schools and Chongryon officials who provided their viewpoints (obviously extremely pro-North Korea) on the Korean minority in
Japan. It also showed some very ugly instances of Japanese nationalists and rightwing thugs trying to
attack the Koreans. What the whole viceo left out is the pro-South Korea organization Mindan. At
present, 65 percent of all Zainichi Koreans who live in Japan identify with Mindan, and these plus
Koreans who immigrated to Japan from South Korea make-up the larger share of the Korean ethnic
minority in Japan. It is from this group of ethnic Koreans whom I had met in my English classrooms
in Seoul, and who are either from solidly ethnic Korean families in Japan or who had come from mixed
Japanese-Korean families and who chose South Korean nationality. In dealing with these ethnic
Koreans, a different picture emerged whereby they were trying to live and get along with their Japanese
neighbors, but yes extremist Japanese nationalists were making it hard for them just as these
extremist Japanese nationalists were making it hard for those Korean who identified as pro-North
Korea and who belonged to Chongryon (although I also learned that many of these these Zainichi
Koreans were not always accepted by many South Koreans in South Korea either). But yes, there
is much more to this story that Vox provided, and I fear that this will give a distorted and one-sided
view of the ethnic Korean minority in Japan to many Americans.
