By Bomi Choi
The New York Times bestseller Pachinko (2017), written by Korean American author Min Jin Lee, and the screen adaptation of the English-language novel on Apple TV+ in 2022, tell stories of Japan’s ethnic Koreans. The Japanese term Zainichi literally means ‘resident in Japan’, but it is commonly used to address its Korean residents. As the title Pachinko – a kind of pinball game which is popular but stigmatised as gambling in Japan – implies, the Zainichi often participate in Pachinko and other small businesses not favoured by Japanese people, remaining on the margins of Japanese society.[1]
In South Korea, few people properly know who the Korean/Japanese diaspora are, and what they have lived through. Despite the long-held fetish for homogeneous Korean ethnicity, the struggling ethnic Koreans in Japan have long been neglected.
To remain in Japan or to return to Korea
In the history of Koreans’ migration to Japan, the annexation of Korea by Japan (1910–45) was a major turning point. Around this time, many Koreans moved to Japan by force or due to economic necessity. Upon Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II and following Korea’s independence in 1945, the majority of the diasporic community returned to Korea. Still, those who did not return to Korea after liberation numbered about 0.6 million, becoming the origin of the Zainichi.[2]
Those who stayed had complex reasons for this. Although Koreans suffered from racial discrimination and economic exploitation, some achieved successful careers during the annexation, while others found economic opportunities that became available soon after the end of the war.[3] The returnees, however, were allowed to carry no more than a thousand yen and such a restriction discouraged them from returning to Korea.[4]
Contrary to those who found some success, and were therefore relatively privileged, there were also impoverished Koreans. Those who were impoverished could not afford a train journey to one of the departure ports and return to Korea.[5]
In addition, the return was not smooth due to severe restrictions on post-war traffic between Korea and Japan. While millions of passengers were transported by ferry between 1905 and 1945, the line between Shimonoseki (Japan) and Busan (Korea) was not resumed until 1970.[6]
The decision of whether to stay or return was even more complicated for those who had left Joseon (1392–1910) – the last Korean dynastic kingdom – or Japanese-occupied Korea before the division of their homeland. As a result of the Korean War (1950–53), the Korean peninsula was divided into two parts, geographically and politically: the democratic South and the communist North. Accordingly, the Zainichi had to choose between whether to return to the North or the South.
In 1952, meanwhile, Japan recovered its sovereignty, and this change then rescinded Japanese citizenship for Koreans in Japan.[7] As Korean/Japanese residents are not allowed to have North Korean nationality, those who do not choose South Korea as their nationality remain stateless in Japan.[8] Those stateless people were granted the status of special residents only after Japan agreed to the refugee treaty in 1982.[9] This has been depicted by the Zainichi character Kim Sunja, whose Japanese name is Bando Nobuko in Pachinko (TV series), who is one of those with the status of special resident.
Sunja was born in the 1910s in Japanese-colonised Busan, Korea. In the early 1930s, she and her husband emigrated to Japan, becoming part of the diasporic community in Osaka. In Osaka, Ikaino was a place where many Koreans settled. Mirroring the literal meaning of Ikaino, a field where people raise pigs,[10] the neighbourhood described in Pachinko is a filthy and deprived area where pigs and people mingle in a narrow alley.
The committed effort to maintain Korean identities
Besides the visual description of the place, what is also noticeable in the TV adaptation of Pachinko is the constant switch from one language to another between Korean and Japanese, though sometimes English is also included in scenes of Sunja’s grandson Solomon Baek who studied and worked in the United States of America. The command of both Korean and Japanese is common for the Zainichi. It does not, however, mean that they are effortlessly bilingual. In reality, the diasporic community has made huge efforts not to forget their mother tongue.
Upon liberation, the Zainichi started to build Joseon schools in Japan to educate their children as Joseon people.[11] Before the forced closure in 1949, approximately 40,000 students were educated at about 360 Joseon schools across Japan.[12] Teaching Korean is one of the most important and distinctive missions of these Joseon schools. When I visited a Joseon school in Osaka in January 2020, what immediately captured my attention was a conspicuous slogan in Korean displayed around the entrance of the building: ‘Let’s learn our language well and always use it’.
In stark contrast to the slogan, ironically, pupils in front of the building were chatting to each other in Japanese. The scenes in Korean or Japanese in Pachinko mirror the distinctive Zainichi milieu where Korean and Japanese languages are mixed.
Considering that the Zainichi are ethnic Koreans domiciled in Japan, it would not come as a surprise that they have both Korean and Japanese names and speak the two languages. Similar to the determined effort made to be able to speak Korean, using a Korean name is not an easy choice to make, either. For example, a Korean/Japanese graduate with a Korean name applied to more than ten companies but was not shortlisted for interviews; however, when he applied to McDonald’s with his Japanese name, he successfully got the job.[13]
Despite the discriminatory attitudes towards and treatment of those who maintain their Korean identities, some Korean/Japanese parents continue to educate their children in Joseon schools in order to preserve their mother tongue and ethnic identity as Koreans.
Korea, Japan and in-between people
‘History has failed us, but no matter’.[14] As the opening sentence of the novel Pachinko indicates, the Zainichi have largely been neglected in modern Korean and Japanese history. It is ‘but no matter’ because stories of the Zainichi such as Pachinko afford contemporary readers and viewers access to the unexperienced time and space of the Zainichi still living between the two countries, two names, and two languages.
Bomi Choi is an experienced theatre and performance industry professional. Bomi received her PhD in Drama and Theatre Studies from Royal Holloway University of London in January 2022. Her PhD thesis explored the nexus of migrants and theatre, focusing on how contemporary South Korean theatre engages with marginalised communities, including North Korean migrants, Asian marriage migrants, and the Korean diaspora.
Bibliography
Kim, Eung-gyo. “Gentile, Zainichi Diaspora Literature.” Journal of Modern Korean Literature 21 (2010): 123–157.
Kim, Hyun-sun. “An Analysis of Nationality and Identity of Koreans in Japan.” Economy and Society 83 (2009): 313–341.
Lee, Min Jin. Pachinko. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017.
Lee, Young-hee. “The Korean Hamlet (‘Buraku’) as a Heterotopia: ‘Ikaino’.” Korean Journal of Japanese Language and Literature 75 (2016): 287–300.
Lie, John. Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity. eScholarship: University of California Press, 2008.
Oh, Yeong-ho. “The History of Joseon Schools as a Process of Decolonisation: Focusing on the 1960s after Liberation.” in Jiwon Bae and Kyeonghi Jo, eds. The Zainichi and Joseon Schools: The Time of Struggle, The Space of Life, 19–65. Seoul: Seonin, 2017.
Yu, Seung-chang. “The Movement of Ethnic Education of the Zainichi in Public Schools of Osaka in the 1970s.” in Jiwon Bae and Kyeonghi Jo, eds. The Zainichi and Joseon Schools: The Time of Struggle, The Space of Life, 151–175. Seoul: Seonin, 2017.
[1] In Pachinko, the Zainichi character Mozasu runs pachinko parlours.
[2] Hyun-sun Kim, “An Analysis of Nationality and Identity of Koreans in Japan.” Economy and Society 83 (2009): 318–319.
[3] John Lie, Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity (eScholarship: University of California Press, 2008), 34.
[4] Lie, Zainichi, 34.
[5] Lie, Zainichi, 34.
[6] Lie, Zainichi, 36.
[7] Lie, Zainichi, x.
[8] The stateless individuals are understood to have the nationality of Joseon which ceased to exist in 1910. Meanwhile, the number of Korean/Japanese people naturalised as Japanese began to increase in the early 1990s. Kim, “An Analysis,” 321.
[9] Eung-gyo Kim, “Gentile, Zainichi Diaspora Literature.” Journal of Modern Korean Literature 21 (2010): 134.
[10] Young-hee Lee, “The Korean Hamlet (‘Buraku’) as a Heterotopia: ‘Ikaino’,” Korean Journal of Japanese Language and Literature 75 (2016): 290.
[11] Yeong-ho Oh, “The History of Joseon Schools as a Process of Decolonisation: Focusing on the 1960s after Liberation,” in The Zainichi and Joseon Schools: The Time of Struggle, The Space of Life, ed. Jiwon Bae and Kyeonghi Jo (Seoul: Seonin, 2017), 23–25.
[12] Oh, “Joseon Schools”, 28.
[13] Seung-chang Yu, “The Movement of Ethnic Education of the Zainichi in Public Schools of Osaka in the 1970s,” in The Zainichi and Joseon Schools: The Time of Struggle, The Space of Life, ed. Jiwon Bae and Kyeonghi Jo (Seoul: Seonin, 2017), 159.
[14] Min Jin Lee, Pachinko (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017), 5.
Cover Image. A signboard in Japanese and Korean in a market in Osaka, Japan (7 January 2020) Author’s own image.
Figure 1. The slogan (‘Let’s learn our language well and always use it’) in the main entrance of the school building (8 January 2020). Author’s own image.
Figure 2. The name of the Joseon school (Osaka Korean High School) written in Korean (Osakka Joseon Gogeup Hakgyo) on the walls (8 January 2020) Author’s own image.
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