I like them both.
Great.
95 year-old Mr Baik proudly shows us his latest momento:
a badge with Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il,
two North Korean leaders vilified as the epitome of evil in the West.
We feel very close to them.
We are united, they stand united with us.
Together, always together with us.
But Mr Baik doesn't live in Pyongyang,
for decades he has lived here in Tokyo, Japan
a country that has been hostile to Koreans
since it occupied their land
at the beginning of the 20th century,
especially the 150,000 or so who identify with the DPRK.
So how is it that new generations of Koreans born in Japan
grow up loyal to the most demonised state in the West?
This is a song from the DPRK.
Along with a few other relics Mr Baik keeps,
this is one of the ways he keeps up his connection to his homeland.
So you always listen to this?
Everyday!
Everyday?
Everyday!
Mr Baik's life has not been easy here,
and for younger Koreans itās not getting easier.
Japan is experiencing a resurgence of the extreme right,
just like Europe and the US.
All foreigners, known as 'Gaijin' in Japanese,
are increasingly frowned upon.
But it's 'Joseon' Koreans, or those who identify with the DPRK,
who are in the most danger.
Japanese hate Koreans.
This, for your information, is from a public survey
conducted by the Sankei Shimbun paper.
It shows that 90 percent of Japanese respondents
say that they donāt like Koreans.
It clearly shows the opinion of the Japanese people.
Makoto Sakurai is a poster boy of the Japanese far-right.
Taking his cues from Donald Trump, Sakurai launched the Japan First Party in 2016
and quickly became infamous for his xenophobic views and his scapegoating of Japanās ethnic Korean minority.
They say things like "go back to your country"
and "you Korean cockroaches".
They says things like "kill all the Koreans, good and bad".
This is Kim, he's a 24 year-old student activist and part of Japan's North Korean community.
When we hear this we feel very intimidated and cannot even use our real Korean names.
As a Korean, this creates an inferiority complex towards being Korean.
Modern Japanese racism is inextricably tied to when Japan was Asia's foremost imperial power
until it was defeated alongside Nazi Germany at the end of World War II.
Japan glorified its bloody colonisation across the Asia Pacific by demonising its colonial subjects.
And right up until today, Japanese society rarely talks about how during that time
hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forced to work in slave-like conditions
in Japanese mines and factories as the country industrialised at break-neck speed.
Or how when Japan was allied to Nazi Germany against the Allies in WWII
Korean men were conscripted in the army and sent to some of the harshest fronts where they faced probable death.
Meanwhile, Japan imposed extreme assimilation policies on Koreans,
forcing Japanese citizenship on them.
They even had to change their names to Japanese ones, while their newspapers and schools were shut down.
So kids were unable to learn Korean
but they were taught anthems of Nazi Germany in Japanese schools,
which Mr Baik still remembers:
Raise the flag!
The ranks tightly closed!
The SA marches!
You know the SA [Hitler's Storm Detachment]?
This is their song
We learned this at school. It was popular among the students.
Popular.
When the Japanese empire fell in 1945 most Koreans returned home
but approximately 600,000 stayed in Japan.
The government then stripped ethnic Koreans of the Japanese citizenship that had been forced on them
and years later when they'd be allowed to get it back, many refused
even though it would mean more political rights and freedom to travel.
I've Never visited the DPRK. I've visited South Korea but I don't consider South Korea my home, or homeland.
That's definitely where my ancestors came from,
that's the country where my grandma and grandpa grew up,
but I feel still that Japan is
the bigger part of me in terms of country.
And yet I don't want to be naturalised,
I don't want to be invisible
and I feel like being
a Korean with a special permanent residency,
I feel like I'm a living evidence of Japan's colonial past.
Koreans who identify with North Korea refer to themselves as Joseon Koreans.
They make up roughly a quarter of the total Korean population living here.
Mr. Ko runs a gaming parlour known as a 'pachinko'.
Pachinkos became the economic bedrock of the Joseon community.
The reason why there are so many Koreans doing this type of work
is because we were unable to work in regular companies after the war.
So Koreans opened these sort of businesses
because they were the jobs that the Japanese didn't want to do.
Today, Joseon Koreans' pachinko and restaurant businesses are thriving here
and their profits are major contributors to an organisation called the Chongryon.
Founded over 60 years ago, the Chongryon remains one of two bodies that represents Koreans in Japan.
Tied to the DPRK, it has fought for decades to protect Korean culture and language,
a difficult task in a country as ethnocentric as Japan.
The DPRK has historically funded the community and its network of schools.
And people here have not forgotten that,
which partly explains why political support for Pyongyang remains strong in the community.
But that doesnāt necessarily mean absolute loyalty to the DPRK for everyone.
For some it's about something much more simple:
a stateless people maintaining their identity in the face of adversity.
We don't have a single right which was given by Japan to us without our own initiative.
We fought and won.
We collected signatures, made requests
and took it to the ministries where [political] demands are made.
We acquired our rights.
There is a history of civil struggle and the Chongryon directed us in what to do.
Mr Kang is also a member of the Chongryon.
His family have been in the restaurant business,
which supports the organisation financially, for three generations.
About 50 years ago my grandmother came to Japan.
Most of the restaurants in this street belong to Zainichi Koreans.
The owners are the second or third generations
of their families working here.
This is my big brother's restaurant.
This is the biggest restaurant.
Let's go inside.
Hey, we're going to film in the kitchen.
We're coming in!
The Chongryon run around 70 schools,
which aim to keep Korean children connected to their language and community.
They're especially valued because they offer an alternative to Japanese schools,
which teach a glorified version of the history which is so painful for Koreans.
After the war, Germany criticised those who supported Nazism.
Japan didn't do that.
When I was growing up I never heard that Japan was actually a perpetrator country too
They feel like they are being personally attacked
for the things that happened years before they were even born.
There is no anti-Japanese rhetoric.
There is a stance against imperialism, of invading and taking over other countries.
We, as graduates of Korean schools, don't agree with imperialism.
We absolutely hate it.
This scene might look like the stereotype we constantly see in the West
brainwashed North Koreans who blindly worship the DPRK and its leaders.
But that's not really what I found.
I was actually surprised at how much nuance there is
amongst Joseon Koreans in their views towards their homeland.
The students are very critical,
they actually are exposed to multiple news sources.
They don't only watch Japanese news,
but they also watch South Korean news.
They also hear what the North Korean government is saying about particular issues
and they think very deeply of what is true, how truth is kind of fabricated
or created by the media.
So I think I would definitely say that they are actually existing
at the very opposite of being brainwashed.
The Japanese media talk about us like we worship Kim Il-Sung,
but that's not how we think.
We just feel close to him. To us he's a friendly figure.
We are in Japan, so who's forcing us to [think like this]?
South Korea says that they've economically better developed
but the South Korean government never sent money to support Koreans in Japan.
They didn't even send us a single book or notebook.
The Chongryon community goes to great lengths to keep its connection to Korea alive.
Here in this museum a vast range of rock, plant and even animal specimens
that the organisation has collected from the DPRK are on display.
It may seem a bit weird, but this community love it.
It's one of the many ways they maintain familiarity with a country that embraces them as they are,
while their Japanese home and its society treats them as outcasts.
My hometown is here, in Chungcheongnam-do.
Mine is here in Chungcheongbukdo, in the southern part of the peninsula.
Mine is here, in Gyeongsangbukdo. This is my hometown.
But the Japanese government doesnāt always take kindly to momentos brought in from the DPRK.
Yesterday students from a Korean school returned from Pyongyang to Tokyo.
Their souvenirs were confiscated at the airport and Chongryon officials gave us a call today,
they want us to attend a press conference so we're about to go in and find out what's going on.
There is no doubt that this unjust act was carried out on the orders of the Japanese government.
Japan is harassing these people. I think that this qualifies as a criminal act internationally.
Japan's authorities also are facing Chongryon students and teachers in court over discrimination.
Their schools are the only ones nationwide that are excluded from state subsidies,
forcing parents to pay high tuition fees.
And on the way to school, pupils have to reckon with the threat of violent far-right groups.
Sometimes we receive phone calls telling us "go home to Korea! If you don't like Japan, go back to Korea!".
This happens a lot.
Pupils are too afraid to even wear their traditional Korean uniforms, called the "chogori", to school.
Here they are wearing Japanese uniforms.
And here, now they are safely through the school gates, they've changed into their chogoris.
Before, we used to go to school in our chogori.
But now the situation is too tense. I find it heartbreaking.
Dr Kyung says it's exactly this atmosphere which makes Koreans feel like they have to hide their identity
that provokes those born in Japan to cling on to their roots even more firmly.
If you talk about the headscarf, in France for example.
When anti-Muslim violence escalated the number of people who wore scarves rose, you know.
When you face discrimination because of who you are,
I think you inevitably feel that you need to protect, you know, who you are.
Korean students thrive on adversity.
When they're targeted they fight back.
Many of us have grown up in these kinds of circumstances.
And so even those ethnic Koreans who have naturalised as Japanese citizens
and are objectively much more Japanese than Korean,
the louder anti-Korean voices get, the closer the Chongryon community comes together.
A lot of people have already naturalised as Japanese citizens
and they are full members of the society in a political sense.
They have a vote, they can vote.
And many community members of Chongryon do not choose that route, intentionally.
They have already learned from other people's struggles like the civil rights movement in the United States,
that citizenship by itself will not guarantee you to participate in the society fully.
In the West, citizenship doesn't mean much
if you're black, Muslim, Jewish, Roma, or a member of some other minority which is the punch bag of the day or era.
It's the same for Koreans in Japan.
The desire to simply be treated as a human being
and not some other label like resident, citizen, immigrant, asylum seeker, displaced person and so on...
That's not to say the political rights that each generation of Koreans in Japan have fought so hard for don't mean something.
This is why they're so determined to keep the memory of that struggle alive;
through the Chongryon and through their schools,
so that future generations can avoid repeating the worst horrors their ancestors lived through,
not least war a spectre which continues to linger over the Korean peninsula.
Joseon Koreans wish for two things:
that we're never colonised again like we were by imperial Japan.
The second is that we don't want another war.
North or South, rich or poor, it's no good for anybody.
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