Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-nzzs5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-15T01:40:33.176Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Rise and Fall of Chongryun—From Chōsenjin to Zainichi and beyond

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Horrified by the sight of the lynching of African Americans, Abel Meeropol wrote a poem called Strange Fruit that is perhaps better known in the form of the 1939 rendition by Billie Holiday. African Americans continued to suffer lynching for many decades after the American Civil War—mostly in the South, but also in many other states all around the country. Being black meant risking being turned into a strange fruit hanging from a poplar tree, giving off the smell of burnt flesh as it swung in the southern breeze. Being black meant close proximity to death—by accidentally stumbling into a white person, by not adhering to prescribed etiquette, by not addressing a white person properly, or simply by making eye contact with a white woman. In a word, lynching could and did take place at the whim of certain white people. Hardly any explanation, let alone justification, was required. In some states, a lynching would be announced in advance in the local newspaper so that white people could gather and enjoy a picnic while watching it. Men and women, old and young, and boys and girls participated, eager and curious witnesses to the spectacle of black bodies being beaten, severed, carved, sliced, burned, and mutilated. Today, half a century after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, great numbers of black Americans die at the hands of police or while in police custody, reminding us that to erase a belief and the system that it is founded upon takes more than the declaration of a new law.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

References

Armstrong, Charles. 2003. The North Korean Revolution, 1945—1950. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Chongryon Chief's Son Arrested over Suspected N. Korea Mushroom Imports.” 2015. Japan Times May 12, 2015. Online (accessed March 1, 2016).Google Scholar
Chung, Erin. 2006. Immigration and Citizenship in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cumings, Bruce. 1981. Origins of the Korean War, vol. 1: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fujitani, Takashi. 2011. Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Inokuchi, Hiromitsu. 2000. “Korean Ethnic Schools in Occupied Japan, 1945—52.” In Ryang, S. ed., Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2000. “Political Correctness, Postcoloniality and the Self-representation of ‘Koreanness’ in Japan.” In Ryang, S. ed., Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kim, Myungsoo. 2003. “Ethnic Stratification and Inter-Generational Differences in Japan: A Comparative Study of Korean and Japanese Status Attainment,” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 12: 616.Google Scholar
Koshiro, Yukiko. 1999. Transpacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kuraishi, Ichiro. 2008. PACCHIGI! And GO: Representing Zainichi in Recent Cinema.” In Ryang, S. and Lie, J. eds., Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan, Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lie, John. 2008. Zainichi (Koreans in Japan): Diasporic Nationalism and Postcolonial Identity. Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Morita, Yoshio. 1996. Sūjiga kataru zainichi chōsenjin no rekishi [A history of Koreans in Japan told through statistics]. Tokyo: Akashi shoten.Google Scholar
Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. 2007. Exodus to North Korea: Shadows from Japan's Cold War. Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 1997. North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity. Boulder, CO.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 2000. “The North Korean Homeland of Koreans in Japan.” In Ryang, S. ed., Korans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 2007. “The Tongue That Divided Life and Death: The 1923 Earthquake and the Massacre of Koreans,” The Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus September 3, 2007, Vol. 5, Issue 9. Online (accessed February 14, 2016).Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 2008a. “The De-Nationalized Have No Class: The Banishment of Japan's Korean Minority—A Polemic,” The Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus June 1, 2008, Vol. 6, Issue 6. Online (accessed February 14, 2106).Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 2008b. Writing Selves in Diaspora: Ethnography of Autobiographics of Korean Women in Japan and the United States. Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Ryang, Sonia. 2010. “To Be or Not to Be – In Japan and Beyond: Summing up and Sizing down Koreans in Japan,” Asia Pacific World Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 731.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Tokyo Police Raid N. Korea HQ.” 2001. BBC News Asia Pacific November 29, 2001. Online (accessed March 1, 2016).Google Scholar