Zainichi North Korean girl comments on politics and discrimination (Video)

YouTube user oniazuma has posted yet another great video, this one of a Zainichi North Korean child giving a speech about her experiences following North Korea’s most recent missile test. The girl was a student as a North Korea-affiliated school in Japan:

Some of the points that really stood out at me:

Her class was supposed to take a graduation trip to North Korea, but they couldn’t go after Japan banned North Korean ships from docking in their ports.
She was “insulted” when some Japanese children on a train said that North Korea/Taepodong is scary and pointed her out as a North Korean school’s student.
Being insulted made her truly feel North Korean.
She hopes that people can learn about “peace” instead of insulting others.

Frankly, I find her views to be somewhat ridiculous. Last time I checked, North Korea was a scary country, they had lobbed missiles into the sea near Japan, and they were continuing to pose a major threat to the peace of the region. The Japanese government banned North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports because those ships helped fund a totalitarian regime that threatens its neighbors and has kidnapped Japanese citizens. It’s a joke for a girl who has graduated from a propaganda school run by one of the most brutal and oppressive nations in the world, and appears to support that regime, to lecture anyone about respecting the rights of others or peace.

22 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - March 21, 2007 at 11:07 pm

Categories: Discrimination, Foreigners in Japan, Politics Tags:

http://www.occidentalism.org Matt

Complaints of harassment is Chosen Soren’s modus operandi. These kind of complaints are impossible to verify, but if someone is saying it, it must be true, right? The other thing is that the kinds of things she describes happening are quite plausible, especially since many of the threats to Japan were made possible by the material support of people like her parents.
bb

James is absolutely right on. This girl needs a reality check. I hope the girl’s sentiments and this kind of argument don’t appeal to anyone, especially the Japan left. Instead, she should be thanking her lucky stars she grew up in Japan, not North Korea. She can actually express her views openly for one….

http://tofusando.blogspot.com Akoua Doffou

North Korea is a scary place to live, I can imagine. The people are poor, hungry and most of them are brainwashed. This is rediculous!

http://sleepytako.blogspot.com David

I feel sad for those students that do get yelled at or live in fear for things well beyond their control. Wether or not, as Matt says, this is their school’s modus operandi is irrelevant, that comes from the adults around them. The DPRK is a scary strange place, I have a strong, sick desire to go and see it in person and often scan through any photos I can find, but let’s not forget that people live day-to-day lives there too. Those people, just like this girl, are pawns in a larger game, let’s not make their chessmasters stronger by making it easier for them to believe the propaganda they are fed, let’s show them the opposite. As a foreign resident of Japan I can only do so much; it’s up to the Japanese education and immigration systems, among other things, to correctly integrate these students into Japanese society. The most apparent problem is when the girl states that she is a North Korean, but judging by her Japanese I’d say she’s really Japanese. If she thought of Tokyo as her home she would also be just as scared by the DPRK’s missile tests.
Ken

There seem so many Korean schools around Osaka as follows.
http://korea-ngo.org/images/4funai_map.gif
http://troubledyouth.org noahT

I going to call bullshit on this hoe. Obviously there are a lot of well-funded Zainichi groups (read, Sumiyoshikai) out there that funded her to memorize the events of this “memory,” so she can’t be trusted at all.

If she doesn’t like her life in Japan, GO BACK TO N.KOREA. Lets see what kind of discrimination she feels there, since it’s doubtful she even speaks Korean.

But it doesn’t even matter. The Zainichi lobby is a shitty minority that will hopefully be crushed soon by anti-organized crime enforcement. REAL Zainichi are normal decent folks who don’t complain all the god damn time.
PD

Umm, her ultimate message is not to discriminate (hurtfully) aginst individuals on the basis of their ethnicity. And finially, she urges all listening to work towards peace. Doesn’t sound so subversive to me.
ponta

To be fair, there is a one-word explicitly discriminatory used against her by Japanese students on the train—if her story is true— chonkousei and it is wrong to blame North Korea aloud on the train so that she could hear it: she is a kid and she has little to do with NK policy and probably she is rather a victim of the biased education. .

She said she learned the word “insulting” this year, and she wanted to learn the word “peace” next year. It seems North Korean high school has not taught her the most elementary and fundamental thing to their student.
Desiree

This girl has some kind of problem..She feels like a true North Korean when she’s insulted and abused,,right now I wonder what kind of things they learn at their N. Korean School in Japan…but I kinda agree with poster Akoua Doffou
adams

Peace is a good message. But I suspect this was rehearsed and strategized. Bottomline, she needs to go to NORTH KOREA! I can gaurantee she would be UTTERLY grateful for Japan and all she has living there. It really annoys me how ungracious non-Japanese in the country are, even english teachers. LEAVING is always an option and im sure no Japanese would be upset by that action, but then, humans like drama and limelight, so she would never leave willingly, nor others i suspect!
kenji

Well I applaud this girl that she indeed wants peace and understanding…something the NK government is oblivious to. But on the other hand, she is North Korean. She has loyalty to North Korea and if she feels discrimination in Japan…I don’t understand why she can’t just go back where she belongs/won’t be discriminated. Of course people are going to generalize about her and her country. Kim Jong is a freakin lunatic, thats a proven fact. Who wouldn’t be scared about a dictator who spends almost his entire GDP on his military?
People like her take their lives for granted. She obviously doesn’t know how good she has it in Japan. She really just needs a dose of reality.
This painfully reminds me of those Muslim immigrants in France who always protest how discriminatory is it to force Muslim schoolchildren to remove their scarves due to security reasons or the distractions they may pose to other students. Immigrants are desperate to leave their countries but then once they get settled they make no effort to assimilate and start to blame the government. Wtf man. Of course this is a generalization but its still in the news from time to time.

..

Kenji, headscarves don’t pose a security threat… Wtf are you smoking??? The reason headscarves are decried in France is because all religious signs are supposed to be kept out of public schools. Schools in France are supposed to be secular. Nobody believes that these girls are terrorists though. However, the vast majority of muslim schoolgirls in France -don’t- wear headscarves. There are only a few dozen cases per year. Also most of them are -not- immigrants, they were born in France. They get French nationalities. This North Korean girl also was probably born in Japan too, if so, it is completely improper to call her an immigrant, same for the muslim schoolgirls in France.

Peter Pan

While I understand a sympathize for her point that KJI being a freak doesn’t make her a freak, so don’t take it out on me, she’s going about fixing the bigger problem in the wrong way. She needs to complain to KJI about how he is the worst leader in the history of time, not to the Japanese people around her that say, “hey, theres that girl who worships the worst leader in the history of time, what a tard she is.”

And the sad part is that’s actually the approach the governments of both North and South Korea are taking. They criticize those who criticize the North for being f’cked up. FYI, the North IS f’cked up; fix the North, and we’ll shut up. But until then, you’re an accomplice.

Frankly I think the North Korean run schools in Japan should be shut down. I think Japan has a responsibility to the children to do what is best for them, and saving them from the cult that is North Korea should be done sooner than later. And don’t even begin to think about the security concerns of allowing a foreign government to train spies on your own land, all while you fund it because they can’t pay their bills.
http://www.keepingpaceinjapan.com Turner

Her account may not have been falsified, but it was clearly rehearsed and used for propaganda. I do agree that she is detached, in more ways than one:

- detached from the DPRK in the sense that she can’t understand the reality of the situation over there, and is using legimate fear to try and soften criticism.

- detached from Japan; she seems to hold no sentiment for the country that is currently her home, and allowing her to speak about such discrimination

Now, I know when I look at an 18-year-old girl, I don’t see a totalitarian regime. And I can understand her narrow views in a way: she doesn’t want to be insulting solely for being a North Korean. But, I agree with a lot of your comments – she still seems to hold this idealistic view of the DPRK, that it is her true home, and nothing can remove that purpose from her mind.

Visit North Korea, stay there, and come back to Japan. See the difference. If you honestly think that there is no justification for fear and resentment, then by all means… criticize away.
langslave

I think theres both good and bad to what she has to say.
On the one hand she obviously has no idea about the reality of life in North Korea, nor how its leaders pariah status is brought about only by his actions.
However I can relate to her comments about “knowing” shes North Korean when shes insulted. Generally no-one here has the balls to really insult a gaijin to their face(unless theres about 20 of them and they have “beer muscles”), but they do manage to slide it in, often without even realising theyre doing it. It cuts all the same though.
One of my friends created the term “Nihonjinist” to describe these people. Basically a Nihonjinist believes any and all things Japanese are in every way different to, and better than, anything/anyone from outside Japan.
Every culture has at least a degree of “uchi”- “soto”, but for the Nihonjinist it is the yardstick by which everything on the planet is measured. And when it comes to “soto”, no-one is more-so than you closest neighbour.
WujouMao

iv got no problems with what she said. clearly yes, she is still taught brainwashing crap, but at the end of the day did didnt like being insulted. least she shares the same date as my birthday
i hate being called american in the philippines, but how can i explain to them what country england is.
Annie

WujouMao, can’t they tell from your accent?

Usually, I would get confuse between British and Australian accent. I can never tell the diff.

Brainwash is a scary thing.
Surge79uwf

Notice this video has been taken down. Oniazuma obviously has realized how much the propaganda value this thing has.
John

I think allot of posters are misunderstanding what’s going on here . Japanese people look down on Korean people. Koreans that live in Japan experience bigotry in a daily basis. This girl has been insulted and probably have been rejected by Japanese people. If you been rejected or insulted wouldn’t you want to side with some other team.

North Korea has it’s problem but that is besides the subject matter here.

ponta

I think you are misunderstanding what’s going on here.
Things are more nuanced than you think.
In a daily basis, no body can tell Japanese from Koreans.
There are some Korean Japanese　like 鄭大均 who criticize Koreans who speak like you.

John

Some poster will argue why don’t this girl just go back to North Korea. Well, this is pretty much the same argument you can apply to any non-Japanese complaining about living in Japan or dealing with Japanese people.

What’s more important is that Japan has to recognize their own bigotry toward other Asian country. Some people mention about brain washing by the North Korea. Funny..it kind of goes both ways with Japan using the media to paint other countries in a negative light.

ponta

You might want to look at how Japanese media depict North Korean school
http://oniazuma.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/annyong-haseo-behind-the-gates-of-north-korean-schools-in-japan/

Zainichi North Korean girl comments on politics and discrimination (Video)

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