{"id":113954,"date":"2025-02-27T20:06:42","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T20:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/migrants-diaspora-and-the-korean-impeachment-protests-in-japan\/"},"modified":"2025-02-27T20:06:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T20:06:42","slug":"migrants-diaspora-and-the-korean-impeachment-protests-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=113954","title":{"rendered":"Migrants, Diaspora, and the Korean Impeachment Protests in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Article begins<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDodon K<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Protesters\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tProtesters gathered at Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan, on Jan 18, 2025. They carry signs reading \u201cImmediately pursue impeachment\u201d in both Korean (\ud0c4\ud575 \uc778\uc6a9 \uc989\uac01\ucd94\uc9c4) and Japanese (\u5f3e\u52be\u8a8d\u5bb9\u63a8\u9032\u305b\u3088).\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Note: All individual names are pseudonyms.<\/em><\/p>\n

Minjoon\u2019s Night<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Minjoon is a South Korean student who moved to Tokyo, Japan, for his college education. On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, as he prepared to go to bed, he noticed posts about martial law beginning to appear on an online forum. Initially, he thought it was the forum manager figuratively declaring \u201cmartial law\u201d to stop the online trolls, but he quickly realized it was South Korean\u00a0President Yoon Suk Yeol<\/a>\u00a0who had made the declaration. Watching the declaration speech, he was struck by Yoon\u2019s\u00a0choice of words<\/a>: martial law was necessary for \u201ceradicating at one sweep the anti-state forces who follow North Korea<\/a>.\u201d What does he mean by eradication (\ucc99\uacb0), Minjoon wondered. Will people get shot to death? Was his family in Seoul safe?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That night, he couldn\u2019t sleep. He kept refreshing the online forum and his X\/Twitter feed for updates. He also watched live-streamed YouTube videos from the National Assembly Building, where police blocked the National Assembly legislators from entering the building while armed military members attempted to break in. At the same time, civilians gathered to stop the armed forces and make way for the legislators. Around 1:00 am, the lawmakers managed to reverse the martial law. However, Minjoon felt uncertain whether the chaotic night\u2014and martial law\u2014were truly over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A couple of days later, he heard from a friend that a protest would be held in\u00a0Ueno<\/a>, a major transportation hub in a working-class neighborhood in Eastern Tokyo. Ueno also serves\u00a0many diasporic and immigrant communities<\/a>, including the\u00a0Zainichi Koreans<\/a>. Although he was tired, he said he found it \u201cobvious\u201d (\ub2f9\uc5f0) that he should attend the protest given the \u201cunprecedented state of affairs\u201d (\ucd08\uc720\uc758\u00a0\uc2dc\uad6d). He joined\u00a0the Ueno protest<\/a>\u00a0on December 7, which drew a crowd of 150\u2013200 people; he also went to subsequent protests in Shinjuku,\u00a0one of which had as many as 500 attendees<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The anxiety Minjoon expressed during the interview was echoed by all the others I talked to in the weeks following the protests calling for Yoon\u2019s impeachment. These protests brought together diverse Koreans in Tokyo, whose legal statuses and migration histories greatly vary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An estimated\u00a0800,000 ethnic Koreans<\/a>\u00a0live in Japan, although\u00a0the exact number is difficult to pin down<\/a>. This is partly due to histories of\u00a0social and legal discrimination against them<\/a>. The figure includes both Zainichi Koreans (\u5728\u65e5\u30b3\u30ea\u30a2\u30f3)\u00a0and the \u201cNewcomer\u201d (\u30cb\u30e5\u30fc\u30ab\u30de\u30fc) Koreans. The Zainichi Koreans are the descendants of Korean colonial subjects who moved to Japan during the colonial era (1910\u20131945). Even though most originated from the Southern part of the Korean peninsula, their\u00a0political affiliation<\/a>\u00a0is split into South Korea-backed\u00a0Mindan<\/a>\u00a0and North Korea-backed\u00a0Chongryon<\/a>. While many Zainichi Koreans have naturalized as Japanese citizens in the past decades, many are still legally classified as\u00a0special permanent residents<\/a>\u00a0and travel with\u00a0a South Korean or a North Korean passport<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNewcomers,\u201d by contrast, are colloquially understood as Koreans who are not Zainichi Koreans. They are South Korean citizens who moved to Japan after the diplomatic relationship was established between South Korea and Japan in 1965. Among them are business immigrants, long-term migrant workers, and students. Amid this complexity, Zainichi Koreans and Newcomers rarely cross paths with each other in their everyday lives. The diversity of the protest participants was thus a novel experiment that challenges the conventional understandings of migration, belonging, and citizenship among Koreans in Japan.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDodon Kim<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tImage 2: Impeachment protesters gathered in Ueno, Tokyo, Japan, on December 7, 2024.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The Tokyo Impeachment Protests and the Problem of \u201cAnti-State Organization\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Within a month of the declaration of martial law in South Korea, I counted at least five impeachment protests in Tokyo, most of them not reported by the local or international press. The earliest protest occurred on December 6 in\u00a0Shin-Okubo<\/a>, a neighborhood\u00a0known to be Tokyo\u2019s \u201cNew Koreatown,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0just three days after what many protestors now call the \u201c12.3 Insurrection<\/a>.\u201d Subsequent protests alternated between Ueno (Dec. 7, 2024, and Jan. 4, 2025) and\u00a0Shinjuku Station<\/a>\u00a0(Dec. 14 and Dec. 28, 2024), the latter a site that a protest participant called \u201cthe center of Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly after the Dec. 7 protest, I began working with my colleague\u00a0Ilju Kim<\/a>\u00a0to talk to Koreans participating in Tokyo\u2019s impeachment movement. We recruited many of our interlocutors from an anonymous chat group on KakaoTalk\u2014the most popular messenger in South Korea\u2014where about 350 Koreans living in Japan exchange protest information. Most of our interlocutors were South Korean citizens in their 20s and early 30s studying or working in Japan. At the protests, we encountered a more diverse array of protestors, not only Koreans living in Japan but also members of more transient groups like temporary workers on\u00a0working holiday visas<\/a>, tourists from South Korea, and Japanese citizens joining the protests in solidarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For all our interlocutors, this was their first time attending a protest in Japan. Yet, like Minjoon, many characterized their participation as an obvious decision. For example, Yujin, who took a three-hour-long bus ride from a neighboring prefecture to participate in the protests, said that seeing reports about rallies in South Korea had \u201cnaturally\u201d (\uc790\uc5f0\uc2a4\ub7fd\uac8c) led her to search for information about protests in Japan. Others shared feelings of frustration and distress for not making it to the earlier protests.<\/p>\n

However, while they took protest as an obvious and \u201cnatural\u201d response, they were still cautious. This was because of the suspicion about the Zainichi Korean activists and their politics. The December 7th protest was organized by Hantongryon (Korean Democratic Unification Alliance in Japan), which has been designated an\u00a0\u201canti-state organization\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(\ubc18\uad6d\uac00\u00a0\ub2e8\uccb4) by the South Korean government. This designation is a legacy of South Korea\u2019s authoritarian past: Hantongryon was first established in Japan in 1973 largely by Mindan-affiliated Zainichi Koreans under the name of Hanmintong (The National Council for the Promotion of Recovery of Democracy and Unification in Korea). It played a key role in the democratization movement, especially in the 1970s and 80s, including working with the former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner\u00a0Kim Dae-jung<\/a>\u00a0during his exile in Japan and leading the movement to save Kim after his kidnapping by the South Korean intelligence authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1977, the South Korean government\u00a0fabricated an espionage case against Zainichi Korean students<\/a>, falsely accusing them and their organization of being North Korean spies. Despite a series of\u00a0court rulings<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0official reports<\/a>\u00a0in the last decade admitting the\u00a0convictions\u2019 invalidity<\/a>, the government\u00a0never lifted the designation<\/a>. Hantongryon members, who are legal citizens of South Korea, are thus still deprived of their voting rights and are denied passports by the South Korean embassy.<\/p>\n

The \u201canti-state organization\u201d label gave many interlocutors (and me) pause. The organization fit the description of the very enemy that Yoon called to \u201ceradicate\u201d (\ucc99\uacb0) and \u201cexecute\u201d (\ucc98\ub2e8) in his martial law declaration. Participants\u2019 hesitation also derived from the fractured political affiliation\u2014and the potential fluidity\u2014among Zainichi Koreans. In this context, many South Korean migrants were openly vigilant about distancing themselves from anti-American rhetoric or any discourses related to North Korea. This reveals that Cold War anti-communist politics extends to many young South Korean migrants in Japan, not just\u00a0Yoon<\/a>\u00a0or his supporters in South Korea waving\u00a0American<\/a>\u00a0flags<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDodon<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Screenshot\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA digital flyer circulated on social media to advertise the December 14, 2024, protest in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. The graphic contains lines of text in black (Korean) and white (Japanese) on a red background. In English, the message reads, \u201cArrest and impeach the leader of the insurrection, Yoon Suk Yeol.\u201d\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The Minority Anxiety<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In response to the discomfort underpinning the first Ueno protest hosted by Hantongryon, some young South Koreans mobilized on social media to organize a follow-up protest in Shinjuku<\/a>. The volunteers characterized themselves as a group of ordinary citizens, emphasizing the dispersed nature of their mobilization and distancing themselves from any affiliations that could open them up to attacks from far-right activists in South Korea and Japan. When we spoke, several volunteers speculated that this distancing likely contributed to the Shinjuku protest\u2019s larger, more diverse crowd.<\/p>\n

In addition to the fear of connection to an \u201canti-state organization,\u201d many interlocutors were also\u00a0concerned by their status as a legal and ethnic minority in Japan. Organizers and participants face a very real risk of harassment or doxing by\u00a0Japanese far-right nationalists<\/a>\u00a0(uyoku dantai<\/em>), whose nativist claims resonate with\u00a0anticommunism and colonial racism<\/a>.\u00a0Some of them<\/a>\u00a0are infamous for their\u00a0anti-Korean activities<\/a>, from hate speech, public protests, and\u00a0soliciting political support<\/a>\u00a0to committing\u00a0hate<\/a>\u00a0crimes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Other interlocutors expressed concerns about the wider stigma against political expression in Japan, especially\u00a0protest<\/a>. Hayoon shared the sadness and anger that she felt after reading far-right Japanese comments online, which included xenophobic attacks toward a protest she attended:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIs speaking up in Japan [as Koreans] considered a nuisance (\ubbfc\ud3d0)? [\u2026] What we are doing\u2026 is it making South Korea lose face? [\u2026] I was also worried about having my face appear in news reports. What happens if my colleagues see?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anxieties like these shaped how the Shinjuku protest was organized. The volunteer organizers visited the local police and the train station to ensure the legality of their protest even after earlier confirming by phone that the \u201cappeal protest\u201d did not require prior permission. To prevent local businesses from filing complaints against them, they contacted every store near the protest site to establish a communication channel. They even arranged for volunteers to regularly monitor the noise level inside the shopping mall to ensure protesters remained below the legal limit of 55dB. This turned out to be pointless given how busy the area can get on a weekend evening, with traffic and pedestrian noise drowning out protesters.<\/p>\n

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