September 8, 2003
North Korea Losing Support in an Angry Japan
By JAMES BROOKE
OKYO, Sept. 8 — Huge oil portraits of Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, beamed down tonight from a stage here that was festooned with artificial flowers. Soviet-style music wafted over banquet tables brimming with Korean delicacies, and bar tables brimming with beer and wine.
At the imposing building that serves as North Korea's de facto embassy here, no corners were cut to celebrate the 55th birthday of what is formally called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The only missing element was government representatives from the host nation, Japan.
For 50 years, the group sponsoring this event, the General Association of Korean residents of Japan, has loyally supported North Korea, providing millions of dollars in aid and sending representatives to serve in the Supreme People's Assembly. But in the last year, the group has split along generational and ideological lines as Japan's mood has turned strongly — and sometimes violently — against the group.
In the past, power brokers from the governing Liberal Democratic Party would sweep into founding-day banquets. But tonight, not even congressional representatives from the Communist Party of Japan dared be seen at a North Korean event.
Anger over North Korea's nuclear bomb program, its missile program and its past practice of kidnapping Japanese, has set Japanese public opinion sharply against North Korea and its supporters here. On the government level, Japan plans to spend $1.2 billion next year to start building a missile defense system against North Korea.
"There has been a lot of pressure by Japan on us," complained Ho Jong Man, a dignified man in a well-cut business suit who looked every inch an ambassador, but carries the title of acting chairman of the association. With about 150,000 members, it is the largest group of North Korean supporters living outside the isolated nation.
On the street level, credit unions affiliated with the association have been targets of bomb and bullet attacks. Korean-language schools have been targets of hate mail, harassing telephone calls and, sometimes, attacks on students.
"We are having a tougher and tougher time getting students," Song U-Ze, principal of a pro-North Korean school, said tonight over a plate of sushi. Noting that portraits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung were taken down at his school a year ago, he added, "We are emphasizing politics less, and emphasizing Korean ethnicity and language more."
While Mr. Song's student body had only dropped by about 25 percent over the last 30 years, he and others admitted that time is not on the side of the these schools, which are often seen as the reservoirs of Korean nationalism and culture in Japan.
"The younger generation have been Japan-ized, so they don't have the drive to maintain their ethnicity," lamented So Chung-On, an association official who said he travels to Pyongyang annually to visit his aunt and his cousins. "The Japanese media and the Japanese people have been pressing against the Koreans in Japan who support North Korea."
Speaking of the pressure to assimilate, Lee Hyon Suk, a recent graduate of the Korean school system here, said, "Parents now think, if you want to get ahead in Japanese society, you may as well go to a Japanese school and to a Japanese university, in order to get a job in a Japanese company."
A few years ago, politicians in Japan's governing party maintained warm, if discreet, contacts with North Korea's representatives here, sometimes even traveling to Pyongyang.
But today, in a measure of the changed attitudes, each of the three members of Parliament running against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at the Sept. 20 convention of the Liberal Democratic Party denounced Mr. Koizumi for not being tough enough on North Korea.
Shizuka Kamei, one of the major candidates, said today at a news conference, "I really wonder why Japan does not take the step of imposing economic sanctions, when it is said there are more than 100 abduction victims and North Korea does not intend to deal with the matter appropriately." |
