Zainichi players on the North Korean soccer team

With all the World Cup excitement in Japan right now, I just thought I’d link to this Bloomberg report on the two players from Japan on the NK soccer team:

North Korea, the lowest ranked team in the soccer World Cup, faces five-time champion Brazil tonight with its hopes pinned on two players from Japan.

Japan-born striker Jong Tae-Se and midfielder An Yong Hak, who both play in the J. League, will represent the communist nation in its first World Cup match in 44 years, playing at 8:30 p.m. local time in Johannesburg. Ladbrokes Plc, a U.K. oddsmaker, rates North Korea a 1,000-to-1 chance to win the tournament.

This is the first time players from Japan are representing North Korea at the World Cup, according to Ri. Jong, 26, who plays for Kawasaki Frontale in the J. League, and Omiya Ardija midfielder An, 31, were named in the national team last month.

The two players attended North Korean schools in Japan, hold North Korean passports and have no problem communicating with Pyongyang-based teammates, Ri said.

North Korea, playing in its second World Cup since reaching the quarterfinals in 1966, has no professional teams. National team players earn about twice the average laborer’s salary, according to the North Korean football association.

I am hoping for a US-Japan championship match, but of course that isn’t realistic.

69 thoughts on “Zainichi players on the North Korean soccer team”

  1. Amazing story. It blows my mind that someone could be born and educated in Japan, enjoying the freedom of thought and lifestyle enjoyed here, and then go and live in NORTH FUCKING KOREA. Unbelievable.

  2. Shit, I’m amazed that the entire DPRK team doesn’t defect the instant they land on foreign soil!

  3. Seriously though, maybe they weren’t good enough to make the Japan team, but in North Korea they can be superstars? It’s incredible what people will do to be celebrities.

  4. Curzon: I believe neither zainichi player on the DPRK team actually live in North Korea. In fact I think Jong Tae-Se has gone on record to say that he has no plans to live in the North Korea.

  5. Do a quick Google News search for a profile on Jong Tae-Se, and you’ll see he very much enjoys the freedom of thought and lifestyle enjoyed here.

  6. The British announcer during the game said that he heard the DPRK supporters were paid Chinese nationals. Did anyone else catch that?

  7. Jong was in tears during the DPRK national anthem. That’s the stuff enka is made of.

    Anyhow, as for the US-Japan final, the US and Japan would have to finish 1 or 2 in their respective groups, but one would have to be 1 and the other 2 in order for them to meet in the finals. Seeing as Holland is powering its way through any and all World Cup related matches, Japan’s hope would be finishing second in Group E. That means for Adamu’s fantasy finish, the US would have to come in first in Group C. And then win all subsequent matches.

    There are two chances of that happening: fat and slim.

  8. “There are two chances of that happening: fat and slim.”

    … and slim is stuck in a North Korean prison camp.

  9. Jong Tae-Se would probably make it to the Japan team. Not so sure about An. Japan has enough talented midfield players at this level.

    I have to say that I am deeply impressed with the progress that Team USA has made and the American soccer in general. I am sure that they make it to the final knock out round and wouldn’t be surprised to see them at the quarter final (which is not realistic for Japan).

    Maybe another 2 world cups and I won’t be surprised if they are nominated as favorites for the World Cups!

  10. The article said
    “The Japan Football Association didn’t pick Jong and An for their national team because the players don’t hold Japanese passports and had played for North Korea in other international tournaments, said spokeswoman Yasuyo Oshiden. “

  11. @Adam, but nationality isn’t a standard requirement for membership in an international sports team, is it? On the other hand, playing for an enemy country’s team is a different story.

  12. You are not allowed to have played for an other national team.
    If you have, you can not join a different one.

  13. Roy wrote: “…Nationality isn’t a standard requirement for membership in an international sports team, is it?”

    It’s usually the starting point. If you are a citizen of a country then you are entitled to represent it provided you haven’t done something to invalidate your eligibility. Depending on the sport, you can also qualify to represent a country through continuous residence or if you have a grandparent from that territory.

    Many major professional sports now rule that you cannot switch countries if you have already represented one in major competition. However, the definition of “major competition” varies – some sports might include under-18 tournaments.

    Last year, a zainichi North Korean called Kilryong So played for Japan in several rugby sevens tournaments. It was noteworthy because, like the J League players, he uses his Korean name whereas a lot of special permanent resident sports stars prefer to use a Japanese name. North Korea doesn’t have a rugby federation but I also read somewhere that he wasn’t eligible to play for South Korea so Japan was his only option for international honours anyway.

  14. I would assume that a Japan-born Korean citizen could be eligible though, if his sporting career had been for Japanese teams and he’s never played on a Korean team. Right?

    “It was noteworthy because, like the J League players, he uses his Korean name whereas a lot of special permanent resident sports stars prefer to use a Japanese name.”
    I think it might just be part of the larger trend in society. Younger Zainichi tend not to assume Japanese names like their older family members did, although there are still plenty who are raised with Japanese names and just don’t identify with Korean culture at all, but I would expect that they generally naturalize(like at least one girl I know).

  15. “I would assume that a Japan-born Korean citizen could be eligible though, if his sporting career had been for Japanese teams and he’s never played on a Korean team. Right?”

    Ri Tadanari (Lee Chung-Sung) is one of those players. He was once considered from the Korean side to be included in their Under 20 world Cup squad, but he chose Japan. He retained his Korean name and just changed it to the Japanese pronunciation when he naturalized.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadanari_Lee

  16. I was quite amazed to that somebody born & living in Japan would chose the North Fucking Korean team, but then again, I heard stories…
    I mean, mainly stories about how Chosen people living in Japan with relatives in North Korea being milked by Chongryon, forced to put their children in DPRK related schools, etc. if they wanted to keep their family alive and not in camps.
    Those people would usually be supportive until they learn their relative died, which begins to represent a good percentage of Korean descent living in Japan. That may explain the relative fall of DRPK schools and faltering power of Chongryon.

    Still, the guys chose the DPRK team. One of them apparently said he did not want to be in a team of playboys, the like of South Korea’s or Japan’s. Which would make sense if the alternative was not, hey, Dear Leader’s pet team.
    One cannot underestimate the power of those schools to fuck one’s mind up, though.

    On a sidenote, the movie “Go” by Isao Yukisada (2001) was an interesting view (if a bit popish) on the life of a zainichi, with a little insight on DPRK schools (at least as seen from a Japanese point of view).

  17. “One cannot underestimate the power of those schools to fuck one’s mind up, though.”

    Right. All they have to do is tell the true story of North Korea’s history, including the role of Japan and other nations in that history. That will surely mess with their minds. They are a screwed up country without a doubt, but let’s not forget the outside players who helped them get that way.

  18. “a little insight on DPRK schools (at least as seen from a Japanese point of view”

    Written by a Zainichi.

    “That will surely mess with their minds.”

    I don’t know about that Wataru – knowledge of being hard done over in the past doesn’t necessarily lead to supporting a regime that inflicts far worse hardships on its people than just about any active today.

    If you really, really had a strong feeling that Japan especially was to blame for North Korea’s woes you could naturalize and vote, run for office, write a book, join the Communist Party, become an academic and work in a sphere where criticisms of Japan are welcome, or work with NPOs helping those who flee from the North, etc. I don’t see how running a pachinko shop and funneling money to a government that by all accounts is more concerned with keeping its torture camps open than keeping its people fed is going to help any. Ditto for sending your children to a school where they will learn about the dual-tailed comet that blazed in the sky heralding Kim’s birth or how he, immune to bullets, cut down a dozen Japanese soldiers in hand to hand combat. These things are really in the books! There are also stories from the 60s of students being beaten to death for speaking Japanese at school.

    Playing for the football team is different, I think, as you can make a legitimate case that it increases international connectivity that can result in positive change, etc.

  19. Wataru — Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il have done more to screw up North Korea than any outside nation possibly could. Do you agree or disagree?

  20. @Wataru: I do not think anybody in here is oblivious of Japanese wartime history, but I doubt they have a fair view even of those atrocious events, both in those schools and the whole DPRK. Kim’s bulletproofness story up there being one example of many.

    @M-bone: Didn’t know “Go” was written by a zainichi. Thanks for the info.

  21. Joe, are you cross-examining me? My statement was, “They are a screwed up country without a doubt, but let’s not forget the outside players who helped them get that way.” Screwed-up countries are not born in a vacuum. It never hurts to understand history. Japanese who have sat in on some of those history classes in Chosen schools in Japan have been pretty humbled and shamed by the experience.

  22. Why should Japanese feel particularly humbled in Chosen school history classes? Even the “New History Textbook” has a section about the 3-1 movement crackdown, the killings of Christian school girls, etc. What they are being humbled by, perhaps, is a whole lot of made up history. Japanese colonial rule was brutal. But the North’s assertion that over 2,000,000 Koreans (the population more than doubled from 12,000,000 between 1910 and 1945) were killed by the Japanese is even more fantastic than the comet tale. The North Koreans also have stories of Japanese boiling babies alive and eating them. That’s going to shock and horrify any Japanese students who are brought in to feel miserable but what’s the point?

    I’m also not really seeing what history has to do with this particular argument, Wataru.

    Japan occupied Korea under one system. Today, part of the peninsula is a prosperous pluralist democracy and the other half is a giant concentration camp. Countries in East Asia that were proactive about international engagement (like China) have been the recipients of many billions of dollars in aid and investment from Japan.

    Quantitative suffering in the Korean peninsula over the first half of the 20th century pales before the damage done by the Japanese military in areas like Vietnam (as many as 2,000,000 starved to death because of rice levies), the Philippines, and Indonesia – all of which have made transitions to either democracy or advanced international engagement. In terms of colonial legacies, while the motives were clearly selfish, Japan did leave Korea more economically developed and on the whole with a more highly trained, educated, and literate population than any Western colonizer left a colony (apart from the exceptional ones like Hong Kong). This was done to create a more “useful” subject population, but it left Korea with tremendous advantages after liberation when compared with, say, the Philippines, Burma, or India which continue to struggle with the legacies of underdevelopment.

    North Korea, and supporters in Japan, really have to be held responsible for a continuous stream of appalling decisions, the type that are whitewashed or justified at North Korean schools or funded by donations – attacking the South resulting in the deaths of millions, pushing for violent communist uprising in Japan that saw terror attacks, firebombings, etc. in the 1950s, attempts to assassinate South Korean politicians, bombing of airliners and mass killing of civilians, passing up the end of the Cold War as an opportunity to follow China into engagement with the United States by beginning atomic blackmail while as many of millions starved to death in the country, meeting Koizumi’s bravest foreign policy initiative by unilaterally breaking existing agreements and restarting atomic weapons development, once again in the face of mass starvation, the list goes on. I take a dim view of American world power generally, but with VIETNAM so clearly welcomed back into the world system, can we really say that anyone is keeping North Korea isolated behind a wall of violence other than the North Korean elite themselves?

    I mean, you can make the argument that Japan contributed to the Cultural Revolution in China, but like North Korea’s situation, there seems to be many degrees of separation here that make drawing historical connections tenuous when the behavior of the Kims and their enablers seem much more immediate.

  23. While I in no way intend this to excuse Japanese annexation of Korea or the history there, it may also be worth considering that if Korea had not become a part of Japan, it is extremely likely it would have become part of Russia and then the USSR. If you look at what was going on in the years leading up to 1910, those were pretty much the only two options on the table. Korea was not going to remain an independent country, and there were a great many Koreans who did not seem to have a particular problem with that – or at least, could see the writing on the wall and decided signing on was the lesser of two evils.

    Had Russia taken over, I doubt very much any Korean would be celebrating 1945 as the year they regained independence. But, the world would probably have ended up with just one Korea in the 21st century – a broken, third-world nation possibly run by a tyrant named Kim, but the peninsula would have been unified.

  24. ““a little insight on DPRK schools (at least as seen from a Japanese point of view”

    Written by a Zainichi.”

    I’ve also read the original novel, and I think 2 of his other ones. They’re pretty fun reads, although after a while start to feel a little bit repetitive. The protagonists aren’t always Zainichi (although he does always include Zainichi characters), but the general style and themes felt a bit repetitive after a while.

  25. Yep. He (Kaneshiro) knows which side his bread is buttered on. If I made as much dough from a work as he made from “Go”, however, I’d probably be unable to resist the temptation to pack it in and go through the motions.

    Kang Sang Jun is also having the same problem.

    Yan Sogiru, I think, is the most diverse of the successful Zainichi authors.

  26. M-Bone: “Japan occupied Korea under one system. Today, part of the peninsula is a prosperous pluralist democracy and the other half is a giant concentration camp.”

    This is true, but how did it get that way? A bit simplistic, but basically NK is the result of the forces that resisted Japanese occupation and SK the forces that collaborated with the occupiers. So of course the latter came out on top.

    My original comment, however, was in reaction to François saying the Chosen schools indoctrinate students. I reacted because, in a sense, all schools mess with our minds, as they choose what information to give us and instill certain values in us.

    I went to schools that indoctrinated me in Christianity, in the importance of eating red meat, and in the evils of communism. Today’s America is the product of such education. Chosen schools teach a different view of the world, using mythology about the Dear Leader. My schools used mythology about Moses and Christ. Mormons learn other, really strange mythology. Catholic schools talk about miracles by saints. Schools also make sure we learn about the importance of work, careers, money, consumerism, capitalism, etc.

    The interesting thing about the lads playing on the NK team is that they also live in Japanese society, so they see a different side of life from what they see in their Chosen schools. Yet they decided, as adults, to play for the NK side. Many of my friends have decided to go with the capitalist and Christian worldview. I could just as well say of them what François says of the Chosen schools; someone has messed with their minds. Same for the Mormons, and Catholics, and Orthodox Jews, and Muslims. Same for the people filling those stadium-sized churches in the US.

    The world is full of cults and cultists, but some are accepted into the mainstream, more or less, while others are marginalized. NK is a cult that was marginalized from the start. The rest of the world treated them as enemies, and that is what they have become.

  27. A bit simplistic, but basically NK is the result of the forces that resisted Japanese occupation and SK the forces that collaborated with the occupiers. So of course the latter came out on top.

    We both come from an extremely prosperous country that was founded as the result of resisting an occupation, and we both live in an extremely prosperous country that is still collaborating with an occupation, so I don’t know what you are trying to argue here.

    in a sense, all schools mess with our minds, as they choose what information to give us and instill certain values in us.

    Huge difference: schools in both Japan and the States never flat-out lie (in the curriculum, anyway) in order to persuade students to support the government. Sure, all schools distort the truth. You and I are both distorting the truth right now–it’s impossible to avoid. But our goal is not to subvert the truth; we simply have our own frameworks for viewing the truth. We present the truth as we see it and we let people come up with their own conclusions. North Koreans don’t really have that freedom.

  28. A bit simplistic,

    More than “a bit”. And what is this garbage about the North being “the resistance” and the South being “the collaborators”? If the South was collaborating, why didn’t they end up with the industry and infrastructure to support that industry which Japan built in the North? Sure, traditionally the southern part of the Peninsula was the “breadbasket”, but why would Japan put all kinds of effort into building up an industrial base in an area full of “the resistance”, and give them nice, fat targets to go after?

    The Korean peninsula is split because after losing in one power play (Japan vs. Russia) it lost in another (USSR vs. US). The North is the way it is because it collaborated with the USSR, not because it “resisted” Japan.

    About mythology: sure, in the West there may be a mythology involving Jesus and Moses. However, I am also free, as someone who grew up with that mythology, to stand up and say I reject it. I can publicly challenge that mythology, and while I may get weird looks or challenged in return, I won’t be packed off for “re-education”, turned into forced labor or just murdered for my beliefs. I hope you can see the difference, Wataru, because if you can’t then there is absolutely no hope for you.

  29. Of course I can see the difference between a totalitarian and non-totalitarian country. (There are also many shades in between, and people often don’t realize the degree of pressure on them to conform to the prevailing belief system where they grow up and live.) Anyway, we are not talking here about life under the Kim regime in NK, but about football players living in Japan and attending Chosen schools. The question is not whether NK is a hopeless, brutal, totalitarian regime (it is), but whether Chosen schools are unique in indoctrinating students. Also, to what extent the history they teach is true.

  30. Honestly, I’m cheering for NK to get a win this series. They’re the underdogs here. They haven’t even gotten into the world cup since 1966, have they? And apparently haven’t had a win in 9 games (with 3 ties).

    But besides my quitoxic hopes for them, winning a world cup game or 2 could end up encouraging north korea to enter more sports, maybe host a tournament – it could have a small snowball effect in opening up the country. If the zainichi players do well, it might also result in some mildly pro-Japanese feelings for a bit as well, much like how that half-Korean player for the Steelers is a star in South Korea.

    Here’s the next match-up: Portugal.
    http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/17062010/58/world-cup-2010-match-facts-portugal-v-north-korea.html

  31. “The rest of the world treated them as enemies, and that is what they have become.”

    That doesn’t go far, however, toward explaining why the government has had to kill so many of its own citizens.

  32. Yes Wataru, I am familiar with the fact that many politicians and others of prominence in post-liberation South Korea were educated or trained by the Japanese. Then suddenly in August of 1945 they remade themselves as “anti-Japanese freedom fighters” and started putting all the machinery left behind by the Japanese to use securing their position and crushing resistance.

    And on the other side of the coin, the leaders of North Korea spent their time being educated and indoctrinated by the Soviets, in the Soviet Union, and then suddenly in August of 1945 they remade themselves as “anti-Japanese freedom fighters”and started putting all the machinery left behind by the Japanese to use securing their position and crushing resistance.

    If there were as many actual “freedom fighters” as there were people who claimed to be such, Japan would have been unable to annex and subsequently control the peninsula. The people who ended up running things on both sides were either collaborators or those who sat things out and seized opportunity when a power vacuum appeared. Both sides made active use of the institutions Japan left, while those who had actually opposed Japanese rule during the colonial period were either labeled “communists” by one side and persecuted or were labeled “anti-revolutionary” by the other and persecuted.

    But back to the question: are Chosen schools unique in indoctrinating students? No, not if you call educating in society’s rules and norms “indoctrination”. Chosen schools are unique in that they “educate” in a fictional society’s rules and norms, while completely and utterly disparaging the society the teachers and students actually live in. They are unique, at least within Japan and most liberal democracies, in their political indoctrination and in the perversion of the history they teach in order to fit that indoctrination.

    I will agree with M-Bone – any Japanese that sit in on a “history” class in a Chosen school are not stunned into silence by shame at what Japan did. They are stunned into silence by the fact that anyone could teach that garbage in a “school”, let alone believe it.

  33. I think you are only half right, Akal. A solid performance in the World Cup could get NK more involved in international sports, but that wouldn’t push the country toward becoming more “open.” The country is a giant criminal enterprise run for the benefit of the Kim family and its entourage. At this point they are only interested in hanging onto power and lining their pockets.

    I was watching a profile of Jong Tae Se on Japanese TV last night. The reason he wanted to play for NK was because he received “cultural education” at an NK-allied school and his mother was a teacher there. He actually had to change his citizenship from South to North Korean to play on the team. Sounds like a potentially fatal lapse in judgment if you ask me.

  34. Sounds like a potentially fatal lapse in judgment if you ask me.

    Only if he makes the mistake at the end of the team’s World Cup play of getting on a plane back to North Korea, like the 1966 team did.

  35. “He actually had to change his citizenship from South to North Korean to play on the team. Sounds like a potentially fatal lapse in judgment if you ask me.”

    I’ve literally never heard of anyone doing that before, and I have actually been told by Zainichi of both nationalities that it isn’t even possible to do in Japan. I would definitely like to hear the whole story

  36. @Roy – I have met North Koreans who have gone the other way (taken South Korean citizenship), but then again that would (in Japan’s eyes) be going from “stateless” to “SK National”.

    Assuming Jong was “South Korean” and he switched, it might be a passport-only thing (by this I mean “inter-Korean affair”, nothing as far as his registration in Japan has been changed). I can think of no reason why the North would not issue him a passport if he went to the Chosen Soren saying he wanted one, nor why they would particularly care how Japan had him registered.

  37. The report didn’t go into too much detail except to say they had to deal with people “well-versed in Chongryon affairs” to get the citizenship changed

  38. “While I in no way intend this to excuse Japanese annexation of Korea or the history there, it may also be worth considering that if Korea had not become a part of Japan, it is extremely likely it would have become part of Russia and then the USSR”

    Sentences like this illustrate the risk of engaging in counterfactual history. Korea became a part of Japan because of the latter’s victory over Russia in the 1904-05 war. You’re assuming that even if Russia had prevailed in that war and taken over Korea, the Bolshevik Revolution would have occurred as scheduled in 1917. But I seriously doubt that. A Russian victory over Japan in 1905 could have shored up the Tsarist regime, thus allowing it to survive well beyond 1917. Anti-Japan types could very easily argue here that Tokyo, by taking over Korea, was to blame for the downfall of the Romanovs and the emergence of Lenin.

  39. Wataru has it both ways
    He gets to live a comfortable live in a capitalist country
    while blaming capitalism on the hell communist countries are.

    When you dismiss his sophistry he then tells you he´s old and deserves respect lol

  40. >ar
    methinks the Romanovs would have lost anyway against the Reich´s army. And Lenin would have got a free train ride too.

  41. “NK is the result of the forces that resisted Japanese occupation and SK the forces that collaborated with the occupiers.”

    Park Chung Hee I will give you, but Syngman Rhee and Chun Doo Hwan as collaborators? And if you are playing the history game, how far do you want to take it? Probably the single most important figure in the development of democracy in SK is Kim Dae Jung. Please explain the nature of his collaboration.

    And by the way, until the 1960s, when Seoul finally – after years of bitter negotiations and prodding by the US – got sweet loans from the Japanese to invest in infrastructure as part of their recognition deal, the North was out-pacing the South in terms of economic development. So why did the South need extra lolly to gain the upper hand if their fate was all pre-determined by dynamics that had played themselves out by 1953?

  42. @Aceface, yes Cummings has his biases and goes overboard. No one else commenting here, of course, has any biases. Cummings also has studied the history longer and more extensively than most people. I think he offers interesting and useful counterpoint to the usual pro-American biases.

  43. 1)At least mine doesn’t support a corrupt regime that kills millions in the concentration camps.I only support a corrupt regime that cover the rivers with concretes.

    2)Yes.Cummings had studied the history longer and more extensively than most people.But not only he refers to history in East Asia,he is a frequent critic in of the region especially,Japan.And I can safely say both you and I had lived here longer than he does and has more extensive knowledge on the country at least within our time frame

    3)While I agree Cummings sometimes offers interesting and useful conterpoint to the usual pro-American biases.But then,you could also get that by reading Asahi shimbun or something.
    In most cases Cummings only uses North Korea as a tool to make counterpoint to the pro-American biases he thinks is dominating in the western idea on East Asia and I found that pretty annoying,just as I see certain groups of people who sees the pre-war Japan as a case to offer interesting and useful counterpoint to the usual pro-western biases,such as liberating Asia from white men etc.

  44. That Cumings (the correct spelling this time) has an important balancing role is acknowledged also by scholar Rodney Armstrong, a Japan Forum contributor. On April 1, 2009, for example, he wrote:

    “One does not have to go as far in sympathetic treatment of the DPRK as the famous American scholar of Korea Bruce Cumings to take from his books some balancing considerations concerning the DPRK. If Cumings is correct on his facts (and in all cases where I have personal knowledge, he has been), the U.S. Air Force bombing attacks in Korea (and mostly on North Korea) 1950-1953 were as or more destructive as those on Japan in World War II if the much smaller area and the lesser degree of urban development is considered. The bombing of the large irrigation and hydroelectric dams in the north in 1953 destroyed miles of villages, infrastructure, and crops in the valleys below.”

    A lot of history that Cumings writes about in his books is ignored in most other historical treatments. I have read through the comments above by LB and M-Bone, whom I respect greatly, and others, but have not seen a full appreciation of the events that produced North Korea. Why, for example, did the US decide to partition Korea in the first place, and then occupy the South? There was an extreme anti-communism fervor, one that almost led to the nuking of huge swaths of Asia. The people being supported by the US were, in fact, people who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation and were more easily persuaded to create a capitalist regime. The resistance contained a strong socialist worker flavor, which the US feared. There is a strong likelihood the Koreans would have, on their own, without interference from either the US or the Communist nations to its north and west, remained a unified nation having a socialist government.

  45. “whom I respect greatly”

    Thanks! (and I always welcome your debate as well)

    In any case, it is not so much the history of North Korea that I am concerned about here, but about relativism and assigning “blame” in general. Sure, some of what is wrong with NK has to do with Japan and the US but if you want to keep taking it back and back through lines of historical causation, we have a Japan that was opened up to a survival of the fittest international environment by American gunboat diplomacy. Does this absolve the Meiji leaders (or 20th century militarists) of anything? Japanese rightwingers from Hayashi Fusao to Tanaka and Tamogami seem to think that it does. I don’t. And I’m not letting the North Korean elite off the rhetorical hook so easily either.

  46. “The people being supported by the US were, in fact, people who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation and were more easily persuaded to create a capitalist regime.”

    We don’t know that.Republic of China was a very pro-American capitalist regime and was extremely corrupt and brutal toward it’s own citizen just like South Korea.But Kuomingtang did fight the Japanese more so than the communists when they were in the mainland.
    The fact many Korean “collaborators”occupied the South Korean establishment is simply because they were more educated and had practical experiences than the rest of the population which is nothing so special in post-colonial countries.Anyway,I find the choice of the word “collaboration” is already a problematic to deal with the situation in Korea.Unlike France which was occupied only briefly by the enemy,Korea was colonized and modernized under Japanese.Anyone can be a collaborator in that kind of situation.
    Koreans,throughout it’s history has always been in “collaboration”with the mightiest neighbor.Either that were Mongols or Manchu or Chinese or Japanese.Kim Il sung didn’t gain power just because he resisted the Japanese.He gained power because he collaborated with Soviets,and Syngman Rhee with the Americans,simple as that.

    “There is a strong likelihood the Koreans would have, on their own, without interference from either the US or the Communist nations to its north and west, remained a unified nation having a socialist government.”

    There’s a big IF in this hypothesis.What is certain is many in the South had rejected the idea after the Kim Il Sung’s adventrous actions.
    And the whole problem comes from a simple fact that Cumings doesn’t believe in the war starts from the aggression from the North,hence massive bombing by the US airforce.

  47. M-Bone: “In any case, it is not so much the history of North Korea that I am concerned about here, but about relativism and assigning “blame” in general.”

    Sure, but it’s still important to look at history from the viewpoints of all players, including those we see as enemies or ruthless regimes. If a dog has been kicked repeatedly, it may become a “bad” dog, but I think the person doing the kicking is more to blame than the dog. That S. Korea turned out reasonably well in the end (though it went through some ruthless regimes of its own) and N. Korea turned out as a huge failure and a problem for us living in Japan are the result of many complex factors, including outside influences on both sides, and economic factors. Today the biggest factor of all is, of course, the cult-like regime in the North and its despotic control. But we can’t ignore how it got that way, and the role of Japan and the US in that process. The Chosen schools focus on those historical factors and ignore the present-day ones. But for the rest of the world, the emphasis is likely to be the other way around, and that’s not good either.

  48. We’re in agreement on your last post, Wataru.

    Changing focus a bit, I think the WWII narrative is not adequately taught in any country because of the political interests involved. Japanese schools come close to giving a balanced perspective on the causes, but gloss over most of the effects except for the A-bombs. American schools are even worse: my history classes focused almost exclusively on the Nazi extermination of Jews and, to a much more limited extent, the Pearl Harbor attack, and glossed over pretty much everything else (though we at least read Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse Five in high school). China and Korea (both North and South) naturally skew their curriculum against Japan.

    The Korean War is hardly even discussed in American or Japanese history classes nowadays. American schools note it as a sort of transition between WWII and the Cold War, while Japanese schools note its effects in winding down the US occupation and setting the stage for postwar economic growth. It’s an extremely glossy treatment of a horrific conflict. I will maintain, though, that the standard US/Japanese propaganda is “less wrong” than the North Korean propaganda. Oversimplifying the situation in a locally favorable light is unavoidable (or at least very difficult to avoid) when a topic is distilled for mass consumption in a short period of time, as school history lessons basically have to be. Every country is guilty of this. But the Norks go beyond this: they are not just cherry-picking history, but they are making up a huge part of the narrative entirely. It’s kind of sad because they could possibly make a halfway rational case for themselves if they were less sensationalistic about it.

  49. “If a dog has been kicked repeatedly, it may become a “bad” dog, but I think the person doing the kicking is more to blame than the dog. ”

    You could still have a “bad”dog for throwing a bone instead of a stick everytime it bits someone,you know.

    Anyway I can’t recall a single opportunity that Japan kicked the dog since 1945.

  50. I learned different things about Vietnam in different years.

    In seventh grade, we did an in-class re-enactment of the My Lai court martial (I think I played Calley, actually). We also went into the “domino effect” argument for going into the war. (You can only explain so much to middle school kids, though–I feel like I learned more from watching Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now on my own.)

    In high school world history (10th grade) we talked a bit about French colonization and there was mention of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, but we were more focused on memorizing names and timelines that year, so there wasn’t much commentary.

    In high school American history class (11th grade) we never got to Vietnam — I think we were only in the early 60’s when the school year ended. I read ahead in the textbook, though, and it had pretty good commentary on the role of television in shaping public opinion, the disastrous effects on LBJ’s presidency, and Nixon’s various exit strategies. There wasn’t much coverage of what actually happened on the ground, though.

    I did Air Force ROTC in my first year of college and we discussed Vietnam at some length in our military history class. However, true to form, the main message in the narrative was that LBJ restrained the air force too much, and that the US might have won if it bombed things less discriminately earlier on rather than waiting for Nixon to give the B-52 squadrons carte blanche toward the end of the war. That was the closest thing to pure propaganda I can recall taking in during my years of education in the States.

  51. I think that it is really telling that you got the more critical stuff when you were in grade 7! Like Japan, it depends on the teacher, I guess. My wife, for example, learned all about the Nanking Massacre in school but thought that the Meiji Restoration like in the 17th century when I asked her back in the day.

    As for me, one thing that I feel was lacking at every stage in my education was an awareness that the US, Canada, UK, etc. were / are actually (collective) rational, self-interested powers trying to get the best deal for themselves in the world system. We learned that there were bad people overseas like various Kaisers and Hitler, that “our” stalwart lads set out to fight for freedom (not, say, to get the hell out of rural backwaters and see the world) and were killed by evil things such as machine guns (certainly not by other stalwart lads), and that some of them wrote poetry, the main theme of which is that if there are more bad people overseas who need their asses kicked, that we have to make sure that we step up and dish it out. Even did navy signals drills in short pants and knee socks in 4th grade (this is in like 1987!).

    Along the way, we learned that the Jews of Europe were all like Anne Frank (ie. just like us except with no TV) except that they didn’t accept Jesus (certainly not that they were mostly Polish, rural, and were very different in culture and belief – that would require, you know, imagination and empathy and thinking about difference) and that Hitler wanted to kill them because he was insane like Saddam Hussein (who was, of course, “So Damn Insane”). I’m fairly certain that I didn’t hear “Korean War” even one time in compulsory education. At one point, a former JET came in to tell us about Hiroshima (I still wonder what the #&$% was up with that) but found out about the Japanese internment in first year uni.

    I did ancient history in high school and learned all about how devious the Athenians were with their Delian League. Thank god I read “Good-Bye to All That” and “1066 and All That” in my first year of university!

  52. I went to middle and high school mostly in South Florida, and the treatment of WWII there was something like 90% Holocaust, 9% Pearl Harbor/Midway and 1% “other.” After a couple of years of that, I started protesting the fact that we were discussing practically nothing but the Holocaust year after year. This made some people think that I hated Jews (who probably constituted almost half of my classmates and at least half of the faculty), but I really just wanted to hear more about the actual war rather than relive the same snuff tale over and over.

  53. Back to the original topic.
    OK,I admit.Today’s massacre at Cape Town is partially our fault.
    This would’ve never happened if only Korea was colonized by Portugal instead of Japan……

  54. Aceface, absolutely. Look at how well the Portuguese and Spanish colonies are doing, compared to former Japanese colonies.

  55. @Joe – some former Japanese colonies make better electronics. Personally I have never felt the need to buy a cheap transistor radio pre-tuned to one and only one frequency, which would be the one used by Radio Pyongyang.

    Not that there is anything wrong with listening to Radio Pyongyang, mind you – it can be great entertainment.

  56. Well, to close the deal, DPRK lost 7-0 to Portugal, so there won’t be much to be discussed about their team in the World Cup any longer. They still have a match against Côte d’Ivoire, but even winning this will more than probably not help getting to round of 16.

    Just hope this pounding does not lead to harsh action on them and/or their families, but that, nobody will ever know but them.

    It will be interesting to see whether the two J-league guys return to Japan or go to DPRK instead.

  57. I like NK’s chances of getting to the round of 16 over the odds of the J-leaguers going to live there.

  58. François: “It will be interesting to see whether the two J-league guys return to Japan or go to DPRK instead.”

    That’s a joke, right?

  59. Well, I don’t think anybody in their right mind would choose to go live in DPRK, but then again, that does happen sometimes apparently… From somewhat regular folks to downright weird.

    – Tilksew Seife
    It’s the second guy in the interview. He is an Ethiopian that used to live their through the Ethiopian Embassy.
    http://metropolis.co.jp/features/feature/japanafrica/

    – Kenji Fujimoto
    who can be seen sometimes on J-TV talking about his stint as Kim’s personnal sushi-chef
    http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/2004/01/fujimoto.htm

    – Joe Dresnok
    Everybody living in Japan a couple years back heard about Charles Robert Jenkins, but this guy did the same thing too: desert to North Korea.
    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/25/60minutes/main2398580.shtml

    and the one I prefer:
    – Alejandro Cao de Benos
    The Spanish leader of the Korean Friendship Association
    http://coolshitblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/alejandro-cao-de-benos-spanish-north.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Cao_de_Benos_de_Les_y_P%C3%A9rez

    So why not a couple Zainichi, even nowadays?

  60. The only interesting part in “War and Television”(written by Bruce Cumings) was that he run into an African man who was trying to pick up a girl in one of the foreign currency bar.

    There are few interesting books written by foreigner and one of them was
    a cartoon titled”Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea” written by a Québécois Guy Delisle who went there for French company making animation in Pyongyang.

    Andrei Lankov has written pretty interesting book called “North of DMZ”translated in Japanese under the title of “民衆の北朝鮮”and another book translatetd directly from Russian and now out of print titled ”平壌の我慢強い庶民たち”.

    There’s another book called ”「朝鮮戦争」取材ノート”written by Hagiwara Ryo,the former Pyongyang correspondent of Akahata,the communist daily of the Japanese communist party,who wrote a book on Korean War and expelled from the party in early 90’s.He went to all the way to Venezuela to meet with Ali Lameda,former member of the Venezuelan communist party and a poet who visited North Korea as a Spanish translator and send to gulag for seven years.According to the book,Lameda was horrified with the fact that a Japanese communist comes to pay visit him all the way to Caracas and feared Hagiwara as a hitman of North Korea.Eventually the two never met because Lameda flew to Europe to avoid the meeting.

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