The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan,"2. Focal Issues of International Public Security in 2006." Ministry of Justice. Retrieved on 17 January 2009. abbreviated as () or , is one of two main organisations for Zainichi Koreans (Korean citizens or residents of Japan), the other being Mindan. It has close ties to North Korea and functions as North Korea's de facto embassy in Japan, as there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries."Stage set for Japan to seize North Korea's 'embassy' ." Agence France-Presse. 18 June 2007. Retrieved on 15 January 2009. The organisation is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and there are prefectural and regional head offices and branches throughout Japan.
Mindan, officially the Korean Residents Union in Japan, contrastingly consists of Zainichi Koreans who have adopted South Korean nationality. As of 2018, among 610,000 Korean residents in Japan who have not adopted Japanese nationality, 25 percent are affiliated with the Chongryon, and 65 percent are affiliated with Mindan. As of 2016, PSIA reported that Chongryon had 70,000 members.
Chongryon's strong links to North Korea, its allegiance to the North Korean ideology and its opposition to integration of Koreans into Japanese society have made it controversial in Japan. Acts which Chongryon officials are suspected of include notably the 1977–1983 abduction of Japanese nationals, illicit transfer of funds to North Korea, espionage, drug trafficking and the smuggling of electronics and missile parts. The Chongryon has been described by the Washington Post as a "very effective sanctions-busting enterprise". Its wide variety of businesses, including banks and pachinko parlors, are used to generate funds for the North Korean government.
Numerous organisations are affiliated with the Chongryon, including 18 mass propaganda bodies and 23 business enterprises, with one of its most important business sectors being pachinko. The organisation also operates about 60 Korean schools and a Korean university, as well as banks and other facilities in Japan. Chongryon schools teach a strong pro-North Korean ideology.
In recent years, the organization has run into severe financial trouble, with debts of over US$750 million, and was ordered by court in 2012 to dispose of most of its assets, including its Tokyo headquarters.
According to an interview with Mitsuhiro Suganuma, former head of the Public Security Intelligence Agency's Second Intelligence Department in 2014, Chongryon is under the control of the United Front Department of the Workers' Party of Korea's Liaison Department.
Background and history
Long-term ethnic Korean residents in Japan primarily consist of those, and descendants of, ethnic Koreans who settled in Japan as: Migrants during Japan's rule over Korea (1910–1945) Conscripted labourers during the Second World War Post-World War II refugees, especially from Jeju island escaping the 1948 Jeju massacre. A 1953 government survey revealed that 93% were from the southern half of the Korean peninsula.
From 1910 to 1945, ethnic Koreans were Japanese nationals. The end of the Second World War left the nationality status of Koreans in an ambiguous position, as no recognized functional government existed on the Korean Peninsula (the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, a government-in-exile, was only somewhat recognized internationally and was not a formal Korean government until South Korea's formation in 1948). Their nationality was provisionally registered under the name of Joseon (Chōsen in Japanese, , ), the old name of undivided Korea.
The 1948 declaration of independence by both South and North Korea made Joseon a defunct nation. Those with Joseon nationality were allowed to re-register their nationality to a South Korean one; however the same did not apply to North Korea due to the fact that Japan only recognises South Korea as the legitimate government of Korea, so supporters of the North retained their Joseon nationality.
Ethnic Koreans in Japan established the League of Koreans in Japan (재일본조선인연맹) in 1945, which followed a socialist ideology, and was banned in 1949 by the order of Allied occupation army. The United Democratic Front of Korea in Japan (재일조선민주전선) was established in 1951, which was banned due to suspected involvement in the 1952 May Day riots.
In 1952, the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung called on the socialist Zainichi Korean movement to be coordinated in close contact with the North Korean government, and to fight, not for a socialist revolution in Japan, but for the socialist reunification of the Korean peninsula.
Chongryon was established on 25 May 1955 by Han Duk-su, who was an activist for leftist labor movements in Japan.
In the late 1950s, Chongryon conducted a campaign to persuade Zainichi Koreans to migrate to North Korea in collaboration with Tokyo. Approximately 70,000 people moved to North Korea under this campaign during a two-year period from 1960 through 1961. The campaign was vehemently opposed by Mindan which organised hunger strikes and train obstructions. Some 87,000 Zainichi Koreans and about 6,000 Japanese spouses moved to the North. Following the normalization of ties between Japan and South Korea, migration to North Korea slowed to a trickle but continued up to 1984. Overall, 93,340 people moved to North Korea from Japan between 1959 and 1984 through the efforts of Chongryon. The migrants were persuaded by propaganda describing North Korea as a utopia wealthier than Japan with better human rights protections. Viewing Koreans as outsiders, the Japanese government collaborated with the program.
Zainichi Koreans who migrated to North Korea were mostly disappointed by the living conditions they found there. They were also discriminated against due to their Japanese origins under the songbun social classification system. Most were assigned to live in rural areas. Many were made to work at collective farms, mines, and coal pits. They were kept under strict surveillance, with those caught attempting to defect tortured and sent to labor camps. Japanese research puts the number of Zainichi Korean returnees condemned to prison camps at around 10,000. Though barred from returning to Japan, they were allowed to maintain contact with relatives there and collect financial remittances from them, which ended up becoming a major source of income for the North Korean government. According to Andrei Lankov:
"Most of the returnees were gravely disappointed by the destitution they saw upon arrival. They soon realized, however, that there was no way back. Stuck in a destitute police state, they (and their children) now found themselves in a strange position: they were simultaneously privileged and discriminated against. On the one hand, the returnees were seen as ideologically unreliable. On the other hand, most of them received money transfers from Japanese family members who were wise enough not to go to the Socialist Paradise. This allowed them to enjoy a life that was affluent by North Korean standards."Lankov, Andrei: The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia, p. 24
In 1990, Ha Su-to, former vice chief of organization for Chongryon who was expelled in 1972 for demanding democratic reforms, led a rally in Tokyo of 500 to protest against North Korea's human rights violations, in which protesters accused North Korea of holding the ex-Zainichi returnees captive to siphon money off remittances from their relatives in Japan.
In the 1990s, Chongryon membership began declining, with younger generations taking Japanese or South Korean citizenship. It was also around this time that remittances to North Korea began to dry up as the immediate relatives of the first-generation migrants began to die and the subsequent generations had no desire to send money to people they had never met. This resulted in a downgrade in the economic status of the second and third generation descendants of the migrants.
Tensions with Japan, legal issues and illegal activities
For a long time, Chongryon enjoyed unofficial immunity from searches and investigations, partly out of respect for its role as North Korea's de facto embassy, and partly due to its power as an ethnic political pressure group. However, escalating tensions between Japan and North Korea over a number of issues, namely its nuclear weapons programme, firing of missiles over Japan and abduction of Japanese nationals has led to protests and public animosity against Chongryon due to its active support of the Pyongyang regime. Acts which Chongryon officials are suspected of include illicit transfer of funds to North Korea, drug smuggling, espionage, and the smuggling of electronics and missile parts. The Chongryon has been described by the Washington Post as a "very effective sanctions-busting enterprise". Its wide variety of businesses, including banks and pachinko parlors, are used to generate funds for the North Korean government.
Kim Kil-uk, a former head of a Chongryon school in Osaka, is suspected of being involved in the 1980s kidnapping of Japanese citizens. Kim, who fled to North Korea, remains on Interpol’s wanted list. In March 2006, Osaka police raided six facilities, including the North Korean Chamber of Commerce, in an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the June 1980 disappearance of one of the abductees, Tadaaki Hara. All six facilities were linked to Chongryon.
Since allegations of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme first surfaced in the early 1990s, Chongryon has frequently reported being targeted by hate mail and malicious phone calls, as well as numerous other incidents. Chongryon facilities have also frequently been sites of protests by Japanese right-wing groups. There have been numerous incidents of students of Chongryon schools, identifiable by their uniforms based on traditional Korean clothing, suffering verbal abuse. Furthermore, around May and June 1994 there was a series of physical assaults on Chongryon students in which their uniforms were cut. In 1998, a petrol bomb was thrown at Chongryon's headquarters in Tokyo, causing minor damage. In June 2003, a shot was fired into a Chongryon warehouse in Niigata, hitting cargo waiting to be loaded onto Mangyongbong-92. In October 2006 in the aftermath of North Korea's first nuclear test, a suspected arson attack damaged a bamboo grove inside Chongryon's school in Mito. The Zaitokukai received criticism from a District Court for harassing Chongryon-affiliated schoolchildren.
The Japanese authorities have recently started to crack down on Chongryon activities, moves usually criticised by Chongryon as acts of political suppression. The first raid on Chongryon facilities was in 1994, when a rally held in Osaka by Rescue the North Korean People (RENK), a Japanese citizens group set up to help refugees and demand democracy and human rights in North Korea, was attacked and broken up by a 100-strong mob. Police investigations revealed that the disruption was orchestrated by Chongryon.