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The Denationalized Have No Class: The Banishment of Japan's Korean Minority—A Polemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Sonia Ryang
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Sonia Ryang possesses “double vision” in that she is a U.S.-based anthropologist as well as a cultural insider who grew up as a Zainichi Korean. Her family supported Chongryun (the North Korea-affiliated Zainichi Korean organization), which stood in contrast to the twentieth century's other Zainichi Korean organization Mindan that was affiliated with South Korea., Zainichi Koreans during the last century was largely divided in their identification either with Chongryun or Mindan. She reached adulthood after attending Chongryun-run ethnic schools including the Korea University in Tokyo and worked as a journalist for a Chongryun newspaper before starting her graduate studies in the United Kingdom. This background endows her Zainichi Korean studies with depths, insights, and a distinctive ethos. In this article, she describes the contours of Zainichi Korean history after 1945 and why “Zainichi Korean” as an ethnicity separate from Koreans in Korea remains relevant today.

Type
Part I: Zainichi Korean Experiences
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Special Issue S11: Course Reader No. 11. Zainichi Koreans: The Past, the Present, and the Future , January 2013 , pp. 25 - 50
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2013

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