Koreans attacked in Japan see link to U.S. offensive
By Deirdre Griswold
It's called scapegoating. It happens in every big capitalist
economic crisis, when the irrationalities of the capitalist
system catch up with life and things begin spinning out of
control. Someone has to be blamed, and the bosses make sure
that their politicians and their press don't blame them.
In Japan today, scapegoating for the years-long shrinkage of
the economy is being directed against the Korean community,
which has long been the target of discrimination. There are
700,000 Korean Japanese, the largest ethnic minority in the
country and the legacy of the days when Japan annexed Korea as
its colony. Most of them are sympathetic to the socialist
Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north, and
recognize its role in leading the Korean people's resistance to
Japanese colonialism and U.S. imperialist domination.
On Nov. 29, hundreds of Japanese police launched a
multi-pronged attack on the General Association of Korean
Residents in Japan (Chongryon), ransacking its offices in the
Tokyo area and arresting 15 of its leaders. The treasurer of
the organization was arrested while in the hospital and
transferred to a jail cell.
The police also raided 47 different Korean establishments,
including banks and savings and loan organizations. These have
been a major financial asset for the Korean community in Japan,
since Japanese banking institutions have "red-lined" Koreans,
denying them business or personal loans.
The government is using a propaganda line taken from George
W. Bush to justify its repression. Borrowing from Washington's
language about the DPRK, it claims that the besieged country of
North Korea, which has nearly 40,000 U.S. troops on its borders
and is constantly under a nuclear threat from the U.S., is a
"terrorist" nation, and that Korean Japanese who visit there or
try to help out their families are financing terrorism.
Japan has been in a financial crisis. Many banks have closed
down and people are frightened of what will come next, now that
the U.S. market is also shrinking. This attack on Korean-owned
banking institutions is an attempt to divert the public's
anxiety away from the Japanese ruling class and somehow link
the bank failures to Koreans who, they say, have channeled
money to the DPRK.
The whole scenario is pure fantasy, similar to the
right-wing myths in the U.S. that blame people on welfare for
the nation's economic ills. Koreans in Japan, like the
oppressed everywhere, do not control the basic levers of the
economy. But, by scraping together their savings, they have
been able to set up some small banks that serve their
community.
When they can, Japanese Koreans visit the DPRK to renew
their heritage. Just two years ago, a highly talented group of
young Korean Japanese who had studied in North Korea gave a
stellar performance of traditional Korean folk songs at New
York's Lincoln Center.
This attack is yet another indication that extreme
reactionary forces all over the world are taking advantage of
the right-wing climate created by the Bush administration's war
drive in Central Asia.
Reprinted from the Dec. 13, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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