http://base21.jinbo.net               
Mar. 29  2024
Write Article 
About Us 
 
Inter-Solidarity 
Christian's Photo Column 

Koreans Attacked In Japan See Link To U.S. Offensive

www.workers.org



by Deidre Griswold


It's called scapegoating. It happens in every big capitalist economic crisis, when the irrationalities of the capitalist market economy catch up with life and things begin spinning out of control. Someone has to be blamed, and the owners of industry, the politicians they control, and the press that won't report on what's really happening, misleading their readers.

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 it's role in leading the Korean people's resistance to Japanese colonialism and U.S. imperialist domination.

On November 29, 2001, hundreds of Japanese police launched a multi-pronged attack on the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), ransacking its offics 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 the 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 (less than 1%of the population, while the richest 1% own more than 50% of the nation's wealth). 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.
2001 / -1 / 2-
 
Labor | Science & ICT | Society | Human Rights
Copylefted by base21.jinbo.net