Word: kim
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When he was younger, Lee Chek says, he wanted to be a soldier for Kim Jong Il, and "fight Japan." He'd have been fighting from behind enemy lines, of course, because the ethnic-Korean Lee was born and raised in Japan, where has always lived. The 35-year-old is a third-generation zainichi, one of 600,000 ethnic Koreans who dwell in Japan. And, like many zainichi, he grew up identifying with the North Korean regime. Lee attended Korean-language schools run by Chongyron, the fiercely pro-Pyongyang Korean residents association in Japan, where he was taught that...
...Though he still retains affection for North Korea, Lee saw Chongyron as fatally beholden to Kim Jong Il, and in 2001 he broke with the organization, becoming a freelance journalist. (Lee Chek is a pen name he uses to protect relatives still living in North Korea from retribution.) Chongyron - which functions as North Korea's de-facto diplomatic voice in Japan - took away his North Korean passport, and he hasn't been back to Pyongyang. Permitted to take Korean or Japanese nationality, last year Lee took South Korean citizenship in order to travel abroad...
...turn away from Kim has left Chongyron, long flush with cash, now owing over $500 million; its headquarters in one of Tokyo's priciest neighborhoods was seized last month by government creditors. "I think there are a lot of people who feel less allegiance or loyalty to North Korea now," admits one Chongyron associate, who prefers to remain anonymous. "And people are distancing themselves from Chongyron because the organization cannot address the needs of the Korean community...
...Despite their longtime support for the North, most zainichi hail from the southern half of Korea, before they moved (or were forcibly relocated) to work in Japan between 1910 and 1945, when Korea had been a Japanese colony. In their new home, the Koreans were an oppressed minority; Kim Kyoo Il, a 69-year-old zainichi activist, remembers that during the war years, "Japanese were first-class citizens, and the [Koreans] were considered second-rate people...
...that harsh environment, the militant Chongyron organization founded in 1955 proved an effective answer to the need of the zainichi to band together to protect themselves and their identity. Kim offers an example from his own life: As a Korean college graduate in 1961, no Japanese company would hire him, so he went to work for Chongyron...