Player Focus: Lee Han Jae, an Ethnic Korean in Japan

In 2005, just before his country’s World Cup qualifier against Japan, Lee Han Jae said, “To beat Japan and win a World Cup berth has been my dream.” What might at first appear simply to be a typical pre-game quote becomes more interesting when you know that Ri was born in Japan. How is it that a Japanese-born player would dream of one day beating the country of his birth?

Lee Han Jae

Lee is not a typical Japanese player. The Sanfrecce Hiroshima player was born in the Japanese city of Kurashiki, but his family comes from North Korea (thus making him eligible for that country’s national team). Lee is a member of the large, but often ignored, ethnic Korean minority group in Japan.

The Korean community exists largely because of Japan’s colonial past. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea, thus forcibly making its people Japanese subjects. For the next 35 years Japan occupied the Korean peninsula and brought many people to Japan as laborers. It was only in 1945 that Korea regained its independence, as Japan’s defeat in World War II led it to relinquish all overseas territories. But many of the ethnic Koreans living in Japan remained in that country and their descendants, like Lee Han Jae, make up the Korean community in Japan today.

Koreans in Japan have experienced widespread discrimination. Japanese identity has long been based on the idea of ethnic homogeneity, an idea challenged by minorities like the Koreans. For a long time, Korean immigrants’ children were denied citizenship, despite the fact that they were born in Japan.

The Korean community in Japan has itself experienced divisions. The war that split the peninsula into two countries soon after World War II also affected ethnic Koreans in Japan. While most came from South Korea, some hailed from the North. Those who supported North Korea formed the Chongryon organization to support the communist government’s ideals. This group continues to receive support from the North Korea government today. A large part of this money funds schools in Japan, which, not surprisingly, have a pro-North Korea bent.

Despite its mistrust of the North Korean regime, the Japanese government tolerates such schools because they are not officially accredited. As University of Iowa anthropologist Sonia Ryang writes in her article How to Do or Not Do Things with Words: The Case of Koreans in Japan, “In exchange for not being academic schools, Chongryun schools had carte blanche to teach about North Korea, Kim Il Sung and other political matters they themselves deemed to be important” (226).

Lee attended just such a school. And as he walked out onto the pitch in 2005 to play Japan, he was watched by 600 students and teachers from the Chrongryon-funded Tokyo Korean Junior and Senior High School. They were among the estimated 5,000 ethnic Koreans who turned out to see the game, which Japan won 2-1. Lee Han Jae is still waiting to fulfill his dream of beating the country of his birth.

A screenshot from Lee Han Jae’s official website shows him along with a Siberian Tiger, a symbol of Korea

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Asia, Ethnicity/Race, History, Immigration, Nationalism/Identity, Player Focus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.