For many Koreans living in Japan, citizenship is more complicated than deciding which country to live in. In a lecture entitled, “Citizenship, Voice, and Korean Identity in Japan” Erin Chung, an associate professor of East Asian politics at Johns Hopkins University spoke about the highly complex concept of citizenship.
“My definition of citizenship is defined as an interactive process of political incorporation and participation,” Chung said. She explained that this idea includes not only political rights, but also cultural factors and loyalty to one’s own heritage.
Chung presented a chart illustrating the most important factors of citizenship. At the top was a person’s legal status, or one’s political voice within the society. Next was symbolic significance in the society, or how an individual identifies oneself within the country’s social diversity. Next came the citizen’s right, or the legal responsibilities held within the society. Finally, she listed the raw practice of citizenship, or the responsibilities of the citizen within the context of civil society.
Chung explained that most of the second and third generation Koreans in Japan believe that partial citizenship status allows them to maintain their citizenship status in Korea while gaining most of the rights of a Japanese citizen.
“For the younger generation, gaining political and social visibility in Japan is more important than gaining official citizenship status,” she said.
In addition, there are many disincentives to attaining full Japanese citizenship. These include the cumbersome factor of time investment, the economic cost of incurring naturalization, and the loss of all official ties with the Korean government. Chung also shared the advantages to becoming a full Japanese citizen.
“Those with full citizenship status have the ability to obtain official voting rights, have official community representation within Japanese electoral politics, and lobby the Japanese government as citizens,” she said.
According to Chung, attaining full Japanese citizenship leads to immediate material gains, including possession of a physical passport, a foreign concept to most residents of Korea who must carry around paperwork that indicates their citizenship status.
Although it wasn’t the main focus of her discussion, Chung briefly touched on the social aspects of Korean life in Japan. Despite the positive progress that has taken place over the decades, members of the Korean community in Japan are often still subject to informal discrimination.
“Many employees are required to submit an official family lineage, enabling the employer to identify him or her as Korean or Japanese,” Chung said. “Discrimination even carries over into familial affairs when parents hire detective agencies to research the background of their son or daughter’s fiancé.”
Chung also noted that many Koreans find it advantageous to blend into their surroundings. She explained that naturalized Koreans often take on Japanese names and hide their heritage from their children. In this regard, she said it is very difficult for researchers to identify authentic Koreans in Japan.
Chung was brought to campus in conjunction with the Freeman Lecture Series sponsored by the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies. She received her Ph.D from Northwestern University and spent a year in Japan researching the country’s postwar citizenship policies, specifically in regard to its Korean inhabitants. From her analysis there, she wrote a dissertation on exercising citizenship and based her talk on its revisions.
“I think compared to my expectation that she would talk about vivid examples of the daily lives of Koreans in Japan, [Chung] instead explained her theories in a view of politics and social structures,” said Inchul Bae ’08. “I felt like [the lecture] was more [geared] toward government or social science students.”
Bae said he learned more from speaking to Ms. Chung one-on-one after the lecture was over.
“I was very surprised to learn that, twenty to thirty years ago, the Korean situation in Japan was similar to that of blacks and whites in America,” he said.
Keith Lee ’09 identified closely with the situations Chung spoke about because he lived in Japan for several years as a Korean.
“She gave good points on why there is such a dilemma between attaining a Japanese citizenship and staying a Korean,” he said. “However, she didn’t really mention much about the cultural and historical relations between Japan and Korea. I think there are much more rooted reasons for a Korean living in Japan refusing to gain citizenship.”
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