Korean Division and Korean Diaspora: focusing on Korean Residents in Japan

The Division of the Korean Peninsula and the Korean War resulted from the Cold War. The Cold War as well as World War 1 and 2 produced an enormous number of diasporas. It became very difficult for them to return home once they were displaced from their native places and settled down in new areas. Such diaspora is called the ‘old diaspora’ in this paper. In the post Cold War era, there appeared some ‘new diasporas’, who can keep in touch with their families and relatives living in the homeland via various kinds of mass-communication including internet, telephone, etc., which is totally different from the situation of the old diasporas. There have been lots of ‘old’ diasporas in Korea since the Division and the Korean War. Korean residents in Japan may belong to this old diaspora still, together with their dispersed families in Korean in the post Cold War era. First of all, this paper is to study the number and situations of Korean diasporas living abroad due to the division and the war. And then it is to consider how the division and the war had influence on Korean residents in Japan and why they, especially, came to be repatriated to North Korea from 1959 to 1984. Their repatriation to North Korea was due to the secret talks and conspiracy between North Korea and Japan. Another accomplice was the strange connivance of super states, that is, U.S.A, former Soviet Union, and China. Probing the matter to the bottom, this paper tried to prove that the repatriation resulted in the long confrontation between North and South Koreas, and pro-North and pro South Korean residents in Japan during the period of the Cold War. So far, the repatriated Koreans have been forced to live in North Korea as another diasporas, deprived of basic human rights. The old diasporic communities are now being transformed into new cultural communities in the post-Cold war era. In other words, new life style and culture is appearing in between the origin society and resettlement communities. Korean diasporas, especially Korean residents in Japan, should be given the chance to build a new culture and a community, through which they would be able to connect their community to the origin society and culture, free from the ideological influence of the cold war era.