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(回答先: 視点／姜 尚中: （経済）制裁は東アジアの安全保障を危うくする[IHT/Asahi] 投稿者 なるほど 日時 2005 年 1 月 01 日 21:44:28)
POINT OF VIEW/ Tessa Morris-Suzuki:Exposing Japan's dark role in Koreans' return
Both Japanese and North Korean governments demand a ``settling of accounts'' for past history. For Japan, however, the account in question is the fate of the Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. For the North Korean side, on the other hand, it is the older and larger history of Japanese colonialism in Korea.
Meanwhile, there is one aspect of the shared history of the two countries that has been neglected by both sides, and where responsibilities for the past remain to be addressed.
This is the issue of the ``return'' to North Korea of some 93,000 people-most of them zainichi Koreans, or Korean residents in Japan (although the number also included some Japanese spouses of North Koreans).
This ``return'' began in 1959 and continued, with interruption, until 1984. Many of the returnees are still living in North Korea today; others have escaped across the border into China; and some have vanished into prison camps, never to be heard from again.
Most returnees to North Korea actually originated from the south of the Korean Peninsula, but there can be little doubt they made a conscious personal choice to leave Japan in search of a new life in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. From August 1958 onward, the North Korean-affiliated General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Soren) promoted a mass return movement, encouraging returnees to believe that they would be taking part in the creation of a peaceful, united socialist homeland.
But previously secret documents recently declassified by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which acted as an intermediary in the return process, have now exposed a long-concealed aspect to this story.
The documents raise disturbing questions about the roles of the Japanese government and Japan Red Cross Society in influencing the circumstances in which those choices were made.
These documents reveal that about three years before the start of Soren's 1958 return movement, the Japanese government and the Japanese Red Cross cooperated in energetically lobbying the ICRC to help undertake a mass repatriation of zainichi Koreans to North Korea.
The key figure in this process was Masutaro Inoue, a former senior Foreign Ministry official who had transferred to the Japan Red Cross Society in 1955.
According to a letter that Inoue sent the International Committee of the Red Cross early in 1956, former Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida and former Foreign Minister Katsuo Okazaki had informed him that the Liberal Democratic Party intended to ``start a movement to support the repatriation of the Koreans'' to North Korea.
As early as 1956, officials of the Japanese government and Red Cross were discussing the possibility of a repatriation of at least 60,000 zainichi Koreans. The motives behind this interest in repatriation are clearly revealed by Inoue, who wrote of zainichi Koreans that their character ``is violent, the standard of their living is very low, and they are in dark ignorance.'' Government officials also believed that they were a burden on the nation's welfare budget.
Writing to the ICRC with the approval of Japanese Foreign Ministry officials in March 1956, Inoue stated, ``It is obvious that the problem of the livelihood of Koreans in Japan cannot be settled, unless our government is able to enforce the repatriation of Koreans who cannot earn their living, either to South Korea or North Korea, regardless of their wish to stay in Japan,'' although he went on to express optimism that they would leave of their own accord.
The Japanese government's enthusiasm to promote this return was confirmed by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, who told visiting ICRC officials in 1956 that his government was deeply concerned with the issue and particularly wished ``to return to their own country the women and children who were leading a miserable life in Japan.''
At the very time when these confidential moves were taking place, the Ministry of Health and Welfare was undertaking a campaign to cut benefits to the zainichi Korean community. Some 60,000 zainichi Koreans had their welfare payments reduced or canceled, with the undoubted result that life for many women and children became yet more miserable.
The newly declassified documents indicate the likelihood of a conscious connection between these welfare cuts and schemes for a large-scale repatriation. Inoue specifically wrote that the welfare reductions would encourage all Koreans in Japan to want to return to North Korea, where jobs were abundant.
Many aspects of this story remain hidden. However, the newly revealed documents from the ICRC archives make two points clear.
1. The Japanese Red Cross Society, which was supposed to be a nongovernmental organization (NGO), actively collaborated with the government in pursuing some very dubious policy aims.
2. The Japanese government was far more actively involved in the repatriation plan than has previously been realized, and this involvement was deliberately concealed both from the Japanese public and from the zainichi Korean returnees themselves.
In light of the new evidence, it is necessary to reconsider the responsibility of the Japanese, as well as the North Korean, government for the ultimate fate of the returnees.
This also implies that the Japanese government must now take seriously its responsibility to accept those former zainichi Korean returnees who today are seeking to escape from North Korea and return to Japan.
* * *
The author is a professor of Japanese history at Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. She contributed this comment to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: November 26,2004)
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200411260122.html
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