hankyoreh

who got married to a Korean

By An In-yong

On the 61st anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan, a new understanding of culture and history is necessary to conquer the difficulties faced by children of Japanese-Korean couples.

One first grader I meet has two names. One is his Korean name, Juk-jeong Chang-su, and the other is his Japanese name, Takei Akehi. Little Chang-su’s Japanese last name comes from his father, Takei Hiroki. These days, his Korean friends keep on asking him the same question: "Why does your name have four characters?"

"It’s ’cause my dad’s Japanese," he tells them. [Translator’s note: modern Korean names generally have three characters.]

Explaining that "my friends think it’s cool," he breaks into a smile. At home, he goes by his Japanese nickname "Hide;" when he’s out of the house, he goes by "Chang-su." One time, he complained to his maternal grandmother after she called him "Hide" in front of his friends. "Call me Chang-su when my friends are around," he said.

"We didn’t tell him to do that," his mother explained. "He was the one that requested he be called Chang-su in front of his friends." She continued, "Living in Korea with a Japanese name, he figured out the difference between the two names on his own."

Japan squared off against Australia June 12 in a crucial match for advancement from Group F in the 2006 German World Cup. Thanks to the boast by Guus Hiddink, the coach of the the Australian soccer squad in 2006, that his team would ’defeat Japan for Korea’s sake,’ the match took on a tinge of being a proxy war between Korea and Japan [Translator’s note: Hiddink had served as the coach of South Korea during the 2002 World Cup]. In front of their televisions, many Koreans cheered on the Australian team. Fourth grader Choi Hong-jun, however, rooted for Japan. "It’s cause Japan is mommy’s country" he explained. His mother, 40-year-old Harue Kiyoko, married her Korean husband in 1991 and they settled in Incheon, where they have three young children. Hugging her son, she smiled and said, "Though many hope for an Australian victory, I’m so glad that my son is cheering on Japan."

With the history between Japan and Korea very much unresolved, the two nations are like the two poles of a magnet, unable to align. Though the two countries’ coexistence is often strained, love conquers past differences, as Koreans and Japanese fall in love and marry. Children from these unions living in Korea often find themselves caught between two worlds. On the occasion of Korea’s 61st anniversary of liberation, I took a look at the lives of these children.

With the rate of international marriage growing annually by more than 20 percent - which means an increase by some 7,000 to 9,000 couples annually in the last two years - it has been an important topic in our society for some time now. Among those foreigners whom Korean men marry, Japanese women occupy the third largest proportion, after Chinese and Vietnamese women. Until the rapid rise in marriages with Vietnamese women starting in 2003, Japanese women were second only to Chinese women in interracial marriages.

In the case of a couple where one spouse is of Southeast Asian descent, the couple’s children bear skin color easy to distinguish from other children. On the other hand, the children of Japanese-Korean households are free from any such identifying features and thus not a target of appearance-based discrimination. However, they suffer from bias and discrimination as deep and as wide as the valley of emotions separating the two countries. Whenever relations rupture between the two nations, such as sentiments which swell on the remembrances of the March 1, 1919 uprising against Japanese rule and liberation day on August 15, 1945, these children’s hearts grow heavy.

Attending her first year of middle school, Ku Mo-kyeong was born to a Japanese mother and Korean father. Though she has never had any conflict with her friends because of her mother’s nationality, she grows uneasy when relations between the two nations become complicated. "My heart aches and I feel bad every time I hear bad things about Japan during the news," she said. She feels similarly when Japan is shown in a poor light during social studies and history class. "At such times, I say to myself, ’Well, not all of the Japanese are bad people,’ " she added.

Most news in Korea regarding Japan is accompanied with a sense of rage. Upon such broadcasts, the parents of these households worry that their children will be the recipients of such ire or will be teased at school. Chang-su’s mother, Kim Hyo-sun, confided, "I sometimes ask my first daughter I-hwa whether there are problems at school because her father is Japanese." She explained, "I do indeed worry about there being discrimination at school."

Mr. Takahashi (pseudonym), another parent from a Japanese-Korean relationship, explained similarly, "I know that everyone has their troubles, but I think that my child may sometimes be sad or rueful that her dad is Japanese."

However, due perhaps to the recent influx of Japanese popular culture and the resulting change in perceptions of Japan, there are very few children from such households who are being excluded by their classmates.

The parents of these mixed families worry about the chaos of adolescence that their children face no less than the possibility of discrimination. Park Seong-jin (pseudonym) of Gyeonggi Province said, "I did not think much about the fact that my mother is Japanese during my middle school years, but suddenly, now that I’ve entered high school, I’ve been made to think about it a lot."

He confessed, "I have complicated feelings toward Japan. There are very few children around here who are like me, so it’s not easy to talk about this to new friends I meet. I feel sorry toward my mom when these thoughts come to mind."

With the majority of Japanese-Korean households having children of elementary or middle school age, it is often the case that the parents are the first ones to come to grips with this issue. The first worry of parents, with the increased sensitivity that children feel during adolescence, is what will their children will think when Japan and Korea are portrayed as being on opposite sides. They know all too well of the possibility that their children will reject Japan outright or feel distressed over their identity as being half-Japanese. That is why these parents want to take the initiative in diminishing such emotional turmoil beforehand.

Mo-kyeong’s mother, Fuji Sachiko, takes a month-long trip with her three children to her parents’ house in Japan once or twice every year during school vacations. It is because she believes that the better her children understand Japan and its culture, the better equipped they will be able to adjust. About her eldest daughter, she said, "I am raising her as a Korean in Korea, but I would like for her to be able to understand and overcome the differences between Japan and Korea. Though she is but a middle school student without much perception of history, I hope that [these trips] will give her the ability to overcome any turmoil in the future that she may feel when she becomes more conscious of these things."

But even if the parents do not say a word on the subject, the children of these families inevitably grow curious in regard to the homeland of their Japanese mother or father. Chang-su’s family uses Korean at home. Though his father Takei is Japanese, neither he nor his wife force their child to learn about Japan, rather tending to simply answer any questions as they arise. As a result, their eldest daughter I-hwa and their son Chang-su tend to ask about Japanese language or cuisine. At one point, their mother told them, "We’ll teach you Japanese from now on." Mo-kyeong is no different. "I want to go to Japan, the country that mommy lived in, and experience life there while going to school," she said. Her dream is to become a Korean-Japanese translator and a flight attendant.

The parents of these households emphasize the importance of an accurate historical education. Having traveled to Korea in 1998, where she met her future husband, Byeon Chang-su, Tanabe Kaori is studying history on her own initiative for the sake of her five-year-old son. Managing the Sarangbang teahouse in Insa-dong, Seoul, Mrs. Tanabe said, "in order to instill in my son a proper historical view, I must study first." She continued, "When my son asks about the history between Japan and Korea, I will tell him objectively about such Japanese mistakes as the colonization of Korea."

Last May, these mixed Korean-Japanese households with an interest in their children’s education assembled to form the Korean-Japanese Family Gathering. The Takeis and Tanabes count themselves among the participating couples. Kim Hyo-sun said, "it is good that these Japanese-Korean families can gather and discuss their concerns regarding their children while giving their kids an opportunity to meet others their age raised in a similar environment. I intend to continue attending these meetings," she said. Composed of nearly twenty families, the Korean-Japanese Family Gathering decided to hold their first meeting last May at Seodaemun Prison, a place which holds a dark history as the place where members of the Korean independence movement were detained and tortured during the Japanese occupation.

The parents and children of these families went together to the prison, where they could look directly at the site while discussing historical issues. In June, they gathered at the War Memorial of Korea and in the following month they convened their meeting at the Memorial to the Martyr An Jung-geun,famous for his pro-independence writings and carrying out the 1909 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, who had served as the first Japanese Resident General in Korea.

These parents expect that, after growing up and methodically examining the issues between Japan and Korea, their children will be able to play a positive role in building relations between the two countries.

"With these children having been born in Japanese-Korean households," Mrs. Tanabe said, "there are a more diverse set of people holding a diverse set of cultures and thoughts."

Mrs. Harue said, "as I am Japanese, I hope that my children will be able to make accurate judgments in regard to Japan and Japanese-Korean relations, and furthermore exert a positive influence on both countries."

A once-in-a-lifetime choice remains to be made by these children, who currently live in Korea and communicate largely in the Korean language. The majority of them hold double citizenship, as nationality in both countries is determined by the parents’ nationality. Under the revision of international law in 1997, such dual citizenship can be maintained until the age of 18. At that age, they must abandon one nationality. Boys confronted with this choice are faced with larger questions due to the Korean military service requirement. When asked how they thought their children would decide, these parents came to a similar conclusion. "As a parent that raised his child in Korea, I will recommend that they take Korean citizenship, but as much as possible I will respect their decision." How will Korean-Japanese relations change when these children decide their citizenship? One cannot help but wonder about the roles these children might take on 10 or 20 years down the line.