Unwelcome & Unwilling

To Tokyo officialdom, Japan's 800,000 "resident Koreans" have long been unwelcome guests who contribute more than their share to Japanese crime and unemployment statistics. But to Soren, the Red-lining General Federation of Korean Residents in Japan, the Koreans are unwilling exiles. Loudly insisting that at least 120,000 of the Koreans in Japan yearn to go to Communist North Korea, Soren has repeatedly demanded mass repatriation as "a basic human right." Last February, after the North Korean government grandly chimed in with an offer to take in all of Japan's Korean residents at once, the Japanese government surrendered to temptation. Shrugging off the Communist propaganda triumph that seemed certain to result, Tokyo announced that any Korean who really wanted to go to North Korea could do so.

The Japanese announcement brought cries of outrage from South Korea's Syngman Rhee, who argued that the repatriates should go to South Korea--but insisted that the Japanese government must first pay "compensation" for the Koreans' years of "forced labor" in Japan. Unmoved, the Japanese pushed ahead, and, with the cooperation of the International Red Cross, set up a repatriation scheme that included a big proviso. Japan's condition: before boarding ship, each would-be repatriate would be asked privately by Japanese and Red Cross officials, "Do you wish to change your mind?" Last week, at 3,655 ward offices throughout Japan, clerks stood ready to sign up the promised rush of homesick Koreans.

The rush never came. The first day of the program, 15,000 Koreans showed up at the ward offices, but only 117 signed up. The rest went at the behest of Korean Communist leaders to protest the repatriation plan. The last-minute question about a change of mind, insisted the Reds would be "a breach of human rights." Tight as their control over their followers appeared, the Reds had not forgotten that in U.N. prisoner-of-war camps at the end of the Korean war, a similar questioning process had turned up an embarrassing 14,000 Chinese Communist soldiers who, in the last analysis, preferred homesickness to slavery.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.