Zainichi Youth in the Japan-Korea Solidarity Movement: Transnational Identities and “Feminist” Discourse in Ajukkari (1975-83)

In January 1975, members of the Ikuno North branch of the political organization Hanch’ŏng (the common abbreviation of Chaeil Hanguk Ch’ŏngnyŏn Dongmaeng, or the Zainichi Korean Youth League) launched the Japanese-language journal Ajukkari (Castor Bean, 1975-83), announcing the renewed commitment of this local community of activists in Osaka’s largest Korean ethnic enclave to the reunification and democratization movements in South Korea.¹ Hanch’ŏng was one of several Zainichi Korean political organizations to have recently split with Mindan, the dominant political organization for South Korean citizens living in Japan, over the ongoing human rights abuses of the Park Chung-hee dictatorial regime (1962-79). The first issue of Ajukkari is an explicit declaration of its collective authors’ pro-democracy, anti-Park stance, drawing its name from a poem by the South Korean dissident Kim Chiha. By ending with a letter from the editor signed simply “Student K,” Ajukkari also responds directly to “Letters from South Korea” (Kankoku kara no tsūshin), a column by the anonymous “Student T.K.” that ran from 1973 to 1988 in the Japanese journal Sekai (The World), a key text of the Japan-Korea solidarity movement, which by 1975 was reaching its peak among leftist intellectuals in Japan.²