Japanese Student in U.S. to Defy Her Country’s Rules for Koreans

Choi Sun-ae hopes to board a plane in Los Angeles today and go home to Japan. But she does not know whether she will be allowed to re-enter her country. She has no entry permit.

Choi, a 28-year-old graduate student at Indiana University, was born in Japan. She is, in fact, a third-generation Japanese. But she has no Japanese passport because Japanese law does not recognize her as a citizen.

In her native Japan, Choi is legally a Korean. Under Japanese law, her bloodline, not her birth, determines her citizenship. So though she does not speak Korean and has visited that country only briefly, she carries a Korean passport. She has no right to vote in Japan.

When Choi attempts to go home Tuesday for summer vacation, her arrival will be an act of civil disobedience watched carefully by the nearly 700,000 other Koreans in Japan, as well as by Japanese authorities.

She will attempt to enter the country without the Alien Registration Certificate that non-citizens are required to carry. That certificate was taken from her because she refused to be fingerprinted in 1981, as required by law every five years, to renew her certificate.

Discrimination against Koreans, by far Japan’s largest minority, became institutionalized after Japan colonized Korea between 1910 and 1945, forcing many Koreans to go to Japan as virtual slaves. Choi’s maternal grandparents were among them. Her father was born in Korea.

Under a policy of “integration,” Koreans who wanted to become Japanese citizens were required to adopt Japanese names and undergo Japanese education. But after World War II, many Koreans returned home and many who remained were stripped of citizenship. In 1955, “the colonials,” as they were called, were required to be fingerprinted.

Because of continuing pressure--though no technical legal obligation--to change their names and renounce Korean dress, food, and culture, not many of the Koreans in Japan seek citizenship. Only 5,110 Koreans became citizens in 1987. Koreans are still routinely denied jobs by Japanese companies, and “mixed marriages” between Koreans and Japanese are frowned upon.

In an interview Friday at a friend’s house in Whittier, Choi explained in eloquent, if halting, English that she had experienced discrimination since she was a child. Little boys stoned her and called her “dirty Korean” when she was 10. Teachers told her to change her Korean name, which means “goodness of love.”

“I always felt isolated,” she said. “I couldn’t be open about my Korean name. That was taboo. I just wanted to be called Hiroko or Yuko or some common Japanese name.”

Luckier Than Most

But, Choi stressed, she felt much luckier than most Koreans. Her family was reasonably well off. Her father, Choi Chang-Hwa, earned a doctorate in law, she said, but was unable to practice law because he was Korean. He became a Presbyterian minister. She lived outside Tokyo--outside Korean ghettos--and made some Japanese friends. She found solace in learning to play the piano she first heard in her father’s church.

When Choi turned 16, she followed Japanese law and registered as an alien, allowing herself to be fingerprinted. When, as a college student, she gave a piano recital on Japan’s national radio station, she found there was a policy against using the Korean pronunciation of her name.

By the time she was 21 and needed to renew her card, she said, she decided to take a stand against the law. In 1981 she and her father were among the first in Japan to refuse the fingerprints.

‘Humiliation’ Cited

Not until 1984, after thousands of Koreans began protesting what they considered the “humiliation” of the fingerprinting law, were she and her father arrested.

They both lost their cases, refused to pay $80 fines and appealed. In her appeal, Choi wrote: “We have neither the right to vote nor the right to speak out, and we can only make our voices heard through this issue. . . . When something hurts, you have to say ‘ouch.’ ”

After losing the appeal, Choi decided to take a graduate degree in music at Indiana University. When she left Japan in August, 1986, she said, she was given no re-entry visa and told she might never be able to return. Upon receiving this warning, many Koreans who had refused the fingerprinting submitted to them, she said. Her mother finally agreed to be fingerprinted because she wanted to leave the country to bury her mother in her native Korea.

Choi herself obtained a U.S. visa, she said, with the help of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Democratic presidential candidate, who was contacted by Korean civil rights leaders. She said she later met Jackson briefly in New York.

“There is discrimination in the United States,” she said she has learned. “All over the world there is discrimination. But at least in the United States, the laws say there is equality. That is not so in Japan.”

When she first arrived in Indiana, she said, she could not bear to look at pictures of her family because she had no idea when she would see them again. When her father had heart surgery, she was unable to return to Japan. Nor could she return for her brother’s wedding.

Slowly, she learned English. But her closest friends were Japanese students. In America, she said, their ethnic differences mattered less than in Japan.

Now, however, she hopes to be reunited with her family on June 1.

Law Modified

She chose that date because that is when a modified law takes effect that requires resident aliens like her to be fingerprinted only once. Since she was fingerprinted once before, she said, she hopes authorities will relent and return her alien registration.

Because the new law is unclear, she said, she hopes that if she succeeds in returning to Japan it will clear the way for her parents, whose certificates have not been formally revoked, to visit her in the United States.

“I really do not know what will happen when I arrive in Tokyo,” she said. “We do not know because there is no example just like this to look at.”

It is unclear, however, whether airline officials will permit Choi to even board a plane without a visa allowing her to enter Japan. “I hope so,” she said, declining to say publicly which airline she is planning to use.

She said she also has an invitation to speak to the Supreme Court of Japan on July 1, when her appeal is to be heard.

Though denied a permit to re-enter Japan to live, she said, “I was offered a tourist permit. But I do not want to be a tourist in my native country. If they offer me anything but my permanent residency back, I will turn around and come back. . . . That was a hard decision. But I will try to appeal from here.”

Hiroshi Sakarai, deputy director of the immigration division at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo, said Monday when asked about the Choi case: “We are wondering whether she has really applied. We have no knowledge of her application.”

‘Landing Permission’

Under Japanese law, a person without a visa may “apply for landing permission” once he arrives in Japan and undergoes a special examination by authorities at the airport, according to T. Miyoshi, a Japanese Ministry of Justice official.

If refused entry by these officials, Choi could appeal to the minister of justice, who could either grant her “a special permit,” Miyoshi said, “or she would have to leave Japan, and either go back to the States or to her home country, which is Korea.”

What she really wants, she said, is to return to Japan and someday become a citizen.

“Japan is my home, the only place I can go back to,” she said. “I love Japan and I would love to be a citizen, but not under present conditions. Only if I can keep my own name and culture.”