“I am a translator who fuses life and knowledge between the ‘Korean Peninsula’ and Japan”···[Meet and Listen]⑩Zainichi scholar residing in Korea, Cho Kyung-hee - 경향신문

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Cho Kyung-hee, who grew up constantly hearing from her parents, “You are a Choson person,” first heard the word Kankoku (Korea) when she was attending a kindergarten in Japan. When the teacher asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, Cho hesitated. At home, she had never talked with her parents about future dreams. A friend said, “Since Kyung-hee-chan is Kankokujin (a Korean), it would be nice if you became a teacher in Korea.” Feeling, “So we must not say Chosen (Choson) here,” young Cho answered, “Alright, I will become a teacher in Kankoku.”

Among the many borders she would later encounter growing up, this was the first moment she faintly sensed the boundary of nationality and the borders called South Korea, North Korea, and Japan. It was also her first experience of being “hailed as Korean while in Japan.”

Professor Cho Kyung-hee of Sungkonghoe University is a “Zainichi residing in Korea.” He believes this oxymoronic label of “in Korea, in Japan” reveals the trajectories and traces of routes taken by diasporas spanning the two Koreas and Japan. In this layered space, he seeks to bind “life and knowledge” together and to become a translator who builds a world of peace and coexistence. He posed for photographs at the Kyunghyang Shinmun on the 19th of last month. Kim Jong-mok, reporter

In <Unfamiliar Home> (Sakyejul), Cho Kyung-hee (professor at Sungkonghoe University) looks beyond geographic borders to examine the boundaries that divide ‘us’ and others, the normal and the exceptional. One conclusion from those observations and experiences is that “a boundary is maintained by pushing someone out.” “Who is recognized as a member of the community, who is entitled to safety, who is ultimately left outside? Even today, when discourse about borders abounds, it remains urgent to ask how borders actually function and what it means to live together in the strange houses on those borders,” he writes.

The book’s themescolonialism, diaspora, Zainichi Koreans, division, migration, hate, feminismare linked by a “shared consciousness about history and borders.” It tells the stories of “people who live with the fissures of borders produced by history and systems” embedded in their lives.

We met at the Kyunghyang Shinmun on the 19th of last month and began with childhood. He was born and raised in Ashikaga, a small city in the southwest of Tochigi Prefecture, about a two-hour drive from Tokyo. Until middle school, he attended a Chongryon-affiliated Choson school for Zainichi Koreans there.

His paternal family came from Gyeongju in North Gyeongsang Province, and his maternal family from Jeju. “I heard my grandfather came to Japan in the 1920s as a labor migrant. He started a small pachinko parlor, which my father took over. In the Zainichi community back then, self-employment often meant pachinko or yakiniku.” The first floor of the building was the pachinko parlor, the second floor housed a mahjong parlor and a bar, and the third floor was home. “I often saw adults at play from broad daylight. I would eat with the employees who looked rough on the outside but were warm inside. To me, that world was a given.”

After graduating from kindergarten, he learned more about what was then called ‘South Choson.’ “Some days our mahjong parlor became a meeting hall for local compatriots. As an elementary schooler, I watched footage of the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement both at the mahjong parlor and at school. I cried at the sight of Gwangju citizens being seized by soldiers. At school we were taught that we must fight together for democratization in the South.” The images of the Gwangju Uprising he saw then became the “primal landscape” of ‘South Choson’ for him. “Even if the videos or curriculum had elements of political propaganda, those experiences of trying to think of the South’s reality as ‘our’ problem had a salutary effect on me.”

It was a small, cozy school with only about 120 students. Elementary and middle schoolers often played together. “I think it gave emotional stability to Zainichi children, a minority in the harsh Japanese society. If I have a fundamental trust or affection for human beings, it was nurtured at the Choson school.”

The Choson school was also a “closed and conservative” space. “The school taught us the need to ‘unite,’ but it did not teach us much wisdom for living in the outside world.”

After graduation, he entered a Japanese university. “Naturally, I began to confront issues like nationality, ethnicity, and identity. It was a time of the Cold War’s collapse and globalization. There was a current seeking to move beyond the nation-state, too. In that atmosphere, I began studying sociology.” He says that while active in a Zainichi student group, he also pondered themes like the “future of Zainichi society.” “The student group was trapped in a very homeland-(North Korea)-centered and male-centered frame of thought. I figured I had to study to gain confidence.”

He transferred to another university. In the interview, a professor asked, ‘Why do you want to study sociology?’ “Vaguely, I answered, ‘Because I want to work on human rights issues.’ The professor then asked whether I wanted to work on my own issue, and I said yes.” He laughed, saying, “If I had not been Zainichi, maybe I would have done something more fun.” “That is how much living as Zainichi has greatly shaped the direction of my life.”

At that time, the homeland for Cho was the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In 1994, he visited North Korea as a member of a student delegation. “From the lavish spreads set out every day to the people’s seemingly wary gazes, I felt I was a ‘guest from a wealthy country.’ I realized I had no choice but to engage the homeland in an asymmetrical relationship, and I began to look at it from a distance.”

In the early 1990s, the image of ‘South Choson’ he saw through the media differed markedly from what he had known. He saw material affluence, “globalization,” and political democratization. After the June 15, 2000 NorthSouth Joint Declaration, the possibility of entering South Korea increaed for compatriots with Chosen-seki who were residing in Japan without holding the nationality of the Republic of Korea or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and without naturalizing in Japan. “For the first time, I was issued a travel certificate and visited South Korea. It had been an ‘imagined homeland’ I had long thought I should not wish to go to, but once I arrived, I was overjoyed.” He spent ten days getting around, speaking a “stiff ‘our language’ mixed with North Korean and Japanese styles.”

In May 2002, he received a seven-month travel certificate. “It was an unusual long-stay permit at a time when the South Korean government still regarded those with ‘Chosen-seki’ as ‘holders of North Korean nationality.’” He arrived during the KoreaJapan World Cup. “I was exhilarated at this ‘encounter’ with Korean society, exchanging high-fives in the streets with people I did not even know. Even amid that, the cheer ‘Dae~hanminguk!’ alone made my body shrink; I could not join in. I could not deny that the Korea I had learned as ‘South Choson’ was, in my life, a relatively distant country. I thought I should not erase that process but endure the sense of distance.”

He says he felt a sense of “liberation” in South Korea. He wanted to live here. To reside in Korea, he gave up “Chosen-seki” and acquired “Korean nationality.” Did one identity disappear? “Even if I moved geographically and institutionally among Korea, Japan, and North Korea, that does not mean my identity moved. Identity accumulates within the ‘experience of mobility,’ not by a ‘logic of conversion.’”

After living in South Korea for nearly a quarter century, his “awkward ‘our language’ has been ‘corrected’ toward standard Seoul speech.” “Even after forming a family and becoming a working person who earns money, ‘unfamiliar Korea’ remains,” he said. Whether in South Korea or in Japan, his feeling that he is “not wholly belonging anywhere” has not changed. Rejecting the notion that “a nomadic life of belonging nowhere is a fantasy,” Cho put it this way.

“We keep living by belonging a little here and there. Zainichi have continued to settle in Japan into the fifth and sixth generations. We have made into home places that are in some way unfamiliar and imperfect.”

“Zainichi also have a different sensibility about the ‘38th parallel,’” he said. “Since there is no physical 38th parallel in Japan, Zainichi compatriots often end up being family or drinking buddies even if they hold different nationalities or bear mutual antagonisms. Things like Mindan and Chongryon cannot help but be crossed. From the perspective of South Korean society or its government, we end up becoming highly suspect beings. Zainichi became victims in past spy-ring incidents because the authorities could, one way or another, manufacture such entanglements.”

Even after “returning” to his grandfather’s hometown, he had to undergo the process of adapting himself anew in a land still unfamiliar to him. Yet South Korea was not a foreign country either.

“Diaspora are always in this ambiguous in-between. We affiliate with one side, depart, and then repeat affiliation and departure.”

For Cho, the “house of diasporas” is a place made up of “lives entangled with multiple sides that cannot choose only one.” It is also a place that keeps many borderlines of life. “Isn’t the idea that home is originally a place of comfort also a fantasy? Many people find home to be hell. For caregivers, home is a site of labor. I feel this is not necessarily a problem unique to diaspora.”

Cho seemed to view the world from its borders. One conclusion he drew from his observations here is that “Korea is a highly homogeneity-oriented society.”

“Rather than nationalism, ‘Republic-of-Korea-ism’ and ‘people-first-ism’ come first here. Everything is standardized by the term ‘the people.’ I am trying to conceptualize this, by analogy with the term ‘normal family,’ as ‘normal people.’”

One of several moments that led him to think this way was during the Yoon Suk-yeol impeachment rallies. He said he was “moved by the sight of diverse subjects speaking from the stage, yet felt an uneasy sensibility somewhere.”

Professor Cho (far left in the middle row), wearing a chima jeogori school uniform, cheers for the unified team at the venue of the 1991 World Table Tennis Championships in Chiba. For the first time ever, the two Koreas formed a unified team, ‘Korea,’ and competed. Courtesy of Prof. Cho

“When I took part in the impeachment candlelight rallies, sexual minorities, young people, factory workers in the provinces, and farmers were making their voices heard. There was Namtaeryeong as well, led by women in their twenties and thirties. But are foreigners or migrants included within that frame of ‘democratic citizens,’ ‘sovereign people’? For me, such questions are always doubtful.”

He added that the phrase in Article 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution“The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea resides in the people, and all state authority emanates from the people”seems to have been “re-sacralized in the course of turbulent domestic conflict.” “In struggles for democratization against power, this provision carries great resonance, but in today’s multicultural society, the phrase ‘sovereignty belongs to the people’ can become a performative power.”

He said this does not mean a simple, benevolent stance of “let’s include foreigners.” “If you draw any boundary, an outside will inevitably emerge. When you hail someone as Korean, the power of the boundary arises; because struggles for power and the division system remain ongoing in South Korea, it seems the subject ‘Korea’ is always posited as a necessity. In the past, we pondered alternative appellations like ‘the masses’ or ‘citizens,’ but perhaps we have entered an era when one unabashedly hails ‘the people’ and ‘Korea’ again.”

On South Korean society’s “bloodline-ism” or “ethnonationalism,” he said this: “Even among those of the same descent, a hierarchy has formed among ‘Korean Americans, Zainichi, Joseonjok (ethnic Koreans in China), Koryo-saram (ethnic Koreans from the former Soviet Union), and North Korean defectors.’ Below them are foreign migrants. Foreigners from the United States or Europe occupy yet another position. I remember someone once saying ‘GNP nationlism’; in the end, I think hierarchies are incessantly produced through the state’s economic power and class.”

On the use of the “K-” prefix, he said this: “It seems norms and desires to subjectify Korea and brand it as a global commodity operate in complex ways. I understand that compliments like ‘You have become so Korean’ are often offered in a good spirit, but within a discursive structure where the homeland is the main and diasporas are forever the sub, the practices of diaspora get sucked into economic utility and patriotic narrativeshow much they help the homeland.” Cho said, “We need to look at the Korean Peninsula through the eyes of the seven million compatriots who went overseas in the modern and contemporary period.”

Cho himself seeks to observe and record “the politics of borders and the people who live those borders.” One example is the comfort women movement by Zainichi women. “Zainichi women led the comfort women movement proactively and forcefully. They did not merely serve as a bridge; they led the movement independently. In investigating, learning, and recording such experiences, I reposition myself once again.”

Cho defines himself as “a translator who fuses life and knowledge between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.” In venues like international conferences, translation and interpreting are often regarded as secondary, incidental, or as mere mediation or bridging. He said, “Seeing them this way is premised on the homogeneity of a community like the nation-state.” Citing the Japanese historian Sakai Naoki’s line that “translation constitutes the subject,” he added, “The very act of translation forms the collectives called Korea or Japan. In that sense, translators occupy a key position in forming communities through solidarity.”

Zainichi are not fully affiliated with any single state, yet often live lifeworlds that span all threeSouth Korea, North Korea, and Japan. For example, while living in Japan, Cho visited both North and South Korea. He learned “two homelands.” “From the vantage of war and security, people who live such lifeworlds with multiple affiliations can only be seen with suspicionas spies. From the vantage of peace and coexistence, they become translators. They become beings of solidarity.” He said, “We cannot deny the realities of war, security, and division, but I think translation is about building a world of peace and coexistence.” This is the charge of a “translator who fuses life and knowledge.”

During his first visit to South Korea in the winter of 2001, Cho tried to find his grandfather’s hometown, the place he had recited from memory at the Choson school since elementary days: ‘Ijori, Naenam-myeon, Gyeongju-gun, North Gyeongsang Province.’ He took a taxi after traveling down to Gyeongju. As the landscapes leading toward the destination unspooled, he felt there was already enough ‘hometown’ in what he was seeing and had the driver turn back. “I think I suddenly lost any compelling reason to arrive right there. My visit to my hometown thus ended unfinished.” He said, “At the time, the sense of longing demanded by the symbol ‘hometown’ felt too conceptual for my body to follow. Being my first time, the unfamiliarity was too strong,” and added, “Now, I would like to go there someday.”