CORRECTED FOCUS: Korean daughter disowned father…

Asian Political News, July 22, 2003

TOKYO, July 16 Kyodo

(EDS: THIS IS FIRST OF FOUR NEWS FOCUS STORIES ON REPATRIATION PROGRAM OF KOREAN RESIDENTS IN JAPAN)

It has been many years since O Mun Ja, a 65-year-old Korean resident in Japan, disowned her late father for blowing the whistle on life in North Korea, after he himself had been an early enthusiast for the repatriation program for Korean residents in Japan.

''As my last word I decided to talk about my father before I might lose my voice,'' said Mun Ja, who is due to have surgery for cancer of the larynx.

Mun Ja, who spoke to Kyodo News recently in an interview at a coffee shop in downtown Tokyo, has remained tight-lipped about her father since 1962 when she disowned him.

Her father Kisei Seki was born in Sunchon, South Korea, then under Japanese colonial rule, but later succeeded in business in Okayama Prefecture, western Japan, and became a finance committee member of the Tokyo-based pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korea Residents in Japan (Chongryun).

Mun Ja, whose education inculcated in her a sense of racial pride, graduated from a vocational school for Korean teachers and became an activist for Chongryun's repatriation program, which began in December 1959.

She recalled how she would join rallies nearly every day and even after her marriage to a teacher at a Korean school would go to the Japanese Red Cross Society building, her baby strapped to her back, to shout 'repatriation' slogans.

The first ship to repatriate Koreans left Niigata port with 975 people aboard on Dec. 14, 1959 amid great fanfare and shouts of 'Mansei!'' (All Hail!) and ''See you in our home country!''

Among those singers praising the North Korean ''utopia'' at a farewell party on the eve of the ship's departure was Mun Ja herself, then 22, dressed in a traditional Korean ''chima choguri'' dress.

But later she remembered how her father, who had been to North Korea as a member of a delegation to celebrate the 15th anniversary of ''Korean Liberation'' in August 1960, told her, ''North Korea is an appalling country!''

Seki had made up his mind to return to his native soil one day, but his feelings changed shortly after he set foot in the North.

He was on a train to Chongjin in North Korea when three youths who had returned to the country on the repatriation program approached a delegation member, historian Goro Terao, and told him, ''We were deceived into coming here by your book, 'North Side of the 38th Parallel.' What can you do for us now? Our careers have been ruined.''

Terao's book, based on his own experiences of visiting North Korea and published in 1959, had bestowed unqualified praise on the country and many people subsequently went there believing what it said. The book, which sold well in Japan, described North Korea as a utopia where food and medical treatment were free and where there was no racial discrimination.

When the delegation asked them questions, the former Korean residents of Japan remained silent, merely crying to themselves. Seki realized that North Korean society was not what he had thought.

After returning to Japan, Seki spoke at meetings of Korean residents who hoped to go to their home country.

''Take with you all items necessary for daily life,'' he told them. ''Give up your wishful thinking that you will be going to a utopia.''

For this he was branded a ''whistle-blower'' and ''backstabber'' and ''an enemy of the Korean people'' by his Chongryun colleagues, who wanted to repatriate people to the North to boost its ties with Japan and increase their own influence among Japan's Korean residents.

Later, following publication of his revealing book about North Korea, ''Losing My Dream,'' in 1962, Seki was among the senior Chongryun officials purged by the leadership during that decade.

''My brethren are aggrieved by the oppression in North Korea. They are seeking an exit to the light. My obligation is to save them from hardships,'' Seki wrote in his book, which was reprinted in 1997.

But Korean residents in Japan were already learning what North Korea was really like from the letters of those who had returned to that ''earthly paradise.'' Up to 1960, the number of repatriated Koreans totaled 51,979, but nearly halved in 1961 to 22,799 and plunged to 3,596 in 1962.

''What my father told me just didn't sound right. But both my husband and I, devoted to socialism and racial education for decades, could not just change that way of life,'' Mun Ja said.

Her husband, who was boycotted by his students following publication of Seki's book, became addicted to tranquilizers and resigned from Korea University, a pro-Pyongyang university for Korean residents in Japan, located in the western Tokyo city of Kodaira, in April 1970 after having slashed one of his wrists in a suicide attempt.

Recalling the days of her father's ''suffocating love'' for her, Mun Ja said, ''My father rejoiced at his daughter's good scores in school and would come with me when I took entrance examinations. But that lovely daughter turned her back on him.''