
When students stroll into any of the 120 or so private elementary and high schools operated for ethnic Koreans by an association in Japan, they enter virtual tiny enclaves of North Korea. Portraits of Kim Il Sung, the deceased Stalinist founder of North Korea, hang on many walls. In the classrooms, teachers instill reverence for Kim. "One day, when my second daughter was in kindergarten, she saw azaleas in the park," recalled Hong Kyong Ui, a third-generation ethnic Korean. "She said, `This is the flower that Great Leader Kim Il Sung likes,' rather than saying it was a beautiful flower"...Many ethnic Koreans chose to join the pro-Pyongyang Generation Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chosun Soren, even though their ancestral home was in what's now South Korea. After all, until the early 1980s, industrialized North Korea, with help from the Soviet Union, was on an economic par with South Korea...more...