http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/international/asia/02gyun.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Born to Be a Foreigner in Her Motherland
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
TOKYO
CHUNG HYANG GYUN'S news conference was a sight seldom seen in Japan, the raw anger written across her face, the fury in her voice and words, the palpable feeling that these last words would somehow redeem the futility of her actions.
"I want to tell people all over the world that they shouldn't come to Japan to work," Ms. Chung said in the perfect Japanese befitting someone who has lived nowhere else but Japan. "Being a worker in Japan is no different from being a robot."
After a decade-long battle, the Supreme Court ruled recently that Ms. Chung, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a South Korean man, who was born in Japan and has lived all her life here, could not take the test to become a supervisor at her public health center because she is a foreigner.
"I have no tears to shed," said Ms. Chung, a 55-year-old nurse. "I can only laugh."
Ms. Chung is what the Japanese call a Zainichi, a term that literally means "to stay in Japan," but that is usually shorthand for Koreans who came here during Japan's colonial rule, and their descendants. Considered outsiders both in Japan and on the Korean peninsula, they have, over the years, adopted different ways of living in Japan.
In a Japan that has softened its attitudes toward the Zainichi, many have become citizens and taken Japanese names, melding into the larger population. Others have taken citizenship, but kept their Korean names. Others still, like Ms. Chung, have taken neither citizenship nor name. Disagreements exist, even within the same family, including Ms. Chung's.
Reaction to the court's ruling - that local governments can bar "foreigners" from holding official positions where they exercise "government power" - was split along political lines. Liberals said an aging Japan with a shrinking workforce would lose by shutting out people like Ms. Chung, who could hardly be considered a true foreigner. Conservatives said foreigners like Ms. Chung should simply become Japanese citizens.
The morning after Ms. Chung's news conference, her boss asked her whether she regretted her words, she recalled in an interview, one recent evening after work, at her apartment here. "No way," was her answer. "I didn't say enough."
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