Pro Wrestler's Life Mirrors Plight of Ethnic Koreans in Japan
SEOUL, July 20 (Yonhap) -- For Japanese people, he was an undisputed national hero, and still remains a legend. Knocking down bulky American professional wrestlers with a trademark karate chop in the ring, Yok Do-san, better known as Rikidozan in Japan, was a popular idol in the 1950s and early 1960s.... lived his life in Japan as neither Japanese nor foreigner, just as with most of the ethnic Koreans currently in Japan, called "Jaeilgyopo" in Korean and "Zainich" in Japanese.
Born in 1924 in what is now North Korea, Yok Do-san's real name was Kim Sin-nak. But he kept his true identity secret for his entire career, claiming he hailed from Nagasaki, Japan.
His true nationality was not revealed to the public until years after he was stabbed to death by Japanese gangsters in a Tokyo nightclub brawl in 1963.....
.... Experts say that ethnic Koreans in Japan are reeling from both outward discrimination and inward identity confusion.
"It is the undeniable reality facing Koreans there. That is why we can't blame the Japanese government only," Kim Jung-dong, Mokwon University professor, said. "In the end, time will cure many of those problems."
"The past 40 years (after Yok's death) can be a long time for those suffering from the plight, but it is also a short one to solve such a sensitive issue," he added.
"I doubt even 10th- or 11th-generation will have a similiar problem," Kim, author of the book "Korea's Modern History in Japan," said.
