Growing up in Japan, Kum-hee Cho recalls learning that her grandparents came from South Korea and her "motherland" is North Korea, but she is neither North nor South Korean.

Key points: Chongryon people are ethnic Koreans in Japan who came from Choson, the last unified Korea

Chongryon people are ethnic Koreans in Japan who came from Choson, the last unified Korea They were left stateless by conflicts that split their homeland in half after 1945

They were left stateless by conflicts that split their homeland in half after 1945 Some Chongryon people see reunification of the two Koreas as the only clear resolution to statelessness

"We are not fully foreigners. We are not fully Koreans," she says.

Ms Cho is part of the Chongryon community, a group of ethnic Koreans in Japan who came from Choson, the last unified Korea, but were left stateless by conflicts that struck the region and split that homeland in half after 1945.

"Chongryon identity, especially in my generation … we feel like we are from the Korean Peninsula," says Ms Cho, a historian and independent scholar.

Ms Cho performs in a band at a Chongryon school as a child. ( Supplied: Kum-hee Cho )

Today, some continue to hope for reunification to restore their lost homeland and grant them the legal protections and freedom to travel that they have never known.

"They can't travel abroad without very complicated legal processes," explains Sayaka Chatani, Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore.

"Many of them have no guaranteed visas or access to their relatives or family members living in South Korea."

As the 65th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice came and passed this year with improved diplomatic relations on the peninsula, Chongryon people may continue to seek not only unification, but also understanding.

A culture without a country

The Chongryon community is a group of ethnic Koreans in Japan who came from Choson, the last unified Korea. ( ABC News )

Historically tied to North Korea, Chongryon people take their name from the Chongryon organisation, which was funded by North Korea in the 1960s and 70s.

It supported a network of Korean schools in Japan that many believe are used to indoctrinate Chongryon people with propaganda, instilling North Korean loyalty.

But Ms Cho says this perception is an oversimplification that ignores the complexities and history of the community.

She recalls that her Chongryon education was not a one-way path towards North Korean affiliation, but instead the development of a distinct culture and language that stood apart from both Koreas.

"I would call Chongryon language a combination of the Japanese accent, South Korean dialect, and the North Korean vocabulary," Ms Cho says.

She explains that historically, the only alternatives for Chongryon families looking to educate their children were Japanese schools fraught with racial discrimination.

"Nowadays there shouldn't be legal discrimination in terms of getting employment or going to school, but back in the 1970s and 80s, discrimination was quite open and accepted," Professor Chatani elaborates.

Sayaka Chatani is an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore.

Chongryon schools today are still decorated with North Korean symbols and portraits of its leaders, but Ms Cho believes that these are homages to the support North Korea gave in the past, rather than indicative of the present curriculum.

"A lot of my friends don't like North Korea. Some of my friends disagree with that Chongryon political attitude," she says.

"However, that culture we grew up in is still our place."

For Ms Cho's generation at least, the home that Chongryon people grew up and feel most comfortable in is not a physical space, or even a nation.

Instead, it is the community and language that they have created and preserved in the absence of the homeland that they lost decades ago.

"A lot of Japanese or Koreans, they don't like their government, but their home is still their home. So for Chongryon Koreans, Chongryon is a space that we call home."

Neither North nor South, nor Japanese

Today, Chongryon people are unable to attain Japanese nationality without abandoning their Korean heritage, due to Japan's designation of citizenship by lineage rather than place of birth.

They are only eligible for a special permanent residency in Japan and South Korean nationality.

A North Korean flag flew at half-mast at the Chongryon headquarters to mark Kim Jong-il's death.

Ms Cho herself took up South Korean citizenship in 2006, but says this is not a simple task for many Chongryon people.

She says obtaining South Korean citizenship requires a family genealogy record going back to Choson, which many Chongryon people do not have.

Even those, like Ms Cho, who have taken up this citizenship still do not have access to the same suite of government programs and benefits that native-born South Koreans do.

"We are still categorised as somewhere between native Koreans and foreigners," she says.

Culturally, Ms Cho describes a growing connection between the Chongryon community and South Korea today, but notes that this only came after a history of distrust and exclusion rooted in the Chongryon's pro-North Korean reputation.

"South Korean society did not accept us," she recalls.

"We got hurt all the time, and found out that we were not truly Korean, South Korean."

And while these attitudes are shifting in South Korea, it still remains among Japan's far-right nationalists.

Students at North Korean schools in Japan learn a distinct language and culture that has come to define the Chongryon community. ( ABC News )

Meanwhile, official membership to the Chongryon and its affiliation with North Korea dropped dramatically in the 1990s and 2000s.

As the community learned about the reality of North Korea's brutal regime and the corruption of the Chongryon's leader, Han Deok-su, many renounced the political and nationalistic aspects of Chongryon identity, but held on to their language, culture and memory of their unified homeland.

Ms Cho recounts that even her father, a former Chongryon activist like his father before him, adopted South Korean citizenship for business purposes without controversy from his peers.

"Now the Chongryon community is shrinking, and it's been under political attack and xenophobic attack for a long time," Professor Chatani says.

'A lot of people have lost that kind of hope'

Despite positive steps by Kim Jong-un and and Moon Jae-in, Ms Cho says many Chongryon people have lost hope of reunification. ( AP: Korea Summit Press Pool )

Pushed away from both South Korea and Japan, and distancing themselves from North Korea, some Chongryon people see reunification as the only clear resolution to this statelessness.

"Reunification … for me, it's like finally realising my family dream," Ms Cho says, adding that this dream is shared by many Chongryon families.

Sorry, this video has expired South and North Korean leaders plant tree in symbolic act

But she also notes that even at this time of heightened diplomatic relations between South and North Korea, others have grown wary after many false dawns.

"My grandpa used to say, 'our country is going to unify within three years' all the time … There was a strong belief, and it didn't happen," she recalls.

"A lot of people have lost that kind of hope."

Chongryon people are descended from the 600,000 Chōsen (a Japanese pronunciation of Choson) people who remained in Japan after its empire fell in 1945.

The US, North Korea and China signed the armistice, but South Korea refused. ( Wikimedia Commons )

In 1947, they were freed from the empire, but this freedom ironically cost them their residential rights to live in Japan as imperial subjects.

They were then forced to register as temporary residents from Chōsen, until US and Soviet forces cut that unified homeland in half, and their stateless status began.

The Korean War Armistice in 1953 has technically continued that war to this day, and has cemented their statelessness into history.

And while they wait for the return of a country that may never come, Professor Chatani explains why the Chongryon story is a valuable one to remember today.

"In broader terms, their history of social and legal discrimination and the demonised image cast over them have a lot in common with those of other minority communities around the world, especially the Muslim community and the Latin American migrants in the United States."

At a time when international conflict and environmental factors threaten to displace unprecedented numbers of people around the world, Chongryon history reflects how difficult it is to resolve the effects of displacement when those people are pushed to the outskirts of their new societies.

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