Third-generation Korean Japanese attorney, Ryangok Ku, 37, who represents victims of anti-Korean hate crimes, stands near her office in Osaka, Japan. Courtesy of Ryangok Ku



By Lee Suh-yoon



Like many other third-generation Koreans in Japan, Ryangok Ku, a human rights lawyer based in Osaka, attended Korean school growing up.



Her school uniform, a simple hanbok, sometimes subjected her to hate speech and hair-pulling on subway stations. Sadly, such discrimination against ethnic Koreans in Japan has only worsened since then, according to Ku.



"Previously, there was still a shared understanding in Japanese society that anti-Korean crimes were bad. Now, the attacks are systematic, publicly advertised in advance and shared online in videos by groups like Zaitokukai (an anti-foreign ultranationalist group). And we have become a society that tolerates such behavior."



Due to a series of skirt-tearing incidents by attackers with knives, female students no longer wear hanbok uniforms in public. Ku says hate speech and crimes against ethnic Koreans intensified whenever geopolitical tensions rose between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, such as North Korea's missile launches and its 2002 admission to abducting Japanese citizens.



Ku now represents the board of Kyoto Korean Schools against Hitoshi Nishimura, the former executive of Zaitokukai who held a one-person hate speech rally in 2017 near the site where the Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School closed due to a 2009 attack by anti-Korean ultranationalists.



In the filmed event, Nishimura falsely accuses Korean schools of harboring North Korean spies and abducting Japanese citizens.



"It was like he was trying to revive the 2009 event, using extreme manners of speech and expression at a symbolic site to draw attention," Ku said.



In Nov 29, Kyoto District Court found Nishimura guilty of defamation but gave him a slap on the wrist ― a 500,000 yen ($4,500) fine. The reasoning was that Nishimura was acting on "matters of public interest," even if his claims were false.



"The accused testified that he believed his actions would be ultimately beneficial to Japan's national interest," the court sentence read. "Since his actions took place under the goal of making the abductions of Japanese citizens better known to the general public, we recognize that his intent was to advance public interest."



Considering the fact the court accepted a "public interest" argument for a hate speech incident, the ruling is a setback from civil trials of the 2009 attack on Kyoto No. 1 Korean Elementary School, Ku says. Apart from fining violators $114,000 in damages and issuing a 200-meter-radius injunction against racist demonstrations, the Japanese court at the time recognized for the first time that the acts were motivated by racial discrimination against ethnic Koreans.



This 2014 ruling spurred the entrance of the Hate Speech Elimination Act. But the law is of little help in legal battles because it does not specify a penalty clause for violators.



"I am scared of what will come next," Ku said. "The situation in Japan now is very similar to what it was like just before it started wars for colonization."

