The Recent Merging of Anti-Okinawa and Anti-Korean Hate in the Japanese Mass Media

 

Introduction

Shin Sugok is an advocate of human rights in Japan and a leader of “Norikoe Net,” an “international network to overcome hate speech and racism.”¹ Norikoe Net’s broad purview encompasses discrimination against Koreans, women, Okinawans, Burakumin, children born out of wedlock, the disabled, LGBT people, and other disadvantaged minority groups. In essence, their aim is to champion human rights in Japan as a universal value.

It is a great injustice that people of various ethnicities who were born and raised in Japan are often treated as outsiders. And it is especially unfair that many Japanese do not view the descendants of Koreans as locals or natives, no matter how brutally their ancestors were dispossessed and colonized by the Empire of Japan a few generations back, or if their grandparents contributed to building the Japan of today. (In this introduction and in the translations below, the term “Zainichi Korean” is used to refer to the migrants and descendants of people who originated in colonial Korea). Here we present two essays by Shin Sugok, the daughter of a Tokyoite, for English readers—a moving, and even disturbing, recent snapshot of a painful episode in one Korean woman’s life-long struggle to secure human rights in Japan.

Her first piece, “What Is the “News Girls” Issue All About?,” from a book edited by Maeda Akira, Heito kuraimu to shokuminchi shugi: han sabetsu to jiko kettei ken no tame ni [Hate Crime and Colonialism: For Anti-discrimination and the Right to Autonomy] (San’ichi Shobō, 2018) explains in a clear and thoughtful way how she was targeted with slander through the broadcasting of a show entitled “News Girls” to the extent that a safe, decent life in her homeland became impossible. “News Girls” essentially “let the dogs loose” for conservative and ultranationalist intellectuals, in the sense that they were provided a stage with all the trappings of a “discussion”—a discussion that was actually a kind of “megaphone” for like-minded conservatives without any established experts or liberal or progressive intellectuals around who might challenge or correct their false assertions—in which they told submissive young ladies the “truth” about controversial social and political issues, as Ms. Shin explains. One episode featured such conservatives falsely claiming that Ms. Shin and her human rights organization were agents of North Korea. In the process they ruined her life.

The show was supposed to inform viewers about the conflict between the pro-US Japanese government and the proponents of peace in Okinawa. This was a conflict over the government’s plans to construct two new US military bases on Okinawa Island, one in the Henoko coastal district of Nago City and the other in a remote location in the northern part of Okinawa Island called Takae, but the show was full of wild, unsubstantiated claims.² As Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu have argued, the struggle over Henoko and Takae involves not only the struggle over these particular bases but also a widespread demand in Okinawa for the “constitutional principle of popular sovereignty (shuken zaimin)” and should be viewed within the “context of the global democratic movements of the early twenty-first century.”[3] Thus there is much at stake in the controversy over the US bases issue in Okinawa, and it deserves in-depth, accurate, intelligent coverage. “News Girls,” unfortunately, could not boast of any such qualities.

Ms. Shin’s first essay below demonstrates that the many false, stereotypical, or otherwise skewed representations of Koreans, foreign nationals, Okinawans, women and other disadvantaged groups, as well as the historical revisionism in the Japanese mass media today are largely the result of a recent decline in ethics standards for journalism in Japan, and that a certain demagogic discourse now functions to build prejudice against any disadvantaged groups that might pose a challenge to the rise of antidemocratic, rightwing extremists to positions of influence and respectability. 

Maeda Akira, Heito kuraimu to shokuminchi shugi [Hate Crime and Colonialism] (San’ichi Shobō 2018)

The second sample of Ms. Shin’s writings is entitled “On the Occasion of the Judgement of the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization” (BPO) that appeared in Ryūkyū Shimpō (March 14, 2018). A one-paragraph introduction appears above the article itself. Shin Sugok argues that Japan is seeing a recent escalation of extreme right-wing threats that extend beyond the usual hate speech, even to terrorism. She warns that this could be the last chance for people in Japan to enjoy some semblance of democratic institutions, decent respect for human rights, and responsible journalism. (JE)

 
What Is the “News Girls” Issue All About?⁴ 

By Shin Sugok

Translation by Joseph Essertier

 

1. What Was Broadcast?

The controversial January 2, 2017 broadcast contained video footage said to be of locations in Okinawa taken by someone who called himself a military affairs journalist.⁵ Yet the interpretation of what went on there was actually based on a disinformation campaign on the Internet.⁶ The broadcaster claimed that “participants in the movement opposing US military bases in Okinawa are extremists and terrorists,” “elderly people who have nothing to lose if they are arrested,” and “people who are mobilized from outside the prefecture and who are paid daily.” “Behind them are South Korea and China. And the hand behind the black curtain is Shin Sugok, who is with the pro-North Korea faction ‘Norikoe Net’.” ⁷

The broadcaster discriminated against ethnic groups while making light of the military bases in Okinawa, ridiculing their opponents and stirring up discriminatory feelings among people by linking Zainichi Koreans [mainly people from colonized Korea and their descendants] with the DPRK [the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” or “North Korea”]. For a subtitle they even used the discriminatory [Japanese] slang term kichigai, which means “outside the military base” but in everyday speech means “insane,” implying that those who protest against the bases must have some kind of mental disorder. 

In other words, this was fake news claiming that the people of Okinawa love the American bases and that no Okinawan groups oppose them. It was an amalgamation of anti-Okinawa and anti-Korean hate.

In the uproar over the show, some right-wing talking heads appeared on the show the following week. Making up excuses for airing a program without interviewing people, they put aside the issues raised in order to change the terms of the discussion, and furthermore, made statements in which they insulted the Norikoe Net organization and me personally.

Since people continued to criticize them, they then interviewed Nishida Shōji, a politician in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet. They called this their second stage of interviews on Okinawa. Mr. Nishida defended the program, saying, “You know, since we’re talking about Zainichi Koreans here, when they hear anything unfavorable about them—they complain, ‘This is discrimination! Violating people’s rights! Hate speech!’” “They make political statements by taking full advantage of their Zainichi status… They themselves are making political statements, but when others are making political statements, they twist things around and call it discrimination. This is terribly sneaky.” “Tokyo MX must boldly refute this,” etc.

The video of that episode was replayed more than 259,000 times (by August 12, 2017). Since [the lies and discrimination of “News Girls”] had become such a huge issue, [that episode] was not broadcast on terrestrial channels.

The hate speech against Okinawa that was spread all over the Internet promoted the idea that:

• Okinawans cannot survive without the bases.
• Okinawans receive preferential treatment and a special budget from the national government.
• People are being paid to struggle against the bases.
• The people struggling against the bases are not Okinawan locals but extremists and activists from the main islands.
• The anti-base struggle receives support from the PRC [i.e., the “People’s Republic of China,” or “China”] and the DPRK.
• Secret agents of the PRC, the ROK [i.e., the “Republic of Korea” or “South Korea”), and the DPRK are leading the struggle in Okinawa.

These are all lies.

 

2. What kind of program is “News Girls” (Nyūsu joshi)?

On the “News Girls” webpage one reads, “An absolutely no-holds-barred discussion with no beating around the bush! A news show where people say what they think!” And, “Together with women, we think about current topics today and explain such topics in an interesting and easy-to-understand way—an adult-oriented, interactive news talk show.” The program features male commentators who are university professors, critics, former government bureaucrats, and journalists telling young women the “truth” about current events.

The first problem with this program is the fact that it is not based on any interviews, which is an essential requirement of any kind of news program. DHC Television Co., Ltd., issued a statement saying, “Those who belong to gangs that commit numerous crimes and illegal acts such as engaging in violence, damaging goods, illegally trespassing, illegally occupying, and exposing the faces of police officers to public view as a kind of threat—I do not consider it necessary, first of all, to listen to what such people have to say, not in a country such as Japan that is governed by laws.” DHC declares that they have no intention of confirming the facts with those who are directly involved—an essential task required of any news media.

Since “News Girls” lacks even a basic understanding of why Okinawans protest the construction of the bases in Henoko and Takae, it does not shy away from showing [the producers] hostility toward the base opposition movement. This is not a tendency limited to specific episodes. Commentators of the program use their status as university professors and journalists to present questionable information as fact. The biggest problem with this program is that it is based on unreliable sources of information.

The second problem is that it is full of sexist elements. While the male commentators bluntly spread misinformation and engage in hate speech, young women are assigned the task of listening, and express surprise with responses such as, “Really?!” and ask questions such as, “Why are foreigners engaging in oppositional movements?” and, “The police cannot do anything?” Their role is to enliven the atmosphere. The women are always assigned the listening role and do not express their own opinions or disagree with others.

That is to say, the very program is constructed in a discriminatory way where older men who are equipped with both experience and knowledge bestow their teachings on ignorant girls who know nothing about the world.

In another episode of this program, a university professor made a misogynistic comment that any claims about the damage to human health caused by cigarette-smoking were fabrications promoted by feminists.

The third problem is how this program is full of hostilities against foreign nationals in Japan, particularly Korean and Chinese residents.

Their episode on Japan-PRC relations expressed the view that “In the case that Japan-PRC relations deteriorate to the point of war, Chinese within Japan are instructed by the PRC to join together all at once in an uprising,” fanning fear that may incite hate crimes or genocide when and if an emergency occurs.⁸

To sum up, “News Girls” is a program that has the following problems:

• The people who produce “News Girls” put together programs full of unreliable information without interviewing people and doing basic fact-checking.
• The organization of the programs itself is sexist.
• It incites discrimination against women and minorities.

 

3. The Sponsoring Company is DHC

First, I refer to the chart below. 

The sponsor of this program is DHC. They buy the broadcast time slot from MX TV. The subsidiary DHC Theater provides 100% of the funding to the production company Boy’s TV Direction Company and has them produce the program. Yoshida Yoshiaki, the president of DHC, writes on the company’s webpage the following:⁹

The founder and president of DHC is the genuine article, even when he has fallen on hard times, but sometimes there are bad people who are way over the top, so one must be careful with such people. There are also many people who are not pure Japanese. When you’re talking about genuine articles, fakes, and pseudos, you can’t get far without dealing with the problem of the Zainichi. In this case, I refer to the broad meaning of “Zainichi.” I mean the naturalized citizens who came to Japan three or four generations back.

In that sense, you would be shocked to know how many Zainichi are living in Japan. Now, among those Zainichi, there are those who have become totally Japanese and are working hard for Japan. They are not a problem. They are splendid people. The problem is the bunch who, although they have naturalized, have nothing but bad-mouthing for Japan, conspire together, and build Zainichi groups—the pseudo Japanese, the fake Japanese. It’s not too much of a problem that the fields of celebrities and sports are riddled with Zainichi since [Zainichi] do not have much of an impact [in those fields]. The problem is in the fields of politics, the bureaucracy, mass communications, and law. These have a big impact on the lives of the Nation’s Citizens. Our company, as one of the large enterprises, is often involved in court battles due to the broad range of activities that we are engaged in, and when the judge is a Zainichi or when the defense is a Zainichi, we, the ones suing, will lose 100% of the time. We know what the judgment will be before the court proceedings have even begun. We do not need these pseudo Japanese. Let’s have them return to their home country.

This is overt racial discrimination. He is inciting hatred.

In order to block any criticism against him, he fires a series of lawsuits in rapid succession against individuals or the mass media seeking large sums of money as restitution—sums of money unthinkable in normal lawsuits for “slander,” in other words “slap lawsuits.”

Mr. Yoshida loses in almost all these court cases. Even if we limit this discussion to those under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo District Court that have been confirmed, he has been involved in at least 10 lawsuits, some of which are discussed below. Consider the following examples.

 

1. Defendant Song Wen-zhou¹⁰

Over a post on Twitter (Amount: 20,000,000 yen [Two hundred-thousand US dollars])

1st trial: March 2015, Accuser’s demand rejected

2nd trial: August 2015, Accuser’s appeal appealed

Supreme Court: March 2016, Decision settlement in which the accuser lost

 

2. Defendant Orimoto Kazushi (Attorney)¹¹

Over a blog posting (Amount: 20,000,000 yen)

1st trial: January 2015, Accuser’s demand rejected

2nd trial: June 2015, Accuser’s appeal appealed

Supreme Court: February 2016, Decision settlement in which the accuser lost

 

3. Defendant Sawafuji Tōichirō (Attorney)¹²

Over a blog posting (Amount: 60,000,000 yen—20,000,000 yen at first)

1st trial: September 2015, Accuser’s demand rejected

2nd trial: January 2016, Accuser’s appeal appealed

Supreme Court: October 2016, Decision settlement in which the accuser lost

 

DHC Theater handles the production of many right-wing programs besides “News Girls.” The intentions of Mr. Yoshida, the sponsor and the president of the company, are often intuited, and so DHC promotes the glorification of Japan and historical revisionism, as well as groundless rumors on the Internet. This has a lot to do with why the nature of the news organization is called into question, i.e., how they put together programs that rely exclusively on “information” from people who all share one point of view.

“News Girls” from Tokyo MX and “Is it OK to Go That Far?” (“Sokomade itte iinkai?” from Yomiuri TV (a local station in Kansai) are the two main programs made by the production company Boy’s TV Direction Company.¹³ “Is it OK to Go That Far?” is a propaganda program in which they bring together participants who are advocates of right-wing politics, in which those who are disadvantaged by the structure of society are made the laughingstock of everyone, and in which denialist statements such as “the Nanking Massacre never happened” are brazenly repeated. The show has high ratings but it does not have sponsors. The fact that Yomiuri TV wants to broadcast the show even without any sponsors tells us something about their intentions.

Tokyo MX began broadcasting in 1995 as the only station that did not broadcast to the whole country. It is available only in Tokyo. Originally, it was a special channel that focused on news programs 24 hours a day. The concept at that time was that TV journalists with small video cameras would go out on an assignment by themselves and do a story on various regions of the country, i.e., video journalism. But later, they lost their production talent as well as their sponsors due to a decline in broadcasting and marketing skills caused by internal problems, and they reached the point where they had to rely on programs that were brought in from outside the company.

One of the companies that has the ability to sponsor programs from the outside is DHC, and they are a big sponsor that supports 15% of Tokyo MX’s sales, so they have a big impact on what is said on the program. Since Tokyo MX is also an agency for when DHC puts out advertisements through other media companies, it is said that sales beyond the income from other advertisements have a large impact.

It is probably difficult to solve the problem of Tokyo MX’s bias because even while the programs made by the company that supports Tokyo MX’s sales are heavily criticized, the company claims that the contents are justified.

Normally in such a case as this, the television station would inspect for itself the content of a program that was brought in from outside the company, and they would take responsibility for it since they are the television station broadcasting the program, but the content of “News Girls” was hardly checked at all.

It is odd that there has been no official response from Tokyo MX at the time of the publication of this article (October 12, [2017]), even after the program was broadcast, and even at the point when it was carefully reviewed by the BPO in response to the protests of many of the viewers. It must be said that it is highly doubtful that Tokyo MX is up to the task of solving its problems.

It is thought that DHC would not have agreed to rectify the situation even if Tokyo MX had recommended to DHC that they apologize and make a correction of the unfair statements made on “News Girls” since Tokyo MX is incapable of doing so itself. That is to say, they [chose to] not rectify the program’s violations of broadcasting ethics and its infringement on human rights.

In this sense, if Tokyo MX were an upright and honest operator, they would have noticed that they were basically being asked, “Are you going to continue to do business with the concerned sponsoring company even if your image as a TV station becomes solidified, in the minds of the public, as one that broadcasts hate programs? And, are you going to choose to be true to the ethics [required in order to be considered] a fair and impartial TV station?”

 

4. After that

The broadcasting of this program completely destroyed my everyday life. This program triggered various kinds of harassment and threats. They came from extreme-right organizations, hate organizations, and anonymous discriminators. And it continues even now.

To give some concrete examples: 

• At hate demos, a photo of my face on a panel is held up and people yell my name over and over in unison as if I am an enemy of the state.
• A rally is held with the following theme: “A Gathering of Citizens of the Nation to Denounce the Anti-American and Anti-Japanese Maneuvering of the Zainichi Korean Shin Sugok and Others.”
• An article is published with the title “The Truth about Shin Sugok” in a monthly magazine.

Etc.

Other examples:

• The dissemination of malicious rumors and hate that provides material for entertainment on the Internet or social media
• Email messages and letters that contain the words “Go back to your country”
• People lying in wait in front of my home and people ringing my doorbell in the middle of the night
• Strangers at the station saying, “Go to hell!” or giving me the thumbs down
• Products and invoices for things I have not ordered being delivered to my home
• People attacking my clients verbally on the phone
• People who have descended on lecture halls where I am speaking to strike out at me verbally or warning me of an attack

I have already reported such damages to the police.

How all this relates to the phenomenon of strangers threatening me with sexual violence is difficult to substantiate, so I dare not record such threats here, but each of [these kinds of harassment and threats] has caused me suffering in my everyday life.

The calm life I once had still has yet to return:

• Even now when I am walking, I think to myself, “Could this person be a racist?” and feel my heart palpitating merely due to their eyes meeting mine.
• I cannot get out of bed on days when I have lectures.
• I feel afraid of talking to people.
• I cannot sleep even when I take sleeping pills.
• I cannot control the ups and downs of my emotions.
• I suffer from forgetfulness and fatigue.
• I cannot get to my home that is only 15 minutes from the station.

I undergo intense emotional and physical pain.

I cannot even put into words how hard it has been for me to confront the pain, to simply draft this one article.

Numerous international organizations and human rights groups have pointed out that Zainichi Koreans (i.e., people from colonized Korea and their descendants), who are Japan’s largest ethnic minority group, even now are deprived of the rights of citizens and are the objects of severe discrimination and ostracism, 72 years after the end of the War. Especially in recent years, extreme-right organizations in Japan have rolled out street marches and violent hate speech on the Internet that target Zainichi Koreans. “Zaitokukai,” an organization at the center of this racist movement, is an extreme-right group that engages in hate speech under Nazi flags and considers Nazist racialism the basis for its rationalization of hate speech. Their activities have developed into a large number of hate crimes, and Japanese society has not sufficiently dealt with the problems that the Zaitokukai presents, in spite of the fact that more and more people are suffering.¹⁴

The expansion of hate toward Zainichi Koreans is becoming more serious. The Internet has become a hotbed of hate speech. Tokyo MX’s “News Girls” has essentially signed off on fake news by broadcasting this program on terrestrial television broadcasts. “News Girls” has hoisted up the malice that dwells in the innermost feelings of people in Japan by carrying the sway of Internet hate to the apex of its media mix. [A “media mix” is specific type of Japanese media franchise].

I, Shin Sugok, am the lamb that has been sacrificed in this trend.

In the “calling by name” process on this show, they skillfully avoid expressions that would represent clear violations of human rights and keep things vague in order to conform to the extant ethical norms of the mass media. Thus they always keep their racist broadcasts in the realm of a gray zone, one in which it is not clear if their expressions constitute discrimination or hate speech.

Nevertheless, we must be aware that the process of “calling by name” itself acts as a kind of “fish hook of emotion,” enough to arouse the malice of hate organizations.

A good example of this are expressions that allude to the “involvement and plotting by foreign factions.” Such “fish hooks of emotion” become triggers that cause rapid proliferation of attacks on the Internet, in which hatred and emotion are like teeth bared against people who are treated as the enemy. Worse still, they provoke actual threats and human-rights violations.

Hate organizations have ventured into producing many xenophobic programs, going beyond just this one. It is not difficult to perceive that they had a xenophobic bias against me, a Zainichi Korean, and that expressing that bias was one of their intentions with these productions. What’s more, my existence (as a Zainichi Korean who has ROK citizenship) has been used as a “fish hook of emotions” that alludes to a notion of “foreign factions plotting together” for the sake of the Okinawan anti-base movement.

All I can do at this time is to continue to trust in the conscience of Japanese society, keep up my spirits to the extent possible, and confront others by saying, “Hate is wrong.” I, the Zainichi Korean woman who is being hit the most in Japan, am living today while asking and answering myself the question, “Who, I wonder, is going to be able to fight if I don’t?”

The original article is from Maeda Akira ed., Heito kuraimu to shokuminchi shugi: han sabetsu to jiko kettei ken no tame ni (San’ichi Shobō 2018).

 

On the Occasion of the “BPO” Judgement

[the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization]¹⁵

By Shin Sugok

Translation by Joseph Essertier

 

The BPO officially recognized that human rights had been violated through Tokyo Metropolitan Television’s broadcast on the January 2nd (2017) episode of “News Girls.” (Tokyo Metropolitan Television is sometimes abbreviated as “TOKYO MX.” Hereafter it will appear as “Tokyo MX”).¹⁶ In the opinion of the BPO, Tokyo MX committed an act of slander against Ms. Shin Sugok in their likening citizens of Okinawa to terrorists and in their report that referred to Ms. Shin as a “black curtain.” The people they called “terrorists” are citizens who oppose the construction of the helipad for the US Military’s Northern Training Area.¹⁷ Ms. Shin is a joint representative of “Norikoe Net,” an organization that opposes hate speech. She commented as follows.

 

Shin Sugok’s Comments

The BPO has clearly recognized the fact that my rights were violated by the “News Girls” program that was broadcast on January 2nd last year. I have suffered so much from this that I cried. [The “News Girls”] program mentioned me by name, saying that I of the “New Northern Faction” [i.e., a reference to the DPRK] am a “black curtain behind the movement to oppose the Bases, who has repeatedly committed illegal, violent acts,” and that I have “mobilized participants by paying them a per diem allowance.” Their program was full of lies and they used my family background to beat up [the supporters of] the peace movement in Okinawa.

The pain of that has not left me, like multiple stress fractures of the heart. Regardless of the BPO’s evaluation, the producer DHC Television just continues to let the racist programs air. The Broadcasting of “News Girls” has come to a halt, but what has actually happened is that DHC, the sponsor, has given up on Tokyo MX. In no sense has Tokyo MX, the broadcasting company, rectified its behavior.

DHC’s goal is to circulate misinformation. In the future, they will probably invest money, make full use of all their media, even take advantage of some Okinawans, and continue to broadcast their fake news in order to achieve that goal.

Ever since the broadcasting of this program started, my life has been made into something like a garbage can for the malice of Japanese society. The mass media designates me an “enemy of the State,” and sympathizers shift gears and take action, dividing up the work systematically. Diet members are right away given protection when there are assassination attempts. But not I. I had to actually seek asylum in Germany. Then we had the Chongryon shooting [in Tokyo on February 23, 2018].¹⁸ The person who was arrested and against whom evidence has gathered was the extreme-right big cheese Katsurada Satoshi, a man whom we have constantly seen at hate events.

We have already entered a new period, from one of hate to one of terrorism.

In other words, this is our last chance, now that this ruling of the BPO has been tossed into our hands. Take back the discourse and the media. Get back the voice of conscience. Before it is too late and all is lost.

The original article is from Ryūkyū Shimpō, March 14, 2018.

 

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Young Min Moon, “Citizenship and North Korea in the Zainichi Korean Imagination: The Art of Insook Kim”

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