Saturday, November 12, 2011

Question about Koreans in Japan?

Question:


Do ethnic Korean-Japanese (Korean heritage born in Japan) people tend to keep Korean last (family) names, or adopt Japanese ones?

What about first (given) names?

Does this differ depending on whether the Korean-Japanese is affiliated with North Korea or South Korea?

What percentage of Korean-Japanese go to special Korean schools in Japan?

Do those Korean school students all have Korean-style dress uniform for the female students? Or is that just North Korean schools in Japan?

Answer:


The first generations were reluctant to use their original names because of fear of possible discrimination, and they either changed their names altogether or added another Kanji to make their names sound like Japanese names. Examples are: Kim (pronounced Kin or Kane in Japanese) plus some Kanji, and the results were Kaneda, Kanemura, Kanemoto, etc; Choo is pronounced either Shoo or Aki in Japanese, so lots of Choo added yama to their names and now they are Aki-yama; Rin (pronounced Korewan way) is Hayashi (in Japanese), which does not need anything added. But third or forth generations are increasingly going with their names unchanged, like the one in Japan's national soccer team. It seems like times have changed for them.

I don't know the exact figures about how many of them go to non-Japanese schools, but it seems like a more than expected number of them are attending Korean schools.

North Korean school girls used to wear chima jeogori, but not anymore, because wearing it made them vulnerable to racist attacks on trains and in public places.

Sorry I don't seem to have answered what you want to know. I think you already know everything I said.

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