The political participation of foreigners in Japan - 2000

before 2000 - 2001

"The New Komeito party, a coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, promised to give non-Japanese permanent residents voting rights in local elections. However, some LDP members are opposed; one said "Suffrage for non-Japanese will lead to the collapse of the nation." About 627,000 people, including about 553,000 ethnic Koreans, had permanent-resident status in 1998."

Migration News, February 2000, Volume 7 Number 2

Japanese Foreign Minister to Visit Korea (March 26-27)

source: Korean Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT)

Mr. Yohei Kono, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, is to pay an official visit to Korea between March 26-27, 2000.

This is his first official visit to Korea, since his resumption of office in October 1999. During his visit, Minister Kono will have Korea-Japan Foreign Ministers' Talks with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Lee Joung-binn. He will also pay courtesy calls on President Kim Dae-jung and Prime Minister Park Tae-joon, and visit the Sakhalin-Korean Apartment Complex in Ansan-city, Kyong-gi province.

At the Foreign Ministers' Talks to be held on March 26, the two ministers will exchange views on a range of major bilateral issues: plans for diplomatic activities between Korea and Japan; collaboration in North Korea policies; granting local suffrage for permanent Korean residents in Japan; Korea-Japan economic relations; promotion of cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries; the G-8 Summit to be held in Okinawa in July; and the ASEM meeting slated for October in Seoul. In particular, there will be a close consultation between the two foreign ministers on the Korea-Japan cooperation in the North Korea issue, prior to the main Japan-North Korea talks for normalization of diplomatic relations which is expected to begin in early April.

Minister Kono's visit is expected to provide an opportunity to further strengthen the cooperative and friendly ties between Korea and Japan in the new era, which was initiated by the exchange of visits by President Kim Dae-jung and Prime Minister Obuchi, and also enhance the mutual trust and working relationship between the foreign ministers of the two countries.

Spokesman of MOFAT

*unofficial translation

Radio Korea International APR 19, 2000

Seoul urges Japan to give voting rights to ethnic Koreans.

South Korea is urging Japan to give voting rights to ethnic Koreans residing in Japan.

At a meeting of a group of Japanese lawmakers, the South Korean Ambassador to Japan asked them to act on a proposed bill extending suffrage to resident aliens in Japan during the upcoming parliamentary session.

About 600,000 ethnic Koreans residing in Japan have long demanded the right to vote in local elections.

The ethnic Koreans residing in Japan are made up of the Koreans forcibly taken there during the second World War to power Japan's imperial war machine and their descendants.

Radio Korea International JUL 14, 2000

Japan's Foreign Minister Yohei Kono in Seoul

Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono arrived in Seoul Thursday evening for a two-day visit.

He met Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Lee Joung-binn Friday to discuss the content of a special announcement on the Korean situation to be issued at the close of the G-8 summit opening in Okinawa July 21.

In his meeting with Lee, the Japanese foreign minister explained the G-8 summit's special announcement which is to express support of the joint declaration issued at the close of the inter-Korean summit held in Pyongyang last month.

Kono also sought the South Korean government's view on whether or not to include in the statement Japan's pending issues with North Korea, such as North Korea's suspected abduction of Japanese citizens and its missile and nuclear arms development programs.

Lee and Kono also discussed the Seoul-Tokyo cooperation in dealing with North Korea after the Pyongyang summit, Pyongyang-Tokyo normalization talks, the suffrage of Korean nationals in Japan in its local elections, the co-hosting of the 2002 World Cup soccer finals in Korea and Japan and Japanese Emperor Akihito's visit to Seoul.

Suffrage to be Deliberated for Korean Residents in Japan

The Japanese Diet will reportedly deliberate on granting political rights to the Korean residents living in Japan at an ad hoc session that starts next Thusday.

Japan's Mainichi Shimbun reported Wednesday..the planned deliberation follows a proposal by the ruling coalition Komei Party to allow Japanese Koreans to vote, which the ruling Democratic Liberal Party accepted.

The report also said..the DLP's decision was inevitable in efforts to pave the way for President Kim Dae-jung's visit to the island nation slated for September 22nd.

It added, however, that chances are not THAT high that the bill will pass the Diet session because many DLP members oppose it, citing its going against the Japanese Constitution.

Koreans' rights in Japan focus of summit

Cable News Network September 22, 2000

From staff and wire reports

TOKYO, Japan -- The political rights of more than 700,000 Koreans living in Japan are one of the items leading the agenda for this weekend's Japan-South Korea summit.

South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung is expected to press Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori to ensure that non-Japanese residents in Japan -- the bulk of whom are South Korean -- gain the right to vote in local elections by the end of this year.

The two will also discuss detente on the Korean Peninsula.

The meeting between the two leaders at a hot springs resort outside of Tokyo is a sequel to an earlier encounter at which the two nations agreed to bridge differences that have stood between them since 1945, when Japan's domination of the Korean Peninsula ended.

The rapprochement has not come too soon for ethnic Koreans who live in Japan, most of whom are second- or third-generation residents.

"Things are changing now," says 19-year-old Han Gang-mi. "But when I was looking for a job in high school, I could never get an interview using a resume that had my Korean name on it. Only my name and nationality are Korean. So why should I be treated that way?"

Japan considers bill

Japan is considering a voting rights bill that would allow permanent foreign residents in Japan to participate in elections for governors, mayors and local assemblies. But the proposed law faces a heated battle before it even gets to Japan's parliament.

Some conservative politicians argue that giving voting rights to non-ethnic Japanese may jeopardize the country's security.

While foreigners have local voting rights in Sweden and the Netherlands, such legislation is rare elsewhere.

Yet the history of hardship that Koreans and other Asian minorities have experienced in Japan, from school-yard taunts to job discrimination, makes Japan's discussion of foreigner voting rights an emotional issue.

"There is more than a half-century of history that makes this necessary," said Seo Won-chul, an official of the Korean Residents Union in Japan, which has ties with South Korea. "Our plea is to have our rights as residents recognized."

While Japan has long been considering suffrage for foreigners, progress has been slow. Hawks among Japan's perennial rulers, the Liberal Democratic Party, are still trying to shoot the bill down.

The LDP has officially backed the bill proposed by its coalition partners. But this week the LDP's Secretary-General Hiromu Nonaka backtracked, telling South Korea's President Kim in Seoul that the bill "will take time."

There has been speculation that bickering in the ruling coalition may lead the legislation to be watered down to include only foreigners who were forcibly brought to Japan and their descendants, a clause that would make determining eligibility an extremely complicated process.

Unexpected opposition

Kim Yong Ho, who is 78 years old and now a successful family restaurant owner, has lived in Japan since he was 20.

"I would not want voting rights if I were only here for the short time," he said. "I think it's only natural if I work, live and pay taxes here."

Says one of Kim's sons, Kim Kil Choong: "I was born and raised here. So there should be no differences between me and any other Japanese. I do not expect that we will be allowed to get into national politics, but is there any harm in giving us the right to vote?"

But the legislation also faces another obstacle: Opposition from some of the foreigners themselves.

The association of Korean residents affiliated with the communist North says that passing the law would merely mask more pressing issues, such as compensation for wartime suffering and subsidies for Korean schools in Japan.

"If the bill is passed, the question of real rights (for Koreans) will simply get buried," said So Chung On, a spokesman for the association.

Japanese and North Korean negotiators are set to meet next month after failing in late August to narrow gaps over the Korean demand for an apology and compensation for Japan's harsh 1910-1945 rule of the peninsula and the issue of Japanese nationals Tokyo says were abducted by North Korean agents.

CNN Tokyo Bureau Chief Marina Kamimura, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Visit to Japan of President Kim Dae Jung of the Republic of Korea - September 24, 2000

Local suffrage for Korean nationals residing in Japan

President Kim indicated his hope that a bill related to local suffrage for Korean nationals residing in Japan be passed within the year.

Prime Minister Mori responded that he sufficiently understands the level of interest from the Korean side and this issue would be addressed by the current session of the Diet, but noted that a serious discussion is required considering its importance as an issue that affects the core of Japanese systems and the broad spectrum of views in Japan ranging from support to opposition. He also indicated his intention to closely follow developments in this area.

Inclusion of Korean as one of the foreign languages in the Examinations of the National Center for University Entrance

Prime Minister Mori explained that Korean would be included in the Examinations of the National Center for University Entrance hopefully by January 2002 and no later than January 2003 (fiscal 2002). President Kim voiced his appreciation for Japan's decision to make this inclusion.

[Korean Information Service10-18-2000 14:39:19]

A group of lawmakers from both ruling and opposition parties Wednesday (Oct. 18) urged the Japanese government to grant ethnic Koreans the right to vote in local elections, in a letter they sent to 19 Japanese leaders, including Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

¡°We believe that Japan's granting of suffrage to Korean residents in Japan will contribute to further developing the ties between Korea and Japan at a time when bilateral relations are closer than ever before,¡±said Rep. Jang Sung-min of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party.

The lawmakers said most Japanese favored allowing ethnic Koreans to exercise their right to vote. He said that 1,400 out of 3,302 local assemblies in Japan passed resolutions in favor of granting suffrage to ethnic Koreans, while 70 percent of population supported the proposal as well.

But, they expressed concerns over a recent move by 33 Japanese politicians to form a group and called for a cautious approach in dealing with the franchise issue to ethnic Koreans, clouding the prospects of a Diet endorsement during this session.

The bill on granting suffrage to permanent residents in Japan was introduced to the Diet on Jan. 21, 2000, and it is still pending. It was one of the important issues when President Kim held talks with Mori in Japanese spa city of Atami last month.

Deok Keun Matthew Ahn, "Reflections on Voting, Identity, and Self-Affirmation in Japan", Harvard Asia Quarterly Autum 2000

Suffrage Unlikely for Foreigners in Japan

Japan's Sankei Newspaper reports chances are slim that bills to grant suffrage to foreign residents, including 650,000 Koreans in Japan will pass the Diet this year.

The report said... the three parties championing the bill: the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Komei Party and conservative Party, have decided to relinquish presenting the bill within this year's session.

The report said..a heated dispute is expected to erupt, surrounding the possible unonstitutionality of the bill at a time when there is only a month to go before the closing of the Diet session, darkening prospects for the bill to receive a green light this year.

The most prominent finding about the state of opinion on allowing long-time foreign-born residents the right to vote in local elections is that more than 60 percent of all those surveyed favor the idea.

On the question of extending their political rights, 41 percent feel that long-time foreign residents should be allowed only to vote in local elections, while another 23 percent making 64 percent overall think they should also - - be allowed to run as candidates.

When it comes to granting both rights, 27 percent of male respondents approve, compared with 19 percent of their female counterparts. Slightly more women than men (43 percent, against 39 percent) would restrict the foreigners' franchise to casting ballots.

More than one-quarter of the survey group (28 percent) is against granting foreigners any electoral rights. About 28 percent of all respondents were against granting them any.

Supporters of both the Liberal Democratic Party (36 percent) and Social Democratic Party (29 percent) are more averse than affiliated party supporters in general to the notion of giving foreign-born residents even such a partial involvement in Japan's political process.

Such resistance stands in stark contrast to the 23 percent of Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) supporters, 20 percent of Japanese Communist Party supporters and 19 percent of New Komeito supporters who would deny the foreigners such a participatory role.

TAKUSHI OHNO, Japanese warming to foreign residents with conditions, Asahi Shimbun - Report 2001

ASIAN MIGRATION NEWS 16-30 November 2000

Voting rights for foreigners

Some years back, Lee Young Hwa, a third-generation Korean, spearheaded a three-year campaign to abolish mandatory fingerprinting of foreign residents. The Diet lifted the fingerprinting mandate for permanent foreign residents in 1992. The same year, Lee started a campaign to demand voting rights for foreigners. Ethnic Koreans are the majority of Japan’s 630,000 foreign residents. Perhaps the first media move to address foreigners’ call for suffrage was an article by Hwang Kap Sik which appeared in the Asahi Shimbun in 1986. The long campaign has not been fruitless. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partners proposed a bill to grant foreigners with permanent residency status the right to vote in local-level elections. Non-Japanese can become naturalized citizens and gain voting rights, but this is not acceptable to many Koreans. The process requires the adoption of a Japanese name, home visits, and interviews with neighbors to ensure that the applicant has assimilated Japanese ways. Still some 8,000-10,000 go through Japan’s arduous naturalization procedures each year. On the other hand, some Koreans – particularly North Koreans – see voting rights as a threat to their ethnic identity. North Koreans regard the voting rights legislation an effort to “naturalize and assimilate” Korean residents in Japan. If enacted, the bill would allow foreigners aged 20 and over who have permanent residency and have lived in the same place more than three months to vote in local elections such as mayoral and local assembly races. Deliberations on the bill had been shelved because of the dissolution of the Diet and the opposition of some nationalistic elements in the LDP. The bill will be taken up in the next session.

Sources: Howard W. French, “Forever Korean: once scorned, always scorned,” The New York Times, 21 November 2000; Hiroshi Matsubara, “Foreigners progress toward suffrage,” The Japan Times, 29 November 2000; George Nishiyama (Reuters), “Japan coalition gives up on foreigners voting bill,” 29 November 2000

Further developments in 2001

SUFFRAGE UNIVERSEL - UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE citoyenneté, démocratie, ethnicité, nationalité -  citizenship, democracy, ethnicity, nationality