This article reexamines whether the Kim Hiro murder case was genuinely rooted in discrimination. It exposes the postwar GHQ pro-Korean policy, illegal immigration, the ideological campaign of Chongryon, and the role of progressive intellectuals in reframing the crime, revealing how historical memory in postwar Japan was distorted.

February 23, 2017
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Was the background of the Kim Hiro incident truly a matter of “discrimination”?
It has generally been said that Japanese people discriminated against Koreans, but in postwar Japan after the dissolution of the Great Japanese Empire (hereafter “the Empire”), the U.S. occupation forces (GHQ) adopted a policy of preferential treatment toward Koreans.
By favoring Koreans over Japanese, the occupation authorities incited ethnic confrontation, using it as a buffer to suppress Japanese resistance against the occupation policy and to facilitate military rule.
This was a habitual method often seen in Western colonial management, in which ethnic conflict is deliberately encouraged in order to govern more smoothly.
I believe that this incited “ethnic friction” served to reinforce Kim Hiro’s assertions.
At the time of the Empire’s dissolution, of the approximately two million Koreans residing in Japan, nearly 1.6 million returned to the Korean Peninsula.
By the end of Showa 21 (1946), only about 400,000 Koreans remained in Japan.
By the time the so-called “repatriation movement” to North Korea began in Showa 34 (1959), that number had increased to 600,000.
Of course, these are the official figures.
The GHQ policy of favoring Koreans, which promoted ethnic confrontation, did not restrain Koreans from returning to the peninsula; rather, it created the conditions for a reverse flow into Japan.
It is impossible for a population to increase by 1.5 times in such a short period of time.
During this period, approximately 60,000 people were apprehended for illegal entry.
It has been pointed out that for every one arrested, roughly three were not, which would amount to about 200,000 illegal entrants.
Subtracting 400,000 from 600,000 yields 200,000, which numerically matches this estimate.
However, the significance of the fact that “200,000 out of the 600,000 resident Koreans were illegal entrants” has rarely been treated seriously.
Where, then, did these 200,000 illegal entrants go?
At the very least, the existence of illegal entrants was widely known until the mid-1970s.
While 100,000 people crossed the sea in the repatriation movement to North Korea, the number of illegal entrants continued to grow, and they were also expected to serve as a labor force sustaining industry at the bottom level in the Hanshin region.
Many Japanese today have forgotten that a large number of resident Koreans were in fact illegal entrants.
The process by which this was forgotten includes the Kim Hiro incident.
It can be said that this was due in part to the campaign by Chongryon that insisted, in defense of Kim Hiro and the case, that “because resident Koreans have been discriminated against, his crime should be mitigated.”
That campaign took the form of Chongryon organizing the “Truth Investigation Group on the Reality of Forced Korean Labor,” which promoted the investigation of what it called the “dark side of modern Japanese history.”
This movement began in Showa 48 (1973) in Hokkaido and Kyushu, and with the cooperation of Japanese scholars and civic activists imprisoned by a guilt-ridden historical view, many investigation reports were published.
Then, in the book Chongryon published in 2005 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the organization, Chongryon emphasized “forced labor” in explaining “why Koreans live in Japan,” although it is common knowledge that even among Chongryon’s officials there were illegal entrants.
The fundamental way of thinking that sought to defend Kim Hiro’s murder is symbolized by the following words:
“Indeed, Kim Hiro killed two people. And you say that murder is an absolute evil. Then what about the actions of the Japanese who took countless Korean lives?” (From the afterword to Kim Hiro’s Court Statement). The “you” in this quote likely refers to Hidenobu Fukuda, Yuji Aida, and Renzaburo Shibata.
Suzuki, anticipating that “you” would reply, “That was before the war, an act committed by a previous generation. I bear no responsibility for it,” rebutted as follows:
“However, I believe that you are not even granted that qualification, because we ourselves are the very ones who have inherited and are reproducing this grim history.”
Suzuki Michihiko, born in 1929, should have had memories of the immediate postwar period and of Koreans acting violently.
What Kim Hiro denounced at Sumatakyo was the discriminatory remark of a police officer who said, “You Koreans come to Japan and do nothing but cause trouble!” but that was a phrase that had been wrung from the life experience of the policeman himself.
It was also a phrase that overlapped with Kim Hiro’s own life, which made him confront it with anger.
Until Kim Hiro murdered two Japanese and barricaded himself at Sumatakyo, he had gone back and forth between prison and Japanese society—before the war for theft and reform school detention, and after the war for repeated theft, fraud, and robbery.
Thus, the words of the police officer must have cut deeply into him.
On the other hand, the police officer who uttered such words had lived a life of maintaining public order against Koreans who had behaved with impunity since immediately after Japan’s defeat.
Did the progressive intellectuals who supported Kim Hiro have no feelings of sympathy for the police officers who had stood in opposition to him to protect public safety, or for the two Japanese who were suddenly shot to death?
Would they say that because one of the victims was a loan shark and a yakuza associate, he deserved to be killed?
In fact, one of the two murdered men was not even a yakuza member.
[To be continued.]