"Songs Beyond the Divide: Second-Generation Zainichi Korean Soprano Ke-son Kim"

2019/06/11

"Kohyang, hometown... We and the Zainichi are the same. I want to go home..." The sobbing of an elderly person nearly 90 years old resonates with a clear singing voice. In the spring of 2009, Japanese wives remaining in South Korea were overcome with nostalgia by "Akatombo" (Red Dragonfly) and Korean Peninsula nursery rhymes delivered by a Zainichi Korean singer. The nearly 20 Japanese wives living together at Nazareth Home in Gyeongju, an ancient capital of South Korea, are nothing other than the remnants of Japan's colonial rule.

Under the slogan of "Naisen Ittai" (Japan and Korea as One), the Empire of Japan encouraged Japanese women to marry men from the Korean Peninsula, but after the war, these Japanese wives became citizens of a defeated nation, and more than 3,000 lost their place amidst resentment and confusion. However, it was not only Japanese wives who were left behind in a foreign land.

Ke-son Kim (70), a second-generation Zainichi Korean soprano, was born in Osaka and encountered ethnic songs at a Korean school. She became a professional singer wishing to help unify her homeland through song. However, as a Zainichi living in a foreign land, her dreams were shattered by the division she was forced to carry. Her parents' homeland is torn between North and South, and the Korean Peninsula and her home country deepen their conflict over historical recognition and abduction issues, while hate speech against Zainichi Koreans is rampant even in her home country. Even within families, one cannot be free from division. The boundary between the third and fourth generations, who are increasingly naturalizing in Japan, and the first generation, who wished for them to maintain their ethnic language and culture... Due to the division, Ms. Kim was banned from performing overseas and deprived of opportunities to work in Japan. Even songs were used as tools to incite division. Lyrics that sang of universal human ideals across borders were rewritten into praise for military dictatorship.

Despairing, Ms. Kim gave up singing and became the proprietress of a yakiniku restaurant to support her husband. However, unable to give up on singing, she entered a Japanese music college at the age of 48, and after much hard work, she mastered Japanese songs and was reborn as a singer. In this book, the genealogy and political context of Japanese and Korean Peninsula songs are used as the horizontal axis, and Ms. Kim's life as the vertical axis, to clarify the location of latent divisions and seek the possibility of overcoming them through song.

Of course, it may be a naive fantasy to think that songs can become a signpost for crossing divisions. However, a future cannot be envisioned without a wish. It would be my greatest satisfaction if the songs of Zainichi Koreans, who seek to overcome division throughout their lives, could resonate even slightly in society.

"Songs Beyond the Divide: Second-Generation Zainichi Korean Soprano Ke-son Kim"

Hyosuke Tsuboi

Shinsensha

248 pages, 1,900 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.