Fun Korean Culturedocument

Korean Fan Dance for Fun: Performing
Alterity in Contemporary Japan
Youngmi Lima,b
a
Lehman College-CUNY, USA; bNew York City College of Technology-CUNY, USA
abstract This paper focuses on performances of Korean folk culture in Japanese

schools and communities to analyse how minority identities are constructed. Korean
minority education in Japan has taken up the challenge of reversing the stigma
attached to former colonial subjects, employing a range of tangible props what
Twine (1999) calls racial literacy which prepares racial minority children to cope
with and challenge racism at large. While embodying identity expression through
Korean folk dance performances is an effective strategy, it faces constraints from
larger social forces. Korean dance and music performances do little to challenge the
dominance of mainstream values. These performances are embedded in everyday
family, school, and community practices and paradoxically reproduce existing gender
roles, broader pedagogical ideologies, and social structures. This ethnographic case
study disentangles contradictions in minority education and shows commitment to
alterity accompanies disavowal of alterity in relation to the hegemonic Japanese
culture and society.
keywords Koreans in Japan, minority education, racial literacy, Korean folk dance,
performing identity
[Q]uestions of identity are always questions about representation. They are always
questions about the invention, not simply the discovery of tradition. They are
always exercises in selective memory, and they almost always involve the silencing
of something in order to allow something else to speak. (Stuart Hall 1995: 5)
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2013.831942

# 2013 Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis
Korean Fan Dance for Fun 193
Introduction
s former colonial subjects, Koreans in Japan are an invisible, racialized,
A and stigmatized minority group. One cannot look at an Asian person

on a crowded Tokyo or Osaka street and know whether he or she is
Korean or Japanese. Koreans who speak Japanese as their native language
and use Japanese-sounding names easily pass as Japanese in everyday life.
The Korean minority community in Japan traces its origin during Japans colo-
nization of Korea between 1910 and 1945. Despite Japanese jus sanguinis nation-
ality laws, increasing intermarriage with the Japanese, and naturalization, each
year there is a gradual decrease in the Korean foreigner population in Japan.1
Koreans whose original migration was related to Japanese colonization, includ-
ing those who were naturalized and their offspring, account for roughly 1% of
Japans population (Fukuoka 1993: 72 73).
Japan-born Koreans are culturally and linguistically assimilated, and their
rst and primary language is Japanese. Even those who attend full-time
Korean schools speak Japanese at home (Ryang 1997: 25 26). Eighty-ve per
cent of school-age children have attended only Japanese schools (Kim & Yi
1991: 197). Korean parents prefer the convenience of neighbourhood schools,
especially in the elementary grades. In Japanese schools, Korean students
receive education intended for Japanese.2
Empowerment education for Korean minority children depends on parent
and student demand and devotion as well as conscious and exceptional Japa-
nese teachers. A few municipalities provide minimal institutional support and
funding for Korean ethnic classes, usually in the form of once-a-week enrich-
ment programmes during regular school hours or as extra-curricular activities
(Inatomi 1988; Hester 2000). Whether Japanese schools with sizeable Korean
student enrolments have Korean culture club activities or Korean minority
issue study groups depends on coincidental factors including a supply of Japa-
nese teachers concerned with the special needs of Korean minority students.
Even in Osaka City, where Koreans are most concentrated, teachers and
parents interested in Korean language and culture report difculties in
gaining support for their educational agenda (Inatomi 1988; Kim 1999; Zencho-
kyo/Zengaikyo reports 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001). In many cases,
parents themselves are ambivalent about their Korean identity, using Japa-
nese-style names when participating in the local economy. Sending children
to Korean ethnic classes and having them use Korean names is not comfortable
for parents who pass as Japanese.
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194 YOUNGMI LIM
Because of linguistic assimilation and phenotypical similarities, passing in

everyday life takes place through the use of a Japanese name. According to a
1993 survey of Japan-born Korean youths (with South Korean nationality),
only 6% used Korean names exclusively (Fukuoka & Kim 1997: 78). Japanese
colonial policy forced Koreans in Japan to adopt and use Japanese names at
the beginning of the 1940s to make Koreans into Japanese imperial subjects
and transform the Korean clan-based kinship system into the modern Japanese
family system (Mizuno 2008: 216). At the end of Second World War, many
Koreans continued using their Japanese names to pass. Once linguistically
assimilated, this passing mechanism proved a convenient way to avoid discrimi-
nation (Kim 1978). Yet, it reinforced their precarious sense of national, racial, and
ethnic identity. In contrast, Korean-style name use has been taken as direct evi-
dence of an individuals commitment to Korean identity. The public use of
Korean names (preferably with the Korean instead of Japanese pronunciation
of the names Chinese characters) remains a core expression of Korean minority
empowerment education.3 Of course, many Japan-born Koreans express com-
mitment to their Korean identities without using Korean names. Using ones
Korean name is a sufcient but not necessary condition of commitment (Kashi-
wazaki 2000).
Post-colonial liberation and nationalist ideologies have long portrayed
assimilation as a vice (Kim 1999). The former colonial racial order propagated
stereotypes about Koreans in Japan that they are backward and lazy and in
need of colonization. Post-war anti-Korean sentiments and cold war security
concerns (Morris-Suzuki 2010) provided fertile grounds for internalized
Korean inferiority. Reversing that sense of inferiority into Korean pride is the
primary goal of Korean empowerment education in Japan (Hester 2000; Yi
1995).
While conducting eldwork in Japan in the late 1990s and early 2000s for my
research on naturalized Japanese of Korean descent,4 I visited different public
festivities where the Korean presence in Japan and multiculturalism were cele-
brated so that I could expand the entry points for my snow-ball sample.5 The
festivities took place in urban multiethnic pockets that were exceptional in
Japans internationally acclaimed homogeneity. These festivities included
annual school fairs, festivals organized by local activist groups to celebrate diver-
sity, and promotional events to foster cultural exchange between Japan and
foreign residents primarily from Korea, China, Brazil, and the Philippines.
They typically took place in school buildings, parks, and community centres.
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

The performance of Korean music and dance in ethnic attire by primary and/or
secondary school students was one of the attractions of these multicultural events.
All-girl troupes using large, colourful fans, and co-ed ensembles playing Korean
drums provided picture perfect climaxes, leaving the audience with memorable
visual images. Looking at the photographs I had taken during my eldwork, I rea-
lized my pictures, although taken on different occasions, were strikingly similar.
The fan dance and folk music are symbolic icons of Korean minority
empowerment, featured in publications or other media on the Korean minority
and celebrations of multiculturalism (Park 1999; Osaka-fu minzoku koshikai
2000; Takatsuki mukuge no kai 1992, 2002; Zenchokyo reports 1995, 1996; Zen-
gaikyo 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002). Yang Yonghis documentary Swaying
Spirit (1996), for example, records the Korean empowerment education prac-
tices of a charismatic Japanese teacher. In the documentary, a Korean, high
school student, who uses her Japanese name, participates in a Korean culture
clubs fan dance with mixed sentiments. She performs nicely on stage, and
the successful performance makes her cry with joy. The narrator, Yang, com-
ments something was changing in her, and we later hear her read in front of
the entire school her essay about her real name and determination to live
with it. At the graduation ceremony, she displays her Korean roots through
Korean ethnic dress and receives her diploma inscribed with just her Korean
name. The fan dance practice and stage performance scenes accentuate the sub-
sequent change from ambivalence to acceptance of her identity. These colour-
fully ethnic scenes provide the viewers not only with visual clues of a distinct
Korean culture but also a message that Korean cultural heritage is difcult to
embrace. Korean dance and dress symbolize a success story of courageously
coming to terms with negatively valued Koreanness in Japan.
The popularity of puchaechum (fan dance) is not limited to programmes of
Korean extra-curricular activities at Japanese schools with signicant Korean
student enrolment. It is also performed by pro-South Korean, private school stu-
dents, pro-North Korean school students,6 and adult amateur dancers. Student
performances usually occur at school events, with additional opportunities to
perform at local community festivals and other venues. Adults who participate
in local amateur Korean dance circles also perform puchaechum. At Japanese
schools and in local communities, the instructors are Japan-born Koreans
who have studied Korean dance in South Korea or from South Korean immi-
grant dance experts.7 In some cases, it is taught by an amateur who has only per-
formed the repertory at school. The increased exchange of people and culture
between Japan and South Korea, mediated by Korean communities in Japan,
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196 YOUNGMI LIM
has inuenced the performance of Korean culture in Japan. But why are particu-
lar forms of performance more popular than other forms of Korean folk culture?
What does this ubiquitous cultural repertoire mean and why are these banal dis-
plays of Koreanness portrayed as foreign and exotic?
This paper analyses how minority identities are constructed by focusing on
performances of Korean folk culture in Japanese schools and communities.
Based on ethnographic data collected in Japan and secondary sources, I will
trace primarily in the school context the passage through which particular cul-
tural forms have become popular repertoires and analyse the multiple meanings
attached to Korean cultural performances. I will illustrate how an anti-racist
pedagogical approach based on strategic essentialism both challenges and
reproduces prevailing social and gendered expectations. This case study
shows that in relation to the hegemonic Japanese culture and society a commit-
ment to alterity accompanies a disavowal of alterity (Doerr 2013). Dance per-
formances in the context of Korean empowerment education obscure critical
understandings of what it means to be a Korean minority in Japan. Yet, uncri-
tical performances do not imply that Korean dance performances are a failure in
anti-racist, anti-sexist struggles.
I am a native eldworker, a Korean, born and raised in Japan. Because of my
migration to the USA as an adult, I am both an insider and outsider to the
Korean communities of Japan, whose ideological commitment, structural and
cultural assimilation, and commitment to and expression of alterity are
diverse and diffuse. The eld data collection for this article was a byproduct
of my research on naturalized Japanese of Korean descent and ethnographic
observations of numerous community events in the Kanto (the Tokyo-Yoko-
hama metropolitan area) and the Kansai (the Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe metropolitan
area) regions. I conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews in
Japan in 1999 2000, 2002, 2008, 2011, and 2012. Other sources include essays
contributed by teachers, students, and parents from school commemorative
publications. Communication with my informants was in Japanese, the rst
language of use among Koreans born and brought up in Japan. What follows
is the presentation of a case of cultural appropriation and its contributing
factors. I will conclude with the implications this particular case has for minority
identication processes in educational settings.
Commitment and Disavowal: Expressing and Representing Alterity

To what extent are identication processes with stigmatized social groups
autonomous and voluntary? Researchers have called attention to the
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

multiplicity and exibility of meanings that constitute specic collective identi-

ties (Glenn 1999; Hall 1996 [1989]; Jung 1996; Kim 1999; Song 2003). In other
words, collective identity formations are always exible, relational, and arbi-
trary. Social categories contain no solid, stable core. However, what Spivak
has called as strategic essentialism, i.e. the ways in which groups selectively
accentuate culture to assert a collective identity, plays a role in minority empow-
erment (Spivak 1996 [1985]: 211 216 in Kim 1999: 132, 148 149; Chapman 2008:
9 10). By idealizing positive characteristics that are often drawn from rediscov-
ered or reinvented traditions, strategic essentialism challenges the subjugating
social and cultural meanings attached to minority statuses (Kim 1999; Han
2006).
The strategic essentialist approach projects folkloric images of men and
women to evoke collective sentiments of pride. On the one hand, visualized,
authentic tradition helps a group to realize its shared, common heritage. Re-
invented local cultures become ethno-national.8 On the other hand, folk arts
are national assets, promoted and provided with protection by the nation
through funding and the designation of cultural and human assets (Van Zile
2001 for the South Korean case). Fork arts ourish as ethno-racial nationalism
gains favour, especially in the post-colonial search for autonomous subjectivity
(Kim 2004: 14; 36; 75ff for South Korean case). They can thus be revived,
adapted, and even sold in markets for domestic and international tourism, in
which case nostalgia feeds the commodication of ethnicity and national iden-
tity (Enloe 1990; Kondo 1997: Ch. 3; Robertson 1997; Wu 1997; Kim 2004).
Criticizing the search for the authentic collective identity in earlier currents of
Korean activism in Japan, researchers increasingly focus on collective identities
that reect a variety of positionalities (Jung 1996; Kim 1999). Diversity in the
content and context of collective representation often converges, however, in
a process of labelling that is based on a Japanese-imposed constellation of
images. As a result, Koreans may have no alternative but to intentionally
adapt the content and expression of their collective identities in a way that ful-
lls the expectations of the Japanese majority and perpetuates stereotypes of
stark cultural differences attached to foreignness. Kuraishis life history research
(2007) illustrates how Korean minority narratives reproduce the wordings of the
dominant other, i.e. the Japanese majority. Strategic essentialism is a double-
edged sword in identity expressions and minority representations vis-a-vis the
dominant culture.
The Korean minority self- and collective consciousness is, therefore, con-
stantly reected through the internalized lens of an imagined reaction from
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198 YOUNGMI LIM
the audience surrounding it, although individuals tend to resist imposed identi-
ties in favour of hybridity (Kim 1999; Ang 2001; Tai 2004; Chapman 2008; Lie
2008). Representing Koreanness in public space involves satisfying a dual audi-
ence. It makes Korean representation exotic and consumable to the Japanese
mainstream audience, and positive and inspiring to the Korean minority audi-
ence and performers themselves. The bottom line is: it must be fun, making
everyone happy. As Doerr (2008; 2013) illustrates, identity representations are
a complex interaction between individuals and broader social and cultural
forces. Korean minority experiences exemplify the conundrum of the identity
commitment and disavowal. Koreans construct their alterity, as both Koreans
and the Japanese attach multiple meanings to Koreanness. Proactive commit-
ment and reluctant disavowal to alterity are not mutually exclusive but rather
overlap in everyday practice.
Considering identity commitment and disavowal, two interrelated questions
arise. First, to what extent can minority members be free from socially pre-
scribed ideas of Otherness? Racialized minority experiences in North America
and Europe show an expectation that minority members should identify with
and commit themselves to disadvantageous identities. Disavowal means surren-
der. Disavowal reproduces the existing, racist, and social status hierarchy (Ang
2001; Song 2003). In other words, the politically conscious and morally correct
minority ought to be assertive and condent in expressing alterity 24 h a day
and seven days a week. The backdrop of Korean identity expression in Japan
is precisely this moral expectation and pressure: ambivalence is defeat. In this
rigid scheme, nonetheless, there is leeway because multiplicities of meaning
attach to identity expressions and representations. What if representation is
soft, palatable, and even fun, in spite of the original agenda of anti-racist struggle
and resistance? The line between victorious resistance (commitment) and
accommodating surrender (disavowal) is blurred.
A second concern is the complex and diverse processes of claiming alterity
itself. Rather than being the ipped image of being something else and being
arbitrarily constructed, alterity involves more complex social and cultural inter-
actions among different groups through the act of imitation and the actual
contact between the perceiver and the perceived (Taussig 1993: 21, 129). Cultural
contact and exchange are neither one-dimensional nor one-directional pro-
cesses between the hegemonic and the vulnerable. Different levels of commit-
ment to alterity deserve close attention in the politics of identities and
representations because once a minority status is assigned, even in this age of
anti-essentialism and social constructivism, willing and active identication
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

with the oppressed and the vulnerable remains taken for granted (Ang 2001;
Doerr 2008, 2013; Song 2002).
Education as a Site of Racial Literacy and Strategic Essentialism

The major objective of Korean minority education is to empower students
by introducing Korean racial literacy (Twine 1999: 98 for British context) in
an institutionalized setting. Minority children need props (tangible and material
clues) and vocabularies to establish self- and collective consciousness that is
resilient enough to challenge dominant and often negative representations.
By instilling Korean consciousness and pride through retrieving language and
reviving cultural heritage, Korean minority education aims to provide a counter-
measure to Japanese cultural hegemony (T. Yang 1984; Y. Yang 1995). While
some attention is devoted to the history of Korea under Japanese colonialism,
positive meanings of Korean heritage are emphasized primarily through the
knowledge and practice of Korean culture accentuated in the folk culture of tra-
ditional music and dance.
The immediate goal of traditional performance is to make the unconscious
conscious and the invisible visible. Differentiating and making themselves
visible, Koreans must rely on tangible clues to imagine Koreanness. Teachers,
especially at the elementary school level, employ a variety of practices, such
as using distinctively Korean family names and greetings, in addition to maps,
food, arts, toys, and games things that are different but familiar (Hester
2000; Osaka-fu minzoku koshikai 2000). These practices allow Koreans who
neither speak Korean nor know much about the culture to acquire easy-to-
understand Koreanness. With these practices, the Korean minority in Japan
can selectively transform its ascribed social category from a stigmatized and
vague foreignness to a category that is foreign, positive, and concrete enough
to allow it to differentiate itself from the Japanese. This acquired foreignness
fosters a multiethnic societal vision that is also appealing to the Japanese
majority. Although Koreans themselves occasionally resist any imposed, essen-
tialized form of Koreanness (Kim 1999), popular forms of representation are
conservatively exotic.
These selective practices of essentialization reproduce other forms of oppres-
sion. As McClintock (1995: 353 374) points out, nationalism has become a com-
modity spectacle, performed in collectivity, with gender and analogies of
domestic relations effectively mobilized in the process. Therefore, strategic chal-
lenges to racist ideas of difference take the form of a kind of cultural nationalism
through these selective practices, in which a conventionally gendered
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200 YOUNGMI LIM
imagination is also always at work. Strategies to combat Japanese racism in

school settings may thus share such elements of the gendered commodity spec-
tacle in that they are constructing a collective identity that relies on visualization
of a Koreanness that is ethno-racial, national, and feminine. Nevertheless, such
claims for and afrmations of Korean identity assume a relatively safe form
camouaged as folklore and limited to shows on stage. The mark of ethnic
difference is not extended into everyday life, unlike the use of Korean-sounding
names, which always signal Otherness and which are unsettling because they
challenge the die-hard assumption that everybody who lives in Japan and
speaks Japanese is Japanese.
Dance: Corporeal Spectacles in Educational Context

Increasingly, many researchers focus on human body movement, dance in
particular, as a symbolic and corporeal medium to express identities (Hanna
1987, 1988; Desmond 1994; Albright 1997; Mendoza 1999; Thomas 2004; Cruz
Banks 2010; Buckland 2001, 2006; Castaldi 2006; Kinoshita 2006; Wong 2010;
Wilcox 2011), challenging the priority of mind over body (Farnell 1999: 345
346), and the treatment of body as epiphenomena of societal ideologies (Alb-
right 1997: xiii). The question whose body in performance? addresses issues
related to various social statuses, power, and reexive bodily experience (Buck-
land 2001: 1, original emphasis). Buckland (2006) introduces a phenomenologi-
cal approach to dance ethnography which enables researchers to explore
embodied cultural knowledge as temporally and spatially dynamic, situational
in its meaning, and creative in the interstices of personal and communal his-
tories that reach across experience of researcher and researched (14).
Desmond (1994) argues that, the examination of bodily texts leads to the ana-
lyses of how social identities are signaled, formed, and negotiated through
bodily movement as well as how social identities are codied in performance
styles and how the use of the body in dance is related to, duplicates, contests,
amplies, or exceeds norms of non-dance bodily expression within specic his-
torical contexts (94).
In these endeavours of understanding social identities through dance, the
identities expressed through dance among the immigrant and minority
(racial, colonized, or indigenous) population shed lights on broader social struc-
ture and cultural hegemony (Mendoza 1999; Kinoshita 2006; Cruz Banks 2010;
Wong 2010; Wilcox 2011). Identities expressed through dance depart from the
search for authenticity, while they reproduce intra-group contradictions as
well as contest the contour of identities in relation to the homeland or the
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

dominant group in society (Mendoza 1999; Castaldi 2006; Kinoshita 2006;

Wong 2010; Wilcox 2011).
Do folkloric Korean fan dance and percussion performances afrm the col-
lective pride of the Korean minority in Japan while, at the same time, subverting
the anti-racist intentions of these cultural displays? Establishing a collective con-
sciousness always involves an interaction or a dialogue with other groups. Col-
lective self-denition among minority groups is contingent on dominant group
labelling and carefully crafted displays of pageantry in search of belonging and
integrity (McClintock 1995; Fujitani 1996). McClintock (1995) shows the ways in
which gender and racial differences are visualized and transformed into some-
thing concrete, convincing, long-lasting, and taken for granted. Popular and
gendered repertories of Korean student performance, female dance perform-
ance in Korean costumes in particular, illustrate a process through which
efforts to reconstruct authentic, ethno-racial identities are complicated by
social structural forces and symbolic meanings attached to gender. Intra-
ethnic cultural representation depends on and reproduces traditional gender
roles, and inter-ethnically, the dominant group treats and consumes minority
representation in feminized ways. Korean fan dances and percussion perform-
ances in the Japanese socio-political and economic milieu raise collective con-
sciousness, while at the same time provide objects for cultural consumption.
The folkloric images presented by these performances are steeped in a nostalgic
understanding of the past, neither contradicting nor threatening existing ideol-
ogies of societys dominant members (Robertson 1997; Iwabuchi 2002; Cruz
Banks 2010; Wong 2010).
What this case study adds to the examination of social identities through
dance is post-colonial pedagogical context. Cruz Bankss case study (2010) ana-
lyses a programme that introduces and teaches West African dances in an
American high school to the predominantly disadvantaged student body.
The programme confronted the reproduction of cultural imperialism in the
schools (Cruz Banks 2010: 30). In contrast, what follows is an illustration of
the transformation of an original pedagogical intention into simultaneous com-
mitment to and disavowal of alterity.
Performing Korean: Fan Dances and Farmers Music and Dance

Korean activists in Japan imported from South Korea and breathed new life
into puchaechum, the fan dance, and farmers music and dance, nong-ak [literally
farmers fun]. Historically, these performance genres were shunned by older
generations as lower class. Nong-ak originated in peasant harvest celebrations
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202 YOUNGMI LIM
and puchaechum in shamanic dance. These folk cultures have a history, much of
it modern. During the 1960s and the 1970s, South Koreans saw traditional
culture revived and adapted through two simultaneous movements. One
aspect involved South Korean Government sponsorship of traditional cultural
events and art forms in the hope that invented traditions would promote collec-
tive national sentiment in favour of the military regime. The 1962 Cultural Prop-
erty Preservation Law was the legislative embodiment of a desire to bolster
national pride and ritualize the collective appreciation of the past (Van Zile
2001: 61 62; Kim 2004: 75). The National Dance Company, which was also
founded in 1962, reinvented Korean dances including puchaechum (Kim 2004:
79 80). Adapted from shamanic dances, which used fans, choreographers trans-
formed it into a precisely choreographed ensemble in which each dancer carries
two large fans and gracefully forms part of a shape, such as a ower or wave
(Han 1983; King 1983).
On the other hand and at the same time, South Korean student activists and
intellectuals appropriated traditional popular culture to express dissent, critical
consciousness, and solidarity for the oppressed. Intellectuals and students
appropriated Korean folk culture as a symbol of hope for Korean unication
and resistance against the then military government in South Korea (Sim
1995; Lee 2003: 561 568).
Puchaechum is a popular representation of Koreanness, Korean femininity in
particular, for South Korean tourism and in diasporic nationalism. It is a (re)in-
vented tradition, danced both by professional dance companies and amateur
groups. Its performance can be part of high culture, a dinner show for tourists,
or popular performing art in which anyone can participate. In multicultural,
festive occasions in Japanese schools and communities, young girls or women
in colourful (often dominated by pink and bright green or red and yellow),
matching Korean dresses dance as a team on stage with prominent smiles or
the nervous concentration of amateur dancers. Elementary school dancers
will perform for 3 4 min and older performers will perform for 5 or 6 min but
rarely exceeding another couple of minutes.
Each dancer carries two identical fans, one in each hand. The fan stretches
half way through the upper arm when open. Combing the fans, each dancer
can make a circle or a buttery shape. The fan opens easily with a slight
shake of the wrist. Puchaechum is typically an ensemble, although a solo per-
formance is not uncommon. In ensemble, dancers coordinate the fans into
such shapes as owers, waves, and butteries. Professional puchaechum includes
fast-paced movement, performers swirl like tops and showing off ankles as skirts
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

rise. Student performances take place at a slow pace, never showing leg move-
ments (personal interview 21 July 2001). Dance movements have to be well coor-
dinated for effective visual impressions. Though with upper body movement
attracting much of the audiences attention, it is relatively easy to present
amateur level dance events. Other types of dance typically require more coordi-
nation of the upper body and steps and demand greater training and commit-
ment.
Co-ed nong-ak, Korean folk percussion and dance performance, represents
a revival of folklore with multiple meanings depending on the context in
which the audience is situated. To some, its origin in Korean agrarian villages
makes it a symbol of resistance to authority. Many folk arts, including the
mask dance and play, mock the establishment. Korean students and labour
movements of the 1970s and the 1980s appropriated nong-ak to make their
voices of protest and resistance audacious and conspicuous. They similarly
adopted communal stage plays (madang-guk) and added improvisation to
raise the collective consciousness of the oppressed. To others, nong-ak is
simply exciting because of the acrobatic and colourful elements of choreogra-
phy and sound.
Nong-ak is visually spectacular: the pungmulnori, one genre of nong-ak per-
formance, a percussion performance in a formation accompanied by acrobatic
movements are dazzling and exiting. The swift movements of male drummers
heads with lengthy streamers attached to their hats create swift swirling pat-
terns like rhythmic gymnastics with ribbons. Nong-ak performers play four
different percussion instruments loudly and rhythmically with dramatic shifts
in pace. The white jacket and pants with a black or blue vest tied around
the waist and shoulders with red, blue, and yellow sashes provide tangible
images of Korean folk culture. The percussion performance worked well not
only for the peoples culture movement of South Korean democratization
(Hesselink 2006: 44 45, 207; Lee 2007: 176) but also as an entertaining
spectacle.
The growth in popularity of nong-ak in Japan (in its contemporary versions
samulnori and pungmulnori) was helped along by the worldwide acclaim
accorded South Korean Kim Duk-Soos performance group, Samulnori. On
one occasion in the Osaka area in July 2002, when I had hoped to observe
extra-curricular activities for Korean students, sessions in the area were can-
celled because all the teachers had attended Kim Duk-Soos performance!
The real cultural representation should be directly from the Korean homeland
for Korean educators.
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204 YOUNGMI LIM
From the Personal to the Collective

How have Korean performing folk arts been incorporated into the curricula
of Japanese schools with Korean student enrolment? I will describe the pro-
cesses whereby the personal shifted to the collective, the negative to the posi-
tive, and the authentic to the inauthentic and hybrid. From the late 1960s on,
emergent, second and third generations Koreans have challenged the older gen-
erations homeland-oriented politics and marked a clear shift in Korean identity
politics in Japan (Chapman 2008; Lie 2008). College-educated local Korean acti-
vists who searched their identity through political struggles or extended studies
in South Korea afrmed that they were neither Japanese nor Korean and that
was nothing to be ashamed of. The legacies of images of poverty-stricken
Koreans residing in their former colonizing power required a Copernicus-like
shift into something positive, bright, stylish, and fun (personal interview 21
July 2002).
A Japan-born Korean dance instructor recalled the moment of inspiration
when she rst saw a Korean dance groups performance as a teenager during
the late 1960s:
I was just so moved. I couldnt believe there was such a beautiful dance in the world.
All the more, its Korean! I wasnt exactly happy about being a Korean in Japan then. I
had a complex. The performance knocked me out. (personal interview 21 July 2002)
She went to South Korea as soon as she nished her high school to study
Korean dance. After she returned, she taught Korean dance to Korean children
and young adults in different places across Osaka during the 1970s. Kang
Yongja, who has been active as part of Kyoto Korean Parents Organization,
cites from a journal she kept as a high school student, I went to see Korean
Youth Organizations cultural festival. [19]74. 11. 18. . . . . I was so moved by
the beauty of Korean dresses. I feel Korean culture is growing beautifully
inside me (Kang 2008: 139).
For Japan-born Koreans, the implications of attraction to Korean cultural
forms and the search for authenticity is double edged. Korean culture symbo-
lizes resistance against the overwhelming Japanese cultural inuences. Korean
culture simultaneously xates what it means to be authentically Korean; the
closer to the way Koreans in Korea do, the more authentic the music, dance,
and even identity can be. The search for authenticity produces an ironic
worship of the Korean homeland that emphasizes the power of a proper gen-
ealogy. A Korean percussion devotee, who has studied only in Japan, com-
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

plains: No matter how seriously I practice, other performers instantly ask

whos your teacher? I learned this under Intangible Cultural Asset such and
such. What? You never attended any workshop in South Korea!? Then he
rolls his eyes (personal interview 7 April 2000).
The Korean reinvented traditional dances background music has Korean
traditional triple time measure. An informant who studied dance and theatre
in South Korea explains:
The rhythm is really difcult it has some irregularity which I cannot capture. It can
be even 6 3 3 6, but I dont understand it fully. I grew up in Japan and the most fam-
iliar rhythm of Japanese music is duple measure. So what I end up doing may be just
one, two, one, two, one, two. I dont get Korean rhythms myself. It was really annoy-
ing at rst. But now I think thats ne. We are not Koreans brought up in Korea! My
inability to capture the rhythm is just part of who I am. (personal interview 7 Decem-
ber 2000)
She reconciled her challenge in learning Korean dance in the celebration of

hybridity. Korean dance is a metaphor for the glimpse of what it means to be
Korean living in Japan: life experiences cannot be Korean nor does the dance
have to be authentically Korean. For novice dancers lacking exposure to
Korean folk rhythms, a supercial mastery of the choreography is the best
they can expect. However, the experience of taking up Korean dance alone is
a leap in Korean minority identity struggles. So is the realization that Koreans
in Japan are by no means Koreans in Korea and that is the way it should be.
In search for their identities, Koreans in Japan encounter real and appealing
Korean culture, which negates negative imprints associated with being Korean
minority in Japan. While the real and authentic restricts their Korean cultural
endeavours in Japan, the incorporation process of Korean culture in Japanese
settings is in tandem with an alternative emphasis on being cultural hybrid.
Venues of Dissemination
Performing Korean folk arts in Japan has required more than individual-level
enthusiasm and enchantment. Disseminating Korean culture has relied on the
work of local activists, student organizations, and the Korean YMCA. Ethnic
classes and the Korean Scholarship Foundation have also had a role in nurtur-
ing the performances. The Korean Scholarship Foundation (founded in 1941
and re-established in 1957) provides Japan-born Korean high school and
college students who are enroled in Japanese institutions, so long as they are
South Korean or stateless Koreans, with scholarships and opportunities
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

206 YOUNGMI LIM
(monthly workshops and summer camps) to learn and think about being
Koreans born and brought up in Japan.9 From the 1970s onwards, Osaka-
based Korean scholarship recipients held year-end parties with speech contests
and Korean dance and music performances. In 1979, the rst large-scale cultural
festival, Uri Bunkasai (our cultural festival) had 170 participants (Korean Scho-
larship Foundation 1980). Korean dance and music performances continue to be
popular at the Foundations annual cultural festival: held for the 34th year in
2012, they provide opportunities for networking and sharing their repertories
beyond the Osaka area.
Analysing the table of contents of the Foundations journal, Chong Un [Blue
Clouds; re-launched as the journal Sae Furum, New Currents, in 1990], I nd
the late 1960s emphasis on Korean politics waned throughout the 1970s and
was replaced by features on Korean cultural activities and reports of employment
opportunities. The shifting focus of the journal coincides with a strategic shift in
the priority of Korean minority education from the homeland politics of Korean
unication to the recognition of human rights and self-fulllment in Japan.
Additional venues suitable for Korean music and dance spread especially since
the 1980s and the 1990s. The forerunner for local Korean and multiethnic cultural
events was Ikuno Minzoku Bunkasai (Ikuno Korean [Ethnic] Cultural Festival),
rst held in 1982. In 2001, on its 20th anniversary, organizers announced that this
would be the nal festival because the festival had fullled its mission. Other local
annual festivals, such as Higashi Kujo Madang (1993-), Itami Madang (1996-),
Nagata Madang (1990-), Takarazuka Minzoku Matsuri (1997-), Higashi Harima
Madang (1998-), Takatsuki Daiyayu-sai (1986-), Kawasaki Ariran-sai (1994
2004), and the like, share Ikunos format. Some events receive small subsidies
from local municipalities, but they are largely dependent on the commitment
of organizers, educators and students, and local activist volunteers.
Other performance opportunities include the teacher and local activist meet-
ings such as the founding ceremony of Zenkoku Zainichi Chosenjin Kyoiku
Kenkyu Kyogikai (Zenchokyo) in 1982, the national federation of Japanese
and Korean teachers who engage in Korean minority education. The cultural
event at the founding ceremony was a high school student puchaechum (Fuji-
wara n.d.).
Korean cultural repertoires and spectacles at these festivals came not
from parents or grandparents (Iida 2002: 312 313). Inspired by alternative and
subversive quests for democratization and South Koreas labour movement,
Japan-born Korean activists selectively imported elements of invented and
nationalized folk culture.
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

Factors Influencing Appropriation of Korean Fan Dance

A high school student wrote in 1996:
Our schools culture fair was held on June 21st KCC (Korean Culture Club) performed
samulnori using Korean musical instruments last year. This year, we performed
puchaechum (Fan Dance). We ordered our costume from South Korea. However,
we had only three female club members, and we needed more performers. Even
though we called for participation, nobody showed interests and we were very
worried about what we should do. Eventually, we asked two teachers to perform
together. One teacher was interested in Asia, and the other agreed to dance
because she wanted to try.
The scheduling was extremely difcult to arrange with our alumni instructor, and
we had to practice following a video tapes instruction. It was also hard to arrange the
practice schedule with the three club members and the two teachers; all ve perfor-
mers could practice together only for several times. Rather than practicing together,
each performer had to practice most of the parts by oneself. However, all the perfor-
mers learned the choreography, and our performance was nearly perfect in the end,
because we practiced again and again. If the ower pattern and the wave pattern did
not coordinate well, we video-recorded ourselves, watched the tape, and gradually
adjusted each performers position. When the performance on stage approached,
we practiced with the costume. When we dressed up, we somewhat felt we per-
formed in a better coordination.
Finally, the day came. We all had a mixed feeling we were very nervous if we
could perform well, and at the same time, we were all anxious, wishing the perform-
ance should be over as soon as possible. But it was denitely not a bad feeling. While
waiting, we wore the beautiful costume, we put on make-up. Although I felt my heart-
beat fast, I felt like, Come on, any moment! Then our turn came. Before stepping into
the stage area, we cheered ourselves up in Korean, igyora!
The music started and the drape was drawn. The critical moment of the ower
pattern came, everyones movement coordinated in a perfect formation for the rst
time. From then on, everything went perfect, I felt. And the last climax, the wave.
It went many more times better than the practice sessions.
The eight minute performance, seemingly long, but very short indeed, was over. As
soon as the drape was pulled down, I had a euphoric feeling, accomplishing some-
thing. It is such an indescribable feeling. (Hyogo-ken zainichi chosenjin kyoiku
kenkyu kyogikai 1996)
This essay illustrates the complexity of commitment and disavowal behind

the cultural spectacle. Despite this success story narrative against the odds
of nding time, coordinating schedules, and corralling resources, performers
pulled it off enlisting sufcient dancers even in a school with a sizeable
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

208 YOUNGMI LIM
Korean student enrolment was difcult because Korean students were unwilling
to advertise their Korean roots.
Six factors explain the spread of the Korean fan dance as a staple of minority
education. First, the introduction of the Korean fan dance and other forms of
Korean culture coincided with changes in the content of education for
Korean children in Japan. As noted above, since the 1970s, there has been a
growing emphasis on fun elements as opposed to academic areas such as
Korean grammar, the history of colonization, or what it means to be a
Korean living in Japan (Osaka shiritsu Kitatatsumi shogakko 1999; Osaka shir-
itsu Nakagawa shogakko 2000). Appealing visual spectacles accompanied this
soft turn.
Second, and related to its visual appeal, puchaechum brings in the maximum
effect with the minimum input. With time for rehearsals limited, student per-
formances are, nevertheless, impressive. The demanding time schedule at
many high schools leaves little time for practice. At elementary schools,
ethnic classes typically run 45 min with practice time but only a small
segment of the year-long curriculum (Osakafu minzoku koshikai 2000: 87
92). Puchaechum is ideal in a sense that it can be impressively staged in a rela-
tively short time period, and neither the performers nor audiences need exper-
tise to enjoy the dance.
Third, resources for Korean minority education have been extremely limited.
Only recently have a few local governments allocated budgets for such pro-
grammes, though they are still underfunded. Information, materials, and instruc-
tors are shared and exchanged, and classes are dependent on the energy and
commitment of a limited number of teachers. Further, dance instructors
shared an explanation that given the limited resources (time and funding)
and in the context of Japans structured educational system, it is impossible to
create original performances (personal interview 21 July 2001; personal corre-
spondence 25 July 2001; personal interview 7 August 2001). Therefore, a familiar
repertory is repeated, sharing the same material and up against similar con-
straints: the same costume and fan, the same music tape/CD, and the same
choreography are recycled.
Fourth, the performative form is appropriate to the physical spaces and
public occasions in which it takes place as well as the school curriculums
time frame. Group musical and dance performances t neatly into Japanese
school activities and culture in general. Group performances of all sorts, includ-
ing choral bodily movements, are marked on the calendars of elementary,
middle, and high schools across Japan in autumn school fairs. Korean folk
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

dance was already transformed from a communal dance to a dance performance

suitable for a proscenium stage in South Korea (Loken-Kim & Crump 1993: 13).
This stage performance style, so universal, is transferrable to other settings.
Fifth, Korean folk culture also ts ideologically with the standard curriculum,
students writing familiar narratives involving tough training, minor mistakes,
and hard sought success on the stage that bring the euphoric feelings of achieve-
ment. One elementary school puchaechum participant writes:
We did our hair during lunch time and dressed up in chogori [Korean dress]. [. . .] My
heart pounded while I was waiting at the back of the stage. Start! I enter the stage with
fans. I wasnt able to do the new trick. But I managed to do the waves. I was so
happy. We had a big applause. (Osaka shiritsu Kitatatsumi shogakko 1998: 54)
The moral expectation behind these essays is that belief in ones efforts leads to
success despite internal pressures and anxiety. Another student writes: Clap!
Clap! Clap! I hear a loud applause. Its over. We worked hard, practiced, gave
up our lunch time recess. It was as if that difculty was blown right away at
the applause (Osaka shiritsu Kitatatsumi shogakko 1998: 54). Rather than pub-
licly performing something Korean or receiving public recognition for being
Korean, the performers feedback is an accommodative, success story that indi-
cates industriousness and the ability to handle pressure. In other words, Korean
dance prepares students to be reliable workers in the existing modes of pro-
duction. There may be mistakes, but everything and anything can be overcome:
hard work brings its own rewards.
Finally, and most important, Korean minority education depends on the
conventional division of gender roles outside school. Female students are
excited to wear the colourful dresses, hair accessories, and make-up that are
part of performing. These activities are fun because they satisfy already gen-
dered self-consciousness among the young. Japanese schools regulate students
use of cosmetics, and students have an occasion to breach the rule in special
events such as dance performances. For some Korean girls, there is pressure
from other Japanese students, who presume that performing the fan dance is
natural and desirable. This pressure, however, is less salient as opportunities
for Japanese students to participate in puchaechum performances increase
(Zenchokyo documents 1996 2002).
The majority of instructors of Korean performing arts are female and part-
time: resource constraints limit job hours. In Osaka, there are only 11 teachers
full-time in the 98 schools with ethnic classes (Korea NGO Center n.d.(a),
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

210 YOUNGMI LIM
n.d.(b)). Men, who remain the breadwinners even in this age of economic uncer-
tainty, are hardly able to pursue Korean performing arts as a career. Moreover, a
part-time, Korean minority educator is not an occupation that provides a living
wage (Chaju [Jishu] editorial board 1999; Mindan shinbun 2000; Korea NGO
Center n.d.(a), n.d.(b)). Elementary school, ethnic classes pay approximately
4000 yen per session (less than US $40). For club activities, a teacher felt
awful because of the low wage teachers receive and tried to use funds allocated
for other purposes and/or increasing the hours within an adjustable range (per-
sonal correspondence 25 July 2001). The essay introduced at the beginning of
this section illustrates that Korean dance teachers have to juggle their schedules.
Having to share limited social, cultural, and nancial capital, it is not surprising
that many school performances are indistinguishable.
The domestic division of labour creates considerable pressure on mothers. In
interviews with members of the Korean Parent Teacher Associations, mothers
who support Korean club activities and cultural performances must rst demon-
strate their ability to their husbands to fulll domestic responsibilities before
participating in evening meetings and other activities outside the home (per-
sonal interview 25 November 2000). At a symbolic level, conventional female
attributes, such as looking pretty and elegant, are afrmed in the racialized
niche of the fan dance. In this way, Korean women reproduce the cultural tra-
dition as housewives and mothers devoted to their childrens education.
Women are in fact necessary to support the Korean minority education
agenda and in so doing, the existing gendered division of labour remains
intact in anti-racist activities aimed at encouraging Korean pride.
The Korean Fan Dance in Japan: Meanings Revisited

The meaning of the Korean fan dance has undergone several transform-
ations, not only in South Korea but also in Japan. Puchaechum has become a
symbol of Korean pride and a tolerant, multiethnic Japan. Performing puchae-
chum, when Koreans began to perform in Japan during the 1970s, was part of
anti-racist struggles. Nonetheless, Korean teachers of different generations
provide contrasting explanations about the popularity and origin of puchaechum.
A dance instructor involved in Korean childrens education recalled that
During the late 1970s, the image of Korea and anything to do with Korea
was quite negative and touchy [politically sensitive]. The Korean fan dance,
which really has no historical meaning, was so breathtakingly beautiful and
just splendid [that] it was encouraging to many Koreans, who became aware
that Korean culture had such beauty, something they could be proud of
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

(personal interview 21 July 2001). A Kawasaki City high school, Korean study
group adopted puchaechum for the rst time in 1982 (Kanagawa kenritsu Kawa-
saki kotogakko chosenmondai kenkyukai OB yushi 1993: 24), and a student
there told a news reporter: We only practiced for two weeks. I was able to
feel Korean culture with my body. Ill do my best to transmit the culture and
to broaden activism that challenges discrimination against Koreans (Kanagawa
kenritsu Kawasaki kotogakko chosenmondai kenkyukai OB yushi 1993: 23).
For some, puchaechum conveys the idea of overall human growth, not necess-
arily Korean pride. To dance is not the token of being a Korean. The objective
was for students to experiment with and afrm their identities through dance
and associated experiences, as an instructor of Korean dance who taught for
eight years recollects (Kanagawa kenritsu Kawasaki kotogakko chosenmondai
kenkyukai OB yushi 1993: 8). Her students proudly emphasize its Korean com-
ponent (see above).
A younger, Korean, high school, language instructor who has performed
puchaechum every year since the late 1990s declared that it was an ancient
dance performed by ladies at court. It is all about long-lasting tradition and
high art. She added that the performance itself was about female beauty and
that students enjoy it precisely because it is exotic (personal correspondence
25 July 2001). What was created as a symbol of a post-colonial search for auton-
omous subjectivity has turned into a major tourist attraction in its own right. In
Japan, what was a symbol of resistance to Japanization and racism has morphed
into a palatable form of cultural difference and for many Japanese and Koreans
alike, a source of sheer exotic pleasure.
Concluding Remark
The above outline of popular Korean cultural performance repertories and
the transformation of meanings attached to them show how these perform-
ances are embedded in everyday family, school, and community practices
and paradoxically reproduce existing gender roles, broader pedagogical ideol-
ogies, and social structures. Highlighting layers of multiple meanings attached
to minority cultural displays, this case study disentangles contradictions in min-
ority education. Highly performative aspects of Koreanness visualized and prac-
ticed in gender-specic ways connect to broader social forces.
The popularity of puchaechum operates on three levels. One level involves the
reproduction of gendered patterns of aesthetics: the application of cosmetics, the
wearing of frilly dresses and costumes, and the stylized enactment of prevailing
gender roles. At another level, the performances are a form of autoexoticizing
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

212 YOUNGMI LIM
(Kondo 1997: 10), and reect an understanding of Korean identity that ironically
conforms to Japanese ideas about Koreans as quaint and folkloric in short, as
overly feminine and harmless. The presentation of alterity in the form of a fem-
inized imagination does not pose a threat and challenge to the existing hierarch-
ical social order. At the other level, it nicely fullls the pedagogical needs of
Japanese school agenda. It supports ideological emphasis on industrial behav-
iour. It also caters to the agenda of international understanding by providing
apolitical multiculturalism, as opposed to critical anti-colonial, anti-imperialist,
and anti-capitalist pedagogy (Cruz Banks 2010).
The appropriation of the puchaechum was possible because this imagined cul-
tural Koreanness practiced through dance does not contradict mainstream edu-
cational goals, minority empowerment educational goals, and existing gendered
norms, and even cultural norm of hard work and team work. Ethno-racial and
national minority representations, when performed as feminized images,
present self-exoticized spectacles that are tame but border on the exotic.
What might be understood as a transgression of Japanese public space and a
challenge to Japanese cultural hegemony through Korean cultural represen-
tations actually reproduces subordinate, gendered, and racialized roles with
further implications for still male-centred, Japanese-centred operation of
economy, culture, and society.
The meaning originally intended in the framework of Korean empowerment
education is for commitment to alterity, but Korean students experience school
life in dimensions that extend beyond Koreanness. Having completed a per-
formance and having had fun encourages socially acceptable behaviour
among students. Its normality may even signal the moment of disavowal
the further accelerated path away from Koreanness towards fuller ideological
commitment to the Japanese society for the Japanese majority. Commitment
to alterity accompanies disavowal of alterity, always in relation to the hegemo-
nic Japanese culture and society.
The gendered construction of Korean Otherness, rendered simply in the
spectacle of traditional performance, also reproduces the rigid ideas of a
male-centred Japanese mainstream. The class subversive meaning of folk
dances is easily ignored. The visual expectations of viewers promoted and
enforced further by saturated colour tourist photographs depicting the gen-
dered quaintness of Koreans in Japan and the quaintness of South Korea as a
holiday destination obliterates the conictual nature of classes and colonial
legacies. For both the Korean minority and Japanese audiences, fan dances
are fun, aside from the paralleling processes of identity struggles torn
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

between commitment and disavowal to alterity, anti-racist struggles, and tamed

expressions and representations of ethnicity. In the mundane settings of school
auditoriums and gyms, I observed the limits to post-colonial subversion. There
is no alternative model, however, to overcome existing contradictions, other
than social scientists pointing out that social identities are contested, exible,
and relational and that they challenge and reproduce the connement of
broader social forces of history, colonialism, and post-colonial struggles, class
and gender, and inherently contradictory roles of education in general.
Korean cultural performances, strikingly similar across time and space, have
come a long way over the past three decades, always producing multiple
interpretations reecting individual standpoints. This limited journey into the
history and contemporary practices of Korean minority education, where the
chronic lack of social, cultural, and nancial capital shapes the traces of dissemi-
nation of a particular genre of Korean music and dance, suggests the continuing
dilemma of being Korean in Japan. Lack of funding in Korean minority edu-
cation denitely sets the boundary for educators engagement. Korean students
continue performing Korean Other in line with the majoritys exoticized views
towards Others, broader moral lessons taught at schools, and gendered role
expectations at home, school, and society. Just being an Other or the efforts
of becoming an Other both involve multiple social forces, while surprisingly
much of colonial legacies remain intact.
Koreanness in Japan thrives now only in a way that does not conict with
Japanese social and political institutions. Food, fashion, and festivals are much
more attractive, both to Koreans and Japanese, than demanding language
study or other kinds of formal schooling aimed at raising consciousness
about living in Japan. Both Koreans and Japanese dress up in traditional
Korean clothes and play the Korean drum to Korean farm music rhythms in
a niche of consumable exoticism. What both Japanese and Koreans share is a
taste of ethnic spice, but nothing more than that. A practice which makes
ethnic Koreanness a new kind of exotic consumable has a striking afnity
with existing gender roles also within formal educational settings that discipline
students as future members of the labour force.
What I have discussed is by no means to deny the historical accumulation of
Korean empowerment education practices or to make judgements regarding
success vs. failure. My analysis is limited by the fact that, in truth, the average
Korean student learns little about Korea and nothing about Koreans in Japan;
the availability of Korean minority empowerment education is limited not
only geographically but also in terms of the interests of students and their
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

214 YOUNGMI LIM
parents. Transformed meanings attached to puchaechum will never constitute a

major concern of Korean minority in Japan as a whole.
A Korean teacher who has been teaching Korean enrichment class for a
decade summarizes her experience, Korean ethnic-classes are also for the
parents, who rediscover their identity through their children. Its sometimes
and often more about the parents (personal interview 18 November 2000).
No matter how students respond to the performance of Korean folk culture,
there exist parents who learn through the experience of their children. Even
with a tamed version, Korean cultural representation in Japanese public space
means much more than no representation at all.
In 2012, I revisited some informants in Tokyo and in Kyoto. Korean dance
instructor who was teaching Korean dance in Osaka in the 1970s now
teaches a Korean drum class in Tokyo to a very small but mixed student
body including Koreans born and brought up in Japan, a Korean migrant,
and Japanese. More than half of her students are Japanese. A group in Kyoto
who had been practicing Korean folk cultural performances since the late
1980s holds Korean drum and dance class primarily for the Japanese. Social
identities embodied in Korean dance and music will have completely different
implications for Koreans, Korean new comers, and the Japanese.
One clear fact is Korean minority lacks relative freedom of identity choices
and expressions. Japanese dene the situation much more than the Korean min-
ority does. Ambivalent sentiments about Koreanness in Japan, the legacy of
colonialism, the increasing popularity of South Korean popular culture in
Japan, concerns about security and the North Korean regime, unsettled histori-
cal and territorial debates with South Korea, and the lack of diplomatic channels
with North Korea all render Korean identities in Japan different but not that
different, insolvable with straight-jacket commitment to Koreanness or with
full disavowal of strategically essentialized Koreanness.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all my informants for sharing their experiences in Korean
minority education, and the Toyota Foundation (2000-2001 Grant D00-A-509),
the Matsushita International Foundation (1999-2000; Grant 98-678) for the generous
funding that made my eldwork in Japan possible, and Stephen Steinberg, Philip
Kasinitz, Sharon Zukin, Sonia Ryang, Haeng-ja Chung, Eunja Lee, Yuko Shibata,
Brett de Bary, Seok Won Lee, Nancy Lopez, Neriko Musha Doerr, Shinji Sato,
Char Ullman, Robert Saute, and the anonymous reviewer for commenting on
earlier drafts. Incipient versions of this article were presented at the 96th Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Anaheim, August 2001, and the
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

East Asia Graduate Workshop: Gender, Visuality, and Colonialismat Cornell Uni-
versity, March 2004.
Notes
1. In 2011, 545,401 Korean nationals were registered as aliens in Japan. The 70.6% of
Koreans with alien registration (385,232) have special permanent residency, a legal
status granted former Japanese nationals, i.e. former colonial subjects and their des-
cendants (Ministry of Justice 2012a). There are many Korean descendants who
have Japanese nationality either by naturalization or born to a parent holding Japa-
nese nationality who are missed in statistical counts. Japan-born Koreans maintain
Korean nationality unless they go through naturalization: both Japan and Korea
grant citizenship jus sanguinis, i.e. by family lineage. Between 1952, when Koreans
in Japan ofcially lost the Japanese nationality they had as colonial subjects, and
2010, more than 300,000 Koreans became naturalized Japanese (Kim 1990;
Asakawa 1999; Ministry of Justice 2012b). Once naturalized, the Japanese Govern-
ment categorizes Koreans as Japanese, and their incorporation makes them statisti-
cally invisible as a group. For Korean who have not naturalized we know the vast
majority were born in Japan mostly second and third generations. In 1974, the
last year the Japanese Government published birth place of resident Koreans,
three-fourths were born in Japan (the government has not released data since)
(Morita 1996: 183). The massive wave of Korean migration to Japan and the origins
of the Korean minority community occurred during Japans colonial rule (1910
1945). Impoverished peasants from the south of Korea, who had lost access to land
as a result of increased tenancy fees and taxes, emigrated to fulll Japanese
demands for cheap labour (Weiner 1989: 38 43; Ch.3). By 1944 nearly two million
Koreans, virtually all migrants, many of whom were conscribed labour migrants,
resided in Japan. They lled in for the massive labour shortage triggered by Japans
war (Morita 1996: 174). In 1948, three years after the end of Japans colonial rule,
the Peninsula was politically divided into two nations, the Republic of Korea
(ROK; the southern half formerly occupied by the USA) and the Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK; the northern half formerly occupied by the
Soviet Union), both established in 1948. At the end of the Korean War (1950 1953),
530,000 Koreans remained in Japan. They stayed because strict currency regulations
prevented them from repatriating. For those who had already established a livelihood
in Japan no matter how meager, returning to Korea penniless was not promising. The
Korean War caused tragic economic and social conditions in the homeland, but it
helped the Japanese economic recovery. The booming Japanese economy and gen-
erational turn-over contributed to Koreans decisions to remain in Japan (Lie 2008;
Morris-Suzuki 2010).
2. Cold War politics and the political division of the Korean peninsula since 1948 com-
plicated overseas Korean education in Japan. There are only three pro-ROK schools
up to 12th grade, one in Tokyo, another in Kyoto, and the other in Osaka, whereas
pro-DPRK schools spread across Japan and includes one university in Tokyo.
However, many parents reject pro-DPRK schools because they lack accreditation
and because of their political ideology (Fukuoka & Kim 1997: 30 31). Full-time
ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

216 YOUNGMI LIM
Korean schools are all private schools and tuition cost more than Japanese public
schools.
3. A local activist informant expressed himself half-jokingly as the elite or even the
shining star of Korean ethnic education [minzoku kyoiku no erto, iya soredokoroka
minzoku kyoiku no kagayakeru hoshi deshitayo] for declaring his real name
[honmyo sengen] before his entire middle-school student body at age 15 (personal
interview 9 December 1999).
4. I had difculties locating Korean respondents with Japanese nationality. The snow-
ball sampling did not work well. Many respondents were hesitant to introduce even
their own family members. In fact, they rarely talked about their identity with their
family and predominantly Japanese friends. Koreans in Japan are not well connected
with each other, opting for passing.
5. Although my focus was primarily on organizationally detached individuals, the
voices of activists are overrepresented in social scientic qualitative data, I partici-
pated in events that ranged from politically conscious study groups and informal
self-help groups to social outings arranged through a mailing list of geographically
dispersed, organizationally inactive Koreans born and raised in Japan.
6. Pro-North Korean organization, Chongryun, has a professional dance theatre
company which performs both in Japan and in North Korea. North Korean dance
is much swifter with ballet-like choreographic elements, allegedly founded by
Choi Sung Hee, the legendary Korean dancer from colonial Korea who was
trained in Japan, performed in Japan, colonial Korea, China, the USA, Latin
America, and Europe in the late 1930s and the early 1940s, and went to North
Korea in 1946 (Kim 1998). Chongryun-afliated dance theatrical performances and
their inuences on Chong-ryun afliated school students are beyond the scope of
this paper. Muyong (dance) club, though, is the most popular extra-curricular activity
among girls (personal interview 21 June 2002). When I observed a Chongryun
middle-schools extracurricular activity on 21 June 2002, the dance club members
were practicing using large blue and white fans (only used for practice). Muyong is
a term imported from Japan during the Japanese occupation (Van Zile 2001: 32).
7. Pro-North Korean schools have Korean dance clubs, which receive choreographic
instruction from the pro-North Korean organization Chongryuns professional
dance troupe (personal interviews 15 June 2002 and 21 June 2002).
8. They even become racial when hierarchical relationships among different groups
exist and when that identity is constructed based on the dominant groups stereoty-
pical and exotic assumptions about minorities. Race restricts the freedom of identity
choice. Race is an imposed, repressive, and excluding label unlike ethnicity which is
optional, expressive, and inclusive (Armstrong 1989; Sanjek 1994; Song 2003).
9. The funding source is primarily the rent revenue of the property they own in down-
town Tokyo and Osaka as well as the donations from Korean entrepreneurs. The
Foundation runs without any funding from either Japanese or both Korean Govern-
ments (personal interview 15 August 2008).
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Korean Fan Dance for Fun: Performing

Alterity in Contemporary Japan

abstract This paper focuses on performances of Korean folk culture in Japanese

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2013.831942

A and stigmatized minority group. One cannot look at an Asian person

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

Because of linguistic assimilation and phenotypical similarities, passing in

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

Commitment and Disavowal: Expressing and Representing Alterity

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

multiplicity and exibility of meanings that constitute specic collective identi-

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

Education as a Site of Racial Literacy and Strategic Essentialism

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

imagination is also always at work. Strategies to combat Japanese racism in

Dance: Corporeal Spectacles in Educational Context

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

dominant group in society (Mendoza 1999; Castaldi 2006; Kinoshita 2006;

Performing Korean: Fan Dances and Farmers Music and Dance

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

From the Personal to the Collective

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

plains: No matter how seriously I practice, other performers instantly ask

She reconciled her challenge in learning Korean dance in the celebration of

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

Factors Influencing Appropriation of Korean Fan Dance

This essay illustrates the complexity of commitment and disavowal behind

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

dance was already transformed from a communal dance to a dance performance

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

The Korean Fan Dance in Japan: Meanings Revisited

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

between commitment and disavowal to alterity, anti-racist struggles, and tamed

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

parents. Transformed meanings attached to puchaechum will never constitute a

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192 222)

ethnos, vol. 80:2, 2015 (pp. 192222)

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