Livelihood strategies of contemporary-generation of Korean diasporas in Japan

Abstract

There are around 600,000 the contemporary-generation of Korean diasporas currently living in Japan, the largest foreign minority group. These Korean people have encountered various forms of discrimination and have been treated as second class citizens. They have even been forced to change their outlook, values, and culture in order to be assimilated with Japanese society, making their daily live difficult. To cope with these predicaments, many contemporary Koreans in Japan have to come up with certain livelihood strategies. This research thus aims to examine the livelihood strategies of the contemporary Koreans living in Japan born since 1980 as they have experienced all sort of discrimination and received unfair treatment by the Japanese society by looking at their adoption of various aspects of livelihood strategies under the Department of International Development’s sustainable livelihood Framework. This research found that contemporary-generation of Koreans in Japan have many forms of livelihood strategies— changing nationality to Japanese, attending ethnic Korean school, attending the movement of ethnic Koreans in Japan and holding Buddhist ceremony and participating in movement of ethnic Koreans in Japan—in order to fight for their own space in Japanese society and to live in Japanese society harmoniously while maintaining Korean identity. However, contemporary Korean residents of Japan tend to have complex identities and cultural orientations compared to other minorities in Japan and adopt various strategies to sustain their lives. They adjust, cope, create and re-create their livelihoods in relation to circumstances of Japanese immigration policy and institutional changes. Their livelihood strategies have been used differently by each person within the various groups of Koreans in Japan. They are therefore likely to increasingly adopt these strategies as ‘complex plans’ for using shared resources and supporting each other.