Lee Kyung-jae, also known as I Kyonje, Yi Gyeong-jae, or Yi Kyŏngjae (born 1954 in

Takatsuki 270px, Takatsuki City Hall is a city in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 348,020 in 164,494 households and a population density of 3.300 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Takatsuki is ...

Osaka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Osaka Prefecture has a population of 8,778,035 () and has a geographic area of . Osaka Prefecture borders Hyōgo Prefecture to the northwest, Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Nara ...

) is an ethnic Korean community organiser in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Early life

Born to

Zainichi Korean () are ethnic Koreans who immigrated to Japan before 1945 and are citizens or permanent residents of Japan, or who are descendants of those immigrants. They are a group distinct from South Korean nationals who have immigrated to Japan since t ...

parents holding

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

n nationality, Kyung-jae grew up in Nariai in

, a small village of around 35 Korean families.MINTOHREN: Young Koreans Against Ethnic Discrimination in Japan, Yasunori FUKUOKA and Yukiko TSUJIYAMA, (Translation: John G. Russell) The Bulletin of Chiba College of Health Science, Vol.10, No.2. His father was a

day labourer Day labor (or day labour in Commonwealth spelling) is work done where the worker is hired and paid one day at a time, with no promise that more work will be available in the future, and outside the protection of labor and civil rights laws. It i ...

, while his mother worked in a

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mining, open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock (geology), rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some juri ...

. Both were

illiterate Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

. Further more, his mother, who had immigrated to Japan at the age of three, had forgotten how to speak Korean, and as a result, their

home language A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers ...

was exclusively Japanese. Lee was given the name legal alias Ri Keisai and grew up being ashamed of his Korean background and due to his poverty. He revealed his Korean name to his classmates at his middle school graduation but retained a strong desire to assimilate to the point of "hatred" towards Koreans and blaming his family's poverty on his parents' laziness. This was a state of mind which was overcome by the intervention of a teacher, who raised the issue of anti-Korean discrimination, and the support and acceptance of Japanese friends. However, upon later entering a private high school he resumed the use of the Japanese name, Takayasu Keisai, and again hid his ethnicity.

Political career

After Lee graduated from high school in 1972, his former teachers provided him with no assistance in finding a job. While supporting himself through part-time work, he founded Mukuge no Kai, one of the predecessor organisations of Mintohren. The name came from ''mukuge'', the Japanese word for ''

hibiscus syriacus ''Hibiscus syriacus'' is a species of flowering plant in the mallow family, Malvaceae. It is native to areas of east Asia, but widely introduced elsewhere, including much of Europe and North America. It was given the epithet ''syriacus'' because ...

'', a former symbol of resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea and the national flower of South Korea. He hoped to address the problems of violence and delinquency among Korean youth in Osaka; he chose to found a new association rather than work through existing ethnic associations such as

Mindan Mindan (, Hanja: 民團), or the Korean Residents Union in Japan (, ), is one of two main organizations for Koreans living in Japan, the other being Chongryon. Mindan has ties to South Korea and was established in 1946 in Tokyo, Japan. Current ...

Chongryon The General Association of Korean Residents in Japan,
" ''

because he felt both were more concerned with the politics of the

Korean peninsula Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically divided at or near the 38th parallel between North Korea (Dem ...

than of local Korean communities in Japan. Though at first they made little progress, their children's programme, founded in 1978, in Nariai was particularly successful; in 1985, they began a campaign which resulted in the establishment of a division in the city board of education devoted exclusively to education for ethnic Koreans, and the elimination of the requirement that city employees hold Japanese nationality. In 2006, Lee naturalised as a Japanese citizen in order to run for a position in the assembly of

. Running from his hometown, the Takatsuki electoral district, he estimated that he would require 13,000 votes to gain a seat. Though in the past, he had held on to his South Korean nationality as an expression of his identity, and joined campaigns demanding suffrage for foreign residents, he naturalised for the express purpose of representing foreign residents and other minorities in local politics. If elected, he would have been Osaka's first ethnic Korean assembly member; he hoped that his campaign would provide an opportunity for Koreans who had taken up Japanese nationality to strengthen their ethnic identity and express it openly to the society at large. However, in the end, out of six candidates competing for five seats, he came in last, with only 2,543 votes out of 127,646 cast (compared to 19,475 for the fifth-place candidate).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Kyung-jae 1954 births Living people Community activists Japanese politicians of Korean descent Japanese people of South Korean descent Japanese political candidates Naturalized citizens of Japan People from Takatsuki, Osaka South Korean expatriates in Japan Zainichi Korean politicians