Esteban Flores. Originally published in Winter 2018.

The large electric fan did almost nothing to cool the unairconditioned room, but my intrigue kept me from being distracted by the sweltering summer heat. The chairs were arranged in a circle: the eager high school students, their smiling teachers, and the charismatic principal occupied one half of the circle while our group of visitors occupied the other half. Although this school was smaller and much more run-down than the top public school we had visited the week before, it undoubtedly felt like a Japanese high school. The giggling students, dressed in uniform, would whisper to each other in Japanese; at the entrance to the school, there was an area to take off and store shoes, as is common across the country; and the sight of students cleaning in the hallways was customary in Japanese schools. At that point, the only hint that something was amiss were portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il that hung on the wall above us.

Despite the obvious similarities, this high school was not like other public or private high schools in Japan. The school was much smaller than average, having fewer than 200 students. Although it was located in a major Japanese city, the school seemed hidden—in order to reach it, one had to take a slightly overgrown path through a forested area. The students in the school are not ethnically Japanese; all of them are of Korean ancestry and many do not have citizenship despite having been born and raised in Japan. But most importantly, this school is one of a handful that align themselves with North Korea. Together, they make up a network of North Korean education facilities in Japan managed by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (abbreviated as “Chongryon” in Korean), whom the Japan Times have dubbed the “de facto embassy of North Korea.”

A representative from Chongryon was sitting in the circle with us—a young woman who, having recently graduated from one of the top colleges in Japan, now worked for the organization on campaigns to spread awareness of discrimination against Koreans. She had graduated from this high school several years before. As we went around the circle introducing ourselves, she helped translate our questions for the students. One student told us that she spends two hours commuting to school every day, often waking up at 5am to make it to school on time. Although she lived far from the school, she reasoned that her parents, who had attended the same school, wanted her to receive the cultural education at the facility.

Another student remarked that at home, his family speaks Japanese, cooks Japanese food, and listens to Japanese music, but at school he is required to speak Korean, wear traditional Korean clothes, and participate in certain Korean cultural practices. These students are quasi-stateless; citizenship in Japan is by birth so many merely have a special residency status and are not afforded the full benefits of citizenship. Yet, they are undoubtedly Japanese and identify culturally as Japanese, to the extent that many Zainichi (meaning “living in Japan”) Koreans have cut all ties with Korea: changing their names, marrying Japanese spouses, or applying for citizenship. The children at this school are different: their parents still hold an allegiance to Korea and thus send them to North Korean schools so they can learn about their Korean heritage. The charismatic principal confirmed that this was often the case with students; living in Japan for generations had made them culturally Japanese, but the school provided them with an opportunity to remember their Korean ethnic roots.

This sentiment of wanting students to adhere to Korean culture partially reflects the original mission behind schools that were created following Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II. According to the Japan Times, Koreans who came to Japan during the 35-year occupation ended up staying due to the subsequent Korean War. These Koreans, commonly referred to as Zainichi set up schools to prepare their children for eventual resettlement to Korea. Most of these schools aligned themselves with North Korea, leaving them in a precarious situation at the end of the Korean War. While at first there were approximately 40,000 students enrolled in these schools, enrollment has dropped significantly to a point where there are now around 8,000 students. Yet, there are still approximately 70 North Korean schools in Japan; in contrast, only four align themselves with South Korea.

After getting into small discussion groups with students and talking about the school, we began our tour. Their English teacher, dressed in a “chima jeogori” (a traditional Korean skirt which is still used in North Korea), led our tour along with the help of the Chongryon representative. Our first stop was a science classroom. As our tour guide bragged about how rigorous their science education was, I began to observe the room. At the front of the classroom were more pictures of previous North Korean leaders. In the back, there was a chart that assigned cleaning duties to each of the students; in Japanese schools, students are in charge of cleaning instead of a janitor. We finally left after one of us asked a student to show us her notebook and she began screaming in excitement.

Next, we visited the Korean culture and history class, and were immediately struck by the silence in the room; the students were silently completing a worksheet on Korean government—the topic they were studying. On the wall hung a large map of Korea—a unified Korea—with the capital as Pyongyang. The principal had earlier remarked that the North-South division does not matter to the school: there is only one Korea. Regardless, the school recognizes North Korea as the legitimate Korean government while treating South Korea as occupied territory. We asked the students to see one of their textbooks and were met with enthusiastic consent. One passage, written in Korean, was translated into the statement, “today in North Korea, everyone has a good life because of communism which is the morally correct ideology, economy, and ethical culture. Those factors demonstrate that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is superior to all.”

The tour guide then led us to their Korean language class. Students were encouraged—and sometimes required—to speak Korean while in school, even though Japanese is their native language. The school has the goal of creating trilingual students that are fluent in Japanese, Korean, and English. Their Korean teacher was enthusiastic and energetic, constantly moving around the classroom with a smile on her face as she drilled students on grammar. The atmosphere was fun and jovial. I asked the tour guide what the students were practicing, and she remarked that they were studying “counters” (Korean has different words to count different types of objects, as does Japanese). She added that counters were much harder in Korean compared to the “simple” Japanese language, and that Korean is a much more advanced language in general.

We were then left to explore the school on our own. I passed an eerie portrait of Kim Il Sung surrounded by happy children; I could not help but be reminded of the principal of the school surrounded by his students. To escape the portrait, I entered a classroom where a few high school seniors were lounging around and talking. They had just returned from a school-sponsored trip to Pyongyang, which is a common excursion for seniors at Korean high schools across the country. The Japanese government, however, strongly disapproves of the school trips to North Korea. One student told us about how safe North Korea is and how rich all the citizens are. He bragged that the capital was beautiful and that their hotel was very luxurious. Clearly still enchanted by the country, he finished by declaring that North Korea is truly an amazing country that we should visit someday.

The subject of our conversation changed to college entrance exams. While the regular Japanese high school we had visited the week before had almost all of its students entering higher education, this school’s rate was much lower. The student who had talked about Pyongyang noted that maybe one day he would be able to study at Harvard or another college in the United States. As we turned the corner, a group of girls who were sweeping the hallway let out a shrill scream and pointed at one of the college students in our tour group who they thought was very attractive. When we reached the room at the conclusion of our tour, the principal had to close the doors and cover the windows to keep them from staring. They finally left when a teacher yelled at them, telling them that it does not take 20 students to sweep a hallway.

As we sat in the unairconditioned room once more, the principal spoke about how Zainichi Koreans face unemployment and educational discrimination in Japan. Indeed, this is historically true; many Koreans try to hide their ancestry for fear of being discriminated against, often taking on Japanese names and moving far away from the Korean neighborhoods in their city. Employment discrimination has lessened as companies became more globalized, but the stigma against Zainichi Koreans that many Japanese nationalist groups promote still persists. Likewise, the students, who wear Korean uniforms at the school, wear regular clothes during their daily commute in order to avoid harassment and potential violence.

Our tour of the school concluded with a traditional North Korean dance group and musical performance, both of which were stunning. All of the students knew how to play an instrument proficiently, either a traditional Korean instrument or a typical modern one. The school band, which competes nationally, also performed for us. Their director composed all the music for theband himself. The last song played by the band was a spin on a traditional Japanese folk song; all the children were familiar with it as well as the Japanese people in our tour group. The band director told us that they were going to perform this song in the band competition this year although they have no chance of winning: “the judges would never pick a Korean school as the winner,” he said with a stoic face, hardly concealing his pain. While I had been bombarded with propaganda that day, I knew that what the band director said was completely accurate.

As our group left the school, one of my friends on the tour, a South Korean, remarked that this school was pure evil. The North Korean regime had killed some of his family members, and to him this school was nothing more than an indoctrination facility that glorifies a murderous dictator. I completely understood the sentiment. For generations, these schools have indoctrinated children to support the North Korean regime, convincing them that North Korea was their home, the true government of Korea, and even the most morally superior society in the world. Yet, I was reminded of the otherwise normal and even stereotypically comical children—children who are obsessed with dating and who want to go to Harvard someday—and could not bring myself to blame them for the brainwashing taking place in these schools. Their teachers and their parents were also students at these schools at one point, but does this lessen their culpability? They are all caught in a cycle of indoctrination and propaganda that began with the evils of World War II.

Regardless, this cycle is likely coming to an end. The enrollment in North Korean schools has fallen significantly in the past decade, which alone would have led to their eventual closing. The Japanese government has also begun to defund North Korean schools following a 2016 directive by the Ministry of Education. A Japanese court recently dismissed a lawsuit against Osaka, brought by Korean organizations after the prefecture defunded all its North Korean schools. Other prefectures have since been inspired by Osaka’s example and also rescinded funding. The dated facilities and overgrown grounds of the school I visited were evidence of this lack of funding. In a few decades, the building will certainly be abandoned; there will be no more students sweeping the halls or enthusiastic instructors teaching Korean. The only things left to hint at the school’s intriguing history will be the dusty pictures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on the walls.