SCHOOL FOR UNDERSERVED KOREANS MARKS 30 YEARS OF STUDENT EMPOWERMENT - KITAKYUSHU JAPAN

SCHOOL FOR UNDERSERVED KOREANS MARKS 30 YEARS OF STUDENT EMPOWERMENT - KITAKYUSHU JAPAN

@Jr_Paku Midin Channel

KITAKYUSHU

A night junior high school founded by a third-generation Korean woman in southwestern Japan for ethnic Koreans who were unable to receive a normal education during the chaotic postwar period marked its 30th anniversary this year.

Yoshie Yanai, 65, who was born and raised in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, initially established the school in the industrial city for her mother and other older Koreans. But the institution has not only become a haven of learning for those who never attended school but also a source of emotional support for others without a formal education.

When Yanai was a student at the University of Kitakyushu some three decades ago, she was bewildered by the contradiction of Japan's Constitution, which touts the "right to education," despite the fact many so-called zainichi Korean residents, including her mother, were illiterate, having received no formal education during or after World War II.

They were mostly first- and second-generation Korean residents who were unable to return to the Korean Peninsula nor afford to go to school due to their low social status after Japan's surrender in the war. "I had no adolescence," Yanai's mother had told her.

Many Koreans then were "socially invisible because they couldn't write their names and addresses in Japanese and couldn't even ride the trains," Yanai said.

Yanai came to know of the presence of night junior high schools through renowned film director Yoji Yamada's film "A Class to Remember," but, when she saw the movie in 1994, there were no such public night classes in Kitakyushu.

However, in May 1994, Yanai approached her academic advisor at the university and opened a reading and writing school for first- and second-generation Korean students at a local community center based on a voluntary evening junior high school in Osaka she had learned about.

Over the past 30 years, more than 100 people have taken classes at the school located in the Ano district of the city's Yawatanishi Ward and known now as the "Ano Junior High Night School." Classes are held from 7 p.m. three days a week in such locations as the local elementary school library.

With eight people in their 30s to 80s currently enrolled, retired teachers and others teach the Japanese language and other subjects of their specialty on a one-on-one basis.

Such schools in Japan that are not officially accredited but teach privately are called "voluntary evening schools."

The education ministry is encouraging each of Japan's 47 prefectures and big cities designated by the government to establish or operate at least one school of the type.

Some 100 people attended a ceremony held at the community center in Ano on June 29 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the opening of the night school. Among them was Pae Dong Son, 89, who said, "Learning has given me a zest for life."

Pae came to Japan in 1942 when she was 7 years old. She studied at a public elementary school for about two years but was forced to quit to attend to household chores.

Thirty years ago, when she was nearing 60 years old and still unable to read Japanese, she began taking night classes along with Yanai's mother, who was in the same situation.

Pae, who continues her studies at the school today, passed the fifth-grade Japan Kanji Aptitude Test in 2011. "I was ashamed to appear in public when I was unable to read and write Japanese. I will keep attending as long as I am physically able to do so," she said.

Not only ethnic Koreans attend the night school. Haruna Tanaka, a 30-year-old Japanese woman who dropped out of school, began taking the classes in March.

"I can study at my own pace and teachers teach me until I understand. I've come to think that learning is enjoyable," she said.

While voluntary night junior high schools are not authorized to award diplomas, students at the Kitakyushu school are allowed to study there for as many years as they wish.

"We want to operate our classes so that we can offer learning opportunities that meet different needs, with public and voluntary (schools) working in parallel," Yanai said.

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