If you’ve followed the news during the past few months, you’ve probably heard about the Japanese association of North Koreans called Chongryon and its problems with Japanese law enforcement. What you’ve probably missed from that story is the fact that, in Japan, there is a big community of Koreans with Northern citizenship who are not engaged in politics, and who simply want to live out their lives.

These Koreans living in Japan do, however, struggle to keep their national identity alive and one of the most important tools to achieve this are schools for ethnic Koreans. Sometimes these schools