Lee Sang-jae (Korea Migrant Workers Human Rights Center)
A few days ago, the trouble started to appear as a headache. Squeezing the entire backbone makes me keep leaning back. The troubles that started when I was informed that I had to empty the current space where I had been nesting for 4 years and 8 months came out of nowhere without finding an answer. I took it as a revelation that it would be better to sleep on my back or chat with me at that time, since interpreting on my own would not be resolved by tying my head alone. natural words. In order to achieve that natural result, we always have to go through a long process. Whether personally, in human rights, in democracy or in history, it is a train of people who have nothing.
There are three main concerns. The realistic financial problem for preparing the relocation space is the most immediate problem, and those concerns are being resolved with the help of everyone we work with and those who watch our struggles. The following is the vision and mission for the group’s activities. In fact, it can be said that everything is contained within the words of this vision and mission. And that’s your personal future. What will I do in the newly moved space? In a situation that is too difficult to solve the current issue, the topic ‘What about me?’ that suddenly comes to my body, causes my body to lose strength. The unstable life of migration seems to have been projected on me as well.
These three concerns are intertwined. One of them comes out with its tail biting its tail, and it seems to be released at some point, repeating all kinds of imaginings and hiding in the skein again. Then it will get tangled again and become a twisted skein. Time is the part that absolutely requires time. know. However, we are anxious to reduce the absolute time even a little. Why? For me, it’s a matter of party nature. A Korean activist working at the Migrant Workers’ Human Rights Center. Representing the parties represents the limitations of not being a party and not an organization of the parties. Right now, such an organization will be needed to represent or support it, but at some point, its existence itself will act as an obstacle to development, like a skein that is untied. When is that? maybe now If so, what should our organization do and how should we change our constitution? my head hurts again
modern day slavery
The party nature encountered in the field is much more sensitive. In particular, after the employment permit system, a system for introducing foreign workers, many people (Koreans) – although the issue of undocumented migrant workers is still attracting many people’s attention – now universal human rights are guaranteed to some extent even for migrant workers. talk about whether or not We appeal for injustice, saying that there is a ‘prohibition of arbitrary movement of workplaces’ in which the right to freedom, the most basic human right, has been trampled upon, so it should be called modern slavery. But the echo is small. Because our urgency is small. This is because we are unaware of the peculiarity and exceptionality of immigrants in Korea, and the premise that jobs for locals and the domestic economy come first. With such self-censorship, our own voices become smaller. In particular, in the current situation of the general recession of democracy and the economic crisis, it shrinks even more.
The explanation was lengthy. The work where you can feel the difference in the individuality of the person is a little long, but it has been moved below. Excerpts from 『GO』 by Kazuki Kaneshiro, a third-generation Korean living in Japan, and 『Wan Deuki』 by Ryeo-Ryeong Kim. In their attitude to the world in which they live, it seems to be possible to feel a little bit of what kind of party is in Korean society. Of course, in Sugihara’s words, you will feel a sense of exhilaration (excluding the consciousness of being Korean).
Sugihara’s words from “GO”
Sometimes I want to kill you guys, Japanese people, this guy or that guy. Why do you guys call me Jail without any doubt? I was born and raised in this country. Since you’re a Zainichi American, don’t call yourself the same as Zainichi Iranians or people from outside. Being Zainichi is no different from treating us as outsiders who will one day leave this country. do you know Have you ever thought about something like that?
I do not care. No matter what you call me Jail, if you want to call me, call me that way. Are you guys scared of me? Don’t you feel relieved if you don’t categorize it and give it a name? But I can’t admit it. i mean It is similar to a lion. A lion doesn’t think of himself as a lion. You guys are just giving names to yourself and acting like you know everything about lions. ….I tell you, I am neither Zainichi nor Korean nor Mongoloid. Now don’t put me in a narrow place any more. i am me no. I hate that I am me. I want to be freed from who I am. I will go anywhere in search of something that makes me forget that I am… You are a country, a land, a title, a convention, a tradition, a culture. You’ll live your life tied to those things, and then you’ll die. damn. I don’t have anything like that to begin with, so I can go anywhere. You can go anytime.
Do Wan-deuk’s words from “Wan-deuk-i”
It was the perfect neighborhood for me to hide from the world. I didn’t know why I had to hide, and I started to get scared because I had been hiding for so long, but I just kept hiding because I knew nothing about hiding. The idiot found me like that. ….even if I hid again, he found me. good. I hid and got caught, so now I’m a tag. I don’t want to rush to find it though. If it’s hard to find anything, I want to find it easily by shouting ‘I can’t find it, oriole’. The days I wasted, my life without doing anything great, I thought it would be okay to live like that. But now you don’t have to be big. Small days add up to become big days. It is a simple but hard and full day by day, and it will be completed as a wonderful necklace of life in the future.
Kim Ryeo-ryeong’s 『Wan Deuki』 is meaningful in its very existence. Compared to Sugihara from 『GO』 at the end, it looks more like a letter of conversion to Korean society. From now on, I will live well without spending every day in vain. If you overdo it, it’s even disappointing. Don’t worry too much because it’s the perspective of a field activist. Then why? For me, it’s a matter of party nature. A Korean activist working at the Migrant Workers’ Human Rights Center. Representing the parties represents the limitations of not being a party and not an organization of the parties. Right now, such an organization will be needed to represent or support it, but at some point, its existence itself will act as an obstacle to development, like a skein that is untied. When is that? Maybe now. If so, what should our organization do and how should we change our constitution? This is an extension of the previous concerns that I have a headache again. It’s like the difference between a novel written by the person concerned and a work with a Korean perspective.
It is an issue that requires an absolute amount of time. There is a clear difference in the words and actions of people who are firmly rooted in their lives and those who can be pushed out at any time, and their attitudes toward society. In the process of raising funds for the relocation of the center and creating a vision and mission, I had to feel the difference between aspirations and reality. (However, here, we are talking about excluding the evaluation of group activities as much as possible, so please do not interpret it as something that would have changed if you did well.) To the migrant workers who have worked with the center, ‘For you, for you, Most of them hesitate and tilt their heads when they say that it is a space for you, so you should also pay.” The result of not reflecting the nature of our activities is a priority, but it is a part that reveals the short history of migration in Korean society.
A reality that speaks and sympathizes with discrimination and exclusion from the perspective of Korean society, and blocks resistance to discrimination and human rights sensitivity at the level of Korean society. activities beyond it. Is there any way for the voices of the parties to be spread raw without being censored and transmitted at the level of Koreans or Korean society? How should we change our constitution for such an activity? In this situation, what would Wandeuk and Sugihara want to say?