Exercising Citizenship: Koreans Living in Japan

Korean residents make up over forty percent of all resident aliens in Japan. Although naturalization procedures have become less restrictive for permanent residents, only about 30 percent of the total Korean population has been naturalized in the past forty years. Rather than attempting to become Japanese, which the Japanese government discourages, elements in the Korean community have experimented with new forms of “citizenship” based on membership and participation in civil society.