The struggle for a decent life in Japan

As of the end of 2008, 2.22 million foreign nationals were registered in Japan, accounting for 1.74 per cent of the total population. ¹ According to Japan's Ministry of Justice, 589,239 (26.6 per cent) of these were Koreans. The majority of these (420,305) were so-called ‘special permanent residents’. ² This means that they held a status that has only been given to families that have lived in Japan since the Second World War and used to be Japanese subjects (i.e. Taiwanese and Koreans that have been resident in Japan for a long time). ³ Koreans have been by far the largest group of foreigners in Japan. They arrived in Japan just before or during the Second World War; some of them as early as the end of the 1800s. They are not Japanese nationals and since the division of their home country into North and South they have also been divided into subgroups that support either the regime in Seoul or that in Pyongyang. Traditionally the largest group has supported the regime in the North.