Kang Sang-jung

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Kang Sang-jung (Hangul: 강상중, Hanja: 姜尙中, born as Nagano Tetsuo(永野鉄男) in 1950) is a Zainichi Korean political scientist. He is a professor at University of Tokyo.

The third son of a Korean migrant from the Masan area of Korea, Kang was born and grew up in Kumamoto in Kyūshū. He has described his childhood experiences in his autobiography "Zainichi"^[1], published in 1994.

After studying at Waseda University, he was an exchange student at the University of Nurnberg, Erlangen in the then West Germany. His encounters with the families of migrant workers in Germany had a lasting influence on his understanding of Zainichi Korean identity.

After returning to Japan, he was involved in the protest movement against the compulsory fingerprinting of foreign residents in the early 1980s. He lectured at Meiji Gakuin University and International Christian University in Tokyo, before being appointed to the University of Tokyo.

Kang's early work focused on the political and social thought of Max Weber. He has written extensively on questions of Zainichi Korean identity, problems of nationalism, and the relationship between Japan and North Korea, and is enthusiastic proponent of Northeast Asian regional integration.^[2]

He is one of the most outspoken critics of Japanese Nationalism and United States Imperialism. He has been criticized in some right-wing Japanese magazines for being a "supporter of Kim Jong-il.^[3] This claim is vigorously contested by Kang, who points out that his writings have consistently criticised dictatorships, both Right-wing and Left-wing. ^{[4] [5]}

His other major works include "Beyond Orientalism" (Iwanami, 1996), "The Perspective of Globalization" (Iwanami, 2001, co-authored with Yoshimi Shunya), and "Nationalism" (Iwanami, 2001)

[edit] References

1. ^ For an English translation of sections of this book, see [1]
2. ^ Japan Focus
3. ^ 諸君！_070401
4. ^ see "Shukan Asahi" magazine, 15 May 2007
5. ^ For Kang's views on North Korea, see "The First Agonizing Steps Towards Stabilizing Northeast Asia", Japan Focus, 2002 [2], and "Overcoming Japan-North Korea Relations", Shueisha Publishers, 2002