The word “Omura” had a very negative connotation to the older generation of ethnic Koreans in Japan. They talked about “being taken to Omura” in low voices. After the Japanese occupation of Korea was over, many ethnic Koreans in Japan were considered illegal immigrants and were sent back to Korea. My uncle was also one of those people who lived in constant fear of going to “Omura.” I have memories of constantly hiding him from the authorities when I was little. “Omura” prison was established in December of 1950. The Koreans who left Korea due to the Korean War and Jeju Massacre were taken to “Omura” and eventually deported. Almost 70 years later, “Omura” is now the “Omura Immigration Center.” The place is now used as a facility to detain “illegal immigrants” just like the Higashi-Nihon Immigration Center in Ibaraki prefecture. The inmates who are there mainly come from about 40 countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Central Latin America. The number of foreign inmates who are detained there for a long period of time is increasing because they are not being recognized as refugees.
Also, the condition of the facility is deplorable, leading to the suicide of an Indian man in his thirties in April of 2018 along with 3 attempted suicides in May. “Omura” represents the restrictive and discriminatory migration policies of Japan and it also reminds us of the impact of those policies on ethnic Koreans in Japan. Kamakura Hideya’s documentary film With Foreign Inmates focuses on a priest who gives support to foreign inmates and makes us reexamine what a “neighbor” truly is and what it means to help our neighbors.

Due to the Trump Administration’s total disregard for UN resolutions, the plight of Palestinians’ is getting more precarious. Can we feel their struggle? In the fall of 2017, Israeli Journalist Amir Haas was invited to visit Japan by an NGO. Amir Haas is a correspondent for “Haaretz” who lived and worked in the district of Gaza from 1993 to 1997. From 1997, she lives in the West Bank where she continues to do her reporting. Her parents were Holocaustsurvivors.
This is what Doi Doshikuni - a well-known Japanese journalist - said about Haas’s reporting: “The international reports concerning the Palestine-Israel conflict tends to focus on the ‘Palestinian uprising and terrorism reciprocated by Israeli retaliation,’ depicting the violent responses on both sides. However, the root of this problem is Israeli ‘occupation’ that leads to violent responses from the Palestinians, not the violent responses themselves. However, the expression ‘occupation’ doesn’t quite fit when considering that it’s a ‘structural violence’ that infiltrates day-to-day life of ordinary citizens and impacts all aspects of society, politics, and economics. Therefore it’s very hard to visually identify. Amir Haas succeeds in overcoming that difficulty by reporting from the ground. [···] Amir places importance on “being on the ground.” Her conviction that there’s no real peace when those under ‘occupation’ can’t live in happiness gives her a piercing insight into our world today.”
This is what Doi Doshikuni - a well-known Japanese journalist - said about Haas’s reporting: When Haas visited Japan in 2017, she went to Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Fukushima and interacted with journalists and citizens. At the end of her visit, she had a meaningful conversation with SUH Kyung-sik about her identity. Voices from Disputed Territories is a documentary film about this journey filmed and produced by Director KAMAKURA Hideya. All over the world, people are separated by callous “walls.” Many don’t want to see what’s over the wall, much less hear what the other side has to say. But there are those whose voices penetrate through the cracks in the wall. We have to listen to those voices. That’s how we resist as humans.

This year’s "Diaspora in Focus" section aims to look at the Yemen refugee issue in a forward-thinking manner through films about Jeju and Yemen. While it's a good idea to raise concerns through films, having face-to-face discussions is probably the most effective way in understanding differences. As a result, we’ve invited a very special guest. They are actual Yemeni refugees who risked their lives to reach Jeju-do. They are also the protagonists in Niel P George’s Hope, Passion, Family. We hope you will welcome them with warm hospitality.

In order to create a society that respects cultural diversity and human rights, one that is peaceful and equal, we need to take an in-depth look at our own current state of society first. Last year, when we saw how some in our society reacted toward the Yemen refugees in Jeju-do, we could see that racism had surfaced itself. The discrimination and hatred that were spread through social media and the internet reached critical levels. What is the role of the youth in these situations as they prepare for the next generation? Communal solidarity is more important than anything in overcoming discrimination and hate. For me and us, the issues of cultural diversity and human rights involve having ‘a world that respects differences and lives in unity’ as a starting point.

A junior high school student made a post on the Blue House Petition Board. It was a request to accept an Iranian boy as a refugee through fair evaluation. The petition stated that since the boy had converted to Catholicism, his life was in danger if he returned to Iran. According to Korean refugee laws, religious persecution is a valid reason for granting refugee status, but the Iranian boy’s application had been rejected. In fact, it was his classmate that took steps to protect him. His friends started to learn about the refugee issue, and relay demonstrations were organized. Many months later, the Department of Justice granted refugee status to the Iranian boy. The students agreed that this sequence of events “a small signpost in the refugee human rights movement,” and it should be remembered. We have invited these students to the 7th Diaspora Film Festival in order to share their precious achievements that shine a brightlight of friendship upon our society.

Japan’s largest Koreatown exists in an area connecting the Osaka-Kanjo line’s Tsuruhashi station, Momodani station, and Hiranogawa. The area is now called Ikuno-gu, but until the 60s, it was called “Ikaino.” About 40,000 ethnic Koreans still reside in this area. JO Ji-hyun, a Korean photographer from Jeju Island, ensured images of the “Ikaino” in the 60s were preserved in time with his photos. Images of the ethnic Korean market in the 60s he snapped depict the life of those from Jeju Island. During the 60s, the political conflict between the North and South Korea intensified after the ROK-Japan treaty. This tension also spilled over into the ordinary lives of common people and the photos reveal the frigid atmosphere of the Korean market. However, his real-life photos also show how ethnic Koreans lived through this tense period of political conflict between North and South Korea. The photos taken of the “Ikaino” depict a world of poverty that had been associated with ethnic Koreans in Japan. Jo Jaehyun took those photos to preserve the “Ikaino” in time and to use them as historical evidence for the future. From his photos, we can discover a previously unknown part of the Korean diaspora.

Beyond the Sun is an art exhibition held along with the Diaspora Film Festival which explores the aesthetic beauty hidden within the colonization and division, war, ideological conflict, etc. surrounding Korea’s modern history. The exhibition displays works from Byun Wol-ryong(1916 - 1900) to works from the 1980s. Byun Wol-ryong was a Koryo-saram who painted the hardships and discrimination faced by his people. The works from the 1980s deal with the confusion of cultural diversity and diaspora that arose from globalization and the migration and borders that arose from our current societal systems. These works are displayed in two parts in order to show the new conditions that are facing our diaspora.
Part 1 “Returning to the Homeland” displays some 30 of Byun Wol-ryong's works which represent the divisions of nations and colonization throughout a century. Having to live in virtual exile, not as a result of voluntary choices but external conditions, which divided his homeland into two separate nations, north and south, and meant that he couldn’t connect with either side, forced to live a life of separation through the Cold War in the Soviet Union, had an enormous effect on all of his works. The exhibition casts light on the works of Byun Wol-ryong with the starting point being before and after 1953 when he visited his home country for a brief time, and it explores the expectations, nostalgia, resignation, despair and complicated feelings regarding diaspora. Part 2 “The Affluent Sun” exhibit the canvas works, videos, installations of modern artists who focus on diaspora, including Kim Kira × Kim Hyungkyu, Min Sunghong, Lee Sooyoung, Im Heung-soon, Kanazawa sumi, and Cody Choi. The existing history division and memories of the motherland, migration and borders that extend past national boundaries, records of migration of the ethnic Koreans, the confusion that relates to cultural diversity and identity, etc. are dealt with along with showing the individual spectrums of the artists as they shed light on the globalization phenomena that has engendered various complexities and problems that develop from the concept of diaspora. We hope you can join us on this unfamiliar journey that explores reason, means and manner of diaspora that extends beyond borders, ideology and time.