A permanent resident of Tokyo who refused to be fingerprinted in 1980 and triggered an antifingerprinting movement on the basis of discrimination, called on the Justice Ministry Tuesday to create a new law for ethnic Koreans that supersedes the Alien Registration Law.
Han Jong Souk, 68, a first-generation Korean resident of Shinjuku Ward, said that although Japan's mandatory fingerprinting of all foreign residents will be abolished during the current Diet session, the basic principles behind the law that repress and discriminate against ethnic Koreans will not change.
In other words, permanent residents — the status given to the offspring of Koreans who came here during Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula — will still be required to carry alien registration cards.
"Ever since I refused to be fingerprinted on Sept. 10, 1980, I have never carried an alien registration card, but authorities can't do anything about it," Han said after visiting the ministry's Immigration Bureau on Tuesday. "My case is proof that the Alien Registration Law is a dead letter."
The reform bill, deliberated and approved in the House of Councilors last month, proposes to abolish the fingerprinting requirement for all foreign residents.
It also plans to downgrade the penalty for permanent residents who do not carry their alien registration cards at all times from a criminal penalty to an administrative penalty.
But the bill does not abolish the requirement that all permanent foreign residents carry the cards at all times.
He also called on the government to issue apologies to all people who have received penalties for not complying with the fingerprinting requirement and urged the government not to disclose information on registered foreign residents.
The fingerprinting system was previously abolished for foreigners with permanent resident status, who are mostly Koreans, in 1993.