The final line of the June 4 article from Kyodo News, "Chinese now No. 1 foreign group," erroneously characterized the 426,227 Koreans who are classified as special permanent residents as "those who were forcibly brought to Japan from the Korean Peninsula when it was under Japanese colonial rule, and their offspring."
Most people with Chosen (Korean) registers who remained in the prefectures after World War II, and then lost their Japanese nationality and qualified for preferential treatment under immigration laws, came to the prefectures from the Peninsula without being "brought" or otherwise "forced" to migrate. Most Koreans who were brought, some by force, as conscript laborers after Japan began to mobilize for the war in China, returned after World War II.
The Kyodo statement is typical of remarks, added to foreign-language versions of Japanese news reports, which perpetuate misinformation in the name of explaining background. The space would better have been used to point out -- as some Japanese reports did, citing Justice Ministry and Immigration Bureau sources -- that Chinese now outnumber Koreans, not only because more Chinese have been coming than leaving but also because the settled Korean population is shrinking as a result of aging (death) and naturalization -- a trend that will continue.
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