Recently I've got very excited about haikyo - abandoned places. Due to factors such as the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble in the 90s, and a declining population in many rural areas, there are lots of abandoned theme parks, hotels, train stations and businesses to be found in Japan. There's lots of interesting stuff to be found if you poke around in these hidden derelict treasurehouses, and you probably won't get crushed to death by unsafe building structures (I hope). I've a few places on my list that I want to nose around in, but last week was my first. Getting there was a little tricky - we had a location on a map but not exact directions, and there was a small element of treasure hunting in working out how exactly to reach our destination - but to be honest this made it all the more fun when we finally made it.
Welcome to Gifu's abandoned Chongryon school for North Koreans!
A brief history lesson (provided by a thoroughly unqualified teacher) may be necessary here. After Korea - previously known as Joseon - split into two independent countries in 1948, the roughly half-a-million ethnic Koreans living in Japan were given the option of registering as citizens of South Korea. Those who didn't became de facto citizens of North Korea, and because Japanese citizenship is not automatically given to Japanese-born children of foreign nationals, there is still a big community of North Korean nationals here today. A pro-North Korean organisation known as Chongryon provides services such as education to the Korean community, and although its influence appears to be dwindling, there are still a few dozen schools in the country providing North Korean-style education in Japan. The one we went to was abandoned in the 80s, but the shell of the building still remains, glowering at Japan from a hilltop.
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