Japan Press Weekly

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2022 September 14 - 20 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Legal Affairs Bureau recognizes 192 Web postings as hate speech against Koreans

The Yokohama District Legal Affairs Bureau has recently recognized that 192 discriminative postings on the Internet against a 3rd-generation Korean resident to be illegal.

The Korean resident, Choi Kang-ija, held a press conference in Kawasaki City in Kanagawa Prefecture on September 8, accompanied by her lawyers. She said she in June 2020 submitted to the Kawasaki City government a list of 330 Web postings discriminating against Korean residents in Japan and requested the postings to be removed from the Internet based on a city ordinance which prohibits and punishes hate speech. The city, however, determined only a few postings to be hate speech even though among the 330 was the tweet, "Choi Kang-ija is a parasite living in Japan."

Dissatisfied with the city's response, she filed a complaint with and submitted the same list to the Justice Ministry's Yokohama District Legal Affairs Bureau. The bureau, as a result, found 95% of the listed postings on blogs or on bulletin boards as well as about 60% of the listed tweets to be guilty of violating relevant laws.

Choi Kang-ija at the press conference welcomed the bureau's judgement and said, "I hope this result will give a boost to local governments to provide relief to victims of human rights abuses, including hate speech."

Past related article:
> Ordinance penalizing hate speech enacted in Kawasaki City [December 13, 2019]