The collapse of the Japanese colonial regime and the Cold War caused the massive movement of people. Many Koreans in Japan tried to return to the Korean peninsula, but over 600,000 were still in Japan when the Korean War broke out in 1950. Those people are known as Zainichi. Over 93,000 of them including 6,000 Japanese women, who had married Korean men during the colonial period, repatriated from Japan to North Korea between 1959 and 1984. After several decades, some of them and their children escaped and returned to South Korea and Japan. They are known as repatriated Zainichi ‘North Korean Migrants (returnees).’

This dissertation examines the family histories of repatriated Zainichi ‘North Korean Migrants’ (returnees) in East Asia history. I consider East Asia as space shaped by crosscutting postcolonial history and bipolar history (Cold War history) after at the end of WWII. The massive repatriation in 1959 from Japan to North Korea had an irreversible impact on East Asian history because it reinforced regime competition between South and North Korea.

I argue that the repatriation of Zainichi from Japan to North Korean in 1959 affected nation-building narratives in East Asia and thus laid the foundations for ongoing contentious history problems. The national narratives of North Korea and South Korea looked to the past, presenting the Zainichi community as a result of the colonial era, and as a community to be rescued from colonialism. However, Japan’s national narrative sought to sever the present from the past, which implied that Zainichi should be returned to their country of origin and Zainichi existed only in the past in their national narrative. The development of these three national narratives produced contradictory national narratives which laid the foundation for the enduring and contentious history conflict in East Asia.