Schools teach Koreans in Japan pride in culture of homeland

The children, gathered in rows on a school field in Tokyo, crouch and then reach up in unison, waving red, white and blue banners to form a North Korean flag as the school band plays an emotional rendition of a song for their "motherland."

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice flag cheering Routines at a Tokyo Korean junior and senior high school in Tokyo. Many third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans brought to Japan during the imperialist years before and during World War II remain loyal to their roots. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

They are third- and fourth-generation descendants of Koreans, including many who were forcibly taken from their homeland to labor in mines and factories during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 until its 1945 defeat in World War II.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students attend a Japanese language class at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Though many have become citizens of Japan or South Korea, the students' families remain loyal to their heritage, choosing to send their children to one of some 60 private schools that favor North Korea, teaching the culture and history.

Despite recent North Korean missile launches, including two that flew over Japan, students and graduates of the schools say they take pride in their community and view it as a haven from the discrimination they face in Japan.

In this Sept. 26, 2017 photo, a student cleans the blackboard under the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hanging on the classroom wall at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

"We do things together, and we help each other," Ha Yong Na, a 16-year-old mix of giggles and poise, said as she demonstrated her Korean dance moves with a classmate.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, a student flag team practices a performance waving red, white and blue banners to form th North Korea national flag at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo.  (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Here, portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on classroom walls. Teachers instruct in the language of their ancestry, and Japanese and English are offered as foreign languages. The cafeteria serves kimchee for lunch.

FILE - In this May 19, 2013 photo, a group of nationalist protesters, rear, march through a Tokyo street to denounce "privileges" for Koreans living in Japan, past a counter-protester, bottom right, yells at them. Extremist groups sometimes take to Tokyo streets, waving militarist rising-sun flags and chanting anti-Korean slogans. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi, File)

About 450,000 ethnic Koreans live in Japan, and several thousand attend such schools.

Schools like the North Korean Junior and Senior High School in Tokyo underline a deep divide in a country often portrayed as homogenous. North Korea's missile launches and nuclear weapons tests have deepened the complexity of the situation.

In this Oct. 5, 2017 photo, Myoung-joo Boo, 45, an actor, a third-generation Korean in Japan and a graduate of the North Korean school, speaks during an interview in Tokyo.  (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

Ha and her classmates said they cherish their shared heritage and friendships and are happy they don't have to worry about being picked on for not being Japanese.

In this Oct. 5, 2017 photo, Yeong-I Park, a 42-year-old filmmaker who went to North Korean schools, from kindergarten through college, speaks during an interview in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Yuri Kageyama)

"We want graduates of our school to go out into Japanese society, and the world, with pride, as Koreans in Japan, and be able to confidently express themselves," said Kim Seng Fa, a graduate, teacher and academic affairs director at the 7-decade-old school.

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In the U.S., being born there makes one an American. In Japan, citizenship must be acquired for immigrants through a government system. Some have complained the process forces people to give up their loyalties to the cultures of their origin.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice a performance waving red, white and blue banners to form the North Korean national flag at a Tokyo Korean high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Many Koreans seek to avoid hassles by taking on Japanese names and blending in. But others like Myoung-joo Boo, a 45-year-old actor, prefer to embrace their ethnic heritage, although he stresses he never tries to get into an argument on cultural pride.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students walk by a classroom where the portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il hang on the wall at a Tokyo Korean junior and senior high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

"People who don't like Koreans don't have to come near me. And I will live with those who don't care about such things," said Boo, a graduate of the North Korean schools.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students practice flag cheering routines at a Korean high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

"In America, people who may have been historically forcibly brought in see themselves as American. But for Koreans, I am born in Japan, but I see myself as Korean," Boo said.

The schools, founded by the first generation of Koreans in Japan, are privately run and financed by tuition and donations. The graduates and students are fighting several court battles to get the schools recognized as private schools to win the same government subsidies.

The rulings have varied depending on the courts, and the fight is expected to eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court. None of the schools now get such subsidies. Attendance has been shrinking with each generation because of Japan's overall declining birthrate, and more people choose to assimilate into Japanese society or take South Korean citizenship.

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One of the worst atrocities against Koreans in Japan came after the Sept. 1, 1923, Great Kanto Earthquake, when thousands were lynched by vigilante mobs and police after false rumors spread that they were poisoning wells.

Today, the antagonisms are less violent, but they remain. Koreans have been traditionally shunned by some mainstream employers. That's changing, partly because Japanese companies are becoming more global, and employment from multinationals is increasingly available. In the past, the stereotype jobs have been in restaurants and pachinko parlors, and in entertainment.

This year, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike declined to send a customary annual eulogy message to the Korean victims of the 1923 earthquake, which left more than 140,000 people dead or missing in Tokyo and surrounding areas, angering civil rights advocates. She gave no reason, but Koike has won support from nationalist-leaning factions that question accounts of atrocities committed against Koreans and other Asians before and during World War II.

Extremist groups sometimes take to Tokyo streets, waving militarist rising-sun flags and chanting anti-Korean slogans.

Online hate speech remains rampant, with trolls stalking people known to have Korean ancestry, such as actress Kiko Mizuhara. Students of North Korean schools are sometimes harassed on commuter trains, and some have had their clothing slashed with knives.

In this Sept. 26, 2017, photo, students clean their classroom under portraits of the late North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il at a Korean high school in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Hwaji Shin, a sociology professor at the University of San Francisco, who grew up as a third-generation Korean in Japan, believes the harassment has worsened, becoming more systematic and threatening as worries mount over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

Resentment toward immigrant communities and other minorities, apparent in many countries, also reflects insecurities over globalization and widening inequality, Shin said.

"When people are increasingly competing over a smaller pie and when someone whispers in your ear, those are the people who are taking the slice of pie away from you. It is very easy to harbor hatred against that group," she said.

The myth persists that Japan has no problem with discrimination, and the country's mainstream media rarely mention such issues, Shin said.

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As in most immigrant experiences, successive generations of Koreans in Japan, including those at the North Korean schools, speak Japanese at home. Like their Japanese peers, they enjoy Japanese pop music and American rock, and watch local and American TV shows and Hollywood movies.

Yet Yeong-I Park, a 42-year-old filmmaker who attended North Korean schools from kindergarten through college, still considers himself "a foreigner."

He is married to a Korean born in Japan and his children attend North Korean schools. He has visited North Korea 17 times, and says the country is changing.

Like others of his background, he empathizes with North Korea's historical view that it is their own country that suffered a brutal war of invasion by the U.S. — a narrative contrary to the Western view that North Korea was the aggressor in the 1950-53 Korean War.

Park views North Koreans as misunderstood victims.

"I feel news about North Korea is really exaggerated, especially in Japan," he said. "They depict it as though it's hell on Earth."

Kum Son Gyun, 17, a student at a North Korean school, visited North Korea on a school trip this year and found the place anything but hellish.

"It was a fantastic place," said Kum, whose father works as an editor of a publication for the North Korean community in Japan. "They had cows."

When asked about the recent North Korean news dominating coverage in Japan — the missile and nuclear threat — his eyes started to brim with tears.

"I want to believe my country is right, and I have believed in my country since I was a child, and that isn't going to waver," he said. "I believe my country is right."

SEATTLE (AP) — Saturday marks marijuana culture’s high holiday, 4/20, when college students gather — at 4:20 p.m. — in clouds of smoke on campus quads and pot shops in legal-weed states thank their customers with discounts.

This year’s edition provides an occasion for activists to reflect on how far their movement has come, with recreational pot now allowed in nearly half the states and the nation’s capital. Many states have instituted “social equity” measures to help communities of color, harmed the most by the drug war, reap financial benefits from legalization. And the White House has shown an openness to marijuana reform.

Here’s a look at 4/20's history:

The origins of the date, and the term “420” generally, were long murky. Some claimed it referred to a police code for marijuana possession or that it derived from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” with its refrain of “Everybody must get stoned” — 420 being the product of 12 times 35.

But the prevailing explanation is that it started in the 1970s with a group of bell-bottomed buddies from San Rafael High School, in California's Marin County north of San Francisco, who called themselves “the Waldos.” A friend’s brother was afraid of getting busted for a patch of cannabis he was growing in the woods at nearby Point Reyes, so he drew a map and gave the teens permission to harvest the crop, the story goes.

During fall 1971, at 4:20 p.m., just after classes and football practice, the group would meet up at the school’s statue of chemist Louis Pasteur, smoke a joint and head out to search for the weed patch. They never did find it, but their private lexicon — “420 Louie” and later just “420” — would take on a life of its own.

The Waldos saved postmarked letters and other artifacts from the 1970s referencing “420,” which they now keep in a bank vault, and when the Oxford English Dictionary added the term in 2017, it cited some of those documents as the earliest recorded uses.

A brother of one of the Waldos was a close friend of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, as Lesh once confirmed in an interview with the Huffington Post, now HuffPost. The Waldos began hanging out in the band’s circle and the slang spread.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s: Steve Bloom, a reporter for the cannabis magazine High Times, was at a Dead show when he was handed a flyer urging people to “meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais.” High Times published it.

“It’s a phenomenon,” one of the Waldos, Steve Capper, now 69, once told The Associated Press. “Most things die within a couple years, but this just goes on and on. It’s not like someday somebody’s going to say, ‘OK, Cannabis New Year’s is on June 23rd now.’”

While the Waldos came up with the term, the people who made the flier distributed at the Dead show — and effectively turned 4/20 into a holiday — remain unknown.

With weed, naturally.

Some celebrations are bigger than others: The Mile High 420 Festival in Denver, for example, typically draws thousands and describes itself as the largest free 4/20 event in the world. Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park has also attracted massive crowds, but the gathering was canceled this year, with organizers citing a lack of financial sponsorship and city budget cuts.

College quads and statehouse lawns are also known for drawing 4/20 celebrations, with the University of Colorado Boulder historically among the largest, though not so much since administrators banned the annual smokeout over a decade ago.

Some breweries make beers that are 420-themed, but not laced, including SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, which is throwing a 420 music festival this weekend and whose founders went to the University of Colorado.

Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California, releases its “Waldos’ Special Ale” every year on 4/20 in partnership with the term’s coiners. That's where the Waldos will be this Saturday to sample the beer, for which they picked out “hops that smell and taste like the dankest marijuana,” one Waldo, Dave Reddix, said via email.

4/20 has also become a big industry event, with vendors gathering to try each other's wares.

The number of states allowing recreational marijuana has grown to 24 after recent legalization campaigns succeeded in Ohio, Minnesota and Delaware. Fourteen more states allow it for medical purposes, including Kentucky, where medical marijuana legislation that passed last year will take effect in 2025. Additional states permit only products with low THC, marijuana's main psychoactive ingredient, for certain medical conditions.

But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It is listed with drugs such as heroin under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it has no federally accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

The Biden administration, however, has taken some steps toward marijuana reform. The president has pardoned thousands of people who were convicted of “simple possession” on federal land and in the District of Columbia.

The Department of Health and Human Services last year recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified as Schedule III, which would affirm its medical use under federal law.

According to a Gallup poll last fall, 70% of adults support legalization, the highest level yet recorded by the polling firm and more than double the roughly 30% who backed it in 2000.

Vivian McPeak, who helped found Seattle's Hempfest more than three decades ago, reflected on the extent to which the marijuana industry has evolved during his lifetime.

“It's surreal to drive by stores that are selling cannabis,” he said. “A lot of people laughed at us, saying, ‘This will never happen.’”

McPeak described 4/20 these days as a “mixed bag.” Despite the legalization movement's progress, many smaller growers are struggling to compete against large producers, he said, and many Americans are still behind bars for weed convictions.

“We can celebrate the victories that we've had, and we can also strategize and organize to further the cause,” he said. “Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We've got to keep earning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”

For the Waldos, 4/20 signifies above all else a good time.

“We’re not political. We’re jokesters,” Capper has said. “But there was a time that we can’t forget, when it was secret, furtive. ... The energy of the time was more charged, more exciting in a certain way.

“I’m not saying that’s all good — it’s not good they were putting people in jail,” he continued. “You wouldn’t want to go back there.”

Associated Press writer Claire Rush contributed from Portland, Oregon.

FILE - Caretakers oversee a grow room for medical marijuana at ShowGrow, a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, April 20, 2017. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

FILE - People smoke marijuana during the annual 4/20 marijuana gathering at Civic Center Park in downtown Denver, Wednesday, April 20, 2016. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

FILE - Alfalfa farmers Diane and Russ Jones look on during a public hearing on medical cannabis at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, June 5, 2019, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

FILE - A San Rafael High School newspaper from June 1974 referencing 420, is shown that is stored at a bank vault in San Francisco, April 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

FILE - People buy marijuana products at the Essence cannabis dispensary, Saturday, July 1, 2017, in Las Vegas. Nevada dispensaries were legally allowed to sell recreational marijuana starting at 12:01 a.m., that day. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - From left, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., announce a draft bill that would decriminalize marijuana on a federal level Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The bill, called the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, would not only decriminalize marijuana, but also expunge the records of those with non-violent convictions related to cannabis and invest money into restorative justice programs. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File)

FILE - Police handcuff a suspect during a drug raid in Miami, May 18, 1979. Police said eight were arrested and marijuana was seized. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/Al Diaz, File)

FILE - A Drug Enforcement Administration agent shoulders a bundle of marijuana plants down a steep slope after working with other law enforcement officers to clear a patch of the plants from national forest land near Entiant, Wash., Sept. 20, 2005. Police confiscated 465 marijuana plants at the so-called "garden," a small find compared to the thousands of other plants confiscated on some other busts in the area. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

FILE - Kay Nelson, left, and Bryan Grode, retried seniors from Laguna Woods Village, chat in the lobby of Bud and Bloom cannabis dispensary while waiting for a free shuttle to arrive in Santa Ana, Calif., Feb. 19, 2019. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

FILE - Jim Weber examines the inside of The Bud Light marijuana growing trailer at the International Cannabis & Hemp Expo, Saturday, April 17, 2010, in Daly City, Calif. The unit, once hooked up to electricity and water supplies, is a turnkey marijuana growing space. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

FILE - Set to the symbolic 4:20 time, weed patterns adorn clocks up for sale on the first of three days of Hempfest, Seattle's annual gathering to advocate the decriminalization of marijuana, at Myrtle Edwards Park on the waterfront in Seattle, Aug. 15, 2014. (Jordan Stead/seattlepi.com via AP, File)

FILE - Music fans seek shelter in a grass hut at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival in Bethel, N.Y., Aug. 17, 1969. The sign above reads "Have a Marijuana." Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - Joseph DuPuis, co-founder of Doc & Yeti Urban Farms, a licensed cannabis producer, looks out into a growing area in Tumwater, Wash., March 15, 2023. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/Eugene Johnson, File)

FILE - Gabe Williams works on an exhibit at the Cannabition cannabis museum in Las Vegas, Sept. 18, 2018. The museum celebrates all things cannabis with displays that include a glass bong taller than a giraffe and huggable faux marijuana buds. Medical marijuana is now legal in 38 states. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - A large crowd cheers as the time reaches 4:20 p.m., on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, April 20, 2009. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

FILE - Patrons smoke marijuana at Lowell's Original Cannabis Cafe, a legal marijuana establishment, in Los Angeles, Nov. 13, 2019. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

FILE - A vendor makes change for a marijuana customer at a cannabis marketplace in Los Angeles, April 15, 2019. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

FILE - The Waldos, from left, Mark Gravitch, Larry Schwartz, Dave Reddix, Jeffrey Noel and Steve Capper sit on a wall they used to frequent at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, Calif., April 13, 2018. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

FILE - Members of a crowd numbering tens of thousands smoke marijuana and listen to live music at the Denver 420 pro-marijuana rally at Civic Center Park in Denver, April 20, 2013. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)

FILE - A guest takes a puff from a marijuana cigarette at the Sensi Magazine party celebrating the 420 holiday in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, April 20, 2019. Marijuana advocates are gearing up for Saturday, April 20, 2024. Known as 4/20, marijuana's high holiday is marked by large crowds gathering in parks, at festivals and on college campuses to smoke together. This year, activists can reflect on how far the movement has come. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)