Hanshin Education Incident

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Hanshin Education Incident

Policemen at the protests in Osaka
Native name	阪神教育事件
Date	10 April 1948 - 24 April 1948
Location	Hyogo Prefecture and Osaka Prefecture, Japan
Cause	Closure of Korean ethnic schools in Japan
Deaths	1 Korean casualty

The Hanshin Education Incident (Japanese: 阪神教育事件) occurred in April 1948, when Japanese authorities, acting under the directions of the Government of the United States and the Japanese Ministry of Education, closed down private Korean ethnic schools operating in Japan.^[1][2] This caused protests across Japan that ranged in size to up to 20,000 civilians. The majority of the protests were concentrated on the streets of Osaka and Kobe, the capital of Hyogo Prefecture, where civilians protested the closure of the Korean schools.^[2] Hanshin, the location of many of the demonstrations, is the region that lies between Osaka and Kobe.

The protestors stormed the Hyogo Prefecture Office Building, and held the governor, the prefectural police chief, and officers of the Allied Occupation as hostages in an attempt to coerce them to rescind their decision to close the Korean ethnic school.^[1][2][3] While an agreement was briefly agreed upon, the Japanese and the U.S. government broke the deal, declared a state of emergency in Hyogo, and arrested thousands of Koreans living throughout the city.^[1][3]

The schools had been set up by Chōren, an organization for pre-1945 Koreans arrivals to Japan (also known as Zainichi), to preserve Korean heritage through Korean language education.^[4] However, the fear that communists had infiltrated the schools and were attempting to disrupt the U.S. occupation of the region prompted the closure of the schools.^[1][3]

In the 1950s, Koreans living in Japan were able to preserve the existence of Korean ethnic schools through privatization, distancing themselves from the Japanese Communist Party and by establishing Chongryon and Mindan, Zainichi organizations which are supported by the North Korean and South Korean governments, respectively.