Picture by Ken OHYAMAAll around Tsuruhashi station, under the train tracks, there is a labyrinth of Koresn market stalls. You can find all sorts of imported items, k-pop goods and Korean food. But this is not yet Korea Town. A few more blocks away you will find Miyukimori Shrine, which is the entrance to Korea Town, also known as Miyukimori Shopping Street (御幸森商店街). A three hundred-meter-long shopping street with about 150 Korean food stores, restaurants and clothing stores. In both areas you will find some of the finest Korean food in Japan, Kimchi of every type, for example soft-shelled crab kimchi, cucumber kimchi or celery kimchi. Outside Tsuruhashi station an entire side street is devoted to Korean barbeque (yakiniku), for this street you leave the West gates of the station.
Picture by kana
Picture by m-louis .®
Picture by Jon PowerMost young people in Tsuruhashi can't speak Korean anymore. They all converse in Japanese. Tsuruhashis population comes from South and North Korea. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. At that time, the country was extremely poor and many Koreans migrated to Japan in their search for a better life. During World War II, Japan recruited a great number of Koreans to do forced labor in coal mines and the industries. After the war, in 1948, a rebellion broke out on the southern-most Korean island of Jeju. It was stimulated by agents from North Korea - but the Jeju islanders didn't feel that they wanted to be ruled by Syngman Rhee, the dictator from Seoul. They wanted to live their own way. Rhee cracked down on the rebels. Thousands were killed. The ones who made it out alive fled to Japan. They settled in the Koreatown of Tsuruhashi. Kim Jong-un’s mother, Ko Yong-hui, was born and raised in Tsuruhashi until her family repatriated when she was about 10 years old.
Read also: Tsuruhashi Walking Tour
See the location: Tsuruhashi 鶴橋 Google Map
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