CHUNG HYANG GYUN"S news conference was a sight seldom seen in Japan, the raw
anger written across her face, the fury in her voice and words, the palpable
feeling that these last words would somehow redeem the futility of her
actions.

"I want to tell people all over the world that they shouldn"t come to Japan to
work," Ms. Chung said in the perfect Japanese befitting someone who has lived
nowhere else but Japan. "Being a worker in Japan is no different from being a
robot."

After a decade-long battle, the Supreme Court ruled recently that Ms. Chung,
the daughter of a Japanese woman and a South Korean man, who was born in Japan
and has lived all her life here, could not take the test to become a
supervisor at her public health center because she is a foreigner.

"I have no tears to shed," said Ms. Chung, a 55-year-old nurse. "I can only
laugh."

Ms. Chung is what the Japanese call a Zainichi, a term that literally means
"to stay in Japan," but that is usually shorthand for Koreans who came here
during Japan"s colonial rule, and their descendants. Considered outsiders both
in Japan and on the Korean peninsula, they have, over the years, adopted
different ways of living in Japan.

In a Japan that has softened its attitudes toward the Zainichi, many have
become citizens and taken Japanese names, melding into the larger population.
Others have taken citizenship, but kept their Korean names. Others still, like
Ms. Chung, have taken neither citizenship nor name. Disagreements exist, even
within the same family, including Ms. Chung"s.

Reaction to the court"s ruling - that local governments can bar "foreigners"
from holding official positions where they exercise "government power" - was
split along political lines. Liberals said an aging Japan with a shrinking
workforce would lose by shutting out people like Ms. Chung, who could hardly
be considered a true foreigner. Conservatives said foreigners like Ms. Chung
should simply become Japanese citizens.

The morning after Ms. Chung"s news conference, her boss asked her whether she
regretted her words, she recalled in an interview, one recent evening after
work, at her apartment here. "No way," was her answer. "I didn"t say enough."

Ms. Chung"s story begins, as do all the stories of the Zainichi of her
generation, with her parents. Her father, Chung Yeon Gyu, an author and Korean
nationalist who opposed Japanese colonial rule, arrived in Japan in the
1920"s. According to Toshio Takayanagi, a historian at Hosei University here
who researched Mr. Chung"s life, Mr. Chung published novels and essays
critical of the Japanese government through the end of World War II; his
writings were often censored here, and in 1944 he was put on a watch list by a
special police unit.

DURING Japan"s colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945, some Koreans came here
seeking economic opportunities while others were brought as forced laborers.
By 1944, nearly two million Koreans lived in Japan, though most were
repatriated after Japan"s defeat, and the number fell to under 600,000 by
1947. In 1952, the Zainichi here were made to choose between South or North
Korean citizenship, and were recognized as permanent residents of Japan.

Ms. Chung"s father and mother settled in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan.
Growing up there, Ms. Chung remembers, most of her classmates were told by
their parents not to associate with her; a few, though, who came to play at
her house are still friends.

When she entered junior high school, a teacher ordered her to adopt a Japanese
name, complaining that she could not read her Korean one. Other Zainichi in
her class, who used Japanese names and hid their real ethnic background, faced
anguish at graduation ceremonies when certificates were handed out in their
Korean names.

Unwanted in Japan, she had dreamed of finding acceptance in South Korea, where
she headed to study after graduating from college in Japan. "But what I faced
was terrible discrimination," she said.

South Korea, under the military rule of Park Chung Hee from 1961 to 1979, was
fiercely suspicious of Zainichi, many of whom were pro-North Korea. (A
Zainichi would, in fact, later try to assassinate Park in Seoul, killing his
wife instead.) What is more, Zainichi like Ms. Chung, who barely spoke Korean,
were not considered Korean at all, she found.

"I was told that Zainichi are the people who did not come back to Korea
because they did not want to spend money," she said, recalling what would be
her first and last trip to South Korea. "If I said my mother was Japanese,
they looked at me as if they were looking at a dirty thing."

Eventually, Ms. Chung became a public health nurse and in 1988 was hired by
the Tokyo metropolitan government. Given the traditional Japanese respect for
civil servants, her daily life became easier. For once, she faced no
discrimination and even considered getting Japanese citizenship.

But everything changed in 1994 when she applied to take a test for a
managerial post. After she was told that managers had to be Japanese, she
filed the lawsuit that was recently rejected by the Supreme Court.

In recent years, general civil service positions have been opened to
non-Japanese, including in 11 out of 47 prefectures and most big cities. But
only a few municipalities, like Kawasaki City near here, have opened
management-level positions to non-Japanese, and the Supreme Court ruling now
makes it less likely that other municipalities will follow suit.

THE easiest route toward the managerial posts is, of course, to acquire
Japanese citizenship, a choice more and more Zainichi are making. In 2003,
there were only 470,000 officially recognized Zainichi, a drop of about
100,000 since 1993. Most became naturalized Japanese, no longer counted as
Zainichi.

One of them is Ms. Chung"s older brother, Tei Taikin, a professor at Tokyo
Metropolitan University specializing in Japan-Korean relations and Zainichi
issues. He became a naturalized Japanese in 2004 and changed his name. He has
written about his agonizing choice and urged his sister to do the same.

A Zainichi is confined to an uncertain existence, he wrote in Chuo Koron, a
conservative monthly. "In order to remove such uncertainty, you need to get
your nationality closer to your identity - that is, acquire Japanese
nationality and, hopefully, you can live as a Korean-Japanese."

After getting citizenship, he said, he felt as if he had passed through a
tunnel. He did not feel as if he had sprung "suddenly into the bright world
when I got out of the tunnel."

"But, nonetheless," he said, "I feel a kind of relief or lifting of burden."

Ms. Chung said she had not read her brother"s essays.

"Zainichi who get Japanese nationality do so feeling, "What else can I do?" "
she said. "They do so because they do not want to be discriminated against."