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Following Japan's aggression in Manchuria and subsequently in other parts of China, many Koreans were mobilised into the armed forces and many hundreds of thousands were shipped to Japan as forced labourers. By this time, Japan's hold on the Korean peninsula had intensified and many basic freedoms were denied to Koreans. Korean language instruction was abolished, for example, and the Japanese language was forced upon the people. Furthermore, the Koreans were obliged to change their names and adopt Japanese names. Between 1939 and 1945 a total of 1,259,900 forced labourers were shipped to Japan from the Korean peninsula.

At the end of the Second World War about a third of the Koreans living in Japan at that time returned to their homeland. Many of course now had roots in Japan, having married and had families here and they elected to stay in Japan. Some people chose not to return home immediately and as time went on decided to stay and others were reluctant to return to what had become the Communist-controlled northern part of the peninsula. And there was a logistical problem - there simply weren't enough ships to take everyone back. As a result, just over fifty years later, some 700,000 Koreans reside in Japan and form the largest minority group in the country.

Yuki is one of them. She is a 7 year old girl living in Yao, Osaka and to all intents and purposes she appears to be just like any other seven-year old girl. She goes to the local school and looks and speaks like her classmates, but she has not been treated in quite the same way as the others. Like her classmates, Yuki was born and brought up in Osaka and uses a Japanese name. But she has been told many times by her parents not to disclose her Korean background and it is difficult for her to bring her friends home since they might notice the 'kimuchi' and ask her if she is Korean. Although she doesn't quite understand why she must keep her nationality a secret, she senses that things might become awkward for her if she identifies herself as a Korean.