[sneak]

Asking the state for permission to travel and jumping through hoops thereby is obnoxious and offensive to me, and that’s even with the circumstance where the US recognizes me as a citizen.

I can imagine a lot of philosophical reasons why someone might not wish to jump through hoops to simply exist and receive the same treatment as everyone else.

In the OP’s case:

> Another question I often hear is: “Why don’t you just acquire Japanese citizenship?” Yes, it is an option. However, until recently, there was a rule requiring us to change the pronunciation of our name to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters.

> For example, Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank. He once held the same status as mine. His original name was Son Jeong-ui, which is how you would pronounce those Chinese characters in Korean. When he naturalized, he became Masayoshi Son.

> For me, Taejun Shin would become “Yasutoshi Shin.” Taejun Shin, Yasutoshi Shin. Hmm, not.

> So, I decided not to change it. Even though the rules have relaxed somewhat now, I have lived with this identity for so long that I’m not inclined to alter it for now.

[decimalenough]

Sure. But the Korean War was in the 50s, all Chosen-seki in Japan are third generation by now, meaning both they and their parents grew up in Japan and have barely any connection to the Choson their grandparents left, much less the DPRK of today. So it just seems to be a bit of an odd hill to die on? If you feel more Korean, get a South Korean passport; if you feel more Japanese, get a Japanese one. (Hell, North Korea will happily issue them passports as well, they're just kind of useless for going anywhere!)

Also, for what it's worth, Chosen-seki in Japan are "special permanent residents" that can do basically anything a Japanese citizen can except vote. The travel restrictions for being stateless are not imposed on them by Japan, but by other countries, who generally view the stateless as extremely high risk for overstaying and/or claiming asylum.

[Muromec]

>So it just seems to be a bit of an odd hill to die on? If you feel more Korean, get a South Korean passport; if you feel more Japanese, get a Japanese one

Could it be that getting a South Korean passport will mean losing the special status and residence in Japan?

[decimalenough]

No, the vast majority of Special Permanent Residents are South Korean citizens.

[compsciphd]

there are so many american jews who have a "legal english name" and a "jewish hebrew one". Sometimes they are similar (i.e. the anglification of the hebrew name, Yehoshua -> Joshua, Daveed (though generally just written David) -> David, Moshe -> Moses, Avraham -> Abraham, with varying degrees of closeness. And sometimes they are not really related at all (perhaps just by similar phonemes, but not by real meaning).

Therefore, to me it feels a strange hill to die on. Even if one had to have their "legal name" be pronounced X, I'm not sure what exactly changes. 1) how you want to refer to yourself will still be how you refer to yourself 2) If the characters are pronounced differently in Japan than elsewhere, won't regular Japanese people already "mispronounce it". (my only guess is that there's some form of characvter mapping going on with different pronounciations for the different character sets?)