One of Japan's open secrets: burakumin and ethnic Koreans dominate the organized crime gangs known as the yakuza. More than three-quarters of the members of the Yamaguchi Gumi, Japan's biggest underworld organization are said to be burakumin or ethnic Koreans.
Obara's company reportedly became a front for the Sumiyoshi yakuza. Joji Obara was born in 1952 to an impoverished Korean family in postwar Osaka. His father had been a scrap collector, then a taxi driver who worked his way into owning a fleet of cars and a string of pachinko parlors from which he amassed a fortune. Copyright c 2004 Time Inc. http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,108848,00.html
appealed for help to a Korean Japanese named Hisayuki Machii, who was then in the process of forming one of the major gangs of the yakuza, the Toseikai, largely ethnic Korean gang known for it’s ruthless control of nightclub in Tokyo’s famous Ginza district. Yakuza Japan's Criminal Underworld Expanded Edition David E. Kaplan covers organized crime and terrorism for U.S. News & World Report http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0520215621/qid=1104522877/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-5296614-4164812?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 He is coauthor of The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult that exposes cozy relationships between Aum, Yakuza and North Korea
The U.S. Embassy Japan North Korean Officials Have Long History in Crime Bolton specified three sources of funds remitted legally and illegally to that country: sales of ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction; sales of illegal drugs and connections with Japanese organized crime networks.