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Unequal status of self-employed workers in Japan have produced lower wages and fewer start-up firms, reducing employees chances of progressing to management level.

There were around 1.5 million registered non-Japanese people living in Japan at the end of 1997, of whom around 645,000 have legally declared themselves as Korean. Most of them have spent their whole life in Japan, but they are not entitled to vote. The Japanese government and much of the media seek to present Japanese society as homogenous, but in fact there is considerable ethnic discrimination, both formal and societal. Many Japanese fail to take account of the fact that they have obtained a significant part of their cultural heritage from China through the Korean Peninsula.

There is growing awareness in Japan of the need to make structural changes to the labour market. This trend, along with the changing nature of the Japanese labour force in relation to the country's aging population, means that unemployment will probably not become as severe as in some European countries. Growth of the labour supply has slowed down in the 1990s as a result of the aging of the population, and the supply is forecast to fall from 2005. The aging of the population has also led to an increased proportion of older people in the labour force itself. It is becoming clear that Japan will now have to make more efficient use of the labour market mechanism.

People aged over 65 account for 15% of Japan's total population and could account for 27% by the year 2025, compared with around 20% in Europe and North America. Japan must prepare social resources to care for its aging population and the issue is perceived to be one of the country's most critical forthcoming problems. Life expectancy has grown 50% in recent decades, but the need for care of the chronically long-term ill has become more widespread. The organisation of society can change through the aging population, with social expectations requiring adjustment.

The younger generations of Japan-born Koreans in Japan is adapting to a newly found identity derived from their Korean roots and their exposure to the Japanese culture. A study conducted among Koreans who have come to Japan in the last 5-10 years and the older generations of Koreans, or Kyopo, showed that new immigrants tend to uphold their Korean identity in Japan's alien environment. The younger Japan-born Koreans draw their new identity from both Korean and Japanese traditions, while their ascendants have adopted Japan's cultural traditions and attitudes readily.