The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle

https://www.theramenrater.com/2018/07/18/2898-saikebon-yakis...

Looks like a good reference. The link leads to a review of an Italian brand of noodles that are probably pretty rare outside of this country.

It may not count as top shelf, but Nongshim's products aren't bottom shelf (that honor goes to Maruchan.)

Many returned to Korea after Korea gained independence. But many also stayed. One of the descendants of these Korean-Japanese is Masayoshi Son, founder of Softbank.

I've read some interview of him when he discussed his early years. He recalls riding in the back of a hand cart pulled by his parents (or grandparents) who were going around town in Japan, picking up discarded food trash from trashcans outside homes/restaurants to feed to the pigs. Remember, there was no disposal unit in kitchen sinks, so food trash was thrown into trash. This was early 1960s, as he was born in 1957. It was probably one of the worst ways to make a living, but as a Korean-Japanese, that was about what they could do.

Many were blocked from getting a job in the Japanese corporations, which is one of the reasons many Pachinkos in Japan are owned by Korean-Japanese, or so I heard.

Masayoshi Son specifically recalled having a hard time getting a business loan, until a sympathetic Japanese banker gave him that loan.

Certain irony for sure. Coming from Korean-Japanese family who was considered lowest, to be 2nd richest Japanese citizen.

Btw, while looking up facts, I just discovered another Korean-Japanese who is one of top 20 richest individuals, Chang-Woo Han. Never knew that.

Ahh, the wonders of internet.

EDIT:

Clicked on of the links in the wiki and found this article

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/16/national/sons-r...

Son was born in 1957 to Korean parents in a flood-prone area of Saga Prefecture, where poor Korean immigrants lived in a cluster of shacks, many by keeping pigs in the house and making bootleg alcohol, according to “Ampon,” a biography of Son by journalist Shinichi Sano.

In the book, interviews with Son’s relatives shed light on his upbringing. His cousin recounts how he often caught a preschool-age Son “studying like nobody’s business while he was soaked up to his knees in a shack full of floodwater smelling of feces.”

His early dwelling was miserable, and his Korean descent made him a target for discrimination, overshadowing his early years. But Son’s determination probably surfaced in his early teens, his biographers say.

Sano, for example, describes interesting episodes in which Son transferred, in the middle of his first semester in junior high school, to a more reputable school at his own wish and did all the paperwork himself. In another episode, a 15-year-old Son, now in high school, asked his third-year homeroom teacher from junior high to a restaurant and begged him to become the president of a cram school he planned to set up. The teacher turned him down.