Korea under Japanese rule

• 1. Prelude To Annexation

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  On the 27th of February 1876, the Japan, Korea Treaty of 1876 was signed under duress following the Ganghwa Island incident. This unequal treaty ended Korea's status as a protectorate of Qing China and forced open three Korean ports to Japanese trade. The agreement granted extraterritorial rights to Japanese citizens, mirroring concessions Western powers had secured in Japan after Commodore Perry arrived in 1854. In 1894, the Donghak Peasant Revolution provided a pretext for direct military intervention by Japan. On the 3rd of May 1894, 1,500 Qing forces appeared in Incheon, but Japan attacked Seoul on the 23rd of July 1894 in defiance of the Korean government's demand for withdrawal. Japan won the First Sino-Japanese War, leading to the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 which recognized the full independence of Korea. However, political turmoil continued with the assassination of Queen Min on the 8th of October 1895 by Japanese agents who entered the palace Gyeongbokgung. King Gojong fled to the Russian legation in Seoul on the 11th of February 1896 and governed from there for about a year. By 1904, Japan reported it had developed 25 reforms intended to introduce into Korea gradually. The Russo-Japanese War ran from the 8th of February 1904 to the 5th of September 1905, eliminating Russia as a rival influence. Under the Treaty of Portsmouth signed in September 1905, Russia acknowledged Japan's paramount interest in Korea. Two months later, Korea became a Japanese protectorate through the Japan, Korea Treaty of 1905. Emperor Gojong secretly sent three representatives to the Second Peace Conference in The Hague in June 1907 to question the legality of the protectorate convention. One representative, Yi Tjoune, committed suicide at The Hague out of despair. In response, the Japanese government forced Gojong to relinquish his imperial authority on the 19th of July 1907. On the 24th of July 1907, a treaty was signed under Lee Wan-yong and former Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi to transfer all rights of Korea to Japan. This led to a large-scale righteous army movement among Koreans. On the 26th of October 1909, Ahn Jung-geun assassinated Ito Hirobumi in Harbin.

• 2. Colonial Administration And Control

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  In May 1910, Minister of War Terauchi Masatake received a mission to finalize Japanese control over Korea after previous treaties had made it a protectorate. On the 22nd of August 1910, Japan effectively annexed Korea with the Japan, Korea Treaty of 1910 signed by Ye Wanyong and Terauchi Masatake who became the first Governor-General of Chōsen. The treaty stipulated that the Emperor of Korea conceded completely his entire sovereignty over the whole Korean territory to the Emperor of Japan. The treaty became effective the same day and was published one week later. During the Military Police Reign Era from 1910 to 1919, police had the authority to rule the entire country. Akashi Motojiro was appointed commander of Japanese military police forces which replaced the Imperial Korean police system in June 1910. These officers started to have great authority over Koreans as they combined police forces and military police. By 1934, Japanese in Chōsen numbered approximately 561,000 out of a total population of over 21 million. In March 2010, 109 Korean intellectuals and 105 Japanese intellectuals met on the 100th anniversary of the Japan, Korea Treaty of 1910 where they jointly declared this annexation treaty null and void. They announced that the process and formality of the treaty had huge deficiencies. The Japanese administration relocated some artifacts such as a stone monument originally located in the Liaodong Peninsula which was moved to Pyongyang. As of April 2020, 81,889 Korean cultural artifacts are in Japan. The royal palace Gyeongbokgung was partially destroyed beginning in the 1910s to make way for the Japanese General Government Building. Hundreds of historic buildings in Deoksugung were also destroyed to make way for colonial exhibitions.

• 3. Economic Exploitation And Infrastructure

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  From around the time of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894, 1895, Japanese merchants started settling in towns and cities in Korea seeking economic opportunity. By 1908 the number of Japanese settlers in Korea was somewhere below the figure of 500,000. Governor-General Terauchi Masatake facilitated settlement through land reform using the Land Survey Bureau which conducted cadastral surveys establishing ownership based on written proof. By 1920, 90 percent of Korean land had proper ownership of Koreans but the new system denied ownership to those who could not provide written documentation. Because of these developments, Japanese landownership soared while many former Korean landowners became tenant farmers. During the rice shortage in 1918, Japan looked to Korea for increased rice cultivation causing much resentment among peasants. As of the years 1916, 1920, and 1932, the ratio of Japanese land ownership increased from 36.8 to 39.8 to 52.7 percent. In addition, 70 percent of agricultural workers were reduced to tenants of Japanese and Korean landlords who purchased land at low prices. They had to pay high rents of 50 to 70 percent. A 1939 statistic shows that about 94 percent of total capital recorded by factories was Japanese-owned. While Koreans owned about 61 percent of small-scale firms with 5 to 49 employees, about 92 percent of large-scale enterprises with more than 200 employees were Japanese-owned. The Government-General of Korea established the Twelve-Year Railway Plan after 1927 in discussions with the Korean Private Railway Association. New routes such as the Domun, Hyesan, Manpo, Donghae, Gyeongjeon, and Paekmu Lines were constructed. On the 1st of December 1937, the Northern East Coast Line was opened to transport anthracite coal from Dokye to Mukho Port. This line carried passenger cars as well as approximately 15 to 20 freight cars and it was primarily used to transport timber from the Yangyang area. All these enterprises were established with Japanese colonial capital.

• 4. Cultural Erasure And Assimilation

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  In 1911, the proclamation Matter Concerning the Changing of Korean Names was issued barring ethnic Koreans from taking Japanese names. By 1939, however, this position was reversed and Imperial Decree 19 and 20 on Korean Civil Affairs went into effect. Ethnic Koreans were forced to surrender their traditional use of clan-based Korean family name system in favor of a new surname. In practice many Koreans received a Japanese surname though there is controversy over whether adoption was effectively mandatory or merely strongly encouraged. Japan sent anthropologists to Korea who took photos of traditional villages serving as evidence that Korea was backwards. In 1925, the Japanese government established the Korean History Compilation Committee which was administered by the Governor-General. The committee supported the theory of a Japanese colony on the Korean Peninsula called Mimana which remains among the most disputed issues in East Asian historiography. The National Palace Museum of Korea was renamed Museum of the Yi Dynasty in 1938. The Governor-General instituted a law in 1933 in order to preserve Korea's most important historical artifacts. This system retained as the present-day National Treasures of South Korea and North Korea was intended to preserve Korean historical artifacts including those not yet unearthed. During World War II many ethnic Korean girls and women mostly aged 12 to 17 were forced by the Japanese military to become sex slaves on the pretext of being hired for jobs such as seamstresses or factory workers.

• 5. World War II Mobilization And Atrocities

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  From 1939, labor shortages as a result of conscription of Japanese men led to organized official recruitment of Koreans to work in mainland Japan. By 1942, the Japanese authorities extended provisions of the National Mobilization Law to include conscription of Korean workers for factories and mines. The combination of immigrants and forced laborers during World War II brought the total to over 2 million Koreans in Japan by the end of the war. Of the 5,400,000 Koreans conscripted, about 670,000 were taken to mainland Japan for civilian labor. In Japan, 60,000 of the 670,000 mobilized laborers died while estimates of deaths range between 270,000 and 810,000 in Korea and Manchuria. Korean laborers were found as far as the Tarawa Atoll where only 129 of the 1,200 laborers survived during the Battle of Tarawa. Starting in 1944, Japan started the conscription of Koreans into the armed forces with all Korean men drafted to either join the Imperial Japanese Army or work in the military industrial sector. From 1944, about 200,000 Korean men were inducted into the army. During World War II, American soldiers frequently encountered Korean soldiers within the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army. Most notably was in the Battle of Tarawa which was considered one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. military history. A fifth of the Japanese garrison during this battle consisted of Korean laborers. After the war, 148 Koreans were convicted of Class B and C Japanese war crimes including Korean prison guards who were particularly notorious for their brutality. The highest-ranking Korean to be prosecuted after the war was Lieutenant General Hong Sa-ik who commanded all Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in the Philippines.

• 6. Resistance Movements And Independence Efforts

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  Since the early 1900s, numerous Koreans based in Manchuria and Primorsky Krai in Russia waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation. Beom-do Hong's unit ambushed and annihilated the Imperial Japanese Army advancing in the Battle of Bongodong in June 1920. The combined forces of independence armies commanded by Kim Chwajin and Hong killed about 1,500 Imperial Japanese soldiers in the Battle of Cheongsanri. In retaliation, the Imperial Japanese Army committed the Gando Massacre massacring between 5,000 and tens of thousands of Korean civilians in Gando. One of the guerrilla leaders in this region was the future dictator of North Korea, Kim Il Sung. In January 1919, Emperor Gojong died suddenly which led to widespread anti-Japanese sentiment among Koreans. On the 8th of February 1919, Korean students issued a Declaration of Independence in Tokyo while Koreans in Seoul issued their own declaration read aloud in Tapgol Park. This gave rise to nationwide March 1 Movement peaceful protests where an estimated 2 million people took part. According to Korean records over a year of demonstrations resulted in 46,948 arrests, 7,509 killed and 15,961 wounded. After the repression of these protests, Koreans fled the peninsula and congregated in Shanghai to found the Korean Provisional Government. In 1931, member Kim Ku founded the Korean Patriotic Organization which planned attacks on Japanese officials including a 1932 assassination attempt on Emperor Hirohito. The army fought in China and Burma preparing for its return to Korea as the tide of World War II turned against Japan.

• 7. Liberation And Postwar Division

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  Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on the 15th of August 1945 ending 35 years of Japanese colonial rule though Japanese troops remained in Southern Korea until fully withdrawing by mid-September. American forces under General John R. Hodge arrived at the southern part of the Korean Peninsula on the 8th of September 1945 while the Soviet Army stationed themselves in the northern part. U.S. Colonel Dean Rusk proposed to Chischakov that Korea should be split at the 38th parallel during an emergency meeting to determine postwar spheres of influence. This proposal led to the division of Korea into occupation zones under the rule of the Soviet Union and the United States. Following liberation, the Name Restoration Order was issued on the 23rd of October 1946 enabling Koreans to restore their names if they wished. Many Koreans in Japan chose to retain their Japanese names either to avoid discrimination or later to meet requirements for naturalization as Japanese citizens. Within South Korea, a particular focus is the role of numerous ethnic Korean collaborators with Japan including Park Chung Hee who became president of South Korea. Until 1964, South Korea and Japan had no functional diplomatic relations until they signed the Treaty on Basic Relations which declared all treaties made between Empires null and void. The legacy of Japanese colonization continues to be extremely controversial causing diplomatic issues regularly.