Did Japanese colonial rule leave anything of significance except a few bad memories? and what did it mean for Japan?
In the late nineteenth century, major imperial powers were trying to carve out spheres of influence for trade, and were racing to gain colonies. Through various manoeuvres, including assassinating several members of the Korean royal family, Japan officially took control of Korea in 1910, renaming it Chōsen. The Japanese continued to occupy Korea until their defeat in World War II in 1945. During the occupation, Koreans struggling to keep a hold of their culture, as Korean language and historical education was banned, and many documents were burned.
Eckert (1991) explores the idea that Korea benefitted from Japanese imperialism in some ways economically. He suggests that the impact of imperialism on Korea in the 1870s drew Korea out into a ‘vigorous new international market dominated by the great capitalist powers.’ (Eckert, p7)
Like Tokugawa Japan, Yi Korea had a strict policy that forbade private foreign trade, restricting international commerce to tributary trade with China and Japan. However, with the Kanghwa Treaty of 1876, which eventually led to the annexation of Korea by Japan, Korea’s commercial isolation was effectively ended. Korea was gradually transformed into an exporter of grains (particularly rice) to Japan, as Japan wedged open and developed the country’s main ports. (Busan in 1876, Weonsan in 1880, Incheon in 1883 and Mokp’o and Kunsan, two of the most important ports in rice trade, in 1897 and 1899.) Many Korean farmers were forced off their own lands while others had to fulfil these grain quotas for Japan. While this of course worked to the benefit of the Japanese, between 1897 and 1919, Korea’s new economic position as an export market also allowed for many enterprising Koreans to accumulate capital. Some of these people then became the core of a nascent industrial bourgeoise in the 1920s and later. This process of bourgeois development was very gradual, but it started due to the impact of the international market from 1876.
In a 1895 work called Seoyu Kyeonmun (‘Things seen and heard in travels to the West’) by Yu Kilchun (1856-1914), an early reformist, he explains the definitions of ‘nation’ and ‘patriotism’ to the Korean people to whom these ideas were still alien. Nationalist thought was introduced to the Koreans before Japanese colonisation, and Yu Kilchun had warned that insufficient nationalism could lead to Korea becoming a ‘slave’ among nations. The Japanese colonisation of Korea was a psychological shock for many Koreans, provoking mixed feelings of shame and wrath, as Japan had always been regarded as an inferior country to them. For many leading intellectuals of the following generation, who had grown up under Japanese rule, believed strongly in Yu Kilchun’s writing and that nationalism should be promoted in order to regain political independence. Eckert suggests that prewar Japan’s ‘ultra-nationalism’ was transmitted directly to Koreans through the colonial education system, and resulted in a much more militant and xenophobic Korean nationalism. (Eckert, p368)
However, Robinson disputes the idea that Japanese colonialism paved the way for Korean nationalism, calling it as ‘simplistic Korea-Japan binary” which overlays various narratives, and denotes that anybody who was successful during the occupation was a ‘collaborator’ and so were ‘non-Korean’. Robinson writes, ‘These politicized narratives obscure a rich and pluralistic discourse on representation of the political community during the colonial period.’ (Robinson, p13) Korean nationalists were divided, and some groups wanted to be closely associated to the West and followed western ideas, whereas some wanted to return to Confucian values. These nationalist divisions are still present in Korea today.
The Japanese government responded to some criticism over how harsh its rule was by easing some policies in the 1920s, by allowing some books and magazines to be published in the Korean language, and investing in government buildings and education. The Japanese claimed that this was to provide opportunities for trade and to modernise Korea.
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