History: Korea as a Japanese Colony

As the Choson dynasty ended, Korea was a colony of Japan for 35 years.
The Japanese colonial occupation is divided into three phases:
- Military Period (Dark Age): 1910–1919
- Cultural Policy Period: 1919–1931
- Assimilation Period: 1931–1945

Military Period (1910–1919)

First decade: harsh military rule, modernization, new ideas and products.
Resistance:
- Left and right wing squeezed off the peninsula.
- Armed resistance fighters hid in Manchuria.
- Others set up governments in exile in Shanghai and elsewhere.
Collaborators: sought advantages by recognizing Japan's control.
Most farmers and workers tried to make the best of the situation.

Cultural Policy Period (1919–1931)

Second decade: open, subtle censorship and suppression.
Armed resistance continued in Manchuria.
Governments-in-exile abandoned hope of recognition.
Citizens looked for reasons to hope for a better day.
Japan's economy grew, and some Koreans enjoyed new products.
Many Koreans accepted Japan's concepts of an "Asian Greater Co-prosperity Sphere" and "Asia for the Asians."
Cultural creativity flourished. Short stories and poems published in new magazines.
The world economy boomed in the 1920s.
Average Korean was swept along in a flood of development and prosperity.
Subtle emergence of "thought police" and first political arrests foreshadowed darker days.

Assimilation Period (1931–1945)

Third decade: war brought untold hardships to the colony.
Life became difficult for average Japanese citizens but was worse for residents of the colony.
Second-class citizens suffered greatly.

Japan's Interest in Korea

Japan had its eyes on Korea since the 1870s.
Influence grew gradually.
Japanese policy was not always consistent.
Differences between military men and democracy advocates.
Decisive invasion: by-product of the war with Russia in 1904.
- Japanese troops landed at Inchon, marched into Seoul.
- Forced the Korean government to accept Japanese "protection."
Treaty of Portsmouth confirmed that those with the power to intervene were content to let Japan have Korea.
Every move the Japanese made after 1905 served to strengthen their control.
Suppression of a vigorous Korean guerrilla movement.
Korea annexed to the Japanese empire on August 22, 1910.
Korean people did not become citizens of Japan with the rights of Japanese.
No real representation in their own government or control of its policies.
Japan took control of Korea with a large military and civilian police force.
Ruled through a series of governor-generals appointed in Japan.
Age of imperialism.
Japan had already taken control of Taiwan in 1895 as a result of the Sino-Japanese War.
Looking at Manchuria and the mainland of China.
Japanese observed that the world was being carved up by imperial powers.
Choice: to be carved up or seize the carving knife—to be colonized or to become an empire.
Japan's successes: defeating the Chinese and then the Russians.
First and only non-Western empire in the age of imperialism and the first to defeat a European power.
Once Japan began to succeed at imperialism, it could not easily turn back.
Japan was on the road to becoming one of perhaps three or four countries that would rule the world.
At least that was the way it looked to the imperialists at the time.

Military Regime

First Japanese governor-general: Terauchi Masatake (1852–1919).
Appointed resident-general in 1909 to succeed the assassinated Ito Hirobumi (1841–1909).
Became governor-general at the point of annexation.
Terauchi held the post until 1916, and his tenure was one of ruthless military rule.
First phase is called the Military Period.
Increase in numbers of soldiers and military police that Japan brought into the peninsula to combat the resistance movement.
Resistance movement had gained strength after 1905, when Japan declared Korea its protectorate.
Before 1905 a Japanese political takeover had not seemed plausible.
After the Korean army was dissolved in 1910, many who had been in the military joined the guerrilla fighters.
Led to a sudden increase in armed anti-Japanese activity.
Korean resistance remained scattered and poorly organized.
Within a few years, the overwhelming force of the Japanese army and police had eliminated the armed resistance.
- Killing Korean resistance fighters.
- Arresting them.
- Squeezing them out of the country.
Those committed to armed resistance mostly left the peninsula.
Many gathered in Manchuria and Russia, from where they fought a guerrilla war against Japanese forces at the Chinese-Korean border.
During the administration of Governor-General Terauchi, thousands of Koreans were killed:
- Official numbers say 17,000.
- Unofficial estimates are higher.
Some Koreans gave their lives in the fight against occupation; others accommodated themselves to it.
In an effort to diffuse resistance in Korea's traditional aristocratic ruling class, the colonial government gave special treatment to members of the former Korean royal family and to high-ranking pro-Japanese officers.
Some eminent Koreans were offered titles of nobility, others were given pensions, and elderly Confucian scholars were given "age grants" (Han 1975, 406).
An essentially powerless privy council was staffed with pro-Japanese Koreans.
Thanks to the existence of the privy council, which employed 15 pro-Japanese Korean first-class advisers and 55 pro-Japanese Korean councilors, the Japanese could tell the world that Koreans were participating in their government (Kang Man-gil 2005, 6).
Koreans were also employed in large numbers in the lower echelons of the military and civilian police force, by means of which the Japanese controlled Korea.
The military police force, which was widely used for nonmilitary and noncriminal matters, was a special feature of Japanese rule in Korea.
In the words of Korean historian Mang-gil Kang:

The military police were involved directly or indirectly in every aspect of colonial rule, from the collection of intelligence to the extermination of anti-Japanese guerilla units, the summary disposition of criminal affairs, the mediation of civil suits, the serving of processes, the collection of taxes, the protection of forests, the compilation of populations registers, the provision of escorts for postal officers, the enforcement of quarantines and the prevention of epidemics, the measuring of rainfall, the control of economic activities including smuggling, the oversight of labourers, and the diffusion of the Japanese languages, and projects for improving farming. (Kang Man-gil 2005, 7)

Economic Exploitation, Modernization, or Both?

The Japanese changed Korea forever.
Outsiders have been debating whether there was anything good in these changes since the end of their era in Korea in 1945.
In Korea, the whole period tends to be remembered as a time of Japanese exploitation and patriotic Korean resistance (with the occasional traitor and collaborator).
Professor Bruce Cumings describes the view among contemporary Koreans he has met:

Among Koreans today, North and South, the mere mention of the idea that Japan somehow