View source for Korea under Japanese rule

{{Short description|1910–1945 colony of the Empire of Japan}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2017}}
{{Infobox country
| native_name            = {{lang|ja|朝鮮}}<br />{{small|{{transliteration|ja|Chōsen}}}}<hr />{{lang|ko|조선}}<br />{{small|{{transliteration|ko|Chosŏn}}}}
| conventional_long_name = Korea
| common_name            = 
| empire                 = Japan
| status                 = [[Japanese colonial empire#Korea|Colony]] of the<br>[[Empire of Japan]]
| year_start             = 1910
| year_end               = 1945
| life_span              = 1910–1945
| p1                     = Korean Empire
| flag_p1                = Flag_of_Korea_(1899).svg
| s1                     = Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea{{!}}'''1919:'''<br>Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea
| flag_s1                = Flag of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.svg
| s2                     = People's Republic of Korea{{!}}'''1945:'''<br>People's Republic of Korea
| flag_s2                = Flag of the People's Committee of Korea.svg
| s3                     = Soviet Civil Administration{{!}}Soviet Civil Administration
| flag_s3                = Flag of the Soviet Union.svg
| s4                     = United States Army Military Government in Korea
| flag_s4                = US flag 48 stars.svg
| image_flag             = Flag of Japan (1870–1999).svg
| flag                   = Flag of Japan
| flag_type              = Flag
| image_coat             = Seal of the Government-General of Korea.svg{{!}}class=skin-invert
| symbol                 = Governor-General of Chōsen
| coat_alt               = Seal
| symbol_type            = {{longitem|Seal of the<br />Government-General<br />of Chōsen}}
| national_anthem        = "[[Kimigayo]]"<br><div style="display:inline-block;margin-top:0.4em;">[[File:kimi ga Yo 1930 instrumental.oga]]</div>
| image_map              = Map of Japan and Korea (1945), National Geographic.jpg
| image_map_caption      = 1945 [[National Geographic Maps|''National Geographic'']] map of Korea, showing Japanese placenames and provincial boundaries
| capital                = [[Keijō]]{{sup|a}}<br />(now [[Seoul]], South Korea)
| largest_city           = capital
| official_languages     = {{ubl|[[Japanese language|Japanese]]|[[Korean language|Korean]]}}
| religion               = {{ublist 
 | ''De jure'': None<!--
 --><ref>Sarah Thal. "A Religion That Was Not a Religion: The Creation of Modern Shinto in Nineteenth-Century Japan". In ''The Invention of Religion''., eds. Peterson and Walhof (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002). pp.&nbsp;100–114.</ref><!--
 --><ref>Hitoshi Nitta. "Shintō as a 'Non-Religion': The Origins and Development of an Idea". In ''Shintō in History: Ways of the Kami'', eds. Breen and Teeuwen (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i, 2000).</ref><!--
 --><ref>John Breen, "Ideologues, Bureaucrats and Priests", in ''Shintō in History: Ways of the Kami''.</ref><!--
 --><ref>Hitoshi Nitta. ''The Illusion of "Arahitogami" "Kokkashintou"''. Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūjo, 2003.</ref>
 | ''De facto'': {{hlist|[[State Shinto]]|[[Korean Confucianism|Confucianism]]|[[Korean Buddhism|Buddhism]]|[[Korean shamanism|Shamanism]]|[[Taoism in Korea|Taoism]]|[[Christianity in Korea|Christianity]]|[[Cheondoism]]{{sup|b}}}}
 }}
| politics_link          = Government
| title_leader           = [[Emperor of Japan|Emperor]]
| leader1                = [[Emperor Meiji|Meiji]]
| year_leader1           = 1910–1912
| leader2                = [[Emperor Taishō|Taishō]]
| year_leader2           = 1912–1926
| leader3                = [[Hirohito|Shōwa]]
| year_leader3           = 1926–1945
| title_deputy           = {{longitem| [[Governor-General of Korea|Governor-General]]}}
| deputy1                = [[Terauchi Masatake]]
| year_deputy1           = 1910–1916 (first)
| deputy2                = [[Nobuyuki Abe]]
| year_deputy2           = 1944–1945 (last)
| era                    = [[Empire of Japan]]
| event_pre              = [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905|Japanese protectorate]]
| date_pre               = 17 November 1905
| event_start            = {{nowrap|[[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910|Annexation treaty]] signed}}
| date_start             = 22 August
| event1                 = Annexation by Japan
| date_event1            = 29 August 1910
| event2                 = [[March First Movement]]
| date_event2            = 1 March 1919
| event3                 = [[Sōshi-kaimei]] order
| date_event3            = 10 November 1939
| event_end              = [[Surrender of Japan]]
| date_end               = 2 September
| event_post             = [[Treaty of San Francisco|Japanese claim relinquished]]
| date_post              = 28 April 1952
| title_representative   = 
| representative1        = 
| year_representative1   = 
| representative4        = 
| year_representative4   = 
| legislature            = 
| house1                 = 
| type_house1            = 
| house2                 = 
| type_house2            = 
| currency               = [[Korean yen]]
| stat_year1             = 
| stat_area1             = 
| stat_pop1              = 
| stat_year5             = 
| stat_area5             = 
| stat_pop5              = 
| today                  = [[North Korea]]<br />[[South Korea]]
| footnote_a             = {{langx |ja|京城 |translit=Keijō}}; {{korean |hangul=경성 |mr=Kyŏngsŏng |rr=Gyeongseong}}
| footnote_b             = According to Korean Christians<ref name="Wi Jo Kang 1997 62">{{cite book |author=Wi Jo Kang |title=Christ and Caesar in Modern Korea: A History of Christianity and Politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lYn4BKxNSCoC&pg=PA62 |year=1997 |publisher=SUNY Press |page=62 |isbn=978-0791432488 |access-date=29 October 2015 |archive-date=18 May 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518184249/https://books.google.com/books?id=lYn4BKxNSCoC&pg=PA62 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{request quotation|date=January 2021}}
| demonym                = [[Koreans|Korean]]
| area_km2               = 
| area_rank              = 
| GDP_PPP                = 
| GDP_PPP_year           = 
| HDI                    = 
| HDI_year               = 
}}
{{History of Korea |width=22.0em}}
From 1910 to 1945, [[Korea]] was ruled by the [[Empire of Japan]] under the name '''Chōsen''' ({{Langx|ja|朝鮮|label=none}}), the Japanese reading of "[[Joseon]]".{{efn|"Chōsen" was recognized as Korea's name internationally until the end of colonial period.<ref name="edict">{{cite web |title=Imperial Edict No. 318: National Name of Korea to be Changed to Chōsen |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Imperial_Edict_No._318:_National_Name_of_Korea_to_be_Changed_to_Ch%C5%8Dsen |website=Wikisource |access-date=9 November 2021 |archive-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220519200824/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Imperial_Edict_No._318:_National_Name_of_Korea_to_be_Changed_to_Ch%C5%8Dsen |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="WaPo">{{cite news |title=Yi-Syek Bids Farewell to Korea, Now Cho-Sen |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844784/ |access-date=20 July 2021 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=29 August 1910 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024916/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844784/the-washington-post/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Brooklyn">{{cite news |title=News Jottings: Korea Now Cho-Sen |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844750/ |access-date=20 July 2021 |work=Brooklyn Times Union |issue=29 August 1910 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024916/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844750/times-union/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="LA Times">{{cite news |title=Aero Meet for Fleet |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844904/ |access-date=20 July 2021 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=29 October 1910 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024917/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81844904/the-los-angeles-times/ |url-status=live}}</ref>}}

Japan first took Korea into its sphere of influence during the late 1800s. Both Korea ([[Joseon]]) and Japan had been under policies of [[isolationism]], with Joseon being a [[Tributary system of China|tributary state of Qing China]]. However, in 1854, [[Perry Expedition|Japan was forcibly opened by the United States]]. It then rapidly modernized under the [[Meiji Restoration]], while Joseon continued to resist foreign attempts to open it up. Japan eventually succeeded in opening Joseon with the unequal [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876]].

Afterwards, Japan embarked on a decades-long process of defeating its local rivals, securing alliances with Western powers, and asserting its influence in Korea. Japan [[Assassination of Empress Myeongseong|assassinated the defiant Korean queen]] and intervened in the [[Donghak Peasant Revolution]].<ref name=":03">Donald Keene, ''Emperor of Japan: Meiji and his World, 1852–1912'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), [https://books.google.com/books?id=3YQpz9v8TjQC&q=unspeakably+barbaric&pg=PA517 p. 517.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404025914/https://books.google.com/books?id=3YQpz9v8TjQC&q=unspeakably+barbaric&pg=PA517 |date=4 April 2023 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mori |first=Mayuko |date=2012 |title=The Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War and the Issue of Suzerain-Vassal as Viewed from the Standpoint of Chosŏn |url=https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=405 |journal=International Journal of Korean History |language=English |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=62–63 |access-date=28 September 2023 |archive-date=28 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230928103751/https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=405 |url-status=live }}</ref> After Japan defeated China in the 1894–1895 [[First Sino-Japanese War|First Sino–Japanese War]], Joseon became nominally independent and declared the short-lived [[Korean Empire]]. Japan then defeated Russia in the 1904–1905 [[Russo-Japanese War]], making it the sole regional power. It then moved quickly to fully absorb Korea. It first made Korea a [[protectorate]] with the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905]], and then [[Indirect rule|ruled the country indirectly]] through the [[Japanese Resident-General of Korea|Japanese resident-general of Korea]]. After forcing Emperor [[Gojong of Korea|Gojong]] to abdicate in 1907, Japan then formally colonized Korea with the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910]]. The territory was then administered by the [[Governor-General of Chōsen|governor-general of Chōsen]], based in [[Keijō]] ([[Seoul]]), until the end of the colonial period.

Japan made sweeping changes in Korea. Under the pretext of the racial theory known as ''[[Nissen dōsoron]]'', it began a process of [[Japanization]], eventually [[Sōshi-kaimei|functionally banning the use of Korean names]] and the Korean language altogether. Tens of thousands of cultural artifacts were taken to Japan, and hundreds of historic buildings like the [[Gyeongbokgung]] and [[Deoksugung]] palaces were either partially or completely demolished. Japan also built infrastructure and industry. Railways, ports, and roads were constructed, although in numerous cases workers were subjected to extremely poor working circumstances and discriminatory pay. While Korea's economy grew under Japan, many argue that many of the infrastructure projects were designed to extract resources from the peninsula, and not to benefit its people.<ref name="economic" /><ref name="shocks" /> Most of Korea's infrastructure built during this time was destroyed during the 1950–1953 [[Korean War]].<ref>{{cite journal |last = Lee |first = Jong-won |date = 2001 |title = The Impact of the Korean War on the Korean Economy |journal = International Journal of Korean Studies |volume = 5 |issue = 1 |pages = 97–118 |url = https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/ijoks/v5i1/f_0013337_10833.pdf}}</ref>{{sfn|Robinson|2007|pp =119-120}}<ref>{{Cite web |last = Fisher |first = Max |date = 2015-08-03 |title = Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea |url = https://www.vox.com/2015/8/3/9089913/north-korea-us-war-crime |access-date = 2021-10-18 |website = Vox |language = en |archive-date = 7 April 2022 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20220407112255/https://www.vox.com/2015/8/3/9089913/north-korea-us-war-crime |url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last = Florick|first = Davis |date = 2017-06-18 |title = Strategic Bombing during the Korean War: The Good and the Bad |url = http://www.hscentre.org/asia-and-pacific/strategic-bombing-korean-war-good-bad/ |access-date = 2024-08-12 |website = Human Security Centre |language = en}}</ref>

These conditions led to the birth of the [[Korean independence movement]], which acted both politically and [[List of militant Korean independence activist organizations|militantly]] sometimes within the Japanese Empire, but mostly from outside of it. Koreans were also subjected to a number of mass murders, including the [[Gando Massacre]], [[Kantō Massacre]], [[Jeamni massacre]], and [[Shinano River incident]].

Beginning in 1939 and during [[World War II]], Japan mobilized around 5.4 million Koreans to support its war effort. Many were moved forcefully from their homes, and set to work in generally extremely poor working conditions, although there was a range in what people experienced. Women and girls were controversially forced into sexual slavery as "[[comfort women]]". After the [[surrender of Japan]] at the end of the war, Korea was liberated, although it [[Division of Korea|was immediately divided]] under the [[Soviet Civil Administration|rule of the Soviet Union]] and [[United States Army Military Government in Korea|of the United States]].

The legacy of Japanese colonization was hotly contested even just after its end, and is still extremely controversial. There is a significant range of opinions in both South Korea and Japan, and historical topics regularly cause diplomatic issues. Within South Korea, a particular focus is the role of the numerous ethnic [[Korean collaborators with Imperial Japan|Korean collaborators with Japan]], who have been variously punished or left alone. This controversy is exemplified in the legacy of [[Park Chung Hee]], South Korea's most influential and controversial president, who collaborated with the Japanese military and continued to praise it even after the colonial period. Until 1964, South Korea and Japan had no functional diplomatic relations, until they signed the [[Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea|Treaty on Basic Relations]], which declared "already [[null and void]]"<ref>{{cite book |author=Hook, Glenn D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HZYARCHyP_AC |title=Japan's International Relations: Politics, Economics, and Security |year=2001 |isbn=978-0415240970 |page=491 |publisher=Psychology Press |quote=Article II. It is confirmed that all treaties or agreements concluded between the Empire of Japan and the Empire of Korea on or before August 22, 1910 are already null and void. |access-date=13 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803143451/https://books.google.com/books?id=HZYARCHyP_AC |archive-date=3 August 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref> the past unequal treaties, especially those of 1905 and 1910.<ref name="AnnexTreaty">{{cite news |title=Treaty of Annexation |work=USC–UCLA Joint East Asian Studies Center |url=http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/documents/kore1910.htm |url-status=dead |access-date=19 February 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070211234114/http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/documents/kore1910.htm |archive-date=11 February 2007}}</ref> Despite this, [[Japan–South Korea relations|relations between Japan and South Korea]] have oscillated between warmer and colder periods, often due to conflicts over the historiography of this era.

==Terminology==
During the period of Japanese colonial rule, Korea was officially known as {{nihongo|Chōsen|朝鮮}},<ref name="WaPo" /><ref name="Brooklyn" /><ref name="LA Times" /> although the former name continued to be used internationally.<ref name="Reno">{{cite news |title=Old Time Miners Rally 'Round in Reno |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81852210/ |access-date=20 July 2021 |work=Reno Gazette-Journal |date=8 May 1940 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024920/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81852210/reno-gazette-journal/ |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Montreal">{{cite news |title=Japan's Progress in China |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81852397/ |access-date=20 July 2021 |work=The Gazette (Montreal) |date=13 October 1937 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024917/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/81852397/the-gazette/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

In South Korea, the period is usually described as the "Imperial Japanese compulsive occupation period" ({{Korean|hangul=일제강점기|hanja=日帝强占期|rr=Ilje Gangjeomgi}}).<ref>{{cite web |last=신 |first=용하|url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0047318 |script-title=ko:일제강점기 (日帝强占期) |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]] |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |access-date=5 March 2023 |archive-date=5 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230305103315/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0047318 |url-status=live }}</ref> Other terms, although often considered obsolete, include "Japanese Imperial Period" ({{Korean|hangul=일제시대|hanja=日帝時代|rr=Ilje Sidae|labels=no}}),<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.cha.go.kr/cop/bbs/selectBoardArticle.do?nttId=5136&bbsId=BBSMSTR_1008&mn=NS_01_09_01 |script-title=ko:특집 – 일제시대 문화재 수난사를 되새기다 |website=[[Cultural Heritage Administration]] |access-date=5 March 2023 |archive-date=5 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230305103316/https://www.cha.go.kr/cop/bbs/selectBoardArticle.do?nttId=5136&bbsId=BBSMSTR_1008&mn=NS_01_09_01 |url-status=live }}</ref> "The dark Japanese Imperial Period" ({{Korean|hangul=일제암흑기|hanja=日帝暗黑期|rr=Ilje Amheukgi|labels=no}}),<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Young |first=Sek-won |date=November 2010 |url=https://www.dbpia.co.kr/journal/articleDetail?nodeId=NODE01644738 |script-title=ko:일제 암흑기 만보산사건과 소설적 재현 양상 연구 |trans-title=A Study on the Manbosan Affair under the Japanese Colonial Dark Ages and Novelistic Reproduction Aspects|journal=통일인문학|volume=50 |pages=147–173}}</ref> and "[[Wa (name of Japan)|Wae]] (Japanese) administration period" ({{Korean|hangul=왜정시대|hanja=倭政時代|rr=Wae-jeong Sidae|labels=no}}).<ref>Kim Jeong-in ed. (2005). [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002679039 왜정시대, 일제식민지시대, 일제강점기] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230306193102/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002679039 |date=6 March 2023 }}. [[Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information]].</ref>

In Japan, the term {{nihongo|"Chōsen of the Japanese-Governed Period"|日本統治時代の朝鮮|Nippon Tōchi-jidai no Chōsen}} has been used.

==Background==
===Political turmoil in Korea===
====Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876====
{{Main|Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876}}
[[File:Soldiers from the Un'yō attacking the Yeongjong castle on a Korean island (woodblock print, 1876).jpg|400px|thumb|Japanese marines landing from the ''Unyo'' at [[Yeongjong Island]] which is near Ganghwa]]
On 27 February 1876, the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1876]] was signed. It was designed to open up Korea to Japanese trade, and the rights granted to Japan under the treaty were similar to those granted Western powers in Japan following the visit of [[Matthew C. Perry|Commodore Perry]] in 1854.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> The treaty ended Korea's status as [[Tributary system of China|a protectorate of China]], forced opening of three Korean ports to Japanese trade, granted [[Extraterritoriality|extraterritorial rights]] to Japanese citizens, and was an [[unequal treaty]] signed under duress ([[gunboat diplomacy]]) of the [[Ganghwa Island incident]] of 1875.<ref name=autogenerated1>[http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200707220222.html A reckless adventure in Taiwan amid Meiji Restoration turmoil], ''The Asahi Shimbun'', Retrieved on 22 July 2007. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071031070532/http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200707220222.html |date=31 October 2007 }}</ref>

====Imo Incident====
{{Main|Imo Incident|Japan–Korea Treaty of 1882}}
The regent [[Daewongun]], who remained opposed to any concessions to Japan or the West, helped organize the Mutiny of 1882, an anti-Japanese outbreak against [[Queen Min]] and her allies.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen">Marius B. Jansen (April 1989). ''The Cambridge History of Japan'' Volume 5 The Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press {{ISBN|0-521-22356-3}}.</ref> Motivated by resentment of the preferential treatment given to newly trained troops, the Daewongun's forces, or "old military", killed a Japanese training cadre, and attacked the Japanese [[legation]].<ref name="Marius B. Jansen"/> Japanese diplomats,<ref name="故広戸一等巡査外五名靖国神社ヘ合祀p.6 left">[http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647000 Japanese Cabinet Meeting document Nov, 1882] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090413204452/http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647000 |date=13 April 2009 }} p. 6 left 陸軍外務両者上申故陸軍工兵中尉堀本禮造外二名並朝鮮国二於テ戦死ノ巡査及公使館雇ノ者等靖国神社ヘ合祀ノ事</ref> policemen,<ref name="故広戸一等巡査外五名靖国神社ヘ合祀p.2 left">[http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647000 Japanese Cabinet Meeting document Nov. 1882] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090413204452/http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647000 |date=13 April 2009 }} p. 2 left</ref> students,<ref name="朝鮮国ニ於テ戦死セシ語学生靖国神社ヘ合祀ヲ許サス">{{cite web |url=http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647100 |script-title=ja:国立公文書館 アジア歴史資料センター |access-date=5 January 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150116192426/http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/listPhoto?IS_STYLE=default&REFCODE=A03023647100 |archive-date=16 January 2015}}</ref> and some Min clan members were also killed during the incident. The Daewongun was briefly restored to power, only to be forcibly taken to China by Chinese troops dispatched to Seoul to prevent further disorder.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen"/>

In August 1882, the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1882]] indemnified the families of the Japanese victims, paid reparations to the Japanese government in the amount of 500,000 yen, and allowed a company of Japanese guards to be stationed at the Japanese legation in Seoul.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen"/>

====Kapsin Coup====
{{Main|Kapsin Coup|Gaehwa Party}}

The struggle between the Heungseon Daewongun's followers and those of Queen Min was further complicated by competition from a Korean independence faction known as the Progressive Party (''Gaehwa-dang''), as well as the Conservative faction. While the former sought Japan's support, the latter sought China's support.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen" />

On 4 December 1884, the Progressive Party, assisted by the Japanese, attempted the [[Kapsin Coup]], in which they attempted to maintain Gojong but replace the government with a pro-Japanese one. They also wished to liberate Korea from Chinese suzerainty.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen" /> However, this proved short-lived, as conservative Korean officials requested the help of Chinese forces stationed in Korea.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen" /> The coup was put down by Chinese troops, and a Korean mob killed both Japanese officers and Japanese residents in retaliation.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen" /> Some leaders of the Progressive Party, including [[Kim Okkyun]], fled to Japan, while others were executed.<ref name="Marius B. Jansen" /> For the next 10 years, Japanese expansion into the Korean economy was approximated only by the efforts of [[Russian Empire|tsarist Russia]], but eventually would be annexed by Japan in 1910 (See Prelude to annexation).

====Donghak Revolution and First Sino-Japanese War====
{{Main|Donghak Peasant Revolution|First Sino-Japanese War}}
[[File:First Sino-Japanese War.svg|300px|thumb|Major battles and troop movements during the [[First Sino-Japanese War]]]]
The outbreak of the [[Donghak Peasant Revolution]] in 1894 provided a seminal pretext for direct military intervention by Japan in the affairs of Korea. In April 1894, Joseon asked for Chinese assistance in ending the revolt. In response, Japanese leaders, citing a violation of the [[Convention of Tientsin]] as a pretext, decided upon military intervention to challenge China. On 3 May 1894, 1,500 Qing forces appeared in [[Incheon]]. On 23 July 1894, Japan attacked Seoul in defiance of the Korean government's demand for withdrawal, and then occupied it and started the Sino-Japanese War. Japan won the [[First Sino-Japanese War]], and China signed the [[Treaty of Shimonoseki]] in 1895. Among its many stipulations, the treaty recognized "the full and complete independence and autonomy of Korea", thus ending Joseon's [[Tributary state|tributary]] relationship with Qing, leading to the proclamation of the full independence of Joseon in 1895. At the same time, Japan suppressed the peasant revolt with Korean government forces.

====Assassination of Queen Min====
{{Main|Assassination of Empress Myeongseong}}

The Japanese minister to Korea, [[Miura Gorō]], orchestrated a plot against 43-year-old Queen Min (later given the title of "[[Empress Myeongseong]]"), and on 8 October 1895, she was assassinated by Japanese agents.<ref name="Dong-a 2002"/> The Korean military unit, [[Hullyŏndae]], participated in the assassination. With Korean aid, Japanese assassins were allowed to enter the palace Gyeongbokgung. In 2001, Russian reports on the assassination were found in the archives of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation. The documents included the testimony of King Gojong, several witnesses of the assassination, and [[Karl Ivanovich Weber]]'s report to [[Aleksey Lobanov-Rostovsky]], the Foreign Minister of Russia, by Park Jonghyo. Weber was the ''[[chargé d'affaires]]'' at the Russian legation in Seoul at that time.<ref name="Dong-a 2002">{{cite journal |url=http://www.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2004/11/09/200411090500053/200411090500053_1.html |script-title=ko:일본인 폭도가 가슴을 세 번 짓밟고 일본도로 난자했다 |journal=[[The Dong-A Ilbo]] |author=Park Jong-hyo ({{lang|ko|박종효}}) former professor at [[Lomonosov Moscow State University]] |date=1 January 2002 |issue=508 |pages=472–485 |language=ko |access-date=25 October 2008 |archive-date=14 March 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090314035233/http://www.donga.com/docs/magazine/shin/2004/11/09/200411090500053/200411090500053_1.html |url-status=live}}</ref> According to a Russian eyewitness, Seredin-Sabatin, an employee of the king, a group of Japanese agents entered [[Gyeongbokgung]],<ref>See Russian eyewitness account of surrounding circumstances at {{cite web |url=http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/queenmin.txt |title=Archived copy |access-date=2014-08-03 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160201010304/http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/queenmin.txt |archive-date=1 February 2016 |df=dmy-all}} by [[Gari Ledyard]], Sejong Professor of Korean History Emeritus at [[Columbia University]]</ref> killed Queen Min, and desecrated her body in the north wing of the palace.

The Heungseon Daewongun returned to the royal palace the same day.<ref name="Dong-a 2002"/> On 11 February 1896, [[Gojong's internal exile to the Russian legation|Gojong and the crown prince fled for protection at the Russian legation]] in Seoul, from which he governed for about a year.<ref name=":04">{{Cite web |last=이|first=원순|script-title=ko:고종 (高宗) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0003939 |access-date=2023-08-25 |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]|website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]]}}</ref>

=== Democracy protests and the proclamation of the Korean Empire ===
{{Main|Independence Club|Korean Empire}}
In 1896, various Korean activists formed the [[Independence Club]]. They advocated a number of societal reforms, including democracy and a constitutional monarchy, and pushed for closer ties to Western countries in order to counterbalance Japanese influence. It went on to be influential in Korean politics for the short time that it operated, to the chagrin of Gojong. Gojong eventually forcefully disbanded the organization in 1898.<ref>{{Cite web |script-title=ko:독립협회 (獨立協會) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0015993 |access-date=2024-01-26 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |language=ko}}</ref>

In October 1897, Gojong returned to the palace [[Deoksugung]], and proclaimed the founding of the [[Korean Empire]] at the royal altar [[Hwangudan]]. This symbolicly asserted Korea's independence from China, especially as Gojong demolished a reception hall that was once used to entertain Chinese ambassadors in order to build the altar.<ref name=":05">{{Cite web |script-title=ko:환구단에서 황제에 오르다 |url=http://contents.history.go.kr/mobile/ht/view.do?levelId=ht_003_0020_0020_0020 |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=우리역사넷}}</ref><ref name=":9">{{Cite web |last=Neff |first=Robert |date=2022-10-15 |title=The emperor is crowned: Part 1 |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2023/08/721_337895.html |access-date=2023-08-25 |website=[[The Korea Times]] |language=en}}</ref>

=== Prelude to annexation ===
{{Main|Russo-Japanese War|Taft–Katsura agreement|Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905|Hague Secret Emissary Affair}}
[[File:統監府の旗.svg|thumb|180px|Flag of the Japanese Resident General of Korea (1905–1910)]]
Having established economic and military dominance in Korea in October 1904, Japan reported that it had developed 25 reforms which it intended to introduce into Korea by gradual degrees. Among these was the intended acceptance by the Korean Financial Department of a Japanese Superintendent, the replacement of Korean Foreign Ministers and consuls by Japanese and the "union of military arms" in which the military of Korea would be modeled after the Japanese military.<ref>''Anglo-Japanese Gazette''; London, October 1904</ref> These reforms were forestalled by the prosecution of the [[Russo-Japanese War]] from 8 February 1904, to 5 September 1905, which Japan won, thus eliminating Japan's last rival to influence in Korea.<ref name="chosondy">{{cite web |url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+kr0017) |title=South Korea; The Choson Dynasty |access-date=20 February 2007 |last=Hadar |first=Oren |work=Library of Congress Country Studies |archive-date=21 September 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080921102052/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd%2Fcstdy%3A%40field%28DOCID+kr0017%29 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Frustrated by this, King Gojong invited [[Alice Roosevelt Longworth]], who was on a tour of Asian countries with [[William Howard Taft]], to the Imperial Palace on 20 September 1905, to seek political support from the United States despite her diplomatic rudeness. However, it was after exchanging opinions through the [[Taft–Katsura agreement]] on 27 July 1905, that America and Japan would not interfere with each other on colonial issues.<ref>[https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/Straight/aroosevelt.html Cornell University Library] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113050832/https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/Straight/aroosevelt.html |date=13 November 2023 }}-[[Willard Dickerman Straight]]</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://10mag.com/alice-roosevelts-visit-to-joseon-korea/ |title=Alice Roosevelt's Visit to Joseon Korea In 1905 |date=2 July 2014 |access-date=23 October 2023 |archive-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102165931/https://10mag.com/alice-roosevelts-visit-to-joseon-korea/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Under the [[Treaty of Portsmouth]], signed in September 1905, Russia acknowledged Japan's "paramount political, military, and economic interest" in Korea.<ref name="chosondy"/>

Two months later, Korea was obliged to become a Japanese protectorate by the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905]] and the "reforms" were enacted, including the reduction of the Korean Army from 20,000 to 1,000 men by disbanding all garrisons in the provinces, retaining only a single garrison in the precincts of Seoul.<ref name="chosondy"/> On 6 January 1905, Horace Allen, head of the American Legation in Seoul reported to his Secretary of State, John Hay, that the Korean government had been advised by the Japanese government "that hereafter the police matters of Seoul will be controlled by the Japanese gendarmerie" and "that a Japanese police inspector will be placed in each prefecture".<ref>Dept of State Correspondence #856 dtd 6 January 1905</ref> A large number of Koreans organized themselves in education and reform movements, but Japanese dominance in Korea had become a reality.<ref name="chosondy"/>

In June 1907, the [[Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907|Second Peace Conference]] was held in [[The Hague]]. Emperor Gojong secretly sent three representatives to bring the problems of Korea to the world's attention. The three envoys, who questioned the legality of the protectorate convention, were [[Hague Secret Emissary Affair|refused access]] to the public debates by the international delegates. One of these representatives was missionary and historian [[Homer Hulbert]]. Out of despair, one of the Korean representatives, [[Yi Tjoune]], committed suicide at The Hague.<ref>{{cite book |first=H. B. |last=Hulbert |title=History of Korea |publisher=Routledge |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-7007-0700-3}}</ref> In response, the Japanese government took stronger measures. On 19 July 1907, Emperor Gojong was forced to relinquish his imperial authority and appoint the Crown Prince as regent. Japanese officials used this concession to force the accession of the new Emperor Sunjong following abdication, which was never agreed to by Gojong. Neither Gojong nor Sunjong were present at the 'accession' ceremony. Sunjong was to be the last ruler of the Joseon dynasty, founded in 1392.<ref>{{cite book |first=D. |last=Keene |title=Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912 |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-231-12340-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/emperorofjapanme00keen}}</ref>

On 24 July 1907, a treaty was signed under the leadership of [[Lee Wan-yong]] and [[Itō Hirobumi|Ito Hirobumi]] to transfer all rights of [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907|Korea to Japan]]. This led to a large-scale righteous army movement among Koreans, and disbanded troops joined the resistance forces. Japan's response to this was a scorched earth tactic using division-sized troops, which resulted in the movement of armed resistance organizations in Korea to Manchuria. Amid this confusion, on 26 October 1909, [[Ahn Jung-geun]], a former volunteer soldier, assassinated [[Ito Hirobumi]] in [[Harbin]].<ref>統監府文書7 [https://db.history.go.kr/id/jh_097r_0010_1440 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF KOREAN HISTORY] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231006102940/https://db.history.go.kr/id/jh_097r_0010_1440 |date=6 October 2023 }}</ref>

Meanwhile, pro-Japanese populist groups such as the [[Iljinhoe]] helped Japan by being fascinated by Japan's [[pan-Asianism]], thinking that Korea would have autonomy like [[Austria-Hungary]].
It was adopted as a representative consultant for [[Ryōhei Uchida|Ryohei Uchida]], and was used for propaganda with the support of the Japanese government. On 3 December 1909, he and [[Lee Wan-yong]] will issue a statement demanding the annexation of Korea.<ref>[[Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty]][https://sillok.history.go.kr/id/kzb_10212004_001 Annals of King Sunjong3 4 December 1909] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231006102942/https://sillok.history.go.kr/id/kzb_10212004_001 |date=6 October 2023 }}</ref>

However, the merger took place in the form of Japan's annexation of Korean territory and was disbanded by [[Terauchi Masatake]] on 26 September 1910.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1xx4cs |title=Populist collaborators : the Ilchinhoe and the Japanese colonization of Korea, 1896-1910/Yumi Moon 2013 |jstor=10.7591/j.ctt1xx4cs |access-date=5 October 2023 |archive-date=6 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231006102940/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1xx4cs |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>[http://www.riss.kr/search/detail/DetailView.do?p_mat_type=be54d9b8bc7cdb09&control_no=ff7c98c7d5c5d032ffe0bdc3ef48d419  (A) study on the Ilchinhoe[a pro-Japanese group<nowiki>]</nowiki> at the end of the Great Han Empire[1904–1910<nowiki>]</nowiki>]Jongjun Kim. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231006102942/http://www.riss.kr/search/detail/DetailView.do?p_mat_type=be54d9b8bc7cdb09&control_no=ff7c98c7d5c5d032ffe0bdc3ef48d419 |date=6 October 2023 }}</ref>

===Militant resistance===
{{Main|Righteous armies#During the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945)}}
[[File:Les Troubles de Coree.jpg|thumb|200px|Battle of Namdaemun in 1907 – [[Le Petit Journal (newspaper)|Le Petit Journal]]]]

During the prelude to the 1910 annexation, a number of irregular civilian militias called "righteous armies" arose. They consisted of tens of thousands of peasants engaged in anti-Japanese armed rebellion. After the Korean army was disbanded in 1907, former soldiers joined the armies and fought the Japanese army at [[Namdaemun]]. They were defeated, and largely fled into Manchuria, where they joined the guerrilla resistance movement that persisted until Korea's 1945 liberation.

=== Military police ===
As Korean resistance against Japanese rule intensified, Japanese replaced Korean police system with their military police. Infamous [[Akashi Motojiro]] was appointed for the commander of Japanese military police forces. Japanese finally replaced Imperial Korean police forces in June 1910, and they combined police forces and military police, firmly establishing the rule of military police. After the annexation, Akashi started to serve as the Chief of Police. These military police officers started to have great authority over Koreans. Not only Japanese but also Koreans served as police officers.<ref>{{Cite web |website=우리역사넷 |title=(1) 헌병경찰체제 |url=http://contents.history.go.kr/front/nh/view.do?levelId=nh_047_0020_0010_0020_0010 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230516142459/http://contents.history.go.kr/front/nh/view.do?levelId=nh_047_0020_0010_0020_0010 |archive-date=16 May 2023 |access-date=16 May 2023}}</ref>

==Japan–Korea annexation treaty (1910)==
{{Main|Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910}}
[[File:General power of attorney to Lee Wan-Yong signed and sealed by Sunjong.jpg|200px|thumb|General power of attorney to [[Lee Wan-yong]] sealed and signed, by the last emperor, [[Sunjong of Korea|Sunjong]] on 22 August 1910 ({{Korean|hangul=융희4년|hanja=隆熙4年|labels=no}})]]
In May 1910, the [[Ministry of War of Japan|Minister of War of Japan]], [[Terauchi Masatake]], was given a mission to finalize Japanese control over Korea after the previous treaties (the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of February 1904]] and the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907]]) had made Korea a protectorate of Japan and had established Japanese hegemony over Korean domestic politics. On 22 August 1910, Japan effectively [[annexation|annexed]] Korea with the [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910]] signed by [[Ye Wanyong]], Prime Minister of Korea, and Terauchi Masatake, who became the first [[Governor-General of Chōsen]].

The treaty became effective the same day and was published one week later. The treaty stipulated:
* Article 1: His Majesty the Emperor of Korea concedes completely and definitely his entire sovereignty over the whole Korean territory to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan.
* Article 2: His Majesty the Emperor of Japan accepts the concession stated in the previous article and consents to the annexation of Korea to the Empire of Japan.

Both the protectorate and the annexation treaties were declared already void in the 1965 [[Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea]].

This period is also known as Military Police Reign Era (1910–19) in which Police had the authority to rule the entire country. Japan was in control of the media, law as well as government by physical power and regulations.

In March 2010, 109 Korean intellectuals and 105 Japanese intellectuals met in the 100th anniversary of [[Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910]] and they declared this annexation treaty null and void. They declared these statements in each of their capital cities (Seoul and Tōkyō) with a simultaneous press conference. They announced the "Japanese empire pressured the outcry of the Korean Empire and people and forced by Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 and full text of a treaty was false and text of the agreement was also false". They also declared the "Process and formality of "Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910" had huge deficiencies and therefore the treaty was null and void. This implied the [[March First Movement]] was not an illegal movement.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=014&aid=0002291898 |title=韓日 지식인 "1910년 한일병합조약 무효"..공동선언 |access-date=8 November 2019 |archive-date=9 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309024737/https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=014&aid=0002291898 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=001&aid=0004599216 |script-title=ko:'한일병합 무효' 입증 문건 처음으로 확인 |access-date=8 November 2019 |archive-date=8 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308160300/https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=001&aid=0004599216 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20100512002015 |script-title=ko:[인터뷰] '한일병합 무효' 근거 제공 이태진 서울대 명예교수 |date=12 May 2010 |access-date=8 November 2019 |archive-date=2 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200802074859/http://www.seoul.co.kr/news/newsView.php?id=20100512002015 |url-status=live}}</ref>

==Early years and expansion (1910–1941)==
===Japanese migration and land ownership===
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,<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1011225 | jstor=1011225 | title=Japanese Immigration into Korea | last1=Millard | first1=Thomas F. | journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science | date=26 March 2024 | volume=34 | issue=2 | pages=183–189 | doi=10.1177/000271620903400222 }}</ref> comprising one of the ''[[Japanese diaspora|nikkei]]'' communities in the world at the time.

[[File:Masatake Terauchi 2.jpg|150px|thumb|[[Terauchi Masatake]], the first Governor-General]]
[[File:Oriental Development Company.JPG|260px|thumb|Headquarters of the [[Oriental Development Company]] in Keijō]]

Many Japanese settlers showed interest in acquiring agricultural land in Korea even before Japanese land-ownership was officially legalized in 1906. Governor-General Terauchi Masatake facilitated settlement through [[land reform]]. The Korean land-ownership system featured absentee landlords, only partial owner-tenants and cultivators with traditional (but no legal proof of) ownership. By 1920, 90 percent of Korean land had proper ownership of Koreans.<ref>{{Cite web |script-title=ko:토지 조사 사업(土地調査事業) – 부산역사문화대전 |url=http://busan.grandculture.net/Contents?local=busan&dataType=01&contents_id=GC04200618 |access-date=2023-05-21 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Local Culture]] |archive-date=21 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521142241/http://busan.grandculture.net/Contents?local=busan&dataType=01&contents_id=GC04200618 |url-status=live }}</ref> Terauchi's new Land Survey Bureau conducted [[cadastral]] surveys that established ownership on the basis of written proof (deeds, titles, and similar documents). The system denied ownership to those who could not provide such written documentation; these turned out to be mostly high-class and impartial owners who had only traditional verbal cultivator-rights {{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}. Japanese landlords included both individuals and corporations (such as the [[Oriental Development Company]]). Because of these developments, Japanese landownership soared, as did the amount of land taken over by private Japanese companies.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Historical Experience of Agrarian Reform in Our Country |year=1974 |location=Pyongyang |pages=6–7}}</ref> Many former Korean landowners, as well as agricultural workers, became [[tenant farmer]]s, having lost their [[Property|entitlements]] almost overnight because they could not pay for the land reclamation and irrigation improvements forced on them.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Korea's Heritage |last=McCune |first=Shannon |publisher=Charles Tuttle |year=1964 |location=Rutland |page=86}}</ref> Compounding the economic stresses imposed on the Korean peasantry, the authorities forced Korean peasants to do long days of compulsory labor to build irrigation works; Japanese imperial officials made peasants pay for these projects in the form of heavy taxes, impoverishing many of them and causing even more of them lose their land.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Historical Experience of Agrarian Reform in Our Country |last=McCune |first=Shannon |year=1974 |location=Pyongyang |page=7}}</ref> Although many other subsequent developments placed ever greater strain on Korea's peasants, Japan's rice shortage in 1918 was the greatest catalyst for hardship. During that shortage, Japan looked to Korea for increased rice cultivation; as Korean peasants started producing more for Japan, however, the amount they took to eat dropped precipitously, causing much resentment among them.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Modern Korea |last=Grajdanzev |first=Andrew J. |year=1944 |location=New York |page=118}}</ref>

By 1910 an estimated 7 to 8% of all [[arable land]] in Korea had come under Japanese control. This ratio increased steadily; as of the years 1916, 1920, and 1932, the ratio of Japanese land ownership increased from 36.8 to 39.8 to 52.7%. The level of tenancy was similar to that of farmers in Japan itself; however, in Korea, the landowners were mostly Japanese, while the tenants were all Koreans. As often occurred in Japan itself, tenants had to pay over half their crop in rent.<ref name="Japan Focus">{{cite web |url=http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2220 |title=Legal Categories, Demographic Change and Japan's Korean Residents in the Long Twentieth Century |access-date=19 February 2007 |last=Nozaki |first=Yoshiko |author2=Hiromitsu Inokuchi |author3=Tae-young Kim |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070125052048/http://www.japanfocus.org/products/details/2220 |archive-date=25 January 2007 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>

By the 1930s the growth of the urban economy and the exodus of farmers to the cities had gradually weakened the hold of the landlords. With the growth of the wartime economy throughout the [[World War II|Second World War]], the government recognized [[landlordism]] as an impediment to increased agricultural productivity, and took steps to increase control over the rural sector through the formation in Japan in 1943 of the {{nihongo|Central Agricultural Association|中央農会|chūō nōkai}}, a compulsory organization under the wartime [[command economy]].{{citation needed|date= October 2013}}

The Japanese government had hoped emigration to its colonies would mitigate the population boom in the ''[[naichi]]''(内地),<ref name="kimura">{{cite journal |last1=Kimura |first1=Mitsuhiko |title=The Economics of Japanese Imperialism in Korea, 1910–1939 |journal=The Economic History Review |date=August 1995 |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=564–566 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2598181 |access-date=28 October 2021 |publisher=Wiley |doi=10.2307/2598181 |jstor=2598181 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024919/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2598181 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> but had largely failed to accomplish this by 1936.<ref name="porter">{{cite journal |last1=Porter |first1=Catherine |title=Korea and Formosa as Colonies of Japan |journal=Far Eastern Survey |date=22 April 1936 |volume=5 |issue=9 |pages=87–88 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021667 |access-date=28 October 2021 |publisher=Institute of Pacific Relations |doi=10.2307/3021667 |jstor=3021667 |archive-date=28 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211028014301/https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021667 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to figures from 1934, Japanese in Chōsen numbered approximately 561,000 out of a total population of over 21 million, less than 3%. By 1939 the Japanese population increased to 651,000, mostly from Japan's western prefectures. During the same period, the population in Chōsen grew faster than that in the ''naichi''. Koreans also migrated to the ''naichi'' in large numbers, especially after 1930; by 1939 there were over 981,000 Koreans living in Japan. Challenges which deterred Japanese from migrating into Chōsen included lack of arable land and population density comparable to that of Japan.<ref name="porter"/><ref name="kimura"/>

===Anthropology and cultural heritage===
{{See also|Korean History Compilation Committee}}
[[File:Hyochangwon as Korea's first golf course.jpg|thumb|In 1921, Japan turned a Korean royal cemetery into a golf course, with the graves still directly on the course. This occurred at what is now [[Hyochang Park]].<ref name=":7">{{Cite journal |last1=Youn |first1=Hyun-Chul |last2=Ryoo |first2=Seong-Lyong |date=2021-11-20 |title=VR and AR Restoration of Urban Heritage: A Virtual Platform Mediating Disagreement from Spatial Conflicts in Korea |journal=Buildings |language=en |volume=11 |issue=11 |pages=561 |doi=10.3390/buildings11110561 |issn=2075-5309 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name=":5">{{Cite web |last=노 |first=형석 |date=2018-05-31 |script-title=ko:왕실묘→골프장→유원지→독립투사 묘지 '영욕의 232년' |trans-title=Royal Tombs -> Golf Course -> Amusement Park -> Independence Activist Cemetery '232 Years of Honor and Disgrace' |url=https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/847064.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230717063311/https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/847064.html |archive-date=2023-07-17 |access-date=2023-07-17 |website=[[The Hankyoreh]] |language=ko}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{Cite web |last=신 |first=병주 |date=2023-02-08 |script-title=ko:'옷소매' 성덕임과 그의 아들의 묘가 '효창공원'에? |trans-title='Sleeves' Uibin Seong and Her Son Are Buried in 'Hyochang Park'? |url=https://mediahub.seoul.go.kr/archives/2006866 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230717055039/https://mediahub.seoul.go.kr/archives/2006866 |archive-date=2023-07-17 |access-date=2023-07-17 |website=mediahub.seoul.go.kr |publisher=[[Seoul Metropolitan Government]] |language=ko}}</ref>]]
Japan sent anthropologists to Korea who took photos of the traditional state of Korean villages, serving as evidence that Korea was "backwards" and needed to be modernized.<ref>{{cite book |last=Atkins |first=E. Taylor |title=Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 |publisher=University of California Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-520-26674-2 |location=Berkeley}}</ref>

In 1925, the Japanese government established the [[Korean History Compilation Committee]], and it was administered by the Governor-General and engaged in collecting Korean historical materials and compiling Korean history.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/personal/yokoyama/jpmem/2001/page2001_02.html |script-title=ja:韓国・国史編纂委員会所蔵 |publisher=Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo |language=ja |access-date=8 September 2008 |quote=第一条 朝鮮史編修会ハ朝鮮総督ノ管理ニ属シ朝鮮史料ノ蒐集及編纂並朝鮮史ノ編修ヲ掌ル |title=Hakoishi report |archive-date=25 November 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061125011205/http://www.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/personal/yokoyama/jpmem/2001/page2001_02.html |url-status=live}}</ref> According to the ''[[Doosan Encyclopedia]]'', some mythology was incorporated.<ref name="Korean History Compilation Committee">{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://100.naver.com/100.nhn?docid=138719 |script-title=ko:조선사편수회 |encyclopedia=Naver/Doosan Encyclopedia |language=ko |access-date=4 August 2011 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024925/https://terms.naver.com/entry.naver?docId=1141830&cid=40942&categoryId=33384 |url-status=live}}</ref> The committee supported the theory of a Japanese colony on the Korean Peninsula called [[Mimana]],<ref name="Korean History Compilation Committee" /> which, according to E. Taylor Atkins, is "among the most disputed issues in East Asian historiography."<ref>{{cite book |author=E. Taylor Atkins |title=Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910–1945 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wmdskbM_VgAC&pg=PT116 |date=10 July 2010 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-94768-9 |pages=115–116 |access-date=26 April 2025}}</ref>

Japan executed the first modern archaeological excavations in Korea.<ref>[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/11/eak/ht11eak.htm] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081203010825/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/11/eak/ht11eak.htm|date=3 December 2008}}</ref> The Japanese administration also relocated some artifacts; for instance, a stone monument (棕蟬縣神祠碑), which was originally located in the [[Liaodong Peninsula]], then under [[Kwantung Leased Territory|Japanese control]], was taken out of its context and moved to [[Pyongyang]].<ref>{{cite book |author=리순진 |script-title=ko:평양일대 락랑무덤에 대한 연구 |trans-title=A Research about the Tombs of Nangnang around Pyongyang |publisher=중심 |location=서울 |isbn=978-89-89524-05-2 |year=2001}}</ref> As of April 2020, 81,889 Korean cultural artifacts are in Japan. According to the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, not all the artifacts were moved illegally. Adding to the challenge of repatriating illegally exported Korean cultural properties is the lack of experts in Korean art at overseas museums and institutions, alterations made to artifacts that obscure their origin, and that moving Korean artifacts within what was previously internationally recognized Japanese territory was lawful at the time.<ref name="The Korea Times">{{cite journal |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2020/07/135_292925.html |title=Korea ramps up efforts to bring back looted treasures |journal=[[The Korea Times]] |date=16 July 2020 |access-date=2 October 2022 |archive-date=2 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221002200841/https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/culture/2020/07/135_292925.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-05-la-ca-cultural-exchange-korea-20101205-story.html |title=Recovering South Korea's Lost Treasures |journal=The Los Angeles Times |date=5 December 2010 |access-date=2 October 2022 |archive-date=2 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221002202758/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-05-la-ca-cultural-exchange-korea-20101205-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="tussle">{{cite web |url=https://www.newsweek.com/korea-tussle-over-treasures-122061 |title=Korea: A Tussle Over Treasures |work=Newsweek |date=20 February 2005 |access-date=2 October 2022 |archive-date=2 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221002203114/https://www.newsweek.com/korea-tussle-over-treasures-122061 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44504065 |author=Christine Kim |title=Colonial Plunder and the Failure of Restitution in Postwar Korea |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |date=July 2017 |volume=52 |issue=3 |pages=607–624 |doi=10.1177/0022009417692410 |jstor=44504065 |s2cid=159549648 |access-date=2 October 2022 |archive-date=2 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221002204018/https://www.jstor.org/stable/44504065 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> The South Korean government has been continuing its efforts to repatriate Korean artifacts from museums and private collections overseas.<ref name="The Korea Times" />

The royal palace [[Gyeongbokgung]] was partially destroyed beginning in the 1910s, in order to make way for the [[Japanese General Government Building, Seoul|Japanese General Government Building]] as well as the colonial [[Chōsen Industrial Exhibition]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last1=Lee |first1=Yunah |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=plWHEAAAQBAJ&dq=gyeongbokgung+1915+destroyed+japanese&pg=PA90 |title=Design and Modernity in Asia: National Identity and Transnational Exchange 1945–1990 |last2=Rajguru |first2=Megha |date=2022-10-20 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-1-350-09146-7 |pages=90 |language=en}}</ref> Hundreds of historic buildings in [[Deoksugung]] were also destroyed to make way for the {{Ill|Yi Royal Family Museum of Fine Art|ko|이왕가미술관}}. The displays in the museum reportedly intentionally contrasted traditional Korean art with examples of modern Japanese art, in order to portray Japan as progressive and legitimize Japanese rule.<ref name=":1" /> The [[National Palace Museum of Korea]], originally built as the Korean Imperial Museum in 1908 to preserve the treasures in the [[Gyeongbokgung]], was retained under the Japanese administration but renamed Museum of the Yi Dynasty in 1938.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gogung.go.kr/introduce/history.jsp |title=history of the museum |language=ko |publisher=National Palace Museum of Korea website |access-date=24 April 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303184147/http://www.gogung.go.kr/introduce/history.jsp |archive-date=3 March 2016 |df=dmy-all}}</ref>

The Governor-General instituted a law in 1933 in order to preserve Korea's most important historical artifacts. The system established by this law, retained as the present-day [[National Treasures of South Korea]] and [[National Treasures of North Korea]], was intended to preserve Korean historical artifacts, including those not yet unearthed. Japan's 1871 Edict for the Preservation of Antiquities and Old Items could not be automatically applied to Korea due to Japanese law, which required an imperial ordinance to apply the edict in Korea. The 1933 law to protect Korean cultural heritages was based on the Japanese 1871 edict.<ref name="hamada.u-shimane.ac.jp">Ohashi Toshihiro. "[http://hamada.u-shimane.ac.jp/research/32kiyou/10sogo/seisaku08.data/seisaku0809.pdf A Study on the Development of the Cultural Properties Policy in Korea from 1902 until 1962] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131013112500/http://hamada.u-shimane.ac.jp/research/32kiyou/10sogo/seisaku08.data/seisaku0809.pdf|date=13 October 2013}}". ''Sogo Seisaku Ronso'' 8 (2004)</ref>

===Anti-Chinese riots of 1931===
{{Main|Wanpaoshan Incident}}
[[File:Chinese anti-Japanese poster published after the revenge by Koreans.jpg|thumb|Chinese anti-Japanese poster published after reprisals by Koreans]]
Due to a waterway construction permit, in the small town of Wanpaoshan in Manchuria near [[Changchun]], "violent clashes" broke out between the local Chinese and Korean immigrants on 2 July 1931. ''[[The Chosun Ilbo]]'', a major Korean newspaper, misreported that many Koreans had died in the clashes, sparking a Chinese exclusion movement in urban areas of the Korean Peninsula.<ref>日本外交文書デジタルアーカイブ 昭和期I第1部 第5巻 p248</ref> The worst of the rioting occurred in [[Pyongyang]] on 5 July. Approximately 127 Chinese people were killed, 393 wounded, and a considerable number of properties were destroyed by Korean residents.<ref name="Wanpaoshan" /> [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]] further alleged the Japanese authorities in Korea did not take adequate steps to protect the lives and property of the Chinese residents, and blamed the authorities for allowing inflammatory accounts to be published. As a result of this riot, the Minister of Foreign Affairs [[Kijūrō Shidehara]], who insisted on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean harmony, lost his position.<ref name="Wanpaoshan">{{cite book |last1=Em |first1=Henry |title=The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea, Part 2 |date=2013 |publisher=Duke University Press |location=Durham |isbn=978-0822353720 |page=125 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DxAd2Aw_jP0C |access-date=21 August 2017 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024917/https://books.google.com/books?id=DxAd2Aw_jP0C |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Order to change names===
{{Main|Sōshi-kaimei}}
In 1911, the proclamation "Matter Concerning the Changing of Korean Names" (''{{lang|ja|朝鮮人ノ姓名改称ニ関スル件}}'') was issued, barring ethnic Koreans from taking Japanese names and retroactively reverting the names of Koreans who had already registered under Japanese names back to the original Korean ones.<ref name="Mizuno1">{{citation |last=Mizuno |first=Naoki |script-title=ja:植民地支配と「人の支配」 |trans-title=Colonial control and "human control" |url=http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/staff/youran/mizuno.pdf |url-status=dead |publisher=[[Kyoto University]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070103005827/http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/staff/youran/mizuno.pdf |archive-date=3 January 2007 |access-date=20 February 2007}}</ref> By 1939, however, this position was reversed and Japan's focus had shifted towards [[cultural assimilation]] of the Korean people; Imperial Decree 19 and 20 on Korean Civil Affairs ([[創氏改名|Sōshi-kaimei]]) went into effect, whereby ethnic Koreans were forced to surrender their traditional use of clan-based [[Korean name#Family names|Korean family name]] system, in favor of a new surname to be used in the family register. The surname could be of their own choosing, including their native clan name, but in practice many Koreans received a Japanese surname. There is controversy over whether or not the adoption of a Japanese surname was effectively mandatory, or merely strongly encouraged.<ref>{{cite web |author={{lang|ko|윤해동}} |script-title=ko:황국신민화정책자료해설 |url=http://www.kstudy.com/japan/html/hwangkook_3.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928015412/http://www.kstudy.com/japan/html/hwangkook_3.htm |archive-date=28 September 2007 |access-date=19 February 2007 |language=ko |df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |script-title=ja:水野直樹「『創氏改名』の実施過程について」『朝鮮史研究会会報』154号、2004年 |url=http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~mizna/soushi.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304033127/http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~mizna/soushi.htm |archive-date=4 March 2016 |access-date=31 October 2019 |language=ja}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"
|+ Number of renaming applications in 1940<ref>朝鮮総督府法務局「第79回朝鮮総督府帝国議会説明資料」｣</ref>
! Month !! household !! % </tr>
| Feb. || 15,746 || 0.4% </tr>
| Mar. || 61,579 || 1.5% </tr>
| Apr. || 157,074 || 3.9% </tr>
| May. || 500,840 || 12.5% </tr>
| Jun. || 1,081,564 || 27.0% </tr>
| Jul. || 2,153,393 || 53.7% </tr>
| Aug. || 3,220,693 || 80.3%
|}

==World War II==

===National Mobilization Law===
{{See also|Koreans in Japan|Sakhalin Koreans}}

====Forcing of labor and migration====
[[File:Japan-Korea Cooperative Unity World Leader Postcard 1920s.png|219x219px|thumb|''Japan-Korea Cooperative Unity, World Leader.'' – The notion of racial and imperial unity of Korea and Japan gained widespread following among the literate minority of the middle and upper classes.<ref>{{cite book |last=Myers |first=Brian R. |title=The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves – And Why It Matters |edition=Paperback |publisher=Melville House |year=2011 |pages=26–29}}</ref>]][[File:Kuniaki Koiso 2.jpg|160px|thumb|[[Kuniaki Koiso]], Governor-General of Chōsen from 1942 to 1944, implemented a draft of Koreans for wartime labor.]]
From 1939, [[Labour shortage|labor shortage]]s as a result of [[conscription]] of Japanese men for the military efforts of World War II led to organized official recruitment of Koreans to work in mainland Japan, initially through civilian agents, and later directly, often involving elements of coercion. As the labor shortage increased, by 1942, the Japanese authorities extended the provisions of the [[National Mobilization Law]] to include the conscription of Korean workers for factories and mines in Korea, [[Manchukuo]], and the involuntary relocation of workers to Japan itself as needed.

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, according to estimates by the [[Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers]].<ref name="Ryang2000-Ch2">{{cite book |last=Ryang |first=Sonia |title=Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2000 |isbn=978-1-136-35312-3 |editor-last=Ryang |editor-first=Sonia |chapter=The North Korean homeland of Koreans in Japan |access-date=18 October 2016 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZUVGAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170224024930/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZUVGAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32 |archive-date=24 February 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Of the 5,400,000 Koreans conscripted, about 670,000 were taken to mainland Japan (including [[Karafuto Prefecture]], present-day [[Sakhalin]], now part of Russia) for civilian labor. Those who were brought to Japan were often forced to work under conditions that have been described as appalling and dangerous.<ref>Rummel, R. J., ''Death by Government'', pg.150</ref> Although Koreans were reportedly treated better than laborers from other countries, large numbers still died. In Japan, 60,000 of the 670,000 mobilized laborers died. In Korea and Manchuria, estimates of deaths range between 270,000 and 810,000.<ref name="Rummel 1999">{{cite book |last=Rummel |first=R. J. |title=Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1990 |publisher=Lit Verlag |year=1999 |isbn=978-3-8258-4010-5}}
Available online: {{cite web |title=Statistics of Democide: Chapter 3 – Statistics Of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources |url=http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100323044733/http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM |archive-date=23 March 2010 |access-date=1 March 2006 |work=Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War}}</ref>

Korean laborers were also found as far as the [[Tarawa|Tarawa Atoll]], where during the [[Battle of Tarawa]] only 129 of the 1200 laborers survived.<ref>{{Cite web |title=HyperWar: The Battle for Tarawa [Appendix C: Japanese Casualties] |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-M-Tarawa/USMC-M-Tarawa-C.html |access-date=2022-11-21 |website=www.ibiblio.org |archive-date=12 April 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100412093624/http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-M-Tarawa/USMC-M-Tarawa-C.html |url-status=live }}</ref> According to testimonies in Japanese records, Korean laborers on the [[Mili Atoll]] were given "whale meat" to consume, which was actually human flesh from other dead Koreans. They rebelled after learning the truth, and were killed by the dozens in the aftermath.<ref name=":32">{{Cite web |last=Lee |first=Hyeong-Ju |date=June 8, 2024 |title=218 victims of 'Mili Atoll incident' disclosed |url=https://www.donga.com/en/article/all/20240608/4991614/1 |access-date=2024-06-29 |website=[[The Dong-A Ilbo]] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":14">{{Cite web |last=Choi |first=Jeong-yoon |date=2024-06-07 |title=Japanese researcher reveals 'massacre' of Koreans in Mili Atoll |url=https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20240607050534 |access-date=2024-06-29 |website=[[The Korea Herald]] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":23">{{Cite news |date=October 5, 2010 |title=Gov't report confirms Japan's massacre of forced Korean laborers at Marshall Islands |url=https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20101005002600315 |access-date=June 29, 2024 |work=[[Yonhap News Agency]]}}</ref> Korean laborers also worked in Korea itself, notably in [[Jeju Island|Jeju]] where in the later stages of the [[Pacific War]], Korean laborers expanded airfields and built facilities at [[Altteureu Airfield]] in order to block a US invasion of the Japanese mainland and in 1945 laborers on [[Songaksan (Jeju)|Songaksan]] (where several airstrips were located) were ordered to smooth down the slope in order to prevent American tanks being able to go up.<ref>{{Cite web |title=[Reporter's notebook] Vestiges of forced labor still remain on Jeju Island |url=https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/811245.html |access-date=2022-11-21 |website=[[The Hankyoreh]] |archive-date=21 November 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221121090528/https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/811245.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Most Korean atomic-bomb victims in Japan had been drafted for work at military industrial factories in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<ref name="BBC News">{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1364728.stm |title=Japan compensates Korean A-bomb victim |work=[[BBC News]] |date=1 June 2001 |access-date=26 September 2009 |archive-date=11 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024919/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1364728.stm |url-status=live}}</ref> In the name of humanitarian assistance, Japan paid South Korea four billion yen (approx. thirty five million dollars) and built a welfare center for those suffering from the effects of the atomic bomb.<ref name="Andreas Hippin">{{cite news |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20050802zg.html |title=The end of silence: Korea's Hiroshima, Korean A-bomb victims seek redress |work=[[The Japan Times]] |date=2 August 2005 |author=Andreas Hippin |access-date=1 December 2008 |archive-date=19 December 2012 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121219024113/http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20050802zg.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

====Korean service in the Japanese military====
{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="float:left;"
|+ Korean military participation until 1943<ref>太平洋戦争下の朝鮮及び台湾、友邦協会､1961, p.&nbsp;191.</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire |first=Paul H. |last=Kratoska |publisher=NUS Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-9971693336 |page=115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-zvDJV3s6tAC&pg=PA115 |access-date=4 May 2020 |archive-date=3 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803172155/https://books.google.com/books?id=-zvDJV3s6tAC&pg=PA115 |url-status=live}}</ref>
! Year !! Applicants !! Applicants<br />accepted !!Acceptance<br />rate [%]</tr>
| 1938 ||      2,946 ||   406 || 13.8 </tr>
| 1939 ||     12,348 ||   613 || 5.0 </tr>
| 1940 ||     84,443 || 3,060 || 3.6 </tr>
| 1941 ||    144,743 || 3,208 || 2.2 </tr>
| 1942 ||    254,273 || 4,077 || 1.6 </tr>
| 1943 ||    303,294 || 6,300<ref>{{cite web |publisher=administrative bureau |title=Current state of Korea and Taiwan: Imperial Army Special volunteer system |date=October 1943 |page=13 |url=http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/image_B02031284700?IS_KIND=RefSummary&IS_KEY_S1=b02031284700&IS_STYLE=default&IS_TAG_S1=reference_code& |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018102836/http://www.jacar.go.jp/DAS/meta/image_B02031284700?IS_KIND=RefSummary&IS_KEY_S1=b02031284700&IS_STYLE=default&IS_TAG_S1=reference_code& |archive-date=18 October 2015 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> || 2.1 </tr>
|}
[[File:Japan & Korea Imperial family Yasukuni 1938-10 (cropped).jpg|thumb|right|Korean royalty of the [[House of Yi]] (front row, right to left): [[Yi Wu]], [[Yi Geon]] and [[Yi Un]] as officers of the Imperial Japanese Army, together with members of the Japanese imperial family at the [[Yasukuni Shrine]], 1938]]
Japan did not draft ethnic Koreans into its military until 1944 when the tide of World War II turned against it. Until 1944, enlistment in the [[Imperial Japanese Army]] by ethnic Koreans was voluntary, and highly competitive. From a 14% acceptance rate in 1938, it dropped to a 2% acceptance rate in 1943 while the raw number of applicants increased from 3000 per annum to 300,000 in just five years during World War II.<ref>[https://www.jacar.archives.go.jp/aj/meta/image_B02031288800?IS_KEY_S1=%E6%9C%9D%E9%AE%AE%20%E5%BF%97%E9%A1%98%E5%85%B5&IS_KIND=detail&IS_STYLE=default&IS_TAG_S1=InD& JACAR(Japan Center for Asian Historical Records)Ref.B02031288800、本邦内政関係雑纂/植民地関係 第四巻(A-5-0-0-1_1_004)(外務省外交史料館)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211024922/https://www.jacar.archives.go.jp/das/image/B02031288800?IS_KEY_S1=%E6%9C%9D%E9%AE%AE+%E5%BF%97%E9%A1%98%E5%85%B5&IS_KIND=detail&IS_STYLE=default&IS_TAG_S1=InD |date=11 February 2022 }}, July 1944.</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="float:right;"
|+ Motivation of Korean Applicants in 1941<ref>朝鮮總督府(1941.12), ｢第79回帝國議會說明資料｣</ref>
! age !! Applicants !! Compulsion !! Etc. !! Total</tr>
| 17 || 5,673 || 9,355 || 1,915 || 16,943 </tr>
| 18 || 6,943 || 11,089 || 2,012 || 20,044 </tr>
| 19 || 7,771 || 12,117 || 2,318 || 22,206 </tr>
| 20 || 7,591 || 11,844 || 2,125 || 21,560 </tr>
| 21 || 6,486 || 10,704 || 1,742 || 18,932 </tr>
| 22 || 5,357 || 8,722 || 1,610 || 15,689 </tr>
| 23 || 3,965 || 6,682 || 1,132 || 11,779 </tr>
| 24 || 2,694 || 4,347 || 1,146 || 8,187 </tr>
| 25+ || 3,704 || 4,812 || 1,190 || 9,706 </tr>
| Total || 50,184 || 79,672 ||15,190 || 145,046 </tr>
| % || 34.6% || 55.0% || 10.4% || 100% </tr>
|}

[[File:Park Japan.JPG|thumb|160px|[[Park Chung Hee]], future leader of South Korea, as a soldier of the Manchukuo Imperial Army]]

Other Korean officers who served Japan moved on to successful careers in post-colonial South Korea. Examples include [[Park Chung Hee]], who became president of South Korea; [[Chung Il-kwon]], prime minister from 1964 to 1970; [[Paik Sun-yup]], South Korea's youngest general who was famous for his command of the [[1st Infantry Division (South Korea)|1st Infantry Division]] during the [[Battle of Pusan Perimeter|defense of the Pusan Perimeter]], and [[Kim Suk-won (general)|Kim Suk-won]], a colonel of the Imperial Japanese Army who subsequently became a general of the South Korean army. The first ten of the Chiefs of Army Staff of South Korea graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and none from the [[Korean Liberation Army]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.army.mil.kr/intro/intro1_3_5b.htm |script-title=ko:육군 참모총장, The Republic of Korea Army |access-date=19 February 2007 |language=ko |title=K2WebWizard }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |script-title=ko:초기 육군 총장들은 일본 육사 출신, 여야 설전 |date=26 September 2005 |url=http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=079&article_id=0000056180 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120712064844/http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=079&article_id=0000056180 |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 July 2012 |work=CBS Nocut News/Naver |access-date=19 February 2007 |language=ko}}</ref>

Officer cadets had been joining the Japanese Army since before the annexation by attending the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Enlisted Soldier recruitment began as early as 1938, when the Japanese [[Kwantung Army]] in Manchuria began accepting pro-Japanese Korean volunteers into the army of Manchukuo, and formed the [[Gando Special Force]]. Koreans in this unit specialized in counter-insurgency operations against communist guerillas in the region of [[Jiandao]]. The size of the unit grew considerably at an annual rate of 700 men, and included such notable Koreans as General [[Paik Sun-yup]], who served in the Korean War. Historian Philip Jowett noted that during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the [[Gando Special Force]] "earned a reputation for brutality and was reported to have laid waste to large areas which came under its rule".<ref>{{cite book |author=Philip S. Jowett |title=Rays of the Rising Sun |year=2004 |publisher=Helion & Company Limited |location=West Midlands |page=34}}</ref>

Starting in 1944, Japan started the [[conscription]] of Koreans into the armed forces. All Korean men were drafted to either join the Imperial Japanese Army, as of April 1944, or work in the military industrial sector, as of September 1944. Before 1944, 18,000 Koreans passed the examination for induction into the army. Koreans provided workers to mines and construction sites around Japan. The number of conscripted Koreans reached its peak in 1944 in preparation for war.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/033rd_issue/98031103.htm |title=Archived copy |access-date=2015-08-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160413200013/http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/033rd_issue/98031103.htm |archive-date=13 April 2016 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> From 1944, about 200,000 Korean men were inducted into the army.{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}

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 during that time to be one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. military history. A fifth of the Japanese garrison during this battle consisted of Korean laborers, where on the last night of the battle a combined 300 Japanese soldiers and Korean laborers did a last ditch charge. Like their Japanese counterparts, many of them were killed.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.stamfordhistory.org/ww2_tarawa.htm |title=Pride and Patriotism: Stamford's Role in World War II: The Battle of Tarawa |access-date=9 July 2008 |archive-date=16 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516085435/http://www.stamfordhistory.org/ww2_tarawa.htm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://worldwar2database.com/node/995 |title=The Battle of Tarawa, November 20–24, 1943 |work=World War II Multimedia Database |access-date=31 March 2016 |archive-date=12 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160412155451/http://worldwar2database.com/node/995 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The Japanese, however, did not always believe they could rely on Korean laborers to fight alongside them. In ''Prisoners of the Japanese'', author Gaven Daws wrote, "[O]n [[Tinian]] there were five thousand Korean laborers and so as not to have hostiles ''at their back'' when the Americans invaded, the Japanese killed them."<ref>{{cite book |author=Gavan Daws |title=Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific |year=1994 |publisher=William Morrow & Company |location=New York |page=278 |isbn=978-0-688-11812-9}}</ref>

After the war, 148 Koreans were convicted of Class B and C [[Japanese war crimes]], 23 of whom were sentenced to death (compared to 920 Japanese who were sentenced to death), including Korean prison guards who were particularly notorious for their brutality during the war. The figure is relatively high considering that ethnic Koreans made up a small percentage of the Japanese military. Judge [[Bert Röling]], who represented the Netherlands at the [[International Military Tribunal for the Far East]], noted that "many of the commanders and guards in POW camps were Koreans – the Japanese apparently did not trust them as soldiers – and it is said that they were sometimes far more cruel than the Japanese."<ref>{{cite book |author=B. V. A Roling and Antonio Cassese |title=The Tokyo Trial and Beyond |year=1993 |publisher=Polity Press |location=Oxford, UK |page=76}}</ref> In his memoirs, Colonel Eugene C. Jacobs wrote that during the [[Bataan Death March]], "the Korean guards were the most abusive. The Japanese didn't trust them in battle, so used them as service troops; the Koreans were anxious to get blood on their bayonets; and then they thought they were veterans."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/blbro10.htm |title=Blood Brothers A Medic's Sketch Book / Jacobs, Colonel Eugene C. |publisher=Project Gutenberg |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080506093620/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/blbro10.htm |archive-date=6 May 2008 |df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Blood brothers: a medic's sketch book |first=Eugene C. |last=Jacobs |publisher=Carlton Press |year=1985 |isbn=978-0-8062-2300-1}}</ref>

Korean guards were sent to the remote jungles of [[Burma]], where Lt. Col. William A. (Bill) Henderson wrote from his own experience that some of the guards overseeing the construction of the [[Burma Railway]] "were moronic and at times almost bestial in their treatment of prisoners. This applied particularly to Korean private soldiers, conscripted only for guard and sentry duties in many parts of the Japanese empire. Regrettably, they were appointed as guards for the prisoners throughout the camps of Burma and Siam."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mekongexpress.com/thailand/photoalbum/bridgechapt8.htm |title=Bridge Over the River Kwai – Chapter 8 |publisher=Mekong Express |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080828015402/http://www.mekongexpress.com/thailand/photoalbum/bridgechapt8.htm |archive-date=28 August 2008 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> The highest-ranking Korean to be prosecuted after the war was Lieutenant General [[Hong Sa-ik]], who was in command of all the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps in the Philippines.

===Comfort women===
{{main|Comfort women}}
[[File:Korean Comfort Women recorded by U.S. Marine Corps.png|thumb|Korean comfort women on Okinawa being interviewed by U.S. marines after liberation]]
During [[World War II]], many ethnic Korean girls and women (mostly aged 12–17) were forced by the Japanese military to become sex slaves on the pretext of being hired for jobs, such as a seamstresses or factory workers, and were forced to provide sexual service for Japanese soldiers by agencies or their families against their wishes.<ref>The Dong-a Ilbo 5 May 1933 "民籍을僞造 醜業을强制 악마 길은 유팍업자의 소행 犯人은警察 에被逮"</ref><ref>The Dong-a Ilbo 30 June 1933 "路上에少女掠取 醜業[[Chungin|中人]]에賣渡 金神通 팔아먹은 男女檢擧 判明 된誘引魔手段"</ref><ref>The Dong-a Ilbo 16 July 1934 "팔린養女 눈물로 呼称 十一歳少女賣春强要"</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Morgan |first=Jason |title=How Beijing weaponizes 'comfort women' as propaganda tool |newspaper=[[Asia Times]] |language=en |date=24 March 2018 |url=https://asiatimes.com/2018/03/beijing-weaponizes-comfort-women-propaganda-tool/ |access-date=15 September 2020 |archive-date=28 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028150016/https://asiatimes.com/2018/03/beijing-weaponizes-comfort-women-propaganda-tool/ |url-status=live}}</ref> These women were euphemistically called "[[comfort women]]".

According to an interrogation report by [[U.S. Army]] in 1944, comfort women were in good physical health. They were able to have a periodic checkup once a week and to receive treatment in case of spreading disease to the Japanese soldiers, but not for their own health.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japanese_Prisoner_of_War_Interrogation_Report_49 |title=Japanese Prisoner of War Interrogation Report 49 |access-date=15 September 2020 |archive-date=12 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201012083101/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japanese_Prisoner_of_War_Interrogation_Report_49 |url-status=live}}</ref> However, a 1996 [[United Nations]] Report detailed that "large numbers of women were forced to submit to prolonged prostitution under conditions which were frequently indescribably traumatic". Documents which survived the war revealed "beyond doubt the extent to which the Japanese forces took direct responsibility for the comfort stations" and that the published practices were "in stark contrast with the brutality and cruelty of the practice".<ref>{{cite web |title=UN Commission on Human Rights – Report on mission to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Jan 96) |url=http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/commission/country52/53-add1.htm |access-date=2021-02-10 |website=hrlibrary.umn.edu |archive-date=6 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206033948/http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/commission/country52/53-add1.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Chizuko Ueno]] at [[Kyoto University]] cautions against the claim that women were not forced as the fact that "no positive sources exist supporting claims that comfort women were forced labor" must be treated with doubt, as "it is well known that the great majority of potentially damaging official documents were destroyed in anticipation of the Allied occupation".<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chizuko |first1=Ueno |last2=Sand |first2=Jordan |date=1999 |title=The Politics of Memory: Nation, Individual and Self |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/his.1999.11.2.129 |journal=History and Memory |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=129–152 |doi=10.2979/his.1999.11.2.129 |jstor=10.2979/his.1999.11.2.129 |pmid=21268430 |s2cid=1765052 |issn=0935-560X |access-date=10 February 2021 |archive-date=13 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113050828/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/his.1999.11.2.129 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The [[Asian Women's Fund]] claimed that during World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army recruited anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of women from occupied territories to be used as sex slaves.<ref>The "Comfort Women" Issue and the Asian Women's Fund https://www.awf.or.jp/pdf/0170.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210109152657/https://www.awf.or.jp/pdf/0170.pdf |date=9 January 2021 }}</ref> [[Yoshimi Yoshiaki]] asserted that possibly hundreds of thousands of girls and women, mainly from China and the Korean Peninsula but also Southeast Asian countries occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army, as well as Australia and the Netherlands, were forced to serve as comfort women. According to testimonies, young women were abducted from their homes in countries under Imperial Japanese rule. In many cases, women were lured with promises of work in factories or restaurants. In some cases propaganda advocated equity and the sponsorship of women in higher education. Other enticements were false advertising for nursing jobs at outposts or Japanese army bases; once recruited, they were incarcerated in comfort stations both inside their nations and abroad.<ref>Yoshimi, Yoshiaki (2000), Comfort Women. Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Asia Perspectives, translation: Suzanne O'Brien, New York: Columbia University Press, {{ISBN|978-0-231-12033-3}}</ref><ref>"An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 women across Asia, predominantly Korean and Chinese, are believed to have been forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese military brothels", BBC 2000-12-08;"Historians say thousands of women; as many as 200,000 by some accounts; mostly from Korea, China and Japan worked in the Japanese military brothels", Irish Examiner 2007-03-08;AP 2007-03-07;CNN 2001-03-29.</ref>

From the early nineties onward, former Korean comfort women have continued to protest against the Japanese government for apparent historical negationism of crimes committed by the [[Imperial Japanese Army]], and have sought compensation for their sufferings during the war.<ref>[http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women/index.html Japan court rules against 'comfort women'] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060922051632/http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women/index.html |date=2006-09-22 }}, CNN, 2001-03-29.</ref><ref>[https://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/15/congress_backs_off_of_wartime_japan_rebuke/ Congress backs off of wartime Japan rebuke] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303182502/http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/15/congress_backs_off_of_wartime_japan_rebuke/ |date=2016-03-03 }}, The Boston Globe, 2006-10-15.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.comfort-women.org/ |title=Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, Inc |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091103220622/http://www.comfort-women.org/ |archive-date=2009-11-03 |access-date=2006-08-05}}</ref> There has also been international support for compensation, such as from the [[European Union]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Texts adopted – Thursday, 13 December 2007 – Comfort women – P6_TA(2007)0632 |url=https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2007-0632+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN |access-date=2021-02-10 |website=www.europarl.europa.eu |archive-date=15 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210615113606/https://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2F%2FEP%2F%2FTEXT+TA+P6-TA-2007-0632+0+DOC+XML+V0%2F%2FEN |url-status=live}}</ref> the Netherlands, Canada and the Philippines.<ref>[https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/52000/asa350012008eng.pdf Open Letter: House Resolution 124 Calling on the Government of Japan to Apologize for the System of Military Sexual Slavery Before and During World War I ] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210509223827/https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/52000/asa350012008eng.pdf |date=9 May 2021 }}</ref> The United States passed [[United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121|House of Representatives House Resolution 121]] on 30 July 2007, asking the Japanese government to redress the situation and to incorporate comfort women into school curriculum.<ref>{{cite web |title=Passage of H.Res. 121 on "Comfort Women", the US Congress and Historical Memory in Japan |url=https://apjjf.org/-Kinue-TOKUDOME/2510/article.html |access-date=2021-02-10 |website=The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus |date=August 2007 |archive-date=26 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201126190423/https://apjjf.org/-Kinue-TOKUDOME/2510/article.html |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Hirofumi Hayashi]] at the [[University of Manchester]] argues that the resolution has helped to counter the "arguments of ultrarightists flooding the mainstream mass media" and warned against the rationalization of the comfort women system.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hayashi |first=Hirofumi |date=2008 |title=Disputes in Japan over the Japanese Military "Comfort Women" System and Its Perception in History |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25098017 |journal=The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |volume=617 |pages=123–132 |doi=10.1177/0002716208314191 |jstor=25098017 |s2cid=145678875 |issn=0002-7162 |access-date=10 February 2021 |archive-date=9 February 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209101413/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25098017 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

===Religion and ideology===

Protestant Christian missionary efforts in Asia were quite successful in Korea. American Presbyterians and Methodists arrived in the 1880s and were well received. They served as medical and educational missionaries, establishing schools and hospitals in numerous cities. In the years when Korea was under Japanese control, some Koreans adopted Christianity as an expression of nationalism in opposition to the Japan's efforts to promote the Japanese language and the Shinto religion.<ref name="Danielle Kane 2009 pp 365">Danielle Kane, and Jung Mee Park, "The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia", ''American Journal of Sociology'' (2009) 115#2 pp 365–404</ref>
In 1914 of 16 million Koreans, there were 86,000 Protestants and 79,000 Catholics. By 1934 the numbers were 168,000 and 147,000, respectively. Presbyterian missionaries were especially successful. Harmonizing with traditional practices became an issue. The Protestants developed a substitute for Confucian ancestral rites by merging Confucian-based and Christian death and funerary rituals.<ref>Kenneth Scott Latourette, ''A History of the Expansion of Christianity: Volume VII: Advance through Storm: A.D. 1914 and after, with concluding generalizations'' (1945) 7:401–407</ref>

==Korean independence movement==
{{Main|Korean independence movement}}

=== Guerrilla resistance in Manchuria and Russia ===
Since the early 1900s, Koreans in [[Manchuria]] and [[Primorsky Krai]] in Russia waged a guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation. At this time, [[Hong Beom-do|Beom-do Hong]]'s unit ambushed and annihilated the Imperial Japanese Army that was advancing in [[Battle of Fengwudong|Battle of Bongodong]](Fengwudong), [[Jilin]], [[Manchuria]](June [[1920]]). Also, the combined forces of the independence army commanded by [[Kim Chwajin]] and [[Hong Beom-do]], while repeatedly retreating operationally, ambushed and killed about 1,500 Imperial Japanese soldiers in [[Battle of Qingshanli|Battle of Cheongsanri]](Qīngshānlǐ), [[Jílín]], [[Manchuria]]. In retaliation to loss at [[Battle of Qingshanli|Battle of Cheongsanri]], the [[Imperial Japanese Army]] committed the [[Gando Massacre]], massacring between 5,000 and tens of thousands of Korean civilians in [[Jiandao|Gando]]. The [[Japanese invasion of Manchuria]] in 1932 and subsequent [[Pacification of Manchukuo]] deprived many of these groups of their bases of operation and supplies. Many were forced to either flee elsewhere in China, or to join the [[Red Army]]-backed forces in eastern Russia. One of the guerrilla leaders in this region was the future dictator of North Korea, [[Kim Il Sung]]. These experiences served as a base for Kim's legitimacy after the liberation of Korea.<ref>French, Paul. ''North Korea: The Paranoid Peninsula – A Modern History.'' 2nd ed. New York: Zed Books, 2007. 50–51. Print.</ref>

=== March First Movement ===
{{Main|March First Movement}}
[[File:(Red_Cross_pamphlet_on_March_1st_Movement)_(KADA-shyun15-012~20)_(cropped).jpg|thumb|Korean Christians were [[Crucifixion|crucified]] in the aftermath of the March 1st Movement protests (1919).|178x178px]]
In January 1919, Emperor Gojong died suddenly, which led to widespread {{Ill|Gojong poisoning conspiracy theories|lt=theories that he had been poisoned by Japan|ko|고종 독살설}}. Anti-Japanese sentiment flared amongst Koreans. In Tokyo, Korean students issued a [[February 8 Declaration of Independence]] that declared Korea independent from Japan.<ref name=":24">{{Cite web |last=박|first=성수|title=2·8독립선언 (二八獨立宣言) |trans-title=February 8 Declaration of Independence |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0046354 |access-date=2023-09-28 |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]|website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |language=ko}}</ref> Inspired by this, Koreans in Seoul issued their own [[Korean Declaration of Independence|declaration of independence]], which was prominently read aloud in [[Tapgol Park]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=김|first=진봉 |title=3·1운동 (三一運動) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0026772 |access-date=2024-01-28 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]|language=ko}}</ref> This gave rise to the nation-wide March 1 Movement peaceful protests; it is estimated that 2 million people took part in these rallies. However, they were violently suppressed by Japan; according to Korean records, over a year of demonstrations, 46,948 were arrested, 7,509 killed and 15,961 wounded.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=March First Movement |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service |url=https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9050797?query=march%20first%20movement&ct= |access-date=1 March 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071211125737/https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9050797?query=march%20first%20movement&ct= |archive-date=11 December 2007 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> According to Japanese figures, 8,437 were arrested, 553 killed and 1,409 wounded.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |last=Lee |first=Ki-Baik |translator-first=Edward W. |translator-last=Wagner |others=with Edwar J. Shultz |title=A New History of Korea (韓国史新論) |publisher=Ilchorak/Harvard University Press |year=1999 |pages=344 [https://archive.org/details/newhistoryofkore0000leek/page/1080 1080] |isbn=978-0-674-61575-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/newhistoryofkore0000leek/page/1080}}</ref>

=== Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea ===
[[File:Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.jpg|thumb|Early members of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (1919)]]
{{Main|Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea}}
After the repression of the March 1st Movement protests, Koreans fled the peninsula. A number of them congregated in Shanghai a month after the protests and founded a government-in-exile: the Korean Provisional Government (KPG).{{Sfnp|Robinson|2007|pp=52–53}} The government was highly diverse, with both left- and right-leaning members, and engaged in a range of political and militant efforts that advocated for Korea's independence.<ref name=":42">{{Citation |script-title=ko:김구[金九] |work=Historynet |trans-title=Kim Ku |url=http://contents.history.go.kr/mobile/kc/view.do?levelId=kc_n400245&code=kc_age_40 |access-date=2023-06-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230625013042/http://contents.history.go.kr/mobile/kc/view.do?levelId=kc_n400245&code=kc_age_40 |archive-date=25 June 2023 |url-status=live |publisher=[[National Institute of Korean History]] |ref={{SfnRef|Historynet Kim Ku}} |language=ko}}</ref> In 1931, member [[Kim Ku]] founded the [[Korean Patriotic Organization]] (KPO), a militant arm of the KPG. The KPO planned a number of attacks on Japanese government and colonial officials, including a [[Sakuradamon incident (1932)|1932 assassination attempt on Emperor Hirohito]] and a bombing at a [[Hongkou Park Incident|military rally in Shanghai]].<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=윤|first=상원|script-title=ko:한인애국단 (韓人愛國團) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0061905 |access-date=2024-01-28 |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]|website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |language=ko}}</ref> After the Shanghai bombing, they were forced to flee the city, and eventually settled in Chongqing,<ref name="Encyclopedia KLA">{{Citation |last=박|first=성수|script-title=ko:한국광복군 (韓國光復軍) |trans-title=Korea Liberation Army |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0005134 |access-date=March 29, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230404095003/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0005134 |archive-date=April 4, 2023 |url-status=live |language=ko |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]]|publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]}}</ref><ref name=":3" /> where they received support from the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Chinese government]].<ref name=":3" /> There, Kim Ku, then the leader of the KPG, founded the [[Korean Liberation Army]] (KLA). The army fought in China and Burma, and prepared for its return to Korea as the tide of World War II turned against Japan.<ref name="Encyclopedia KLA" /> This culminated in the [[Eagle Project]], a mission for the KPG and KLA to return to the peninsula and fight the Japanese. Ultimately, with the surprise of the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atomic bomb droppings on Nagasaki and Hiroshima]] and the sudden end of the war, the mission did not come to pass.<ref>{{Cite web |last=윤 |first=시원 |script-title=ko:독수리작전 (禿수리作戰) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0073488 |access-date=2024-01-28 |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]]|website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |language=ko}}</ref>

=== Resistance within Korea ===
Within Korea itself, anti-Imperialism rallies continued on occasion. Most notably, the [[Gwangju Student Independence Movement|Gwangju(Kōshū) Students Independence Movement]] on 3 November 1929 led to the strengthening of Japanese military rule in 1931, after which freedom of the press and freedom of expression were curbed. Many witnesses, including Catholic priests, reported that Japanese authorities dealt with insurgency severely. When villagers were suspected of hiding rebels, entire village populations are said to have been herded into public buildings (especially churches) and massacred when the buildings were set on fire.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wells |first=Kenneth M. |title=Background to the March First Movement: Koreans in Japan, 1905–1919. |publisher=[[Korean Studies (journal)|Korean Studies]], V. 13, 1989 |year=1989 |pages=1–21}}</ref> In the village of Teigan, Suigen District, Keiki Prefecture (now Jeam-ri, [[Hwaseong City|Hwaseong]], Gyeonggi Province) for example, a group of 29 people were gathered inside a church which was then set afire.([[Jeamni massacre]])<ref>{{cite book |last=Lee |first=Ki-Baik |translator-last=Wagner |others=with Edwar J. Shultz |title=A New History of Korea (韓国史新論) |publisher=Ilchorak/Harvard University Press |year=1999 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/newhistoryofkore0000leek/page/344 344] |isbn=978-0-674-61575-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/newhistoryofkore0000leek/page/344}}</ref>

On 10 December 1941, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, under the presidency of [[Kim Ku]], declared war on Japan and Germany.<ref>{{Cite web |script-title=ko:우리역사넷 :: 한국 근ㆍ현대사 사진 모음 |url=http://contents.history.go.kr/mphoto/imsi/imsi_period03_01.do?lang=en |access-date=2024-01-24 |website=contents.history.go.kr}}</ref>

==Independence and division of Korea==
{{Main|Division of Korea}}

Following the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki]], [[Soviet invasion of Manchuria]], and the impending overrun of the Korean Peninsula by U.S. and Soviet forces, Japan [[surrender of Japan|surrendered]] to the Allied forces on 15 August 1945, ending 35 years of Japanese colonial rule, though Japanese troops remained in Southern Korea for several more weeks until fully withdrawing by mid-September.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sthelepress.com/index.php/2023/12/16/ccc/|quote=Assertion that the emperor's surrender 'abruptly' ended Japan's occupation of the peninsula, which in fact continued in the southern part for more than three weeks?|last=Myers|first=Brian Reynolds|title=The Power to Mystify|work=Sthele Press|date=16 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/korean-war/surrender-japan-korea.html | title=Surrender of Japan in Korea }}</ref>

American forces under General [[John R. Hodge]] arrived at the southern part of the Korean Peninsula on 8 September 1945, while the Soviet Army and some Korean Communists had stationed themselves in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. U.S. Colonel [[Dean Rusk]] proposed to Chischakov, the Soviet military administrator of northern Korea, that Korea should be split at the [[38th parallel north|38th parallel]]. This proposal was made at an emergency meeting to determine postwar [[Sphere of influence|spheres of influence]], which led to the [[division of Korea]].

After the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule, the "Name Restoration Order" was issued on 23 October 1946 by the [[United States Army Military Government in Korea]] south of the [[38th parallel north|38th parallel]], 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 the requirements for naturalization as Japanese citizens.<ref name="Han">{{cite journal |last=Fukuoka |first=Yasunori |year=1996 |title=Beyond Assimilation and Dissimilation: Diverse Resolutions to Identity Crises among Younger Generation Koreans in Japan |url=http://www.han.org/a/fukuoka96b.html |url-status=dead |journal=Saitama University Review |volume=31 |pages=13–30 |publisher=[[Saitama University]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061123113014/http://www.han.org/a/fukuoka96b.html |archive-date=23 November 2006 |access-date=27 November 2006}}</ref>

==Administrative divisions==
{{Main|Provinces of Korea#Provinces of Chōsen}}
{{expand section|date=April 2022}}
[[File:Provinces of Chosen Korea.png|thumb|Provinces of Korea during Japanese rule]]
There were 13 provinces in Korea during Japanese rule: [[Keiki Province]], [[Kōgen Province]], [[Chūseihoku Province]], [[Chūseinan Province]], [[Zenrahoku Province]], [[Zenranan Province]], [[Keishōhoku Province]], [[Keishōnan Province]], [[Heian'nan Province]], [[Heianhoku Province]], [[Kōkai Province]], [[Kankyōnan Province]], and [[Kankyōhoku Province]]. The administrative capital Keijō was in Keiki Province.

==Economy==
[[File:Groundbreaking ceremony of Gyeongbu Line at Busan, 1901.jpg|thumb|Groundbreaking ceremony for the [[Keijō]]–[[Busan|Fuzan]] railway]]
[[File:Production in Korea under Japanese rule.png|thumb|Production in Korea under Japanese rule]]
[[File:Industrialization of Korea under Japanese rule.svg|thumb|Industrialization of Korea under Japanese rule]]
[[File:Population of Korea under Japanese rule.png|thumb|Population of Korea under Japanese rule]]
[[File:Railway in Korea under Japanese rule.svg|thumb|Km of railway in Korea under Japanese rule]]
[[File:Telephone subscribers in Korea under Japanese rule.svg|thumb|Telephone subscribers in Korea under Japanese rule]]
Japan encouraged an inflow of Japanese capital to Korea's less developed economy.<ref name=":022">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Xiaobing |title=The Cold War in East Asia |date=2018 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-1-138-65179-1 |location=Abingdon, Oxon}}</ref>{{Rp|page=24}} A large majority of major firms in Korea became Japanese owned and operated as a result, with key positions reserved for Japanese.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=24}} Koreans were permitted to work in menial roles under harsh labor conditions.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=24}} Most of Korea's coal, iron, and crop production was shipped to Japan.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=24}}

Economic output in terms of agriculture, fishery, forestry and industry increased by tenfold from 1910 to 1945 as illustrated on the chart to the right.<ref name="GGK1942">{{cite web |title=朝鮮総督府統計年報 昭和17年 [Governor-General of Korea Statistical Yearbook 1942] |publisher=Governor-General of Korea |date=March 1944 |url=http://kindai.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1454691 |access-date=4 December 2014 |archive-date=16 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150116173452/http://kindai.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1454691 |url-status=live}}</ref> [[Princeton University|Princeton]]'s [[Atul Kohli]] concluded that the economic development model the Japanese instituted played the crucial role in Korean economic development, a model that was maintained by the Koreans in the post-[[World War II]] era.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kohli |first=Atul |year=2004 |title=State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery |location=Cambridge |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=w_r7wLD--VoC&pg=PA27&dq=%22extensive+use%22 27], [https://books.google.com/books?id=w_r7wLD--VoC&pg=PA56&dq=%22highly+cohesive%22 56] |quote=[T]he Japanese made extensive use of state power for their own economic development and then used the same state power to pry open and transform Korea in a relatively short period of time. .&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The highly cohesive and disciplining state that the Japanese helped to construct in colonial Korea turned out to be an efficacious economic actor. The state utilised its bureaucratic capacities to undertake numerous economic tasks: collecting more taxes, building infrastructure, and undertaking production directly. More important, this highly purposive state made increasing production one of its priorities and incorporated property-owning classes into production-oriented alliances.}}</ref>

Randall S. Jones wrote that "economic development during the colonial period can be said to have laid the foundation for future growth in several respects".<ref>Randall S. Jones. ''The economic development of colonial Korea''. University of Michigan, 1984. p. 168.</ref>

A 2017 study found that the gradual removal of trade barriers (almost fully completed by 1923) after Japan's annexation of Korea "increased population growth rates more in the regions close to the former border between Japan and Korea than in the other regions. Furthermore, after integration, the regions close to Korea that specialized in the fabric industry, whose products were the primary goods exported from Japan to Korea, experienced more population growth than other regions close to Korea did."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Nakajima |first1=Kentaro |last2=Okazaki |first2=Tetsuji |title=The expanding Empire and spatial distribution of economic activity: the case of Japan's colonization of Korea during the prewar period |journal=The Economic History Review |volume=71 |issue=2 |pages=593–616 |doi=10.1111/ehr.12535 |issn=1468-0289 |year=2018 |s2cid=157334108}}</ref>

There were some modernization efforts by the late 19th century prior to annexation. Seoul became the first city in East Asia to have electricity, trolley cars, water, telephone, and telegraph systems all at the same time,<ref name="Summer Institute Summaries">{{cite web |title=Summer Institute Summaries |url=http://orias.berkeley.edu/summer2007/Summer2007Summaries.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130812195235/http://orias.berkeley.edu/summer2007/Summer2007Summaries.htm |archive-date=12 August 2013 |access-date=5 January 2015 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> but Korea remained a largely backward agricultural economy around the start of the 20th century.<ref name="LoC Economic Development"/> "Japan's initial colonial policy was to increase agricultural production in Korea to meet Japan's growing need for rice. Japan also began to build large-scale industries in Korea in the 1930s as part of the empire-wide program of economic self-sufficiency and war preparation."<ref name="LoC Japanese rule">{{cite web |title=Korea Under Japanese Rule |editor1-first=Andrea Matles |editor1-last=Savada |editor2-first=William |editor2-last=Shaw |publisher=Federal Research Division, Library of Congress |year=1990 |url=http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/7.htm |access-date=2 October 2004 |archive-date=3 November 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103013022/http://countrystudies.us/south-korea/7.htm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kimura |first=Mitsuhiko |year=1995 |title=The Economics of Japanese Imperialism in Korea, 1910–1939 |journal=[[The Economic History Review]] |volume=48 |issue=3 |pages=555–574 |jstor=2598181 |doi=10.2307/2598181}} See p.&nbsp;558: "Japan faced shortages of rice as domestic production lagged behind demand. The government had three alternatives to deal with this problem: (a) increasing productivity of domestic agriculture, (b) importing foreign rice (''gaimai'') from south-east Asia, and (c) importing colonial rice. The first was most costly and its success was not assured. The second implied loss of foreign exchange and also dependence on foreign producers for the imperial staple, which would seriously weaken the political power of the empire vis-à-vis the West. It also involved a quality problem in that foreign rice of the indica variety did not suit Japanese taste. The third alternative seemed best to the Japanese administration."</ref> In terms of exports, "Japanese industry as a whole gained little&nbsp;... and this is certainly true for the most important manufacturing sector, cotton textiles. This export trade had little impact, positive or negative, on the welfare of Japanese consumer."<ref>Kimura (1995), p.&nbsp;557.</ref> Likewise in terms of the profitability of Japanese investors: colonial Korea made no significant impact.<ref>Kimura (1995), p.&nbsp;564.</ref>

According to scholar [[Donald Stone Macdonald|Donald S. Macdonald]], "for centuries most Koreans lived as subsistence farmers of rice and other grains and satisfied most of their basic needs through their own labor or through barter. The manufactures of traditional Korea – principally cloth, cooking and eating utensils, furniture, jewelry, and paper – were produced by artisans in a few population centers."<ref name="LoC Economic Development">{{cite web |title=A Country Study: South Korea, The Japanese Role in Korea's Economic Development |editor1-first=Andrea Matles |editor1-last=Savada |editor2-first=William |editor2-last=Shaw |publisher=Federal Research Division, Library of Congress |year=1990 |url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/krtoc.html#kr0086 |access-date=17 December 2009 |archive-date=11 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131211124442/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/krtoc.html#kr0086 |url-status=live}}</ref>

{{cquote|During the early period of Japanese rule, the Japanese government attempted to completely integrate the Korean economy with Japan, and thus introduced many modern economic and social institutions and invested heavily in infrastructure, including schools, railroads and utilities. Most of these physical facilities remained in Korea after the Liberation. The Japanese government played an even more active role in developing Korea than it had played in developing the Japanese economy in the late nineteenth century. Many programs drafted in Korea in the 1920s and 1930s originated in policies drafted in Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912). The Japanese government helped to mobilize resources for development and provided entrepreneurial leadership for these new enterprises. Colonial economic growth was initiated through powerful government efforts to expand the economic infrastructure, to increase investment in human capital through health and education and to raise productivity.<ref name="LoC Economic Development"/>}}

However, under Japanese rule, many Korean resources were only used for Japan.<ref name="economic">{{cite web |url=http://smesindia.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Korea.pdf |title=Economic Growth and human Production in the Republic of Korea, 1945–1992 |access-date=19 February 2007 |last=Lee |first=J ong-Wha |work=United Nations Development Programme |archive-date=24 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181024211226/http://smesindia.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Korea.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> Economist [[Suh Sang-chul]] points out that the nature of industrialization during the period was as an "imposed enclave", so the <!-- immediate? -->impact of colonialism was trivial. Another scholar, Song Byung-nak, states that the economic condition of average Koreans deteriorated during the period despite the economic growth. Cha primarily attributed this deterioration to global economic shocks and [[laissez-faire]] policies, as well as Chōsen's rapid population growth; the colonial government's attempts to mitigate this problem were inadequate.<ref name="shocks">{{cite journal |last1=Cha |first1=Myung Soo |title=Imperial Policy or World Price Shocks? Explaining Interwar Korean Consumption Trend |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=September 1998 |volume=58 |issue=3 |page=751 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700021148 |jstor=2566622 |s2cid=154798459 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2566622 |access-date=27 October 2021 |archive-date=27 October 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211027070654/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2566622 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Most Koreans at the time could access only a primary school education under restriction by the Japanese, and this prevented the growth of an indigenous entrepreneurial class. A 1939 statistic shows that among the total capital recorded by factories, about 94 percent was Japanese-owned. While Koreans owned about 61 percent of small-scale firms that had 5 to 49 employees, about 92 percent of large-scale enterprises with more than 200 employees were Japanese-owned.<ref name="Jin W. Cyhn">{{cite book |last=Cyhn |first=Jin W. |year=2002 |title=Technology Transfer and International Production: The Development of the Electronics Industry in Korea |location=Cheltenham |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=5KQlbJWrh3IC&pg=PA78 78]}}</ref><ref>Suh, Sang-Chul (1978), ''Growth and Structural Changes in the Korean Economy, 1910–1940: The Korean. Economy under the Japanese Occupation'', Harvard University Press, {{ISBN|0-674-36439-2}}</ref><ref>Song, Byung-Nak (1997) ''The Rise of the Korean Economy''. 2nd ed. Hong Kong; Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|0-19-590049-9}}</ref>

{{cquote|Virtually all industries were owned either by Japan-based corporations or by Japanese corporations in Korea. As of 1942, indigenous capital constituted only 1.5 percent of the total capital invested in Korean industries. Korean entrepreneurs were charged interest rates 25 percent higher than their Japanese counterparts, so it was difficult for large Korean enterprises to emerge. More and more farmland was taken over by the Japanese, and an increasing proportion of Korean farmers either became sharecroppers or migrated to Japan or Manchuria as laborers. As greater quantities of Korean rice were exported to Japan, per capita consumption of rice among the Koreans declined; between 1932 and 1936, per capita consumption of rice declined to half the level consumed between 1912 and 1916. Although the government imported coarse grains from Manchuria to augment the Korean food supply, per capita consumption of food grains in 1944 was 35 percent below that of 1912 to 1916.<ref name="LoC Japanese rule" />}}

In addition, 70% of the agricultural workers who made up most of Korea's population at the time were reduced to tenants of Japanese and Korean landlords who purchased land at low prices, and they had to pay high rents of 50–70%. As a result, many Koreans left for Manchuria and settled down, becoming the foundation of [[Korean in China]].<ref>Kim, yong-dalment, The Korean peasants movement and agriculture policies of the Japanese govern(2007)</ref>

The Japanese government created a system of [[Colonialism|colonial]] [[mercantilism]], requiring construction of significant [[transportation infrastructure]] on the Korean Peninsula for the purpose of extracting and exploiting resources such as raw materials (timber), foodstuff (mostly rice and fish), and mineral resources (coal and iron ore). The Japanese developed port facilities and an extensive railway system which included a main trunk railway from the southern port city of [[Busan|Pusan]] through the capital of Seoul and north to the Chinese border. This infrastructure was intended not only to facilitate a colonial mercantilist economy, but was also viewed as a strategic necessity for the Japanese military to control Korea and to move large numbers of troops and materials to the Chinese border at short notice.

From the late 1920s and into the 1930s, particularly during the tenure of Japanese Governor-General [[Kazushige Ugaki]], concentrated efforts were made to build up the industrial base in Korea. This was especially true in the areas of [[heavy industry]], such as chemical plants and steel mills, and [[munition]]s production. The Japanese military felt it would be beneficial to have production closer to the source of raw materials and closer to potential front lines for a future war with China.<ref>{{cite book |last=Pratt |first=Keith |year=2007 |title=Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea |publisher=Reaktion Books |isbn=978-1-86189-335-2}}</ref>

[[Lee Young-hoon]], a professor at [[Seoul National University]] states that less than 10% of arable land actually came under Japanese control and rice was normally traded, not robbed. He also insists that Koreans' knowledge about the era under Japanese rule is mostly made up by later educators.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chosunonline.com/svc/auth/index_login.html?contid=2004112063000&code=news |title=ソウル大教授「日本による収奪論は作られた神話」["It is a Myth Made up afterward that Japan Deprived Korea of Land and Food" Professor at Seoul University] |last=Lee |first=Yong Hoon |access-date=8 January 2013 |archive-date=3 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603012115/http://www.chosunonline.com/svc/auth/index_login.html?contid=2004112063000&code=news |url-status=live}} Registration required.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://news.hankooki.com/lpage/society/200411/h2004111817411822040.htm |date=18 November 2004 |script-title=ko:일제 토지ㆍ식량 수탈론은 상상된 신화 |publisher=Hankooki.com |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130618223905/http://news.hankooki.com/lpage/society/200411/h2004111817411822040.htm |archive-date=18 June 2013 |df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chosunonline.com/svc/auth/index_login.html?contid=2007060363016&code=news |title=李栄薫教授「厳格なジャッジなき学界が歴史を歪曲」["Congress without Strict Judgment Distorts History" Lee Yong Hoon Professor] |last=Lee |first=Yong Hoon |access-date=8 January 2013 |archive-date=3 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130603004654/http://www.chosunonline.com/svc/auth/index_login.html?contid=2007060363016&code=news |url-status=live}} Registration required.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/31/2007053100061.html |script-title=ko:정치 지도자의 잘못된 역사관이 나라 망치고있다 |date=31 May 2007 |publisher=[[The Chosun Ilbo]] |access-date=8 January 2013 |archive-date=31 August 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120831012640/http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/05/31/2007053100061.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Many of Lee's arguments, however, have been contested.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/economic-growth-and-human-development-republic-korea-1945-1992 |title=Economic Growth and Human Development in the Republic of Korea, 1945–1992 – Human Development Reports |website=hdr.undp.org |date=January 1997 |access-date=30 March 2018 |archive-date=30 March 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180330213630/http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/economic-growth-and-human-development-republic-korea-1945-1992 |url-status=live}}</ref>

[[Alleyne Ireland]], a British author, referred to conditions in Korea under Japanese rule in 1926. He wrote in his book ''The New Korea'', "looking forward from 1910, one thing was clear where many things were obscure, namely that Japan, having decided to make Korea part of her Empire, would deem the permanence of her occupation to be a major element of her national policy, to be held intact, at whatever cost, against internal revolt or foreign intrigue.<ref name="Alleyne">[[Alleyne Ireland]] ''The New Korea'' E. P. Dutton. 1926 Chapter I Introductory pp. 2</ref> The Japanese refer with pride to their effective protection of life and property throughout a country but recently overrun by bandits, to the enormous increase during the past fifteen years in every branch of production, with its connotation of increased employment for Koreans, to the constantly mounting number of Koreans appointed to the government service are facts, that cannot be gainsaid. However, the Korean nationalists attribute to them a sinister significance."<ref>Alleyne Ireland ''The New Korea'' E. P. Dutton. 1926 Chapter I Introductory pp. 6</ref>

=== Drug trade ===
[[File:Commemorative stamps released by Japan's colonial rule of Korea.jpg|thumb|241x241px|1946 saw the issue of commemorative stamps bearing the dove of peace celebrating the end of Japanese rule.]]
Korea produced a small amount of opium during the earlier years of the colonial period, but by the 1930s, Korea became a major exporter of both opium and narcotics, becoming a significant supplier to the illicit drug trade, specifically to the opium monopoly created by the Japanese-sponsored Manchukuo government.<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/312805 |jstor=312805 |title=The Forgotten Plague: Opium and Narcotics in Korea under Japanese Rule, 1910–1945 |last1=Jennings |first1=John M. |journal=Modern Asian Studies |year=1995 |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=795–815 |doi=10.1017/S0026749X00016188 |s2cid=145267716 |access-date=25 March 2022 |archive-date=23 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220223000328/https://www.jstor.org/stable/312805 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} The Government-General developed facilities dedicated to the production of morphine and heroin.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} Emigrant Koreans played an extensive role in drug trafficking in China, especially in [[Manchuria]], where they were employed as poppy farmers, drug peddlers, or proprietors of opium dens — disreputable jobs that were at the bottom rung of the drug trafficking ladder.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} The initiation of opium and narcotic production in Korea was motivated by the worldwide shortage of opium and Japan's unfavorable environment for poppy cultivation, making the Japanese entirely dependent on foreign imports to meet domestic demand for medical opium.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} The Japanese discovered that Korea provided favorable climate and soil conditions for poppy cultivation; not only were the climate and soil conditions more suitable, but land and labor costs were lower than in Japan.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} Farmers in Korea were aware of the global demand for opium, and welcomed the idea of increasing the amount of land for poppy cultivation, an idea that was introduced to them by Japanese pharmaceutical companies.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} The sale and consumption of drugs were pervasive in Korea, where the country faced a substantial domestic drug abuse problem, appearing in the form of opium-smoking and morphine addiction.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} Within Korea, most illicit narcotics were supplied by Japanese druggists.<ref name=":6" />{{Page needed|date=March 2024}}

==Policies==

=== Motivation behind Japanese colonial policy ===
In Japan, attitudes toward Koreans were deeply shaped by the [[Nissen dōsoron]] (日鮮同祖論, "Theory of Japanese-Korean Common Ancestry"), which claimed Koreans and Japanese shared mythological ancestors: [[Susanoo-no-Mikoto|Susanoo]] (Koreans) and [[Amaterasu]] (Japanese). According to this theory, Koreans were inherently Japanese. This idea served as the ideological foundation for the colonial government's assimilation policies, which aimed to fully incorporate Koreans as "racial Japanese."

In a speech in February 1944, Governor-General Koiso used the [[Nihon Shoki]] to justify the campaign to erase Korean language, culture, and ethnic identity. He asserted that Koreans were descendants of Susanoo-no-Mikoto, younger brother of Amaterasu, the sun goddess and ancestral figure of the Japanese emperor and nation. According to the Nihon Shoki, Susanoo had been sent to Korea to rule, a narrative Koiso used to suggest Susanoo was the same figure as [[Dangun]], Korea's mythical founder. He further argued that Korea's annexation in 1910 mirrored the "divine land transfer" ([[Kuni-yuzuri]]), where Susanoo's descendant, [[Ōkuninushi]], submitted to [[Ninigi-no-Mikoto|Ninigi]], Amaterasu's grandson, establishing a precedent for the subordination of Koreans (Susanoo's descendants) to Japanese (Amaterasu's descendants). Koiso frequently made use of wording that hoped for the colonial policy to help "awaken" Koreans to their "true nature" as Japanese.<ref>{{Cite book |last=京城日報社 |url=https://archive.org/details/kjnp-1944-02-16 |title=京城日報 1944-02-16 |date=1944-02-16}}</ref>

Assimilation, however, did not mean equality. Koreans were to remain subordinate, as theorized by [[Imaizumi Teisuke]], who compared the Japanese-Korean relationship to hierarchical bonds like man and woman, rider and horse. This religious ideology also explained the construction of Shinto shrines across Korea during wartime, seen as completing a divine ritual to secure Japan's destiny.

As opposed to other occupied countries, Koreans were nominally granted Japanese citizenship, including passports, but they were denied basic rights like freedom of speech, assembly, and an independent press. By 1910, all Korean publications were banned, leaving only censored outlets run by the colonial government. Japan's ultimate goal was to erase Korean identity entirely, making Koreans indistinguishable from the Japanese, much like the assimilation policies directed at the Ainu and Okinawans. However, modern research confirms that Korean remains distinct and unrelated to Japanese or other languages.

===Newspaper censorship===
{{See also|History of newspapers in Korea#Japanese colonial period}}
In 1907, the Resident-General of Korea passed the Newspaper Act,<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=최 |first=준 |script-title=ko:대한매일신보 (大韓每日申報) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0014992 |access-date=26 January 2024 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]] |language=ko}}</ref> which effectively prevented the publication of local papers. Only the English-language ''[[The Korea Daily News]]'' and its Korean-language counterpart ''Daehan Maeil Sinbo'' continued their publication, because they were run by the foreigner [[Ernest Bethell]].<ref name=":12">{{Cite web |last=Neff |first=Robert |date=2 May 2010 |title=UK journalist Bethell established newspapers in 1904 |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/01/113_65191.html |access-date=26 January 2024 |website=[[The Korea Times]] |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":06">{{Cite web |last=Han |first=Jeon |date=June 2019 |title=Fighting Injustice with the Pen |url=http://www.kocis.go.kr/eng/webzine/201906/sub05.html |access-date=26 January 2024 |website=[[Korean Culture and Information Service]] |language=en}}</ref> However, after continued Japanese pressure on the paper's staff and Bethell's death in 1909, even these papers became owned by the Japanese government.<ref name=":12" /> The newspaper's Korean-language successor, ''[[Maeil Sinbo]]'', was subordinated to the Japanese-language ''[[Keijō Nippō]].'' These two papers, along with the English-language newspaper ''[[The Seoul Press]]'', were effectively backed by the colonial government.<ref name=":13">{{Cite web |last1=정 |first1=진석 |last2=최 |first2=진우 |script-title=ko:신문 (新聞) |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0032944 |access-date=2024-02-11 |website=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]] |language=ko}}</ref><ref name=":22">{{Cite web |title=京城日報 |trans-title=Keijo Nippo |url=http://archive.history.go.kr/catalog/view.do?arrangement_cd=ARRANGEMENT-0-A&arrangement_subcode=HOLD_NATION-0-JP&provenanace_ids=000000000077&displaySort=&displaySize=50&currentNumber=1&system_id=000000346029&catalog_level=&catalog_position=-1&search_position=3&lowYn= |access-date=2024-01-26 |website=The Archives of Korean History}}</ref> Concurrently, the colonial government published an [[Government gazette|official gazette]], entitled the ''[[Government-General of Chōsen Gazette]]''.<ref name=":07">{{Cite web |script-title=ko:조선총독부 관보: 일자별 보기 |url=https://db.history.go.kr/modern/gb/level.do?itemId=gb |access-date=March 22, 2024 |website=db.history.go.kr |publisher=[[National Institute of Korean History]]}}</ref>

By 1910, the only major privately owned Korean newspaper allowed to publish was the ''[[Gyeongnam Ilbo]]''. However, this paper was pressured to close by 1915, leaving only the ''Maeil Sinbo'' left. However, restrictions were eased upon the 1919 March First Movement and the {{Ill|Cultural rule|lt=cultural rule|ja|文化政治|ko|문화 통치}} policy, which led to the establishment of the historic Korean papers ''[[The Chosun Ilbo]]'' and ''[[The Dong-A Ilbo]]''.<ref name=":13" />

In 1932, Japan relaxed restrictions on the publication of Korean newspapers. Despite this, the government continued to seize newspapers without warning; there are over a thousand recorded seizures between 1920 and 1939. Revocation of publishing rights was relatively rare, and only three magazines had their rights revoked over the entire colonial period. In 1940, as the Pacific War increased in intensity, Japan shut down all Korean language newspapers again.<ref name="robinson">{{cite book |last=Robinson |first=Michael E. |title=The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=1987 |editor=Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie}}</ref>

===Education===
[[File:Keijo Imperial University-old1.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Keijō Imperial University]]]]
[[File:Public primary school in Korea under Japanese rule-en.svg|thumb|250px|Number of public regular schools (公立普通学校) and students under Japanese rule<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1443598/343 |title=朝鮮総督府統計年報 昭和2年 |date=31 March 1929 |publisher=Governor-General of Korea |isbn= |location= |pages=654–655 |language=Japanese |trans-title=Governor-General of Korea Statistical Yearbook 1936 |doi=10.11501/1443598 |last1=朝鮮総督府 |access-date=24 January 2021 |archive-date=13 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113050902/https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1443598/343 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1452382/180 |title=朝鮮総督府統計年報 昭和11年 |date=31 March 1938 |publisher=Governor-General of Korea |isbn= |location= |pages=296–297 |language=Japanese |trans-title=Governor-General of Korea Statistical Yearbook 1936 |doi=10.11501/1452382 |last1=朝鮮総督府 |access-date=24 January 2021 |archive-date=13 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113051405/https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1452382/180 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |url=https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1454691/113 |title=朝鮮総督府統計年報 昭和17年 |date=31 March 1944 |publisher=Governor-General of Korea |isbn= |location= |pages=264–265 |language=Japanese |trans-title=Governor-General of Korea Statistical Yearbook 1942 |doi=10.11501/1454691 |last1=朝鮮総督府 |access-date=24 January 2021 |archive-date=13 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113051324/https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1454691/113 |url-status=live }}</ref>]]
[[File:Public regular school enrollment rate.svg|thumb|250px|Enrollment rate of public regular schools (公立普通学校) under Japanese rule<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Inoue |first=Kaoru |date=June 1997 |title=日本統治下末期の朝鮮における日本語普及・強制政策 : 徴兵制度導入に至るまでの日本語常用・全解運動への動員 |trans-title=Language Policy in Korea under the Last Stage of Japanese Occupation: The Mobilization to the Movement for Daily Use and Understanding of Japanese before the Introduction of a Draft System |url=http://hdl.handle.net/2115/29532 |journal=The Annual Reports on Educational Science |language=Japanese |publisher=[[Hokkaido University]] |volume=73 |page=111 |hdl=2115/29532 |via= |access-date=24 January 2021 |archive-date=13 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231113051328/https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2115/29532 |url-status=live }}</ref>]]
Following the annexation of Korea, the Japanese administration introduced a public education system modeled after the [[Education in the Empire of Japan|Japanese school system]] with a pyramidal hierarchy of elementary, middle and high schools, culminating at the [[Keijō Imperial University]] in [[Keijō]]. As in Japan itself, education was viewed primarily as an instrument of "the Formation of the Imperial Citizen" (황민화; 皇民化; ''Kōminka'') with a heavy emphasis on moral and political instruction.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=ABE |first=Hiroshi |title=Higher Learning in Korea Under Japanese Rule |journal=The Developing Economies |publication-date=1971 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=175 |doi=10.1111/j.1746-1049.1971.tb00468.x |doi-access=free}}</ref> Japanese religious groups such as Protestant Christians willingly supported the Japanese authorities in their effort to assimilate Koreans through education.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Assimilating Korea: Japanese Protestants, "East Asian Christianity" and the education of Koreans in Japan, 1905–1920 |first1=Dolf-Alexander |last1=Neuhaus |journal=Paedagogica Historica |volume=52 |issue=6 |pages=614–628 |doi=10.1080/00309230.2016.1224262 |year=2016 |s2cid=151584389}}</ref>

During colonial times, [[Primary education|elementary schools]] were known as "Citizen Schools" ({{lang|ko|국민학교}}; {{lang|ja|国民学校}}; ''kokumin gakkō'') as in Japan, as a means of forming proper "Imperial Citizens" (황국민; 皇国民; ''kōkokumin'') from early childhood. Elementary schools in South Korea today are known by the name ''chodeung hakgyo'' ({{Korean|hangul=초등학교|hanja=初等學校|labels=no}}) ("elementary school") as the term ''gukmin hakgyo/kokumin gakkō'' has recently become a [[Political correctness|politically incorrect]] term.

During the colonial period, Japan established an officially equal educational system in Korea, but it strictly limited the rate of coed education. After the Korean Educational Ordinance was published in 1938, this situation changed slightly. "Primary education consisted of a mandated four years of primary school (''futsu gakkō''). Secondary education included four years of middle school for boys (''koto'' ''futsu'' ''gakkō'') and three years for girls (''joshi'' koto ''futsu gakko'') or two to three years of vocational school (''jitsugyo gakkō''). 1915, the Japanese announced the Regulations for Technical Schools (s''enmon gakko kisoku''), which legalized technical schools (''senmon gakkō'') as post-secondary educational institutions."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Solomon |first=Deborah B. |editor1-last=Lee |editor1-first=Hong Yung |editor2-last=Ha|editor2-first=Yong-Chool |editor3-last=Sorensen|editor3-first=Clark W.|date=August 2014 |title=Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910–1945 |place=Seattle University of Washington Press, 2013. 350 pp. |journal=[[The Journal of Asian Studies]] |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=827–829 |doi=10.1017/s0021911814000837 |s2cid=162206825 |issn=0021-9118}}</ref>

In addition, modernized (for the time) Korean educational institutions were excluded from the colonial system. 1911, Japanese government set The Regulations for Private Schools (''Shiritsu gakko kisoku'') aimed at undermining these facilities which were believed to breed Korean patriotism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lee |first=Jeong-Kyu |date=2002-03-07 |title=Japanese Higher Education Policy in Korea (1910–1945) |journal=Education Policy Analysis Archives |volume=10 |page=14 |doi=10.14507/epaa.v10n14.2002 |issn=1068-2341 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

The public curriculum for most of the period was taught by Korean educators under a hybrid system focused on assimilating Koreans into the Japanese Empire while emphasizing Korean cultural education. This focused on the history of the Japanese Empire as well as inculcating reverence for the [[Imperial House of Japan]] and instruction in the ''[[Imperial Rescript on Education]]''.

Integration of Korean students into Japanese-language schools and Japanese students in Korean-language schools was discouraged but steadily increased over time. While official policy promoted equality between ethnic Koreans and ethnic Japanese, in practice this was rarely the case.<ref>{{cite book |last=Caprio |first=Mark E |title=Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 |year=2009 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-98900-6 |pages=129–130 |chapter=Post-March First Policy Reform and Assimilation}}</ref> Korean history and language studies would be taught side by side with Japanese history and language studies until the early 1940s under a new education ordinance that saw wartime efforts increased and the hybrid system slowly weakened.<ref>{{cite book |last=Caprio |first=Mark E |title=Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 |year=2009 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-98900-6 |page=153 |chapter=Radical Assimilation under Wartime Conditions}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"style="float:right;"
|+ Academic Status of under Japanese rule in 1944<ref>1944 人口調査結果報告 其ノ二, ｢第79回帝國議會說明資料｣</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1IN4406&conn_path=I2 |title=Statistics Korea |access-date=6 October 2023 |archive-date=6 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231006102942/https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1IN4406&conn_path=I2 |url-status=live }}</ref>
! Academic ability !! Population !! % </tr>
| University || 7,374 || 0.03% </tr>
| Vocational school || 22,064 || 0.1% </tr>
| Middle & high school || 199,642 || 0.9% </tr>
| elementary school || 1,941,789 || 8.5% </tr>
| temporary school & [[Seodang]] || 980,122 || 4.3% </tr>
| Uneducated|| 19,642,775 || 86.2% </tr>
| Total || 22,793,766 || 100% </tr>
|}

One point of view is that, although the Japanese education system in Korea was detrimental towards Korea's cultural identity, its introduction of public education as universal was a step in the right direction to improve Korea's [[human capital]]. Towards the end of Japanese rule, Korea saw elementary school attendance at 38 percent. Children of elite families were able to advance to higher education, while others were able to attend technical schools, allowing for "the emergence of a small but important class of well-educated white collar and technical workers&nbsp;... who possessed skills required to run a modern industrial economy." The Japanese education system ultimately produced hundreds of thousands of educated South Koreans who later became "the core of the postwar political and economic elite".<ref>ed. Duus, Peter, Ramon H. Myers, and Mark R. Peattie, ''The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945'', Princeton University Press (1996), p. 326</ref>

Another point of view is that it was only after the end of Japanese rule with World War II that Korea saw true, democratic rise in public education as evidenced by the rise of adult literacy rate from 22 percent in 1945 to 87.6 percent by 1970 and 93% by the late 1980s. Though public education was made available for elementary schools during Japanese rule, Korea as a country did not experience secondary-school enrollment rates comparable to those of Japan prior to the end of World War II.<ref>Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, editors. ''South Korea: A Country Study''. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1990.</ref>

For example, according to the statistics of the Japanese Government-General of Korea in 1944, which was prepared just before independence, only 8.5% of the total population entered elementary school, and the middle school enrollment rate was only 0.9%. The literacy rate was also very low, so only 30% of the population could read letters, compared to a sharp rise to 90% in 1955, 10 years after independence.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1IN3015&conn_path=I2 |title=KOSIS |access-date=18 August 2023 |archive-date=18 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230818140610/https://kosis.kr/statHtml/statHtml.do?orgId=101&tblId=DT_1IN3015&conn_path=I2 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>Huh, Soo-Youl, Some issues on the theory of colonial modernization(2007)</ref>

===Korean language===
In the initial phase of Japanese rule, students were taught in Korean in public schools established by ethnic Korean officials who worked for the colonial government. Prior to this period, Korean education relied heavily on [[Hanja]], Chinese characters, for written communication. However, during this time the Korean language transitioned to a [[Korean mixed script|mixed Hanja–Korean script]] influenced by the [[Japanese writing system]], where most lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in Korean script.<ref name=Pratt>Pratt, Rutt, Hoare, 1999. ''Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary.'' Routledge.</ref> Korean textbooks from this era included excerpts from traditional Korean stories such as {{ill|Heungbujeon|ko|흥부전}} (興夫伝; Kōfuden).<ref>Hyŏng-gyu Pak. [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/665069316 "Na ŭi midŭm ŭn kil wi e itta : Pak Hyŏng-gyu hoegorok"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140114020432/http://www.worldcat.org/title/na-ui-midum-un-kil-wi-e-itta-pak-hyong-gyu-hoegorok/oclc/665069316 |date=14 January 2014 }}. Seoul: Ch'angbi, 2010. {{ISBN|978-8936471866}}</ref>

In 1921, government efforts were strengthened to promote Korean media and literature throughout Korea and also in Japan. The Japanese government also created incentives to educate ethnic Japanese students in the Korean language.<ref>{{cite book |last=Caprio |first=Mark E |title=Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 |year=2009 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-98900-6 |pages=128–129 |chapter=Post-March First Policy Reform and Assimilation}}</ref> In 1928, the [[Korean Language Society]] inaugurated [[Hangul Day]] (9 October), which was meant to celebrate the [[Korean alphabet]] in the face of accelerating Japanization of Korean culture.<ref>{{cite book |last=Shin |first=Gi-Wook |title=Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy |year=2006 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-5408-8 |page=51 |chapter=Colonial Racism and Nationalism}}</ref>

Koreans were obliged to take Japanese names by 1932.<ref name=":022" />{{Rp|page=24}}

In 1933, the foundation of modern South and North Korean spelling was completed.

The Japanese administrative policy shifted more aggressively towards cultural assimilation in 1938 (''Naisen ittai'') with a new government report advising reform to strengthen the war effort. Under this influence, in 1940, all Korean newspapers except the Japanese government's official newspaper were eliminated. In 1942, Japanese authorities caused the [[Korean Language Society Incident]] and closed the society by applying suspicion of rebellion to scholars.

This left less room for Korean language studies and by 1943 all Korean language courses had been phased out. Teaching and speaking of Korean was prohibited.<ref name="Hopfner">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EhXrBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT35 |title=Moon Living Abroad in South Korea |last=Hopfner |first=Jonathan |publisher=[[Moon Publications]] |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-59880-250-4 |location=Berkeley, CA |page=25 |access-date=4 May 2020 |archive-date=20 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201120130247/https://books.google.com/books?id=EhXrBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT35 |url-status=live}}</ref> Although the government report advised further, more radical reform, the 10-year plan would never fully go into effect.<ref>{{cite book |last=Caprio |first=Mark E |title=Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 |year=2009 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=978-0-295-98900-6 |page=155 |chapter=Radical Assimilation under Wartime Conditions}}</ref>

===Taking of historical artifacts===
The Japanese rule of Korea also resulted in the relocation of tens of thousands of [[cultural artifact]]s to Japan. This removal of Korean cultural property was against a long tradition of such actions dating at least since the sixteenth century wars between Korea and Japan <!-- this is unclear in meaning -->, though in the 20th century colonial period it was a systematised and regulated activity covered by rules issued 1916–1933.<ref>Kim, Jongsok (2018). ''Museums and cultural heritage: to examine the loss of cultural heritage during colonial and military occupations with special reference to the Japanese occupation of Korea, and the possibilities for return and restitution.''

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/161512289.pdf Retrieved 3 December 2023</ref>

The issue over where these artifacts should be located began during the U.S. [[occupation of Japan]].<ref name="TIME">{{cite magazine |last=Macintyre |first=Donald |date=28 January 2002 |title=A Legacy Lost |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|TIME]] |issn=0040-781X |url=http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,197704,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070126170109/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,197704,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=26 January 2007 |access-date=27 June 2009}}</ref> In 1965, as part of the [[Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea]], Japan returned roughly 1,400 artifacts to Korea, and considered the diplomatic matter to have been resolved.<ref>[http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/14/Japan-Seoul-sign-deal-on-artifact-returns/UPI-21911289751032/ Japan, Seoul sign deal on artifact returns] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112200414/http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/14/Japan-Seoul-sign-deal-on-artifact-returns/UPI-21911289751032/ |date=12 November 2012 }} 14 November 2010</ref> Korean artifacts are retained in the [[Tokyo National Museum|Tōkyō National Museum]] and in the hands of many private collectors.<ref name="newsweek">{{cite journal |last=Itoi |first=Kay |author2=Lee, B.J. |date=21 February 2005 |title=Korea: A Tussle Over Treasures |journal=[[Newsweek]] |issn=0028-9604 |url=http://www.newsweek.com/2005/02/20/korea-a-tussle-over-treasures.html |access-date=14 May 2011 |archive-date=23 January 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110123065157/http://www.newsweek.com/2005/02/20/korea-a-tussle-over-treasures.html |url-status=live}}</ref>

The primary building of [[Gyeongbokgung]] Palace was demolished and the [[Japanese General Government Building, Seoul|Japanese General Government Building]] was built in its exact location. The Japanese colonial authorities destroyed 85 percent of all the buildings in Gyeongbokgung.<ref>Peter Bartholomew, 'Choson Dynasty Royal Compounds: Windows to a Lost Culture', in ''Transactions: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch'' Vol. 68 (Seoul: RAS, 1993)</ref> [[Sungnyemun]], the gate in Gyeongsong that was a symbol of Korea, was altered by the addition of large, Shinto-style golden horns near the roofs, later removed by the South Korean government after independence.

According to the South Korean government, there are 75,311 cultural artifacts that were taken from Korea. Japan has 34,369, the United States has 17,803,<ref name="Chosun Ilbo 2006-10-17">{{cite news |script-title=ko:해외 유출된 한국문화재 총 75,311점...문화재가 조국의 눈길한번 받지 못해 |url=http://press.chosun.com/newsRead.php?md=A01&tm=1&no=194733&cat=1200&cat1=1211 |author=Kim Hak-won (김학원) |work=[[The Chosun Ilbo]] / newswire |language=ko |date=17 October 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110708145940/http://press.chosun.com/newsRead.php?md=A01&tm=1&no=194733&cat=1200&cat1=1211 |archive-date=8 July 2011}}</ref> and France had several hundred, which were seized in the [[French campaign against Korea (1866)|French campaign against Korea]] and loaned back to Korea in 2010 without an apology.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-dec-05-la-ca-cultural-exchange-korea-20101205-story.html |title=Recovering South Korea's lost treasures |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |access-date=5 January 2015 |date=2010-12-05 |last1=Glionna |first1=John M. |archive-date=16 January 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150116183025/http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/05/entertainment/la-ca-cultural-exchange-korea-20101205 |url-status=live}}</ref> In 2010, Prime Minister of Japan [[Naoto Kan]] expressed "deep remorse" for the removal of artifacts,<ref>[http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-10/japan-to-return-korea-artifacts-in-occupation-apology.html Japan to Return Korea Artifacts in Occupation Apology] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110915141800/http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-08-10/japan-to-return-korea-artifacts-in-occupation-apology.html |date=15 September 2011 }} ''Business Week'' 2010 08 10,</ref> and arranged an initial plan to return the Royal Protocols of the Joseon Dynasty and over 1,200 other books, which was carried out in 2011.<ref>Yoshihiro Makino. "[http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201112080019a Japan returns Korean royal archives after a century] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121021160551/http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/korean_peninsula/AJ201112080019a |date=21 October 2012 }}". ''[[Asahi Shimbun]]''. 8 December 2011.</ref>

===Religion===
As Japan established the puppet state of [[Manchukuo]], Korea became more vital to the internal communications and defense of the Japanese empire against the Soviet Union. Japan decided in the 1930s to make the Koreans become more loyal to the Emperor by requiring Korean participation in the [[Shinto in Korea|State Shinto]] devotions, and by weakening the influences of both Christianity and traditional religion.<ref name="Wi Jo Kang 1997 62" /><ref>Kenneth Scott Latourette, ''Christianity in a revolutionary age: A history of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries'', volume 5: The 20th Century Outside Europe (1962) pp 415–417</ref>

Shinto shrines were established throughout the peninsula, including [[Chōsen Shrine]] on the mountain Namsan in Seoul and [[Heijō Shrine]] in Pyongyang.<ref name=":02">{{Cite journal |last1=Kōji |first1=Suga |last2=𳜳𨀉𠄈 |date=2010 |title=A Concept of "Overseas Shinto Shrines": A Pantheistic Attempt by Ogasawara Shōzō and Its Limitations |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27822899 |journal=Japanese Journal of Religious Studies |volume=37 |issue=1 |pages=47–74 |jstor=27822899 |issn=0304-1042 |access-date=27 September 2023 |archive-date=3 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231003021152/https://www.jstor.org/stable/27822899 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="神社참배 거부 18개교 日帝, 가차 없이 폐교{{pipe}}주간동아">{{Cite web |title=神社참배 거부 18개교 日帝, 가차 없이 폐교{{pipe}}주간동아 |url=https://weekly.donga.com/society/3/05/11/77546/1 |access-date=2023-09-17 |website=주간동아 |date=26 October 2005 |language=ko |archive-date=18 September 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230918071800/https://weekly.donga.com/society/3/05/11/77546/1 |url-status=live }}</ref> Shrines such as these were destroyed shortly after Korea was liberated in 1945.<ref name="神社참배 거부 18개교 日帝, 가차 없이 폐교{{pipe}}주간동아"/>

====Christianity and Communism====
{{See also|Evangelicalism#Korea}}
Nowhere else were Protestant missionary efforts in Asia more successful than in Korea. American Presbyterians and Methodists arrived in the 1880s and were well received. During the Japanese colonial period, Christianity became an expression of Korean nationalist opposition to Japan and its assimilation policies.<ref name="Danielle Kane 2009 pp 365"/><ref name = Grayson>{{cite journal |last = Grayson |first = James H |title = Christianity and State Shinto in Colonial Korea: A Clash of Nationalisms and Religious Beliefs |date = 1993 |journal = Diskus |volume = 1 |issue = 2 |pages = 13–30 |url = https://jbasr.com/basr/diskus/diskus1-6/GRAYSON.TXT |access-date = 2024-08-12}}</ref> In 1914, out of 16 million people, there were 86,000 Protestants and 79,000 Catholics; by 1934 the numbers were 168,000 and 147,000. Presbyterian missionaries were especially successful. Harmonizing with traditional practices became an issue. Catholics tolerated Shinto rites; Protestants developed a substitute for Confucian ancestral rites by merging Confucian-based and Christian death and funerary rituals.<ref>Kenneth Scott Latourette, ''A history of the expansion of Christianity'' Volume VII: Advance through Storm: A.D. 1914 and after, with concluding generalizations (1945) 7:401–407</ref>

In 1937, Japan began requiring the worship of the Emperor at the numerous Shinto shrines set up across the peninsula to bolster patriotism and national unity. The Presbyterian Church in Korea decided to support the Emperor worship as a denomination in 1938. Other denominations followed. Fewer than a dozen Protestant pastors refused to worship the Emperor and were imprisoned. In total, around 2000 Christian were imprisoned and 50 were martyred. The vast majority of Korean Christians followed the national guidance, and worshipped the Japanese Emperor.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]] |publisher=[[Academy of Korean Studies]] |lang=ko |url=https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0033042 |title=신사참배 거부운동 (神社參拜 拒否運動) }}</ref>  Missionaries expressed alarm at the rise in communist activity during the 1920s. With the enactment of the [[Peace Preservation Law]] in 1925, communist literature was banned throughout the Empire of Japan, including Chōsen; in order to avoid suspicion and permit dissemination, it was often disguised as Christian literature addressed to missionaries. Communist concepts, such as class struggle, and its partner nationalist movement were resonating well with some of the peasants and lower-class citizens of Chōsen; this was worrying to some missionaries because of communism's [[Marxist–Leninist atheism|atheist components]].<ref>{{cite journal |last = Shin |first = Seung-yop |date = 2022-09-05 |title = Living with the Enemies: Japanese Imperialism, Protestant Christianity, and Marxist Socialism in Colonial Korea, 1919–1945 |journal = Religions |volume = 13 |issue = 9 |pages = 824 |doi = 10.3390/rel13090824 |doi-access = free }}</ref> At one point, communist students in Keijō held an "anti-Sunday School conference" and loudly protested religion in front of churches. This protest renewed Japanese governmental interest in censorship of communist ideas and language.<ref>{{Citation |first=Dae-sook |last=Suh |title=The Korean Communist Movement 1918–1948 |place=Princeton, New Jersey |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |year=1967 |pages=66–68}}</ref>

==Legacy==

=== Korean diaspora ===
{{Main|Zainichi Koreans|Sakhalin Koreans|Koryo-saram}}
A number of groups in the [[Korean diaspora]] formed because of the Japanese colonial period. Zainichi Koreans descend from  the population of around 600,000 Koreans who remained in Japan, often not by choice.<ref name=":142">{{Cite web |last=Moon |first=Rennie |date=2010 |title=Koreans in Japan |url=http://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/koreans_in_japan |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230623194324/https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/koreans_in_japan |archive-date=2023-06-23 |access-date=2023-09-23 |website=Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education |language=en}}</ref> After Sakhalin was transferred from Japan to the Soviet Union, most of the 43,000 ethnic Koreans there were refused permission to repatriate back to Japan or Korea, and were thus trapped in Sakhalin. Many remained stateless. They now form the Sakhalin Korean population.<ref name="Lankov">{{cite news |last=Lankov |first=Andrei |date=5 January 2006 |title=Stateless in Sakhalin |url=http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200601/kt2006010516434554130.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060221144952/http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200601/kt2006010516434554130.htm |archive-date=21 February 2006 |access-date=26 November 2006 |work=[[The Korea Times]]}}</ref> Many Koreans had also escaped to Russia and the Soviet Union because of Japanese activities, and were eventually [[Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union|forced to move to Central Asia]] in 1937.<ref>{{citation |last=Pohl |first=J. Otto |title=Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 |pages=10, 13 |year=1999 |publisher=Greenwood |isbn=0-313-30921-3}}</ref> They became a part of the population of Koryo-saram throughout the [[Post-Soviet states|former Soviet Union]].<ref name=":52">{{cite web |last=Lankov |first=Andrei |author-link=Andrei Lankov |date=21 August 2012 |title=Korean carrot |url=http://via.sawd.ch/index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3JidGguYXNpYS9hcnRpY2xlcy8yMDEyLzA4LzIxL2tvcmVhbl9jYXJyb3RfMTY0MDUuaHRtbA%3D%3D |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130928142343/http://via.sawd.ch/index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3JidGguYXNpYS9hcnRpY2xlcy8yMDEyLzA4LzIxL2tvcmVhbl9jYXJyb3RfMTY0MDUuaHRtbA%3D%3D |archive-date=28 September 2013 |access-date=22 December 2016 |publisher=Russia Beyond the Headlines}}</ref>

===Forced laborers, comfort women, and Unit 731===
{{See also|Comfort women#Legacy in South Korea}}
During [[World War II]], about 450,000 Korean male laborers were involuntarily sent to Japan.<ref>{{cite book |author=Kim Seong-hwan |script-title=ko:일제의 침략 전쟁과 병참기지화 |publisher=SaKyejul |year=2004 |isbn=978-89-5828-032-3 |page=173}}</ref> [[Comfort women]], who served in Japanese military brothels as a form of [[sexual slavery]], came from all over the Japanese empire. Historical estimates range from 10,000 to 200,000, including an unknown number of Koreans. However, 200,000 is considered to be a conservative number by modern historians, and up to 500,000 comfort women are estimated to be taken.<ref>{{cite web |title=U.S. playwright takes up 'comfort women' cause |work=[[The Japan Times]] |year=2005 |url=http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/news/nn02-2005/nn20050228a6.htm |access-date=1 March 2006 |archive-date=21 April 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050421183515/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/news/nn02-2005/nn20050228a6.htm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Japan court rules against 'comfort women' |work=CNN.com |url=http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women/index.html |access-date=1 March 2006 |date=29 March 2001 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060922051632/http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/29/japan.comfort.women/index.html |archive-date=22 September 2006}}</ref> These women faced an average of 29 men and up to 40 men per day, according to one surviving comfort woman.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10682830/comfort-women-japan-survivors |title=Life as a "comfort woman": Survivors remember a WWII atrocity that was ignored for decades |date=29 December 2015 |access-date=13 June 2017 |archive-date=22 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170822220830/https://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10682830/comfort-women-japan-survivors |url-status=live}}</ref> However, of the 500,000, less than 50 are alive {{as of|2018|alt=today}}. Comfort women were often recruited from rural locales with the promise of factory employment; business records, often from Korean subcontractees of Japanese companies, showed them falsely classified as nurses or secretaries.<ref>{{cite news |first=Kim |last=Yun-deok |title=Military Record of 'Comfort Woman' Unearthed |date=11 January 2005 |url=http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200501/200501110028.html |work=[[The Chosun Ilbo]] |access-date=19 February 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061017182428/http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200501/200501110028.html |archive-date=17 October 2006}}</ref> There is evidence that the Japanese government intentionally destroyed official records regarding comfort women.<ref name="BBC slaves">{{cite news |first=William |last=Horsley |title=Korean World War II sex slaves fight on |date=9 August 2005 |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4749467.stm |work=BBC News |access-date=19 February 2007 |archive-date=15 January 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070115032249/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4749467.stm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Seoul Times">{{cite news |title=Japan Boiled Comfort Woman to Make Soup |url=http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=1846 |work=The Seoul Times |access-date=19 February 2007 |archive-date=28 September 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928041645/http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=%2FST%2Fdb%2Fread.php%3Fidx%3D1846 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Koreans, along with many other Asians, were experimented on in [[Unit 731]], a secret military medical experimentation unit in World War II. The victims who died in the camp included at least 25 victims from the former Soviet Union and Korea.<ref name="People's daily">{{cite web |title=Archives give up secrets of Japan's Unit 731 |url=http://english.people.com.cn/200508/03/eng20050803_200004.html |publisher=China Daily (published by People's Daily Online) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090213061242/http://english.people.com.cn/200508/03/eng20050803_200004.html |archive-date=2009-02-13 |date=2005-08-03 |quote=The files include full descriptions of 318 cases, including at least 25 people from the former Soviet Union and Korea.}}</ref> Some historians estimate up to 250,000 total people were subjected to human experiments.<ref name="The Guardian">{{Cite news |last=McCurry |first=Justin |date=2011-02-21 |title=Japan unearths site linked to human experiments |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/japan-excavates-site-human-experiments |access-date=2023-08-09 |issn=0261-3077 |archive-date=5 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170305042608/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/21/japan-excavates-site-human-experiments |url-status=live }}</ref> A Unit 731 veteran attested that most that were experimented on were Chinese, Koreans, and Mongolians.<ref name="New York Times">{{Cite news |date=1995-03-17 |title=Unmasking Horror – A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity |work=The New York Times |language=en |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/unmasking-horror-a-special-report-japan-confronting-gruesome-war-atrocity.html?pagewanted=1 |access-date=2023-08-09 |last1=Kristof |first1=Nicholas D. |archive-date=10 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161210063516/http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/unmasking-horror-a-special-report-japan-confronting-gruesome-war-atrocity.html?pagewanted=1 |url-status=live }}</ref>

The Tokyo trials convened on 29 April 1946 to try Japanese personnel on Class A, B, and C charges for [[Crime of aggression|crimes against peace]], conventional [[war crimes]], and [[crimes against humanity]] respectively. Class C was created mainly to address atrocities committed by Japan against its nationals or allied citizens in times of peace or war since the [[law of war]] only covers enemy and neutral nationals in interstate armed conflicts.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WQ0HCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA548 |title=The Handbook of the International Law of Military Operations |editor=Dieter Fleck, Terry D. Gill |pages=548–549 |date=2015 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-1987-4462-7 |access-date=30 October 2023 |archive-date=1 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101160624/https://books.google.com/books?id=WQ0HCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA548 |url-status=live }}</ref> However, the principal Allied powers realized they had colonies themselves and never pressed on the Class C charges as they did not want to risk their own colonial atrocities being subject to prosecution. This left the Korean and Taiwanese victims of Japanese colonial atrocities without any recourse in the international legal system.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tZt8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT116 |title=War Crimes Tribunals and Transitional Justice: The Tokyo Trial and the Nuremberg Legacy |author=Madoka Futamura |page=116 |date=11 October 2007 |publisher=[[Taylor & Francis]] |isbn=9-7811-3409-1317 |access-date=30 October 2023 |archive-date=1 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101160547/https://books.google.com/books?id=tZt8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PT116 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YWUSAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA169 |title=Trials and Tribulations of International Prosecution |editor=Henry F. Carey, Stacey M. Mitchell |page=169 |date=14 February 2013 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=9-7807-3916-9414 |access-date=30 October 2023 |archive-date=1 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101160548/https://books.google.com/books?id=YWUSAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA169 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 2002, South Korea started an investigation of Japanese collaborators. Part of the investigation was completed in 2006 and a list of names of individuals who profited from exploitation of fellow Koreans were posted.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=23332&categoryCode=117 |title=List of Japanese Collaborators Released |access-date=4 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004181952/https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=23332&categoryCode=117 |archive-date=4 October 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The collaborators not only benefited from exploiting their countrymen, but the children of these collaborators benefited further by acquiring higher education with the exploitation money they had amassed.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=2202&categoryCode=117 |title=Government to Seize Assets of Collaborators in Colonial Era |access-date=4 April 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004182014/https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/nation_view.asp?newsIdx=2202&categoryCode=117 |archive-date=4 October 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref>

The "Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism Republic of Korea" investigated the received reports of damage from 86 people among the 148 Koreans who were accused of being Class B and C criminals while serving as prison guards for the Japanese military during World War II. The commission, which was organized by the South Korean government, announced that they acknowledged 83 people among them as victims. The commission said that although the people reluctantly served as guards to avoid the draft, they took responsibility for the mistreatment by the Japanese against prisoners of war. Lee Se-il, leader of the investigation, said that examination of the military prosecution reports for 15 Korean prison guards, obtained from [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]] of the United Kingdom, confirmed that they were convicted without explicit evidence.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=101&oid=081&aid=0000110388 |script-title=ko:강제동원 '조선인 전범' 오명 벗었다 |trans-title=The forcefully mobilized Koreans cleared their disgrace as the war criminals. |publisher=[[Naver]] / Seoul Sinmun |author=Choe, Gwang-Suk (최광숙) |date=13 November 2006 |access-date=1 December 2009 |language=ko |archive-date=18 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018102836/http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=101&oid=081&aid=0000110388 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Korean to Japanese name change order===
Although officially voluntary, and initially resisted by the Japanese Colonial Government, 80% of Koreans voluntarily changed their name to Japanese in 1940. Many community leaders urged the adoption of Japanese names to make it easy for their children to succeed in society and overcome discrimination.<ref>[[Carter J. Eckert|Eckert, Carter J.]], Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, Edward W. Wagner, ''Korea Old and New: A History'', p. 318</ref>

A study conducted by the United States [[Library of Congress]] states that "the Korean culture was quashed, and Koreans were required to speak Japanese and take Japanese names".<ref>{{cite web |date=June 1993 |title=North Korea; The Rise of Korean Nationalism and Communism |url=http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+kp0022) |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511031617/http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd%2Fcstdy%3A%40field%28DOCID+kp0022%29 |archive-date=11 May 2011 |access-date=19 February 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Part III: The problem from a historical perspective |url=http://daga.dhs.org/daga/press/urm/fingerprinting/chap03.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041231073548/http://daga.dhs.org/daga/press/urm/fingerprinting/chap03.htm |archive-date=31 December 2004 |access-date=19 February 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Fukuoka |first=Yasunori |title=Koreans in Japan: Past and Present |url=http://www.han.org/a/fukuoka96a.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190606063047/http://www.han.org/a/fukuoka96a.html |archive-date=6 June 2019 |access-date=19 February 2007 |work=Saitama University Review |volume=31 |issue=1}}</ref> This name change policy, called [[sōshi-kaimei]] ({{lang|ko|창씨개명}}; {{lang|ja|創氏改名}}), was part of Japan's assimilation efforts.<ref>{{cite web |title=Japan's minorities yet to find their place in the sun. |url=http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF56.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070415033925/http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF56.htm |archive-date=15 April 2007 |access-date=19 February 2007 |work=SAHRDC}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Stearns |first=Peter N. |title=The Encyclopedia of World History. 2001. |url=http://www.bartleby.com/67/2493.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070204211608/http://www.bartleby.com/67/2493.html |archive-date=4 February 2007 |access-date=19 February 2007 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company |df=dmy-all}}</ref> This was heavily resisted by the Korean people. Those Koreans who retained their Korean names were not allowed to enroll at school, were refused service at government offices, and were excluded from the lists for food rations and other supplies. Faced
with such compulsion, many Koreans ended up complying with the name change order. Such a radical policy was deemed to be symbolically significant in the war effort, binding the fate of Korea with that of the empire.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pak |first1=Soon-Yong |last2=Hwang |first2=Keumjoong |year=2011 |title=Assimilation and segregation of imperial subjects: "educating" the colonised during the 1910–1945 Japanese colonial rule of Korea |journal=Paedagogica Historica |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=377–397 |doi=10.1080/00309230.2010.534104 |s2cid=145280988}}</ref>

===Discrimination against Korean leprosy patients by Japan===
Colonial Korea was subject to the same ''[[Leprosy]] Prevention Laws'' of 1907 and 1931 as the Japanese home islands. These laws directly and indirectly permitted the [[quarantine]] of patients in sanitariums, where forced [[abortion]]s and sterilization were common. The laws authorized punishment of patients "disturbing the peace", as most Japanese leprologists believed that vulnerability to the disease was inheritable.<ref>Michio Miyasaka, ''A Historical and Ethical Analysis of Leprosy Control Policy in Japan'', {{cite web |url=http://www.clg.niigata-u.ac.jp/~miyasaka/hansen/leprosypolicy.html |title=Leprosy Control Policy in Japan |access-date=28 November 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111113060946/http://www.clg.niigata-u.ac.jp/~miyasaka/hansen/leprosypolicy.html |archive-date=13 November 2011}}</ref> In Korea, many leprosy patients were also subjected to hard labor.<ref>''Korean Hansens patients seek redress'', http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20040226a4.html {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120605020715/http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20040226a4.html |date=5 June 2012 }}</ref>
The Japanese government compensated inpatients.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20160512154500004 |script-title=ko:일제강점기 소록도 수용 한센인 590명, 日정부서 보상받아 |date=12 May 2016 |access-date=13 July 2019 |archive-date=13 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190713182110/https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20160512154500004 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Atomic bomb casualties===
{{Main|Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki}}
Many Koreans were drafted for work at military industrial factories in [[Hiroshima]] and [[Nagasaki]].<ref name="BBC News"/> According to the secretary-general of a group named Peace Project Network, "there were a total of 70,000 Korean victims in both cities". Japan paid South Korea 4 billion yen and built a welfare center in the name of humanitarian assistance, not as compensation to the victims.<ref name="Andreas Hippin"/>

===South Korean presidential investigation commission on pro-Japanese collaborators===
Collaborators of the Imperial Japanese Army were prosecuted in the postwar period as [[Chinilpa]], or "friendly to Japanese".<ref>Ko Wŏn-Sŏp. ''Panminnja Choesanggi'' (A record of charges against the anti-nationalists). Seoul: Paegyŏp Munhwasa, 1949.</ref> In 2006 [[President of South Korea|South Korean president]] [[Roh Moo-hyun]] appointed an investigation commission into the issue of locating descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators from the times of the 1890s until the collapse of Japanese rule in 1945.

In 2010, the commission concluded its five-volume report. As a result, the land property of 168 South Korean citizens has been confiscated by the government, these citizens being descendants of pro-Japanese collaborators.<ref>[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7890316/South-Korea-targets-Japanese-collaborators-descendants.html "South Korea targets Japanese collaborators' descendants"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180428103630/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7890316/South-Korea-targets-Japanese-collaborators-descendants.html |date=28 April 2018 }} ''The Telegraph'', 14 July 2010</ref>

=== Memorials ===
A number of memorials cover the legacy of the Japanese colonial period. The [[Independence Hall of Korea]] in Cheonan,<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Independence Hall of Korea (독립기념관) |url=https://english.visitkorea.or.kr/svc/whereToGo/locIntrdn/rgnContentsView.do?vcontsId=106450 |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=[[VisitKorea.or.kr]] |language=en}}</ref> [[Museum of Japanese Colonial History in Korea]] in Seoul,<ref name=":15">{{Cite web |last=Kim |first=Seung-yeon |date=2018-08-27 |title=(Yonhap Feature) First civic museum on Korea's colonial past looks beyond showing history |url=https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20180824004100315 |access-date=2023-07-09 |website=[[Yonhap News Agency]] |language=en}}</ref> and the [[National Memorial Museum of Forced Mobilization under Japanese Occupation]] in Busan all cover the subject.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kang |first=Yoon-seung |date=2019-10-12 |title=Former Japanese PM pays respects to Korean victims of forced labor |url=https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20191012002400320 |access-date=2023-09-20 |website=[[Yonhap News Agency]] |language=en}}</ref> The [[Trail of National Humiliation]] in Seoul passes by a number of the former sites of colonial-era buildings.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lim |first=Sun-young |date=2017-06-19 |title=Tourist paths map colonial history |url=https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2017/06/19/socialAffairs/Tourist-paths-map-colonial-history/3034834.html |access-date=2025-01-10 |website=[[Korea JoongAng Daily]] |language=en}}</ref>

=== Modern justification of the colonization ===
{{See also|Japanese history textbook controversies}}
Some conservative Japanese nationalists have since attempted to more positively portray the colonization and Japan's intentions. Claims such as "Japan did not want to annex Korea" and "Koreans came to Japan and asked to be annexed" have been forwarded, and efforts are made to highlight Korea's economic development during this period. However, the scholar Mark Caprio writes skeptically of such viewpoints:<ref name="Caprio Interpretations">{{Cite journal |last=Caprio |first=Mark |date=November 1, 2010 |title=Neo-Nationalist Interpretations Of Japan's Annexation Of Korea: The Colonization Debate In Japan And South Korea |url=https://apjjf.org/mark-caprio/3438/article |journal=The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus |volume=8 |issue=44}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=While acknowledging that Japanese policy benefited pockets of Korean society, a responsible argument must also acknowledge that Japan's colonial policies systematically excluded the majority of Koreans from these institutions of modernity. Reliance on a minority sample to explain the entirety of Japan's colonial rule grossly neglects the fact that Japan's administrative decisions forced a large number of participants to act against their volition... [N]eo-conservatives neglect to consider that Japan's history of expansion in East Asia did not end with the emperor's declaration on August 15, 1945, nor did it end with treaties of normalization. This history lives within the people it affected. Denial and beautification of this history disturbs the efforts of its surviving victims to distance themselves from this past, and serves as a painful reminder of Japan's unwillingness to accept responsibility for the injustices that Japanese rule inflicted upon them.<ref name="Caprio Interpretations" />}}

== List of governors-general of Korea ==
{{Main|List of Japanese governors-general of Korea}}
* [[Terauchi Masatake]] (1910–1916)
* [[Hasegawa Yoshimichi]] (1916–1919)
* [[Saitō Makoto]] (1929–1931)
* [[Kazushige Ugaki]] (1931–1936)
* [[Yamanashi Hanzō]] (1927–1929)
* [[Jirō Minami]] (1936–1942)
* [[Kuniaki Koiso]] (1942–1944)
* [[Nobuyuki Abe]] (1944–1945)

==In popular culture==
* ''[[Madam Oh]]'', 1965 South Korean film
* ''[[Sea of Blood]]'', 1971 North Korean opera
* ''[[The Flower Girl]]'', 1972 North Korean film
*''[[Tell O' The Forest!]]'', 1972 North Korean opera
* ''[[Femme Fatale: Bae Jeong-ja]]'', 1973 South Korean film
* ''[[Mulberry (film)|Mulberry]]'', 1986 South Korean film
* ''[[Modern Boy]]'', 2008 South Korean film
* ''[[Capital Scandal]]'', 2008 South Korea TV drama
* ''[[The Good, the Bad, the Weird]]'', 2008 South Korea film
* ''[[My Way (2011 film)|My Way]]'', 2011 South Korean film
* ''[[Bridal Mask]]'', 2012 South Korean TV drama
* ''[[Assassination (2015 film)|Assassination]]'', 2015 South Korean film
* ''[[The Silenced]]'', 2015 South Korean film
* [[The Tiger (2015 film)]], 2015 South Korean Film
* ''[[Spirits' Homecoming]]'', 2016 South Korean film
* ''[[The Handmaiden]]'', 2016 South Korean film
* ''[[The Last Princess (film)|The Last Princess]]'', 2016 South Korean film
* ''[[The Age of Shadows]]'', 2016 South Korean film
* ''[[Love, Lies (2016 film)|Love Lies]]'', 2016 South Korean film
* ''[[Chicago Typewriter (TV series)|Chicago Typewriter]]'', 2017 South Korean TV show
* ''[[Battleship Island (2017 film)|Battleship Island]]'', 2017 South Korean film
* ''[[Anarchist from Colony]]'', 2017 South Korean film
* ''[[Mr. Sunshine (2018 TV series)|Mr. Sunshine]]'', 2018 South Korean TV show
* ''[[Pachinko (novel)|Pachinko]]'', 2017 novel by [[Min Jin Lee]]
* ''[[The Hymn of Death]]'', 2018 South Korean TV show
* ''[[Different Dreams]]'', 2019 South Korean TV show
* ''[[The Battle: Roar to Victory]]'', 2019 South Korean film
* ''[[A Resistance]]'', 2019 South Korean film
* ''[[Whale Star: The Gyeongseong Mermaid]]'', 2019 webtoon by Na Yoonhee
* ''Beasts of a Little Land'', 2021 novel by Juhea Kim
* ''[[Pachinko (TV series)|Pachinko]]'', 2022 Apple TV+ drama
* ''[[Tale of the Nine-Tailed 1938]]'', 2023

==See also==
{{Portal|Japan|South Korea}}
* [[Sōshi-kaimei]]
* [[Japanese war crimes]]
* [[Hashima Island]]
* [[Comfort women]]
* [[Japan–Korea disputes]]
* [[Taiwan under Japanese rule]]
* [[History of Korea]]

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
* {{Country study|url=http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/krtoc.html}}
{{reflist}}

=== Sources ===

* {{Citation |last=Robinson |first=Michael E. |title=Korea's Twentieth-Century Odyssey: A Short History |date=2007-04-30 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FZlhkifQOksC |publisher=University of Hawaii Press |language=en |isbn=978-0-8248-3174-5}}

==Further reading==
* Brudnoy, David. "Japan's experiment in Korea." ''Monumenta Nipponica'' 25.1/2 (1970): 155–195. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2383744 online]
* {{Citation |last=Eckert |first=Carter J. |author-link=Carter Eckert |year=1996 |title=Offspring of Empire: The Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876–1945 |publisher=University of Washington Press |location=Seattle |edition=Paperback |series=Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies |isbn=978-0-295-97533-7 |url=http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ECKOFF.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130730173939/http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/ECKOFF.html |archive-date=30 July 2013 |df=dmy-all}}
* {{Cite book |title=The New Korea |date=1926 |first=Alleyne |last=Ireland}}
* {{Citation |last=Hildi |first=Kang |year=2001 |title=Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-7270-1}}
* {{Cite book |first=F.A. |last=McKenzie |title=Korea's Fight for Freedom |year=1920 |publisher=New York, Chicago [etc.] Fleming H. Revell company |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924023276326/page/n6}}
* {{Cite book |first=Walter |last=Stucke |title=The Direct and Indirect Contributions of Western Missionaries to Korean Nationalism During the Late Choson and Early Japanese Annexation Periods, 1884–1920 |year=2011}}
* {{Cite book |last=Uchida |first=Jun |year=2011 |title=Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945 |series=Harvard East Asian Monographs |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-06253-5}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Library resources box|onlinebooks=yes}}
* [[Isabella Lucy Bird]] (1898), [https://archive.org/details/koreaandherneig00birdgoog ''Korea and Her Neighbours: A Narrative of Travel, with an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country'']
* [[Horace Newton Allen]] (1908), [https://archive.org/details/thingskoreanaco00allegoog ''Things Korean: A Collection of Sketches and Anecdotes, Missionary and Diplomatic'']
* [http://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/8017/1/HJeco0130100400.pdf Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, "Consumer Prices and Real Wages in Taiwan and Korea under Japanese Rule" ''Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics'', 13(1): 40–56]
* [http://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/7960/1/HJeco0200100010.pdf Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, "Economic Growth of Korea under the Japanese Occupation – Background of Industrialization of Korea 1911–1940" ''Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics'', 20(1): 1–19]
* [http://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/rs/bitstream/10086/8007/1/HJeco0140200370.pdf Toshiyuki Mizoguchi, "Foreign Trade in Taiwan and Korea under Japanese Rule" ''Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics'', 14(2): 37–53]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110604231526/http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=young_kim Kim, Young-Koo, The Validity of Some Coerced Treaties in the Early 20th Century: A Reconsideration of the Japanese Annexation of Korea in Legal Perspective]
* [http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/76_S4.pdf Matsuki Kunitoshi, "Japan's Annexation of Korea"] ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20121231163512/http://www.sdh-fact.com/index.html Society the Dissemination of Historical Fact]''
* Walter Stucke (2011), [http://dc.etsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2529&context=etd ''The Direct and Indirect Contributions of Western Missionaries to Korean Nationalism During the Late Choson and Early Japanese Annexation Periods, 1884–1920'']

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{{Korea under Japanese rule}}
{{Gaichi}}
{{Empire of Japan}}
{{Collaboration with Axis Powers}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Korea Under Japanese Rule}}
[[Category:Korea under Japanese rule| ]]
[[Category:States and territories established in 1910]]
[[Category:States and territories disestablished in 1945]]
[[Category:Japan–Korea relations]]
[[Category:Former colonies in Asia]]
[[Category:Military occupations of Korea|Japan]]
[[Category:Annexation]]
[[Category:1910 establishments in Korea]]
[[Category:1910 establishments in the Japanese colonial empire]]
[[Category:1945 disestablishments in the Japanese colonial empire]]
[[Category:1945 disestablishments in Korea]]
[[Category:Former Japanese colonies]]
[[Category:Japanese military occupations]]
[[Category:Former countries of the interwar period]]
[[Category:Japanese imperialism and colonialism]]
[[Category:Anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea]]
[[Category:Anti-Korean sentiment in Japan]]