How Japanized Could Korea Become?

If Japan held onto Korea for longer, or indefinitely, how Japanized could Korea become? What portion of the population would consider themselves Japanese citizens first and Koreans second, and what portion of the population would not be able to speak Korean? Also, how much could the Korean language get influenced by Japanese? Could the influence go deeper than extensive use of Japanese loanwords?
 
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Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Well, first we probably need to determine what sort of Japan we're dealing with. How did they retain control of Korea? The militarists never come to power and so never enter a war where they lose Korea? If the militarists can be prevented from coming to power, would an extended Taisho period lead to Korea being treated better than it was OTL? Would this render any assimilationism there even less effective? But how do we even get there? If we extend the Taisho period by making Emperor Taisho healthier, will he be too strong for Taisho democracy to have taken root in the first place and we just have uninterrupted militarism from Meiji to Showa?
 
Technically, if the Japanese never provoked America or the such, it could've held on Korea indefinitely. Perhaps if America does step in to fight it out in the Pacific without the Pearl Harbor incident, Japan can maintain Korea as part of the peace treaty.

I mean, by 1940 ish, the Korean language was effectively banned, Korean women were forced to become comfort women, Korean men were drafted to fight, Koreans had to switch their name to Japanese, and the younger generation of Koreans were taught that they were inferior to the Japanese and became part of the militaristic culture.

Of course, you can't exterminate the Korean language, as people spoke it in China and there was a huge underground movement that peacefully resisted the Japanese. However, Japan can very well erase Korean history and culture by retaining Korea and oppressing the population.
 
Well it's hard to say, because IOTL there was only 7 years of active Japanization going on. Japan could conceivably do more damage to the Korean language, culture, history, etc. But unless the Koreans are treated as equals (not happening), the Korean identity will always exist. Identity and nationalism is as much about perceived common experiences of oppression as it is about culture or having your own language. Just look at Ireland.

And yeah, as others pointed out, there was (and is) a large, literate population of ethnic Koreans living outside of Korea. Though many of these will be partially assimilated to their country's culture. Just look at Russian Koreans today, many of whom have Russian names and speak Russian.
 
What Little Red Bean said

A longer period of occupation isn't going to do any good if they're not even trying to Japanize the Koreans.

My understanding is that they spent far longer trying to PREVENT Koreans from becoming 'Japanese' than they did encouraging it.

If the Army had followed the same policy in Korea as the Navy did in Taiwan, they could have gotten quite a number to 'convert', IMO. You'd certainly have made occupation far easier...
 
Americanisms have had a pretty large impact on Korean, so much so that North Koreans who have been sheltered from the changes have difficulty communicating- if Japan holds Korea, wouldn't neologisms necessarily filter through Japan first? There are already examples of this in OTL Korean; couldn't it become more pronounced?

And "language purification" can't exactly happen if the country is not sovereign, either, so Japanese influences would stick.
 
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