No Japanese exodus from Korea after independence?

Yeah, the Japanese didn't start the all out push to "Japanize" Koreans (and Taiwanese) until World War II. Until then they largely paid lip service to eventual independence while refusing to ever really see either group as having the potential to be considered full subjects equal to themselves or actually considering giving them freedom.

Exactly how much harsher was Japanese rule in Korea as compared to Taiwan? In the latter it was a fairly standard colonial experience of unfair policies designed to help the colonizer at the expense of the colonized mixed with rapid economic growth and development. The idea that Japanese rule in Korea was comparable to German rule over Poland seems extreme to me. Their actions in China certainly fit the bill, but Korea? To me the intensity of Korean hatred for the Japanese seems to come more from the humiliation of being colonized by a culturally similar neighbor which had for centuries been seen as inferior than the reality of Japanese rule on the peninsula. Not to say it was rosy, as colonial rule never is, but it was hardly an out and out concentration camp/mass slavery/intentional genocide type situation.
 
If the Japanese didn't leave, then i can see them being expelled like the Germans were from the Eastern Territories.
Um, that's what happened in OTL. I'm sure many Japanese families would have left anyway, as they'd prefer to keep living under Japanese rule. But a good many had farms, shops, and other property there--property that their family might have held for three generations by that point. Many of those in that category would have stayed if that had been an option.

Ironically, as much popular hatred as there was against the Japanese people, I wouldn't be surprised if some in the Korean leadership would have wanted some Japanese to stay on in technical advisory positions. No small number of Japanese vets quietly helped out during the Korean War, for example. Obviously the free Korea is not going to allow pro-Japanese discrimination in employment to continue, but this Korea is too poor to refuse all Japanese know-how.

Keep in mind that the law forcing Koreans who gained economically during the Japanese colonial period to surrender their property was not passed until 2005:eek:.
That's what I heard, the policy switch was sometime during the 30's as part of a broader switch from "Koreans are a slave race" to "Koreans must be assimilated."
OK, I'm not defending the Japanese colonization of Korea at all. All colonialism/imperialism is morally abhorrent, and the Japanese government did everything it could to eliminate and overwrite Korean culture. But "Koreans are a slave race"? That's a bit much... Korean farmers were forced to sell their rice at below-market rates to Japan. Koreans were denied good jobs (which were all reserved for Japanese people), or a good education. But Korean people were not used for forced/slave labor until the war years.
It's inaccurate to compare the Japanese colonization of Korea before 1937 to slavery.
 
The comparison of Koreans under Japan to Poles under Nazis is actually fairly apt. There is, however, a major difference, which lies in the significant difference between the Nazis and anybody. That is to say, Nazi policy, in the long term (and as something which applied to all "Non-Aryan" races), was the total extermination of Poles, Poland, and Polish culture. Nazis are unique in this respect, as this is a level that even Japan did not stoop to (though they did intend to figurative extinguish Korea as an independent state and Korean culture), even if it was only for practical reasons.
 
After World War II, most of the Japanese living in Taiwan chose to leave, and the Taiwanese attitudes toward the Japanese were much more accepting than those of the Koreans. I would think that even without being deported, most of the Korean Japanese would choose to leave as well.
Yeah, the Japanese didn't start the all out push to "Japanize" Koreans (and Taiwanese) until World War II. Until then they largely paid lip service to eventual independence while refusing to ever really see either group as having the potential to be considered full subjects equal to themselves or actually considering giving them freedom.
Officially, the Japanese assimilation of the Taiwanese began in 1919. Before that, there was a disagreement between the Japanese officials on whether or not the natives could be assimilated.

Exactly how much harsher was Japanese rule in Korea as compared to Taiwan? In the latter it was a fairly standard colonial experience of unfair policies designed to help the colonizer at the expense of the colonized mixed with rapid economic growth and development. The idea that Japanese rule in Korea was comparable to German rule over Poland seems extreme to me. Their actions in China certainly fit the bill, but Korea? To me the intensity of Korean hatred for the Japanese seems to come more from the humiliation of being colonized by a culturally similar neighbor which had for centuries been seen as inferior than the reality of Japanese rule on the peninsula. Not to say it was rosy, as colonial rule never is, but it was hardly an out and out concentration camp/mass slavery/intentional genocide type situation.
One major difference between the colonization of Taiwan with that of Korea is that Taiwan is far more culturally diverse than Korea. Before the Japanese, there was no easy way for the many different ethnic groups living on Taiwan to communicate. Trading between villages often meant dealing with people that spoke a different language and had different customs. The Japanese provided a lingua franca for the people of Taiwan, and for the first time, there was something that linked the Hoklo, Hakka, and aboriginal tribes besides mutual hatred.

Taiwan was also far less developed and unified than Korea. Until the Japanese, no civilization had ever had control over more than the western third of the island. Before that, the Qing dynasty controlled up to the foothills of the central mountains, and Qing rule was weak at best. There was no real concept of a unified nation. Ethnic tensions prevented that. Korea, on the other hand, has been relatively united for centuries with a strong uniform national identity which was noticeably lacking on Taiwan.
 
Yeah, the Japanese didn't start the all out push to "Japanize" Koreans (and Taiwanese) until World War II. Until then they largely paid lip service to eventual independence while refusing to ever really see either group as having the potential to be considered full subjects equal to themselves or actually considering giving them freedom.

I guess this is true, but WWII was brutal enough.

Exactly how much harsher was Japanese rule in Korea as compared to Taiwan? In the latter it was a fairly standard colonial experience of unfair policies designed to help the colonizer at the expense of the colonized mixed with rapid economic growth and development. The idea that Japanese rule in Korea was comparable to German rule over Poland seems extreme to me. Their actions in China certainly fit the bill, but Korea? To me the intensity of Korean hatred for the Japanese seems to come more from the humiliation of being colonized by a culturally similar neighbor which had for centuries been seen as inferior than the reality of Japanese rule on the peninsula. Not to say it was rosy, as colonial rule never is, but it was hardly an out and out concentration camp/mass slavery/intentional genocide type situation.

The comparison of Koreans under Japan to Poles under Nazis is actually fairly apt. There is, however, a major difference, which lies in the significant difference between the Nazis and anybody. That is to say, Nazi policy, in the long term (and as something which applied to all "Non-Aryan" races), was the total extermination of Poles, Poland, and Polish culture. Nazis are unique in this respect, as this is a level that even Japan did not stoop to (though they did intend to figurative extinguish Korea as an independent state and Korean culture), even if it was only for practical reasons.

IMHO, I think it's almost impossible to compare the Nazis to the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century on an equal basis, because the former were in power for a shorter amount of time. However, I feel that both were brutal in their own ways. Here's part of what I posted earlier:

Along with comfort women. Also, after the March 1st Movement in 1919, the Japanese tortured and/or executed thousands without trial. They also distorted Korean history in order to justify their rule by systematically compiling records and producing their own version, while relocating a large amount of artifacts to Japan. The Japanese also banned the Korean alphabet after 1938, and omitted any mention of Korean history in the school curriculum. Most of the structures around Gyeongbokgung, the main palace, were destroyed, and the General Government Building replaced the palace.

Koreans were required to maintain Korean names from 1911-1939 in order to distinguish them from the Japanese. Also, until 1939, a significant amount of the population did not have a surname. The name change policy (Soshi-kaimei/Changssi-gaemyeong) was implemented in 1939, and it was strictly enforced to the point where rations were not handed out, students were expelled, and people were fired from their jobs if they did not adopt Japanese names.

The Nazis came to power in 1933, and started expanding (with the exception of Austria and Czechoslovakia, which had large Austrian and German populations) into other countries in 1939, when war broke out. It collapsed in 1945, which means that most of its policies were carried out during wartime. On the other hand, the Japanese began to colonize Taiwan in 1895, Korea in 1910, and maintained Manchuria as a puppet state starting in 1932. In other words, while a significant amount of its policies were carried out during World War II, they were also heavily influenced by the ones that came before the war.

In terms of Japanese rule over Korea, the former was mostly concerned with suppressing anything related to independence until 1919. After thousands were imprisoned and tortured in the aftermath of the uprising, the Japanese decided to loosen some restrictions in order to prevent similar events from happening again in the future. However, they continued to suppress Korean culture by compiling a fabricated version of Korean history in 1925, which would have been a tedious process. Attempted coups then occurred in Japan in 1932 and 1936, which caused the military to become more unstable, and education banned Korean history, while restricting and eventually banning the Korean language by treating as nothing more than a dialect during this time. Meanwhile, Shintoism became the state religion, and throughout the 1930s, the Japanese began promoting an ideology in which Japan had supposedly ruled over Korean states as tributaries.

In other words, the name change policy, which was probably the only time in which an entire nation's population was forced to legally change their names systematically, was only the culmination of a process to gradually assimilate Koreans, in which they would be wiped out as a separate ethnicity. The difference between Poland and Korea was that Germany planned on replacing the country with settlers, while Japan decided to assimilate the population. However, Germany attempted to carry out its policies by invading and administering the territory, while Japan already failed to do so during the Seven-Year War (1592-8), and decided to annex the country, then focus on destroying the culture and identity of the country altogether.
 
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Those statements aren't necessarily contradictory. The name change policy didn't start until the 1930s, so perhaps they were banned from Japanese names from 1910-1930s.

Yeah, just checked up, they did start allowing Koreans to take Japanese names by 1939. And even then it was voluntary (though of course 'voluntary' in the sense of 'do it if you want to do something with your life').
Which...yeah. Considering so often the Japanese are painted as fanatical assimilators who forced the Koreans to change their names and all that....its weird.

I'm really going to have to read up on the Japanese occupation of Korea when I get time. I really am beginning to suspect its not all the Korean dominated, post-defeated Japan in WW2, narrative cracks it up to be. Which wouldn't surprise me considering the crazy one sided views that dominate in areas where I know them to be untrue.

Certainly there seems to be a lack of perspective and a lot of looking at Japan in its darkest days during the war and applying such insanity to the decades before hand when Japan actually wasn't so dastardly.



Anyway. Relevant here....
I think you'd need a more active democratic Japanese resistance. A clear distinction between Japan the evil conquerer, eater of babies and the Japanese people who really had no choice in anything.
 
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Yeah, just checked up, they did start allowing Koreans to take Japanese names by 1939. And even then it was voluntary (though of course 'voluntary' in the sense of 'do it if you want to do something with your life').
Which...yeah. Considering so often the Japanese are painted as fanatical assimilators who forced the Koreans to change their names and all that....its weird.

Yes, but the policies were officially carried out in 1940-1, and when less than 10% of the population participated, the government began to implement more stricter policies, some of which I mentioned earlier, causing about 80% to officially change their names by the end of 1941. A significant amount of people (roughly 30-50%) did not have surnames, which meant that they were either assigned or had to create a Japanese name, while those who did have surnames could retain their previous names, although the characters were probably pronounced in Japanese.

I'm really going to have to read up on the Japanese occupation of Korea when I get time. I really am beginning to suspect its not all the Korean dominated, post-defeated Japan in WW2, narrative cracks it up to be. Which wouldn't surprise me considering the crazy one sided views that dominate in areas where I know them to be untrue.

Certainly there seems to be a lack of perspective and a lot of looking at Japan in its darkest days during the war and applying such insanity to the decades before hand when Japan actually wasn't so dastardly.

Again, as I mentioned earlier, the Japanese introduced various policies in order to assimilate the Korean population long before the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. There was probably no need to carry out atrocities, which I will not mention here, on such a widespread scale before the war, because the military did not gain enough influence until the 1930s, and Korea was forcibly annexed, not conquered.

Anyway. Relevant here....
I think you'd need a more active democratic Japanese resistance. A clear distinction between Japan the evil conquerer, eater of babies and the Japanese people who really had no choice in anything.

I agree that the majority of the Japanese civilians did not support the military's actions, but ultimately, it was the latter that made and carried out the decisions, and the Korean government would really have no need to distinguish between the two. Even though it is now illegal in Germany to deny the atrocities that were carried out in Nazi Germany, many of the former Japanese officials and politicians were reinstated after the war, and the government still refuses to fully acknowledge the specific atrocities that occurred during the war. This would probably need to be butterflied away for any distinction between the military and civilians to be made.
 
I agree that the majority of the Japanese civilians did not support the military's actions, but ultimately, it was the latter that made and carried out the decisions, and the Korean government would really have no need to distinguish between the two. Even though it is now illegal in Germany to deny the atrocities that were carried out in Nazi Germany, many of the former Japanese officials and politicians were reinstated after the war, and the government still refuses to fully acknowledge the specific atrocities that occurred during the war. This would probably need to be butterflied away for any distinction between the military and civilians to be made.

Ive never understood how the japanese got away with that.


Still, even if there was a full admission of guilt, etc, i think the korean perception would have been ok new guys, bad old guys, rather than good civilians, bad military.

How arrogant were the japanese civilians in korea? WOULD the koreans perceive a clear enough distinction?
 
Ive never understood how the japanese got away with that.


Still, even if there was a full admission of guilt, etc, i think the korean perception would have been ok new guys, bad old guys, rather than good civilians, bad military.

How arrogant were the japanese civilians in korea? WOULD the koreans perceive a clear enough distinction?

You're probably right. Koreans both in Korea and Japan were discriminated against by the Japanese society as a whole, so after the war, Korea might make a distinction between before and after rather that two different groups of society if the Japanese had made a comprehensive admission of guilt.
 
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