Monday, November 1st, 2010 The Legacy of Assimilation: Contemporary Misconceptions on Japan's Colonial Policy in Korea

Description

Japan’s colonial presence in Korea ended sixty-five years ago, but the legacy of this period lingers to this day. Questions debated at the time of annexation continue to be debated at present. One such question concerns the status of the Korean peninsula and the Korean people during this period. Japanese predicted that its colonial-era assimilation policy would eventually foster equal relations between Koreans and Japanese. Neoconservative Japanese today exploit this rhetoric to argue that Japan annexed Korea as an integral part of Japan, rather than appending it simply as a colony, and that Japanese viewed Koreans as fellow national subjects (kokumin) from the time of annexation. They join others in contending that Koreans retained this status until the war’s end, when the United States-led postwar occupation administration returned their status to that of Korean. This paper will consider two problems presented by these arguments. First, their misrepresentation of Japan’s colonial-era intentions and results, as well as Korean reactions to Japan’s policies, offers Japanese today a skewed view of this history. Second, it neglects the post-liberation issues that developed from this policy’s residue, as seen in the violence over lingering “Japanese-ness” that separated political factions. Failure to properly confront these issues brings a tension to the Korea-Japan relationship that impedes reconciliation at a time when more productive voices call for regional unity.

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Mark E. Caprio is professor of history at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan. He earned his doctorate at the University of Washington in 2001. The author of Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945, Caprio has published several articles and book chapters on Japanese colonial policy, post-liberation Korean repatriation, and the North Korean nuclear issue.