[KS] Re: Japanese Colonization Period

k u s h i b o jdh95 at hitel.net
Sat Sep 2 22:09:30 EDT 2000


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Dr. John Caruso Jr. wrote:
> The Japanese tried for hundreds of years to conqueror the Koreans, then
> later to suppress or perhaps eradicate those elements of culture that made
> the Korean people for thousands of years Korean.  Change their names,

I forgot his name, but some king of Korea did far more than the Japanese did
in terms of de-Koreanizing Korean names. Unless I'm completely wrong, didn't
some Koryo or Choson king decide that all sun-hangungmal surnames be
replaced by ones of Chinese origin? We are of the Park clan, and I am told
that it is one of the few "pure Korean" family names.

As for what the Japanese did, I quote Andrew Nahm: "While accelerating
Japanization efforts through education and propaganda, Governor-General
Minami took a significant step to Japanize the Koreans. On November 10,
1939, he issued the Ordinance No. 20, which, as of April 1940, 'allowed'
(required) the Koreans to change their family and personal names to Japanese
form in order to bring about 'a more perfect union' between Japan and Korea.
Under the supplementary regulations of December 1939, however, they were not
allowed to copy names of Japanese emperors, aristocrats, or certain other
important figures past or present. Fearing retaliation against those who
refused to change their names, 84% of the Koreans (population 25,133,352 in
1944) changed their family names, or the reading of their family names, as
well as their given names, to a Japanese style. Under this ordinance, the
Koreans 'lost' their names and their Korean identity. The adoption of
Japanese names did not, however, serve to conceal Korean identity or to
eradicate discrimination, for all public documents, family registration
records, and school and job applications required the Koreans to indicate
their original family and given names and the place of the clan origin."

When I point this information out, some Koreans are incredulous. This goes
against the black-and-white version of colonial history in a number of ways.
First, a good four million Koreans didn't even bother to Japanize their
names at all. Second, a *Japanese* reading of the *Korean* names (which are
simply *Korean* readings of Chinese characters) was an acceptable way of
complying. Third, and perhaps most important, it didn't happen until 1939
and 1940! For 30 out of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule, this bemoaned
aspect of Japanese cultural extermination didn't even take place. To be
sure, though, there were people like my grandfather who emigrated, first to
Japan, then to North America, in the 1920s with a Japanese passport (after
all, he was a Japanese citizen) and he had to affix that passport with a
Japanese name (he chose the name of a teacher whom he respected, with the
teacher's blessing, apparently).

> forbid their language,

Again, this occurred in the late 1930s. For most of the colonial period, the
Korean language was used as a tool to indoctrinate the Korean people! How
else would they understand the propaganda?

> history,

And how. To justify their absorption of Korea (and Okinawa), the Japanese
militarists had to twist Korean-Japanese relations on its head to make it
seem as if Koreans came from Japan and not vice-versa.

> culture and make them obedient servants of the
> Showa Emperor. Big brother - little brother syndrome.

You are right. But again, most of this (e.g., mandatory Shinto worship,
etc.) occurred in the late 1930s. This was, to my knowledge, not the norm
for most of the colonial period. The first ten years, the amh^ukki,
witnessed a lot of brutal suppression, the next ten years a relatively open
period, and the years leding up to and involving World War II one in which
Japan desperately tried to glue the Koreans to Japan.

> Today, Korean residents in Japan after 55 years are still humiliated,
> shunned by Zaibutsu, undereducated, rarely intermarry, because many Japanese
> view the Koreans as a culturally inferior people suitable for second class
> status not citizenship.

My ex-fiancee is a third-generation ethnic Korean in Japan (who,
incidentally, left me to marry a 100% ethnic Japanese man with whom she
worked in the Japanese school system, which goes against your points a
little bit. Sigh) and we and her friends (who were also ethnic Koreans from
Japan) took considerable issue with this type of characterization. The
problems, they say, are mostly exaggerated by the Korean press and
agenda-builders.

In turn, one would have to ask, do the ethnic Chinese in Korea, whose
families have been here for generations, fare much better? Not at all. Are
they even allowed to get Korean citizenship?

> It is very difficult for any historian to sort out the facts you are seeking
> while the Japanese refuse to officially apologize or even acknowledge what
> they did to the Korean people during 1910-45.

This is not a fair characterization either. Both PM Hosokawa and PM Murayama
expressed what can be taken as none other than an apology. It was the
long-time ruling party, though, the LDP (?) that publicly insisted that
their opinions were only their own. The problem is not Japan, the problem is
the right-wingers in Japan. And the Korean press knows this, but they
downplay the "good guys" and play up the "bad guys", presenting Japan as a
single entity caught up in a gross case of historical amnesia.

Again, I submit that the problem here is only minimally because of "Japan's"
alleged lack of apology. More importantly, it is the attitude of the media,
the politicians, and the educational establishment in Korea. The kind of
people who ignore Hosokawa's and Muryama's statements, or demand technology
transfers as compensation for the suffering of the so-called "Comfort
Women". This year, 55 years after liberation, we now have a liberation
period that is TWO DECADES LONGER than the occupation itself. Yet the
animosity seems to worsen, and you suggest this is because of Japan? This is
all because the Japanese internal politics can't get their act together on
anything? Is Korea as a whole that much of a victim? I don't think so.

> If Emperor Hirohito was
> hanged like the other Nurnberg War Crimes Trial defendants perhaps there
> would be a more balanced view of the colonial occupation.

As a Catholic, I find capital punishment to be wrong. But aside from that,
there were practical reasons not only for not imprisoning him or putting him
on trial, but for allowing him to remain emperor as well. It's very
questionable whether he was particularly involved at all in the war. Should
we execute him because, as some historians say, he was gleeful when Japan
was winning? He could have done little or nothing to change events, it
appears (although I'm receptive to opposing opinions).

At any rate, Hirohito has been dead for eleven years. But the situation has
not changed in terms of Japan coming clean. How would his death in the 1940s
have made things any different. The Korean powers-that-be would still have
needed a bogeyjapan.

K U S H I B O 






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