[KS] Pre-Korean War Population of North and South Korea

Konrad M. Lawson kmlawson at fas.harvard.edu
Tue Oct 26 12:57:57 EDT 2010


In response to the request for population data pre-Korean War: one place that comes to mind (not including secondary sources) to look for southern Korean populations stats is in the monthly reports of the US military government. 

Summations of "Non-Military Activities in Japan" (covers Korea in first post-liberation year) and the "Summation of US Military Government Activities in Korea" have population stats but I don't think they are in every monthly report.

To take just the first example I see searching notes, Summation of Non-Military Activities in Japan and Korea December 1945 (Summation #3) p202 states:

"The population south of the 38th parallel as of May 1944 was 16,415,361. The number of Japanese repatriated from Korea to Japan has almost balanced that of Koreans returned from Japan. The area and population by province are shown in the table below..."

I'm not sure what original (presumably) Japanese source is being used by the US military gov here.

table of population as of May 1, 1944; spelling left as is:

Kyonggi-do	3,309,704
Chungchong Buk-do	979,656
Chungchong Nan-do	1,673,489
Cholla Buk-do	1,674,672
Cholla Nam-do	2,749,148
Kyongsang Buk-do	2,603,740
Kyongsang Nam-do	2,415,093
Kangwon-do	1,008,859

Total: 16,415,361

original source images uploaded temporarily for this and facing page here:
http://huginn.net/t/P1080075.JPG
http://huginn.net/t/P1080076.JPG

Note: of course there are significant population changes throughout the coming months and years as Japanese are repatriated, Koreans return from Japan and elsewhere, and refugees flood from and to Northern Korea. Also, early postwar southern Korean press often mentions a high "ghost population" of reported population being highly inflated so that (dead) individuals could continue to get rations etc.

Respectfully,

Konrad M. Lawson




Message: 1
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:17:18 +0000
From: Roland Wilson <roland_wilson at hotmail.com>
To: <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>, Korean Studies Group
	<koreanstudies-owner at koreaweb.ws>
Subject: [KS] Pre-Korean War Population of North and South Korea
Message-ID: <BAY144-W26D920764D800851FE0EE48A420 at phx.gbl>
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Dear Members,

I was wondering if anyone would have information on or know where I could find information on the populations of North and South Korea prior to the Korean War?  If this was broken down by province, it would even be better, but I realize that I may be asking for too much.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Roland Wilson

roland_wilson at hotmail.com




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