Military control

Japan set up a government in Korea with the governor-generalship filled by generals or admirals appointed by the Japanese emperor. The Koreans were deprived of freedom of assembly, association, the press, and speech. Many private schools were closed because they did not meet certain arbitrary standards. The colonial authorities used their own school system as a tool for assimilating Korea to Japan, placing primary emphasis on teaching the Japanese language and excluding from the educational curriculum such subjects as Korean language and Korean history. The Japanese built nationwide transportation and communications networks and established a new monetary and financial system. They also promoted Japanese commerce in Korea while barring Koreans from similar activities.

The colonial government promulgated a land-survey ordinance that forced landowners to report the size and area of their land. By failing to do this, many farmers were deprived of their land. Farmland and forests owned jointly by a village or a clan were likewise expropriated by the Japanese since no single individual could claim them. Much of the land thus expropriated was then sold cheaply to Japanese. Many of the dispossessed took to the woods and subsisted by slash-and-burn tillage, while others immigrated to Manchuria and Japan in search of jobs; the majority of Korean residents now in those areas are their descendants.

The March First Movement

A turning point in Korea’s resistance movement came on March 1, 1919, when nationwide anti-Japanese rallies were staged. The former emperor, Gojong, the supreme symbol of independence, had died a few weeks earlier, bringing mourners from all parts of the country to the capital for his funeral. A Korean Declaration of Independence was read at a rally in Seoul on March 1. Waves of students and citizens took to the streets, demanding independence. An estimated two million people took part. The March First Movement, as it came to be known, took the form of peaceful demonstrations, appealing to the conscience of the Japanese. The Japanese, however, responded with brutal repression, unleashing their gendarmerie and army and navy units to suppress the demonstrations. They arrested some 47,000 Koreans, of whom about 10,500 were indicted, while some 7,500 were killed and 16,000 wounded.

In September independence leaders, including Yi Dong-Nyeong and Ahn Chang-Ho, who in April had formed a Korean provisional government in Shanghai, elected Syngman Rhee as president. It brought together all Korean exiles and established an efficient liaison with leaders inside Korea. Japan realized that its iron rule required more sophisticated methods. The gendarmerie gave way to an ordinary constabulary force, and partial freedom of the press was granted. But the oppressive and exploitative Japanese colonial policy remained ruthless, though using less conspicuous methods.

Taking advantage of a wartime business boom, Japan took leaps forward as a capitalist country. Korea became not only a market for Japanese goods but also a fertile region for capital investment. Meanwhile, industrial development in Japan was achieved at the sacrifice of agricultural production, creating a chronic shortage of rice. The colonial government undertook projects for increasing rice production throughout Korea. Many farmers were ordered to turn their dry fields into paddies. The program was temporarily suspended during the worldwide economic depression in the early 1930s. It soon resumed, however, in order to meet the increased needs of the Japanese military in its war against China, which began in 1931. Most Koreans were forced to subsist on low-quality cereals imported from Manchuria instead of their own rice.

The end of Japanese rule

Of the several dailies and magazines founded shortly after the March First Movement, the newspapers Dong-A Ilbo (“East Asia Daily”) and Chosun Ilbo (“Korea Daily”) spoke the loudest for the Korean people and inspired them with the ideals of patriotism and democracy. In the academic community, scholars conducted studies on Korean culture and tradition. Novels and poems in colloquial Korean enjoyed new popularity.

A major anti-Japanese mass rally was held in Seoul in 1926, on the occasion of the funeral of Emperor Sunjong. A nationwide student uprising originated in Gwangju in November 1929, demanding an end to Japanese discrimination. These and other resistance movements were led by a wide spectrum of Korean intellectuals.

In 1931 the Japanese imposed military rule once again. After the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937) and of World War II in the Pacific (1941), Japan attempted to obliterate Korea as a nation: Koreans were forced to worship at Japanese Shintō shrines and even to adopt Japanese-style names, and academic societies devoted to Korean studies as well as newspapers and magazines published in Korean were banned. The Japanese desperately needed additional manpower to replenish the dwindling ranks of their military and labor forces. As a consequence, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied Koreans, regardless of gender, were drafted to fight for Japan and to work in mines, factories, and military bases. In addition, after the start of the Pacific war, the Japanese forced thousands of Korean women to provide sexual services (as “comfort women”) for the military.

When Shanghai fell to the Japanese, the Korean provisional government moved to Chongqing in southwestern China. It declared war against Japan in December 1941 and organized the Korean Restoration Army, composed of independence fighters in China. This army fought with the Allied forces in China until the Japanese surrender in August 1945, which ended 35 years of Japanese rule over Korea.