1910-1945
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. 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. More information from Encyclopedia Britannica
Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 by
From the late nineteenth century, Japan sought to incorporate the Korean Peninsula into its expanding empire. Japan took control of Korea in 1910 and ruled it until the end of World War II. During this colonial period, Japan advertised as a national goal the assimilation of Koreans into the Japanese state. It never achieved that goal. Mark Caprio here examines why Japan's assimilation efforts failed.
The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea: Education, Labor, and Health, 1910–1945 by
Examines how the concept of 'Korean woman' underwent a radical transformation in Korea's public discourse during the years of Japanese colonialism. While some Korean women conformed to the dictates of colonial hegemony, others took deliberate pains to distinguish between what was 'modern' (e.g., Western outfits) and thus legitimate, and what was 'Japanese,' and thus illegitimate.
Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945 by
Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea 1910-1945 highlights the complex interaction between indigenous activity and colonial governance, emphasizing how Japanese rule adapted to Korean and missionary initiatives, as well as how Koreans found space within the colonial system to show agency. Topics covered range from economic development and national identity to education and family; from peasant uprisings and thought conversion to a comparison of missionary and colonial leprosariums.
Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 by
Assimilating Seoul challenges conventional nationalist paradigms by revealing the intersection of Korean and Japanese history in this important capital. Through microhistories of Shinto festivals, industrial expositions, and sanitation campaigns, this transnational account that treats the city's public spaces as 'contact zones,' shows how residents negotiated pressures to become loyal, industrious, and hygienic subjects of the Japanese empire.
1932-1945
Comfort women, also called military comfort women, Japanese jūgun ianfu, a euphemism for women who provided sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during Japan’s militaristic period that ended with World War II and who generally lived under conditions of sexual slavery. Estimates of the number of women involved typically range up to 200,000, but the actual number may have been even higher. The great majority of them were from Korea (then a Japanese protectorate), though women from China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia—including Japan and Dutch nationals in Indonesia—were also involved. More information from Encyclopedia Britannica
Hearts of Pine: Songs in the Lives of Three Korean Survivors of the Japanese 'Comfort Women' by
Hearts of Pine brings us into the lives of three such survivors: Pak Duri, Mun Pilgi, and Bae Chunhui. During four decades of secrecy and the subsequent decades of the 'comfort women' protest movement, singing served these women as a means of coping with and expressing their experiences, forging and sustaining identities and social relationships, and recording and conveying their struggles and philosophies of life.
Japan's Comfort Women by
Japan's Comfort Women tells the harrowing story of the'comfort women'who were forced to enter prostitution to serve the Japanese Imperial army, often living in appalling conditions of sexual slavery. Using a wide range of primary sources, the author for the first time links military controlled prostitution with enforced prostitution.