Korea — Japanese colonial rule and wartime impact
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Question
When did Japan formally annex Korea?
Answer
1910 — the final step after Korea had already been a Japanese protectorate since the Eulsa Treaty of 1905.
Question
What was the Land Survey (1910-1918) and its main effect?
Answer
A colonial land-registration programme; many Korean peasants could not prove ownership under its rules, so land passed to the state and Japanese settlers, creating mass tenant farming.
Question
What triggered the timing of the March First Movement in 1919?
Answer
Wilson's idea of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference, plus the funeral of former Emperor Gojong, gave nationalists an opportunity and hope of international support.
Question
How did Japan respond to the Samil Movement, and with what result?
Answer
Violent suppression — thousands killed, tens of thousands arrested — but it also pushed Japan into a softer 'Cultural Policy' in the 1920s.
Question
What was Japan's 'Cultural Policy' of the 1920s?
Answer
A temporary relaxation of colonial control (e.g. allowing some Korean-language newspapers) introduced after the Samil Movement, later reversed in the 1930s.
Question
What was Naisen Ittai and Sōshi-kaimei?
Answer
Naisen Ittai was the 1930s-40s doctrine that Japan and Korea were 'one body'; Sōshi-kaimei (1939-40) was the policy forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names, part of forced assimilation.
Question
How did the Second Sino-Japanese War (from 1937) change colonial rule in Korea?
Answer
It turned Korea into a total-war resource base: forced labour, military conscription (from 1944), requisitioned rice and metal, and the 'comfort women' system.
Question
What was the 'comfort women' system?
Answer
A Japanese military system that forced tens of thousands of Korean and other women and girls into sexual slavery for soldiers — one of the most painful, contested legacies of occupation.
Question
Compare Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee during the occupation period.
Answer
Kim Il Sung: communist guerrilla commander against Japan in Manchuria, then based in the Soviet Union. Syngman Rhee: anti-communist, exiled mostly in the US lobbying for independence.
Question
Why does the Kim Il Sung / Syngman Rhee rivalry matter for Korean history after 1945?
Answer
Their opposed ideologies and separate foreign backers (USSR vs US) meant Korea had no unified independence leadership ready in 1945 — a direct root of the peninsula's later division.
Question
How did Japan's surrender in August 1945 actually come about?
Answer
Through the atomic bombings and Soviet entry into the war against Japan — not through Korean resistance defeating Japan, leaving Korea liberated but unprepared and divided.
Question
What is the key debate over Japanese colonial 'development' in Korea?
Answer
Whether infrastructure and administrative modernisation counted as real benefit, versus extraction that served Japan's interests while Korean ownership, profit, and control were lost.
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Topic 12.5 hub
Korea (1840–1945)
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