Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History:

Reflections on Three Decades of Research

30 年間の近代朝鮮史研究を振り返って
─思いつくままに─

Mark E. CAPRIO

Abstract: This essay addresses random thoughts that I have

entertained during much of my twenty-six year-affiliation with
Rikkyo University, thoughts on the Korean peninsula issues that have
puzzled me and (I hope) my students in classes and in research. The
thoughts are random in that I do not attempt to form them into a
formal research paper, but try to arrange them into a narrative that 9
I believe characterizes the long and winding road that has led me to
their door. Though my personal creation, I attribute their existence
to the classes I have taught, to the conferences and workshops that
I have attended, to the papers I have written, and to the very act
of having been placed in scholarly environments surrounded by
people who also think in scholarly ways. My interests have developed
to center on the important question of why human beings, nations,
are quick to engage in “legal murder”—war—to resolve their
differences. Why do societies value their members’ participation
in this activity above and beyond those people who dedicate their
lives to its antithesis—peace? To what extent do economic gains
drive these motivations? And how should we assess responsibility for
these actions? That this essay provides more questions than answers
indicates that my quest for solution does not end with the arbitrary
demarcation line that separates work from retirement.
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

1. Introduction

That our life’s experiences often drag us down a complicated, but intriguing, long
and winding road, is something I think about every time I hear the Beatles’ tune by this
name. Paul McCartney apparently had a romantic intention in mind when he wrote the
song, but the title resonates with me as I reflect on the long and winding road that led me
to where I am today. Though not a straight road by any means it has somehow managed to
“lead me back” to a path that I can appreciate. People interested in my road frame their
inquiry around two questions: Why Japan?, and then, Why Korea? The first question is
rather easy to answer: Japan fulfilled an early desire of mine to live in a country where a
language other than English was the people’s native tongue. A college professor introduced
me to a program that he had started in such a country, Japan. My desire to live abroad was
inadvertently initiated by two Austrian men that I met in Salzburg who led this lost soul to
the railroad station safely and on time to catch the midnight train to Venice, Italy. Along
the way we engaged in an extremely rudimentary conversation in German on the merits of
Austrian beer. This short ten-minute encounter translated into four decades of living the
life of an expatriate on another continent.
The second question, Why Korea?, is a little more complicated. Like so many other non-
Korean students of its history, society, and culture, Korea seems to have found me rather
10 that my finding Korea. The same perhaps can be said of Japan. Upon securing a job in the
nondescript city of Nagoya, Japan, I spent two years teaching at an all-girls high school, one
year studying Japanese at a university, and then six years teaching at that university after
earning a master’s degree at the University of Arizona. After teaching and researching
language education for six years I felt a need to reinvent myself in a different field. Having
acquired an interest in the Northeast Asian region, I decided to move to Seattle and study
at the Henry Jackson School, University of Washington in Seattle, and to focus on Korea.
Korean Studies there, at least at the master’s level, is by default a Northeast Asian degree
due to the dearth of classes on Korea that the department offered. To complete the degree
students need to take classes on different areas—Japan and China being the preferred
choices. Here I found Korean history both manageable and interesting. When my first
choice, Northeast Asian political science, failed to materialize I followed the sound advice
of my advisor and pursued my doctorate degree in modern Korean history. This is just one
of several times when the ancient Chinese proverb of failure being the mother of success
surely applied to my long and winding road.

2. What is History?

The most important lesson that my doctoral advisor, Dr. James Palais, left his students
was the value of the question as the fundamental tool for historical inquiry. The question,
rather than the fact, is the mother of historical research. The memorization of facts,
often the focus of the history class, is a meaningless task unless the facts contribute to the
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

resolution of a question that provides the context, the air, that gives facts life. A prime
example of this is the classroom textbook, which in most cases is a collection of feel-good
stories accumulated to narrate a nation’s glorious development. Rather than to question its
past, these narratives are designed for their audience, the student, to absorb. A functioning
democracy requires its citizens not only to absorb facts, but also to interact with them.
True historical inquiry informs that there are no objective “facts,” but only subjective
realities that are servants to various interpretations which are influenced by the individual
historian’s past experiences. Facts cannot exist independently from the question. One of the
great philosophers of history, E. H. Carr, in 1961 articulated this by observing that

the relationship between the historian and his facts is one of equality, of give-
and-take. As any working historian knows, if he stops to reflect on what he is
doing as he thinks and writes, the historian is engaged in a continuous process
of molding his facts to his interpretation and his interpretation to his facts. It is
impossible to assign primacy to one over the other (1961, 24).

Carr prefaced the above observation with the thought that there exist irrefutable facts, which
serve as the basis for which historical inquiry evolves. He uses the example of dates assigned
to important events which serve as the “backbone” of history rather than its “essential
function.” These facts, he continues, only speak when “the historian calls on them" (ibid., 11
5), a moment triggered by the question that the historian brings to the research.
These backbones of history are also not free of inquiry. Even facts such as the date a
treaty was signed, or the date when a particular constitution was promulgated, may leave
little room for inquiry.1 That the nineteenth century Japan-Korea Treaty [J. Nitchō shūkō
jōki, K. Kanghwa-do choyak] was finalized on February 26, 1876 is a fact. However, this fact
lacks significance unless accompanied by questions. These might include inquiries on the
document’s content, the processes under which the content was determined, or the treaty’s
future impact.

3. War and its Place in History

The same can be said for the dating of wars in a nation’s narrative. The beginning and
ending dates of wars lend themselves to a plethora of interesting questions, yet for the most
part the essential facts of the war are centered around the dates that the war started and
ended. Objective historical memory often relies on first-shot interpretations (most often
determined by the victor) and peace declarations to date wars and assess responsibility. The
Pacific War, as well as the United States’ involvement in the war’s European theater, began
on December 8, 1941 with the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor; the world returned to
peace either on August 15, 1945, when the Japanese emperor delivered his radio broadcast,
or on September 2, 1945, when the belligerent states signed surrender papers aboard the
USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Assigning these dates suggests that the December 1941 invasion
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

suddenly disturbed a peaceful climate that was restored by the Allied forces on the August/
September 1945 dates. This unambiguous dating of the war hides gray areas that may also
have contributed to the war’s origins, and the fighting that continued after the ink on the
surrender papers had dried, including seemingly unrelated battles that emerged in the years
that followed this war. Refocusing the question to inquire whether other factors contributed
to the war-origin narratives, when perhaps peace was disrupted, begs for a different,
expanded, history of the war. Debating this question strengthens our understanding of
this war in suggesting that responsibility for the war and the destruction it wrought might
involve multilateral, rather than unilateral, actors. Building on our cache of information on
war contributes to dedicated efforts to understanding, and perhaps preventing, future wars.
The Korean War is most relevant to this thinking. For the United States, which
narrates the war’s origins as a totally unexpected, sudden June 1950 attack by the North
Korean military, it is an isolated war fought between two independent states between
the years 1950–1953 to which it was called to aid one state, South Korea. An alternative
understanding of this war narrates it as a civil war, a war of liberation, in which foreign
states—the United States and China—intervened.2 Yet a third perspective may see the war
as an extension of the Pacific War, one that to this day remains finalized only by a cease fire
settlement rather than a peace treaty; a war whose origins remain as obscure as its ending.
This brings the question of the importance of ceremony: How does one date hostilities that
12 lack both a war declaration—it was termed a “police action” by the United States—and a
formal peace treaty? Do the belligerent actions that have occurred since constitute parts of
the Korean War, or are they to be seen as isolated incidents independent of this war? Are
North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile developments to be considered a development by
a rogue state? Weapons’ procurement made within the context of an extended Korean war?
Or those made in preparation for current and future threats? Answers to these inquiries
vary in accordance with one’s perspective of the Korean War and the present state of North
Korea. But discussions on such issues are complicated. Including events that both preceded
and proceeded the war, and their connection to the fighting, challenges official narratives
of the war but broaden our understanding of the war in particular, and wars in general.

4. War Responsibility as Collective

Reconsidering responsibility is also a way to resolve military conflict and the historical
misunderstandings between states that bring them to act belligerently. Burdening one
side of the dispute with total responsibility for a particular conflict may bring a short-term
resolution—the end of the fighting—that fails to survive the test of time, resulting in a
renewal in more belligerent action that often gains classification as a new and different
war. Historical inquiry often reveals such one-sided narratives to be an inaccurate, or a
limited, view of a particular moment of aggression, often one that is self-fulfilling in terms
of victimization claims. Reconsidering responsibility does not necessarily set out to erase
the crimes of a particular aggressor, but rather to expand the scope of responsibility with
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

the intention of rendering it more inclusive, and more accurate. Ferdinand O. Miksche
offers one such example in his arguments on how misconstrued narratives of the origins
of the First World War in part invited a renewal of the fighting two decades later. At the
Versailles peace conference meetings, the victors, particularly the French, saddled on
German shoulders total responsibility for the war and imposed on it unreasonable financial
and territorial conditions that, as many have since argued, gave birth to Hitler’s regime.
Miksche’s purpose is threefold: He first argues that the narrow history of World War I’s
origins ignored the role, and thus responsibility, of France and other states; the peace
settlement that overburdened Germany set the table for the Second World War; and Allied
demands for Germany and Japan’s “unconditional surrender” established conditions that
increased the chances for a third world war, this time between the capitalist and communist
worlds. Miksche explains:

The official standpoint of the Versailles Commission was only concerned with
the state of affairs as it existed immediately before the war and ignored the long
chain of events which led up to it. It described the situation as if the war had come
like a thunderbolt out of a blue sky. The many declarations of war which set the
world ablaze, in those hot summer days of 1914, did not materialize as simply as
all that and as it is generally maintained even to-day (1952, 120-21).
13
He further held states such as Russia, England, and France responsible for failing to
coordinate their “actions in a positive sense.” Had they done so, he reasons, “the conflict
might have been kept within the bounds of the Balkan peninsula, where it would have had
more the character of a punitive expedition” (ibid., 121).
Luckily Miksche was wrong in his prediction that the Allies demanding from Germany
and Japan their unconditional surrender would trigger a third world war. Examining
Miksche, and others who wrote on this history to ascertain why he was wrong, why a third
world war did not erupt, helps us understand the nature of war itself, and what governments
and people must do to protect the peace. Relatively benevolent occupations and far milder
repercussions saddled upon the vanquished might have prevented radical leaders from
rising to the citadels of power in these states, as Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party did in
Germany from the mid-1930s. The nuclear monopoly that the United States held up until
1949, along with its history of having used these weapons, might also have served to pre-
empt a war of this scale.3 Yet, the globe did not liberate itself from war. While the traditional
powers in Europe and in Asia have to date managed to avoid directly engaging each other
in major battles, post-World War II history has seen these powers engage in regional wars
on a smaller scale. Though the narratives created to explain these wars attribute dates and
causes that separate these battles from those that fought up through 1945, it is difficult to
absolve completely the careless decisions made at the conclusion of this war from these acts
of belligerence waged at the regional level.
The early years that followed the peace initiatives of 1945 met with a series of regional
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

wars initiated by independence movements determined to sweep away colonial subjugators.

Two examples of such wars connected to colonial pasts were Asia-centered: Korea and
Vietnam. Might we consider the metaphorical first shots of these wars to have been fired
in the closing days of the Second World War? The initiation of both wars being dated in
the 1950s separates them by five or more years from the Second World War. However, the
troubles that both peoples encountered following Japan’s surrender and exodus cannot be
ignored: Korea was burdened with a humiliating postcolonial division that placed the United
States in charge of the south, and the Soviet Union in charge of the north; in Vietnam the
Allies allowed the French to recolonize the territory. These decisions went against the will
of the people, strengthened ideological divisions rooted in the countries’ colonial pasts,
and eventually brought the two peoples to war. United States history tragically misconstrued
(and continues to misconstrue) both wars within a “domino theory” context, a series of local
wars that the Soviet Union initiated to begin its international communization movement.
It thus failed (or did not want) to understand them as local national unification efforts.
Events that allegedly drew the United States into both wars resemble narratives of German
belligerence as described above by Miksche, as sudden, and totally unexpected.
The official history of the Korean War often describes the war’s origins in similar
simplistic terms, using the metaphor of thunder (North Korean sudden attack) appearing
against a blue (peaceful) sky. Yet, a closer examination of the war’s origins under a different
14 set of questions reveals a different narrative: that of belligerent clouds having gathered
for months, even years, prior to the official start of the war. Considering the war’s origins
from an earlier date opens the possibility for multiple states assuming responsibility, with
the war’s history also including the early ideological battles that erupted during the two
occupations, the failed attempts by the Soviet Union and the U.S. to reunite the peninsula,
the border battles that the North and the South fought around 1949, and the psychological
anxiety wrought by threats of attack from either side of the thirty-eighth parallel. These
actions all predate the June 1950 official starting date of the war (Cumings 1981, 1990).
Enlightened U.S.-Soviet postwar policies would most likely not have prevented factional
strife from erupting between Korean groups; these divisions are traceable to the 1920s,
during Japanese colonial rule. These battles, however, most likely would have been far more
limited, and claimed far fewer lives, than did the all-out war that terrorized the Korean
peninsula up through July 1953.4
That peace was not preserved from 1945 demands a rethinking of questions that
consider the war’s origins. How might responsibility be reassessed if the dominant narrative
(at least in South Korea and the United States) of North Korea being solely responsible
for the war’s origins is challenged? Did the three-plus decades of Japanese colonial rule
contribute to the war’s origins? Did post-Pacific War decisions that the Allied powers made
during their administrations regarding Korea’s future contribute to their history? Could
the United States and the Soviet Union have cooperated better to unify the peninsula
and prevent the fighting? To what extent did the non-cooperation displayed by certain
Korean factions frustrate their country’s return to sovereignty? These and other related
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

questions complicate the Korean War’s neat and comfortable narrative of the war’s origins
dating from a sudden attack in late June. They extend the responsibility for its outbreak to
multiple actors. They also suggest a different perspective of a contemporary North Korean
state, as a state determined to reunite the peninsula by force. This negative image has had a
tremendous influence on U.S. policy toward the state over the seven decades that followed
the 1953 cease fire. While North Korea may (or may not) have initiated the fighting on
the morning of June 25, 1950, to burden the state with total responsibility for the entire
Korean War is inaccurate and self-fulfilling. Instead, a justifiable argument can be made
that South Korea, the United States, Soviet Union, and even Japan also sharing a portion of
this responsibility (Caprio, 2011, 2012).
Reflecting on the Korean War in this wider perspective is more than just a rethinking of
the war, but a rethinking of its aftermath and North Korea’s position in it, including its more
recent efforts to create a nuclear force. This understanding does not condone North Korea’s
actions over this time, but it does attempt to better understand them. It sees the country
as a participant, but also a victim, in the circumstances that transpired before during,
and after the war. Perpetuating a narrative of this history that places total responsibility
on the shoulders of North Korea by threatening and sanctioning the state has blocked
its participation in the international community, has prevented the government from
reallocating funds budgeted for its military to more productive areas, and has prevented its
people from living a fulfilling life. Should these punishments be relaxed there is, of course, 15
no guarantee that the North Korean government would use the opportunity to redirect its
resources in more positive directions to improve the situation of its nation and its people.
It is for certain, however, that they will not (or cannot) do so under the present negative
circumstances and until a more trusting relationship emerges.

5. Contemporary Korean History and Japanese Expansion

Additionally, unfortunate aspects of Korea’s postwar dilemma can be traceable to

the years leading up to Japan’s 1910 annexation of the peninsula, as well as the three-plus
decades of Japan’s colonial rule. Indeed, U.S. wartime reasoning as to why Korea required
a post-liberation occupation often points to the decades of competition over the peninsula
that took place prior to 1910 between the region’s great powers—China, Russia, and Japan.
This history also included intrusions by the Euro-American powers that contributed to
Korea’s nineteenth-century chaos. The Western powers began to enter the region in the
late eighteenth century in search of trade relations. England’s drug wars with China in the
1840s transformed tactics that they initially employed from negotiation to force as a means
to gain their will, with England claiming Hong Kong as the first war bounty. Japan was
next to succumb when the United States employed “gunboat diplomacy” to force it to sign
unequal treaties in 1854 and 1858. Korea held out until 1876 when similar pressure from
Japan forced the kingdom to sign an “unequal” treaty strikingly similar to the ones that the
United States had forced upon Japan two decades previous. Over the decades that followed
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

Korea attempted a number of reform efforts that sought to upgrade its political, social, and
economic institutions, while enduring a decade of efforts by China, and then Russia, to
inflict its control over the kingdom (Larsen 2008). Japan also joined the two neighboring
empires in maneuvering to interject its influence over the peninsula. After defeating these
two rivals in wars between 1895—1905, Japan finally succeeded in absorbing the Korean
peninsula into its growing empire in 1910.
Japan’s acquisition of Korea contributed to its goal of extending its control over foreign
territories at its peripheries to protect its borders. Discussions related to this objective can
be traced to the late eighteenth century, a time when the Tokugawa regime interpreted as
threatening the advancement of Russian explorers crossing Siberia into what are now called
Japan’s northern territories, Ezo (now Hokkaido) and surrounding islands.5 Japan formally
acquired Ezo when it finalized a treaty of friendship with Russia in 1855 (Nichiro washin
jōyaku). Competition with China forced Japan to work more prudently before annexing
the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa) over the initial decade of the Meiji Period. In late Meiji it
annexed Taiwan and Korea, and in the early Showa period Manchuria and parts of China.
With the Pacific Ocean at its eastern border, these acquisitions added layers of protection
off Japan’s western, northern, and southern coasts.
Realist thinking justifies this history of expansion by instructing that a state’s primary
responsibility is to protect its interests, most important being its sovereign territory. In the
16 twentieth century this was accomplished by either expanding into its peripheries or, in the
case of European states, forming balance of power alliances. We can reflect on this period
to ascertain whether expansion was the best way for Japan to protect its interests. Did
expansion fortify Japan’s borders, or did it weaken them? Such reconsideration is not new; it
interested thinkers like Honda Toshiaki and Aizawa Seishisai in the Edo period, and Nakai
Chōmin and Miura Tetsutarō after the 1868 Meiji revolution, but in different ways (Caprio,
2020). Had Japan abstained from expansion might it have saved the Japanese nation from
the horrors of war? These questions are as important then as they are today, particularly at
a time when Japanese leaders debate Japan’s present and future position in world politics.
The world that Japan encountered when it decided, or was forced, to join the global
community encouraged expansion by teaching that states that sought to become rich
nations had been expansionist. To join this elite group, Japanese argued, it would have to
shed its Asian heritage and expand.6 Expansion allowed Japan to reenter Asia through
employing a western institution: imperialism. This decision inevitably led Japan to cross
into areas of interest occupied by Western powers in Asia, and eventually to war.
Japan’s need for resources to meet its industrial and military needs serves as a second
reason for expansion. The monopolies that colonial powers secured through obtaining
colonies encouraged further expansion to ensure access to these resources and to prevent
other states from acquiring them.7 It is perhaps one of the more interesting ironies of
Japanese history that its efforts to rub shoulders with the Euro-American powers eventually
brought it to war with these very powers. How different might Korean-Japanese history have
evolved had Japan employed a diplomatic policy that encouraged cooperation, rather than
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

discord, with its neighbors at this time?

6. Korean and Japanese Modern Development

One of the more interesting problems that I have considered, mostly in classes,
considered Korean and Japanese modernization: Why did Japan become the colonizer
and Korea the colonized? While there was much that Korea could have done differently to
better its position, and much that Japan did correctly, the latter also held advantages over
the former that accidentally worked to its advantage. At the time, both countries faced a
similar task: introducing fundamental changes to their societies. Yet, at this time the cycles
of history worked to Japan’s benefit in ways that prepared it for modern development and,
more importantly, to successfully handle the crisis at hand. Through them, Japan emerged
with a better understanding of the crisis, and with the tools it needed to confront it. Thus,
the development of the two states was more a matter of phenomena that lay beyond the
capacity of either state to control, rather than a matter of one being superior or inferior
from the other. This does not ignore the enlightened accomplishments of the Meiji leaders,
but simply suggests that certain factors facilitated their making those decisions.
One of the more important phenomena of this kind centered on dynastic change,
and specifically the legitimizing factor that such change needed to authorize the social,
political, and economic changes required at this time. It is interesting to note that both 17
Japan and Korea faced a change in monarchs due to death at around the same time: in
Korea King Ch’ŏlchong in 1864 and in Japan Emperor Kōmei in 1867. The new leaders
were also very close in age: King Kojong of Korea in September 1852 and Emperor Meiji
of Japan in November 1852. Japan. Japan, however, would immediately entrust the young
emperor to move from Kyoto to Tokyo and assume his throne to anoint a dynastic change.
Korea, however, continued its Chosŏn dynasty (1392—1910), but under the Price Regent
(Taewŏngun), Kojong’s father, until the king had gained in age, maturity, and knowledge.
The Japanese could not have choreographed this transition of power, but having a legitimate
alternative to the shogun at this pivotal point in time surely benefited their capacity to make
the revolutionary changes that the time required.
In a similar way Japan’s relatively decentralized state also gave it a curious advantage
over the arguably more centralized Korean kingdom. The strength and the sovereignty
that certain han enjoyed required the Shogun to institute a control system, sankin kōtai
that required the han leaders, the daimyo, to commute between their local home and Edo
every other year and to leave their family members in Edo as hostages. While instituted as
a security measure—the expenses incurred by the daimyo, and their families having to
remain in Edo, made the daimyo spend its revenues for this purpose rather than weapons—
it also required human movement across the archipelago that encouraged development
(albeit rudimentary) of networks that Meiji society required for modern development, such
as banking, entertainment, communication, and transportation networks, to name a few.
It further helped form a strong merchant class that gained wealth through its funding the
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

daimyo’s expensive travels to Edo. The wealthier among this class later financed the new
Meiji regime in a number of important ways, including the funding of its wars. The more
stationary Chosŏn Korea society lacked the need to develop in this way until much later.
Other historical “accidents” saw short-term victories turning into long-term defeats,
and vise-versa. Over the 1860s and early 1870s both Japan and Korea confronted attacks
by foreign invaders. These attacks wrought much damage and death to both sides. Yet, in
Japan’s case the foreign invaders destroyed, collected (indemnity), and stayed; in Korea’s
case they destroyed, did not collect, and left. This allowed the Korean government at the
time to maintain an isolation policy toward the outside world, including Japan. Among the
Japanese were many who also wished to maintain restrictive policies toward most foreign
nations, an aspiration that became untenable with the arrival of foreign nationals. These
two different reactions influenced Korean and Japanese histories in different ways. While
the Korean government could use these “victories” over Western invaders to maintain
the status quo, Japan’s “defeat,” and at the two strongholds of the anti-bakufu movement
(Satsuma and Chōshū), forced the han leaders to look for change under revolutionary
(ishin) terms. These defeats also encouraged the two domains, who later led the new Meiji
state, to encourage travel abroad to acquire knowledge, and to invite scholars from abroad
to bring their knowledge to Japan. From the 1889s, Korea also began to make contacts with
the Euro-American world. From this time it, too, sought knowledge from abroad, but on a
18 much smaller scale and through Koreans with less influence than those sent by Japan.8

7. Korea under Japanese Colonial Rule

The above hardly explains the complicated history of pre-colonial Korea-Japan

relations, but it does provide a platform for expanding discussion as to why history evolved in
the way it did from around the mid-nineteenth century. Their histories suggest that students
interested in a more complete understanding of this period examine it as multinational,
rather than binational, phenomena. Though Japan remains at the center of Korea’s colonial
subjugation history, other factors surely played important supporting roles that influenced
these histories. The period of Japan’s colonial administration over the Korean peninsula
officially ended with Japan’s defeat in 1945. Koreans in the south commemorate August 15
as both their day of liberation from Japanese rule (1945) and the founding of their state
(1948). These years, however, could not erase the crude memories of these 35 years of
colonial rule as Cold War aspirations dictated that the two states form a bulwark against
the growing threat that Communism posed from the earliest days of the postwar period.
Many of the colonial-era and postcolonial perspectives stubbornly remained to erupt after
this period faded from world politics; promoting the continuity of such problems appears
to have been more comfortable than negotiating their conclusion.
The Japanese assimilation policy (dōka seisaku) presents a case in point. Koreans today
often articulate this policy’s goal as a cruel effort to erase their culture, to transform the
Korean population into Japanese similar to the Meiji effort to integrate Edo-era han into
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

the Meiji state. Examining colonial rhetoric over this time surely presents Koreans with
justifiable reason to make this claim. On many occasions the Japanese expressed their
aspiration to turn the Korean peninsula into a Japanese prefecture, and encouraged the
Korean people to exchange their Korean identify for Japanese subjecthood. However,
understanding Japanese true intentions requires examination beyond the rhetoric. Did,
for example, Japan’s colonial policy decisions match this rhetoric? Also how do the more
problematic aspects of this period, such as Japanese labor policies that remain issues that
infringe on contemporary Japan-Korea relations, square with Japan’s assimilation rhetoric?
Were the more forward efforts (such as name changes and compulsory military service)
instituted out of wartime necessity, or would they have been continued, and perhaps even
advanced, had the Japanese retained control over Korea after August 1945? Were these
policies successful in enlisting Koreans to integrate into an extended Japanese society? 9
Japan’s defeat in the war, and the subsequent dismantling of its empire prevents us from
deriving definite conclusions to these questions. We can only judge Japanese policy by
its intensions, and what it did, over this short period. During this time, however, we see
Japanese policy matching that of other similar European colonial assimilation policies
(such as the French in Algeria). More often than not colonial policy contradicted colonial
rhetoric (Caprio, 2009).
In addition to my research, students who have studied under me have enriched my
understanding of this period, and the after affects that it influenced. They have contributed 19
samples of this research to this volume. One study deals directly with Japan’s administration
over the Korean peninsula and three studies consider topics that were influenced by this
history. Choi Chung Sook has examined the influence that the established colonial powers
had on Japan’s colonial policy, particularly toward the end of the First World War after the
idea of a people’s right to self-determination began to surface. Her paper details how the
United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan reacted to this policy. This discussion adds a
new dimension to this history, which to date has devoted greater emphasis to the reactions
of peoples under colonial subjugation in Korea and elsewhere. Demonstrations that erupted
in early 1919, though powerful enough to radically change Japanese administrative policy,
fell short in their goal: delivering to the Korean people their independence from Japanese
colonial rule. The reform package that the new governor-general, Saitō Makoto, delivered
to the peninsula, however, was double-edged: While on paper it offered the Korean people
a variety of positive rights, such as the freedom of speech and assembly, in reality those
reforms succeeded in making Korean society more transparent, and thus easier to control.
Koreans publishing newspapers, for example, provided (as one Japanese colonial official
put it) a “chimney” that allowed the Japanese to better read the people’s intentions (Caprio,
2012).
Ahran Ellie Bae’s research looks at the concept of collaboration, an issue that became
problematic when investigations into it had trouble defining the line that separated
collaboration for personal survival from cooperation for personal gain. Korean assemblies,
both the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly established by the United States Army
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) in late 1946 and the first South Korean National
Assembly elected in 1948, drafted legislation that targeted those believed to have crossed
this line, to be deemed guilty of traitorous crimes under Japanese rule. Both assemblies,
however, failed to resolve the basic question of determining guilt. This discussion continues
to the present with the South Korean government having pursued this issue into the
twenty-first century, regardless of the fact that its potential defendants have all passed.
Bae’s research finds that in addition to their not being able to define this concept, Koreans
might not have been asking the right questions in investigating this matter. She argues that
the why question (why they did it) is just as, if not more important, than the what question
(what they did). In certain cases, she found that the accused Koreans appear to have been
cooperating with the Japanese to protect what they believed to be a more important cause,
rather than for personal gain. The activities of longtime Ewha Women’s College president,
Helen Kim [Kim Hwal-ran], is a case in point. Was her cooperation with the Japanese
undertaken as a necessary step to protect what was for her an even more important cause,
women’s education?
Colonial policies in Japan and elsewhere inadvertently helped diversify ideological
thinking among the peoples under their jurisdiction as the colonized sought means to
sweep their subjugators from their homeland to gain its independence from colonial rule.
This is particularly seen in the rise of leftist thinking among these peoples. Ironically,
20 in many cases the colonized gained access to these ideas while residing in the colonial
homeland. The Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, for example, honed his leftist ideological
thinking while in France. Korea’s leftist movement began in the early twentieth century,
around the time Japan annexed their country into its empire. By the end of World War Two
an extended left-minded community had grown on South Korea’s southernmost island,
Cheju-do. In April 1948, just before the country was to vote to elect its first postcolonial
government, conservative Korean elements sided with the USAMGIK to launch a bloody
effort to clear the island of this leftist activity, an operation that left tens of thousands of
residents dead and caused many more to flee the island. Many crossed over to Japan. Hyŏn
Sohee’s research addresses questions of memory, specifically, the extent and ways to which
this massacre is remembered in Korean society’s collective memory today. Why does this
event not receive similar attention to other events, such as the 1980 Kwangju massacre, an
incident that affected the lives of far fewer Koreans?10 Hyŏn has also inquired on why this
incident appears to be better remembered among Koreans in Japan than among those in
Korea.
Finally, Susan Menadue-Chun’s study traces adjustments by the Korean schools in
Japan throughout their postwar history, particularly focusing on The General Association
of Korean Residents in Japan (K. Ch’ongryŏnhaphoe, J. Zai-Nihon Chōsenjin Sōrengōkai, or
Chongryon) schools that at their onset were supported by the North Korean communist state.
These schools were originally created with the idea of preparing Koreans who had remained
in Japan for their eventual repatriation to the peninsula. Believing them to be communist-
enclaves, in 1948 the U.S. occupation authorities ordered the Japanese to close these schools
 Random Thoughts on Modern Korea History

and to integrate the Korean students into Japanese classrooms. Schools run by Chongryon
would later reemerge to base their curriculum on the North Korean system, even accepting
funding and textbooks from the Communist state. School trips (shūgaku ryokō) led students
to P’yŏngyang, the North Korean capital. The times, however, since then have changed and
these schools with them. Recently they have become less dependent on the North Korean
state, and more interested in promoting an international curriculum. Menadue-Chun
argues that despite this revised focus, many Japanese, including the government, continue
to see these schools as “North Korean” directed. Her article traces the development and the
current situation of three schools located in three different geopolitical environments to
demonstrate the variety that can be found in the school system.

8. Conclusion

In this article I have tried to address a number of random issues and views that I have
encountered over the last three decades, since I embarked on the Korean Studies leg of my
long and winding road. The road has been anything but smooth, but in retrospect I accept
the twists and bumps that appeared along this journey as challenges that once overcome
propel rather than impede the development in my research. This I consider to be in no
way unique to my situation, but simply minor annoyances that any dedicated researcher or
creator encounters along their roads. Dodging them might bring peace of mind, but does 21
it produce research of significant importance? Colleagues have contributed to the process
through their critiques and challenges in discussions on, and blind-reviews of, a work in
progress. Active teaching, where instructors and students engage in meaningful dialogue,
is an indispensable part of this process. Students contribute to it through discussions in
the classroom and around the seminar table. They thus share a part of the end result.
Responsibility for the final product, however, remains with its creator.

Notes
1 It might be noted that the significance of the most important fact in United States history, July 4, 1776, is
only in the fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed on this date. Other than this not much
beyond the declaration of an intention transpired on this date. The United States would have to wait a
little over seven years, until September 3, 1783, before it could declare itself truly independent from
British rule. Yet, few Americans today acknowledge the significance of this latter date.
2 William Stueck addresses this directly in his Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic
History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), Chapter 3.
3 Joseph Stalin used this reason in informing Kim Il Sung as to why his armies would not join a war on the
Korean peninsula when the North Korean leader visited Moscow in March 1950 to discuss military
options on the Korean peninsula.
4 As the Korean War was never concluded by a peace treaty, an argument could be made that the two
Koreas, and their superpower allies, remain technically at war even to this day.
5 Two early Japanese who wrote on the need to incorporate peripheral lands were Honda Toshiaki’（A
 ICR Mark E. CAPRIO

Secret Plan of Government, 形成秘策, 1798）and Aizawa Seishisai（New Thesis, 新論, 1825）．
6 Fukuzawa Yukichi’s 1885 “Datsu A-ron” (Abandon Asia) editorial that he published in his Jiji shinpo
newspaper is one often cited example of this.
7 Two important documents that sought to correct this problem by attempting to end colonialism and
promote free and open trade were U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s fourteen-points speech that he
delivered in January 1918 and the Atlantic Charter drafted by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August 1941. Both documents included points aimed at
ending these monopolies.
8 An example of this difference is between Japan’s Iwakura Mission (1871-73), which included statesmen
such as Itō Hirobumi to circled the globe, and Korea’s Gentlemen’s observation tour, limited to Japan,
and included men such as Kim Ok-kyun who would live a life in exile after initiating a coup attempt in
1884 to bring reform.
9 Mizuno Naoki (2008) demonstrates that discussions over the name-changing policy (S ōshikaimei) resulted
in a compromise with the Japanese police who agreed to Koreans changing the number of characters in
their names to match those of Japanese, as long as their names could be distinguishable from Japanese
names.
10 The 1980 Kwangju massacre has secured a place in Korea’s collective memory that has been denied to
the Cheju massacre. It has been the subject of numerous films, gained more mention in school textbooks,
and gained grander displays in museum displays in Korea’s history museums.

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