Center For Korea Studies Publications

Yong-Chool Ha, Yong-Chool Ha, Clark W. Sorensen

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780295746715
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Korean History
• Index: History

In recent years, discussion of the colonial period in Korea has centered mostly on the degree of exploitation or development that took place domestically, while international aspects have been relatively neglected. Colonial discourse, such as characterization of Korea as a "hermit nation, " was promulgated around the world by Japan and haunts us today. The colonization of Korea also transformed Japan and has had long-term consequences for post–World War II Northeast Asia as a whole. Through sections that explore Japan's images of Korea, colonial Koreans' perceptions of foreign societies and foreign relations, and international perceptions of colonial Korea, the essays in this volume show the broad influence of Japanese colonialism not simply on the Korean peninsula, but on how the world understood Japan and how Japan understood itself. When initially incorporated into the Japanese empire, Korea seemed lost to Japan's designs, yet Korean resistance to colonial rule, along with later international fear of Japanese expansion, led the world to rethink the importance of Korea as a future sovereign nation.

PART I

Colonial Policies for Forging Korea’s Image

1

A Devil Appears in a Different Dress: Imperial Japan’s Deceptive Propaganda and Rationalization for Making Korea Its Colony

HAKJOON KIM

In order to colonize Korea, commonly referred to as the Yi or Chosŏn Dynasty, imperial Japan resorted to various methods and techniques. These included supporting as well as fostering pro-Japanese Koreans, encouraging the eradication of anti-Japanese Koreans, promising diplomacy between the major powers and Korea, waging war—first against China and then Russia—demonstrating military strength, intervening in Korea’s domestic affairs, providing loans—which would make Korea Japan’s permanent debtor—and finally buying off and physically threatening Korean bureaucrats. Over several decades many scholars have published work on these methods.¹

However, from this author’s perspective, one method—not mentioned in the above list—was rarely or casually studied. That would be imperial Japan’s propaganda, which mobilized psychological warfare techniques and symbolism in an effort to change the international community’s thoughts and ideas toward Korea. As one shall see in the following pages of this chapter, Japan’s propaganda’s basic contents were three-fold: (1) in light of Korea’s internal and external conditions, it would be inevitable that Korea would need to receive Japan’s protection and control; (2) Japan’s protection of Korea in the form of its annexation would be beneficial not only to the Far East but also to Korea; and (3) Korea’s participation in an “annexed (or federated) great East” with Japan as its master would be advantageous not only for peace in the Far East but also to the preservation of the Korean nation. Unfortunately, most Western countries and even some Korean leaders swallowed this rhetoric, thereby helping Japan realize its objective. This chapter attempts to examine this important but not as yet systematically studied aspect of imperial Japan’s political propaganda techniques which resulted in Korea becoming Japan’s protectorate in November 1905 and ultimately a Japanese colony in August 1910.

JAPAN’S TWIN LOGIC: THE MISSION TO CIVILIZE THE UNCIVILIZED AND TO PROTECT ASIAN NEIGHBORS FROM WESTERN POWERS

The Mission to Civilize the Uncivilized

With the inauguration of the Meiji Restoration regime in March 1868, Japan actively mimicked Western civilization and transformed its political, administrative, and legal systems into Western styles. Boosted by such a seemingly successful transformation, most Japanese intellectuals regarded their country as a civilized nation, while simultaneously referring to other Asian neighbors as half-civilized nations or uncivilized or barbarian nations. With this sense of superiority, Japanese authorities advocated its mission “to civilize Japan’s Asian neighbors.”² One of these officials was well-known Fukujawa Yukichi, who was considered Japan’s Voltaire, and who founded today’s Keio University in Tokyo.³

At this time Japan resembled that of a Western imperialist power—British or American powers for example—which had rationalized their aggression and exploitation of Afro-Asian countries as being a duty and part of the white man’s burden. Needless to say, to Western powers and Japan, the noble phrase “to civilize” was a euphemism of the rude phrase “to colonize.” Given this background then, how did Japan view Korea? On one hand the Japanese regarded Korea as an uncivilized or barbaric nation, while on the other hand many Japanese regarded Korea to be a half-civilized nation. Irrespective of such a difference, Japanese officials agreed that Japan should make Korea its protectorate or colony. Fukujawa was an exception. Although he regarded Korea to be an uncivilized or half-civilized nation, one that should be civilized by Japan, he wrote in 1869 and 1875 that “Japan’s aggression toward Korea at this time would be harmful to Japan.” His alternative was his own version of the conventional Asian solidarity thesis, which had been circulated among the Meiji leaders, and read in part that “solidarity among Japan, China, and Korea, for the prevention of the forced civilization or aggression of the Far East by the Western imperialist nations,” was necessary.⁴ This thesis was favorably received by intellectuals from each of the three nations. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese scholars understood that this idea presupposed the independence and equality of the three nations. However, as one shall see later, Fukujawa would come to change his views with regard to the direction of Japan’s aggression toward China and Korea.

As for methods to civilize or colonize Korea, two different groups emerged in a broad sense. Hardliners proposed a war against Korea as manifested in the Seikanron debate (the thesis of conquering Korea), which reached its climax in 1870–73. Their ambition went beyond Korea. They proposed that after the conquest of Korea, Japan should also integrate other East Asian nations into Japan, but Japanese scholars who were well-versed in the industrial and military strength of major Western powers through their studies abroad, including Yamagata Aritomo and Itō Hirobumi, opposed it. The two, who would each become prime minister of Japan in the 1880s and 1890s respectively, argued that a Japanese invasion of Korea would arouse wide suspicion from the Western powers in general and invite Russian intervention in particular. Yamagata and Itō offered an alternative suggesting that Japan should foster its national strength first, adopt a gradualist approach, and wait for the appropriate time to colonize Korea. Kido Koin (J. Kido Takayosi), Emperor Meiji’s mentor, added, “[l]et us postpone matters for now. We can decide later what to do about Korea. It will not be too late to act when we are properly prepared.”⁵ Concerned by the gradualist group, hardliners initiated an insurrection with Saigo Takamori as their leader in 1877, but the shortlived insurrection ended with Saigo’s suicide.⁶

The first step of the gradualist approach was to open Korea, a country which had maintained its external policy of isolation or seclusion. Another step toward the opening of Korea included severing Korea’s subordinate ties with Qing China. The Japanese leaders thought that as long as Korea remained China’s vassal state, a state that refused the establishment of diplomatic relations with all other countries in general and Japan in particular, Japan had no room to advance into the peninsula. With that in mind, Japan resorted to gunboat diplomacy and forced Korea to sign the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876 (also referred to as the Treaty of Amity or the Treaty of Ganghwa Island) on February 26, 1876. This treaty was the first treaty signed by Korea with a foreign country. Soon after the signing of the treaty Japan opened a legation in Seoul and consulates in major port cities. Under Japanese influence, the Korean court inaugurated a special Japanese-style technical military unit within the existing traditional Korean army.

More important was that the treaty included the clause “an independent state.”⁷ This meant that Korea was no longer China’s dependent state, and Korea should and could develop relations with Japan on its own initiative. Japan began to widely propagate that clause to the international community in its effort to exclude Chinese influence over Korea, while coinciding with the advancement of Japanese influence over Korea. Around the same time, Japanese intellectuals added their stagnated Korea theory to the existing idea of a half-civilized or uncivilized Korea. Fukujawa led this theory. In 1877, he wrote that “Korea has not reformed its old customs since the war between Korea and Japan [initiated with Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in 1592]. It remains in this stagnated situation without either retrogression or progress.”⁸ In sum, stagnated Korea was the equivalent to an uncivilized or half-civilized Korea. Fukujawa’s stagnated Korea theory would be echoed in Western scholarship, thereby causing some Western leaders to accept, either explicitly or implicitly, the Japanese propaganda that proposed that Korea should accept Japanese “guidance” and even “protection” for its enlightenment and development.⁹

The Mission to “Protect” Asian Neighbors from Western Powers

In 1881, Fukujawa advanced another theory, one that declared that Japan should “protect” Asian nations from Western imperialist powers’ common objective to colonize the East. To “protect” its Asian neighbors, Fukujawa argued that Japan may find it necessary to occupy them militarily and to threaten them into adopting reform and progress policies. To illustrate his point, he used a metaphor. Comparing Japan to a stone house and its Asian neighbors to that of wooden houses, he argued that the wooden houses would be vulnerable to the fire ignited by the Western imperialist powers and that the flames may rapidly spread to Japan. In order to check the spread of that fire to Japan, he asserted, it is in Japan and other East Asian countries’ best interest for Japan to destroy the wooden houses and reconstruct them into the stone houses.¹⁰ It was clear that his proposition of solidarity among Japan, China, and Korea had been articulated into the notion that Japan may occupy China and Korea for the purpose of the security of Japan. In other words, his theory revealed Japan’s imperialistic and aggressive character. In 1889 and 1890, Japanese Prime Minister Yamagata Aritomo declared that to guarantee Japan’s national security and prosperity, Japan must safeguard not only its line of sovereignty (i.e., Japan) but also its line of interest (i.e., Korea).¹¹ One may conclude that Fukujawa’s theory of protecting Japan from a fire ignited in Korea developed into Yamagata’s theory of safeguarding Japan’s interest in Korea.

Within the civilizing the uncivilized theory, the new thesis that proposed protecting Asian nations formed a pair of the twin reasoning to rationalize Japan’s aggression. As one shall see later, imperial Japan would extensively propagate these theories to the international community, and many Western intellectuals would later echo it.

THE KOREAN RESPONSE

How did Koreans respond to Japanese reasoning and the signing of the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876? First of all, the traditional Confucian scholars—who maintained the idea that while China is the center of world civilization, Korea is little China, and Japan belonged to the barbaric nations— rejected the Japanese logic described above and opposed the treaty. Yi Hangno, Kim P’yŏngmuk, and Ch’oe Ikhyŏn represented this view, giving birth to the Wijŏngch’ŏksap’a a conservative group with a mission that intended to “defend righteousness and reject evil.”¹² To them Western countries were “animals without basic human morals and ethics,” and Japan had become an animal through its reception of the Western value system.¹³ In 1881, about 10,000 Confucian scholars presented their joint memorial to King Kojong the contents of which urged the king to take a strong anti-Japanese and anti-Western stance.

In contrast, some young Korean intellectuals—who had read Western books, which had been translated with strong skepticism regarding the existing political order in Korea over which Qing China claims suzerain rights by progressive Chinese scholars—accepted Japanese reasoning and the treaty. Some of these young scholars welcomed the clause in the treaty that declared Korea an independent state in particular. In short, they assumed that Japan was helping Korea to become independent from China.¹⁴

The number of Korean intellectuals who agreed with the treaty’s language increased when opportunities to travel to Japan became more available. After having arrived in Japan, they were impressed by the use of electricity, the printing machine and typography, the telephone and the telegram, and the public waterways, railroads, and modern road construction. In 1880, during his trip to Japan, Yi Tongin, a Buddhist monk, introduced himself to his Japanese counterparts as “a barbarian from Korea,” arguing that uncivilized Korea should emulate Japan as early as possible.¹⁵ In 1881, Yu Kiljun, who studied Fukujawa’s theories at Keio, repeated his mentor’s research of the division of nations into civilized, half-civilized, and uncivilized ones. Yu’s analysis determined that most of Japan’s laws and systems resembled that of civilized Western countries, and that Korea had better study the path Japan had walked.¹⁶ In 1882, after his first-hand observation of Japan, Kim Okkyun concluded tha...

Table of contents

• International Impact of Colonial Rule in Korea, 1910–1945
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part I: Colonial Policies for Forging Korea’s Image
• Part II: Colonial Korea’s Perception of Foreign Societies
• Part III: Foreign Societies’ Perceptions of Colonial Korea
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index