Korean Changes From 1850-1950

While we now understand that there are two Koreas, at least the 21^st Century finds South Korea free and independent. It was not always so. For some time, Korea was under the political and military influence and occupation of Japan. This came to light just a few short weeks ago: "The leaders of Japan and South Korea wrapped up a meeting here Monday with what was at best an agreement to disagree about how Japan is handling the legacy of its occupation of the Korean peninsula.

The past dominated the present during the meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. The leaders spent more than an hour and a half discussing historical accounts in Japanese textbooks of the 1910-45 occupation period and 10 minutes on the more immediate problems of the day, such as North Korea's development of nuclear weapons" (Demick A3).

What is important to remember is that Korea, in the century before 1950 was a bouncing ball sort of area, first under the historic influence of China, then various attempts by France and even the U.S. to establish trade- as well as sending Christian missionaries. Korea had an emperor at the time, but the emperors tended to be weak and there was a constant struggle between conservatives who wanted all foreign influences out of Korea, and progressives who wanted Western influence as a means of commercial and economic growth.

But, it was Japan that exerted the most influence. While Japan always was influential, Korea became quite literally a Japanese colony after the Russo-Japanese war. In 1905, "the Japanese forced the Korean government to agree to a protectorate. In 1907 they compelled the emperor to abdicate, and in 1910 they annexed the country to the Japanese empire" (Kang 528c). Was the U.S. concerned? Not really, according to most historians, even though there was a brief invasion of Korea by American marines in the mid-19^th century.

During World War II, the Japanese literally looted most of Korea's natural resources for its war effort. To be a Korean during this time, especially to be a Korean woman meant turning into unwilling forced prostitution. Currently, there are still civil suits by Korean and Chinese women who were forced to serve the Japanese army before and during the war. "An estimated one hundred thousand to four hundred thousand female sex slaves were forced to deliver sexual services to Japanese soldiers, both before and during World War II.... "This system resulted in the largest, most methodical and most deadly mass rape of women in recorded history" (Robinson 1).

As World War II was shifting toward the Allies in the Pacific in 1943, The U.S. and China and Great Britain created a proclamation that Korea would become a free and independent nation. In 1947, the first elections were held, with Syngman Rhee the first democratically elected President of an independent Korea.

Trouble was already in the air, because the Russians and the Chinese Communists tended to object to a democratic thorn in their Asiatic side. So, they created a separate Republic of North Korea. At first, it seemed just political maneuvering since P4resident Rhee's party really had a minority of seats in the government. When Rhee asked American troops to stay and safeguard the new Republic, the military buildup North of the demarcation line, the Yalu river, at the 38^th parallel, escalated.

So what had changed in the nature of being a "Korean"? From the middle of the Nineteenth century, Koreans were a fairly insulated people, most of them resisting Western influence and expecting to continue a friendship, ethnically and religiously with China. When Russia decided to occupy portions of Korea before the turn of the century, Koreans were not like that bouncing ball- shuttled between Russians, Chinese, and eventually the harsh and cruel Japanese. And yet, with the Sino-Japanese ancestry of a good many of its people due to occupation, war, and invasion, the major changes turned Korea from an isolated Empire, into a Japanese colony, then into a free nation and now, into two separate unequal nations- the South prospering, the North foundering. Freedom is cherished, but to many with a historical perspective, still fragile.

REFERENCES:

Demick, Barbara (2005): "South Korea, Japan Remain at Odds on Past Leaders focus on historical accounts in the former occupier's textbooks and glide over the region's current nuclear arms issues" Los Angeles TIMES. June 21, 2005, p. A3

Kang, Younghill (1956): "Korea" Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 16

New York: Americana Corporation (1956)

Robinson, B.A. (2001): "Japanese Sex Slavery" ReligiousTolerance.Orgwww.religioustolerance.org/sla_japa.htm