I think the answer to your question is short — No.

Even for non-Korean academics, the colonial period is too fresh and too much a hot potato to tackle as a whole without having to tip toe around contemporary sensitivities or simply having your view point affected significantly by the still politically charged nature of the topic.

Two works I do know about are Michaeil Edson Robinson’s Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea 1920-1925.

I don’t know if he has come out with another book (this one was in 1988). The book is useful, but the time frame for it is short to consider Japan’s penetration of Korea which began in the late 1800s and finished in 1945.

The other book is Carter Eckert’s Offspring of Empire - The Kochang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism 1876-1945.

Read that then wonder if the new Korean decision to hold an “official” commission to determine who were the “pro-Japanese” Koreans will label the Kims as terrorist to the Korean people and nation….

I want to hear what the Koreans are going to say about people like the Kims very much and about Park Chung Hee too….

Sugar Shin,

I agree with you on the ultra-right in Japan that wants to deny Japan’s past. It also seems to effect the general knowledge in Japan as well.

But, I’ll wait until I believe Japan is trying to repeat those past mistakes before I start screaming at them about their textbooks…..I think this is a big difference between me and the average Korean adult I’ve taught over the years.

And lastly, another reason I hate the bleeping collaborator issue is that it naturally gets bogged down by an argument about whether the occupation was “good” or “bad” with everything not connected to the freedom fighters (mostly in Manchuria) being the only “truly good” Koreans and the rest tainted by non-resistence or “collaboration,” especially if they happened to try to build up the society around them which was controlled at the top by the Japanese but was still guess what - a Korean society nonetheless……..

Shin Jong Il,

Shut the bleep up….

The collaboration issue and judgements about the colonial period really mean next to nothing to me, beyond what I hope to see for the better of Korean society…..

because I’m not Korean nor Japanese. If South Korean society wants to rip itself apart needlessly on the “pro-Japanese” (anti-Korean???) issue, it means nothing to Americans or anybody else with the exception of the Japanese……so why do I care?

Because, dimwad, some of us big noses have invested a good bit of our time in Korea and in connection with Korea and

Yes, I believe that Koreans have to move on and
collaborate with Japan on building a peaceful and
stable NE Asia….. but I feel we are still far
from there…. Just remember it cost to Europe
2 World Wars and 10s of millions of lives lost to
reach current stage of cooperation and integration..

I?쨈ve not much time now. I don’t believe that kimchipi’s claim, that he likes Korea is true and honest, but this is my perosnal opinion.

There are actually, as far as I know, ca. 680 000 Koreans living in Japan. Not all are supporting the North, but the DPRK was quicker and cleverer than the ROK to be supportive to the Korean residents in Japan, when they had been widely discriminated and ignored by a gross of post-war Japanese society.

“…infantile historical obsession with its neighbor” - SundubuMan
The same goes for China and Japan as well. In this region of the world everyone is more or less obsessed about the past, if you like it or not. Have a nice day, SundubuMan.

Many of us way-gooks actually love Korea and the fact that we might criticize its infantile historical obsession with its neighbor is an expression of that love, not a dig at Korea. Call it tought love-

Nationalism has blinded this country’s youth.

Here’s a question…..why are there over 2,000,000 Koreans STILL living in Japan????

Is life among the evil Japanese so horrible??

And ask yourself, if you were a Japanese, how would you feel to have hundreds of thousands of Koreans (supporters of the North) living in your country, espousing hatred of you, sending their kids to schools that proudly exhibit the two Kims, the evil dictators of a country that has kidnapped your citizens, lobbed a missile over your land, and threatens to destroy you in a sea of nuclear fire????

The more young South Koreans ignore this question, the worse the situation will get.

Whom I deeply despise are those extreme right-wing Japanese revisionists and apologists, who don??р꽓t want to accept but to whitewash ANY historical sins of Imperial Japan and ANY of their proven brutal treatment of their then weaker, technically backward Asian neighbours in Korea, Taiwan, Mainland China and South East Asia. Those Japanese folks who sees and pitty themselves only as innocent victims of the Pacific War with the truely horrible carpet bombings of their cities and the dropping of the nuclear bombs by the US, with deadly consequences for the civilian Japanese population. Those Japanese guys prefer to look on and bemoan primarily the effects or results of their past suffering, but on the other hand they don?쨈t want to dig deeper to the ultra-nationalistic, racist and imperialistic cause of their wartime catastrophe. The Imperial Japanese society have viewed the other Asian folks as inferior subhumans, dirty backward Koreans or Chinese as well were not more worth than the dirt under their soldier?쨈s boots, let us not forget the racist mindset of Imperial Japan?쨈s colonial and war aggression in Asia.

US-Americans in general (my very simplified assessment) are forward-looking, practical and overall optimistic people, who seek for new frontiers and challenges, with the ???뱇et??р꽓s do it???-approach of settlers and immigrants. I think, they don??р꽓t want to deal a lot with the past in contrary to the history-obsessed societies especially here in East Asia (or Europe, the Middle East etc.).
IMO they tend to interpret the ???뱖hining??? or ???밷emoaning??? of past injustice as a sign of weakness and backward-looking self-pitty or as a pschological hindrance/ obstacle for future progress. For East Asians in general, be it practical or not, the Chinese proverb: ???밚earn from the past, if you want to build the new??? is the defining/ determining device. My 20 won.

P.S.: Only to kimchipig. Man, you must decide once and for all who should be your “poiboy”. Mr. Shin Jong-Il or me, Sugar Shin. If you can’t differ between two Koreans/ Korean-Americans with the same “family name” ID, how could you ever differentiate between 48 million South Koreans in general?

My ancestors were all from Ireland. Now, England was not exactly touchy-feely in Ireland. If you want to make the case of cultural geniocide, Ireland is a good example.

However, I am mature and educated enough to admit a few things. The idea of being “Irish” developed under English rule. So did “rule;” Ever see the movie “Gangs of New York?” Well that pretty accurately describes the social situation in Ireland arounf 1850.

Now, poiboy, let’s recap again: Just because a Big Nose says anything critical of Korea does not mean he/she hates Korea. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Most people here in Canada no absolutely nothing about Korea and could care less. I do know a lot and I met many fine people there. I am therefore very interested in the Korean people’s future. This is not exactly the future of the ruling elite that is in the balance now, I am a supporter of the Korean version of myself, a Dad trying to support a family. I doubt many readers here see things from that perspective and let me assure you, it changes your outlook a lot.

I sometime feel that Korean emotions towards Japan are a mix of envy, “familiarity breeds contempt” and misplaced scapegoatism. I have lived on both places and the daily isntitutions are very similar. The main difference is that Japan is not so focused on its past or politcs. People go about thier daily lives in a more mature way than Koreans.

Of course, this is very easy for me to say — my ancestors did not have an up-close and personal experience with Japanese colonial policy, so I have an easier time looking at Japanese expansionism in the late 19th/early 20th century from a more detached, global perspective. It also allows me to posit that if Korea had been successful in its belated modernization attempts under foreign pressure (like Japan), it would have probably behaved in a similar fashion as other late-developing states in the colonial era, i.e. it would have rushed as quickly as possible into the Great China Gang Bang (like Japan). I often wonder what that would have been like, watching a modernized Chosun fighting it out with the Russians and Japanese for control of Manchuria.

Alas, that’s not how the proverbial cookie crumbled…

Let’s look at it. First, education. The Japanese set up a elementary education system for Korea. The system was set up to teach basic reading skills and more importantly to train them in the ways of being Japanese. Yet, it wasn’t to make them “Japanese” because they were never accepted as equals. For the most part, Koreans and Japanese did not attend the same school. Very, very few Koreans were allowed to progress. Only 5% of Korean students were allowed to go beyond this basic “education” or should we say indoctrination.

You somehow think they were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts? Give me a break. It was the process of trying to change the Korean children, to give them a “Japanese” outlook on things, to basically erase Korea. It got so bad that in the 1920s Koreans formed groups to maintain their culture and language and teach them to the children.

Korean’s had schools, and there were many private schools, but the Japanese went out of their way to shut them down. Although they would teach reading, writing and math skills, they weren’t teaching the children to be good Japanese.

The Koreans in high positions of power were collaborators IMHO. But this garbage of looking at the large number of Koreans working in government and somehow trying to show this as Korean acceptance for the occupation is ridiculous. It is the same for citing Koreans in the Japanese army.

Next, you are going to take the Japanese count of death and arrested, you didn’t mention injured, over the count of the Koreans? Yes, it was a count by Nationalist Koreans, both IN and out of the country. Reminds me of the official count of the Kwangju incident and what has later come to be a much higher count.

Again, Korea was in the process of modernizing themselves when Japan took over. Large reforms had already started to take place in the economy, military, schooling and health services. There was no need for Japan except for Japans own gain. Trying to say this was altruistic in any way is pure crap. Freedom of speech was eradicated, the press shut down and any gathering of Koreans was punishable by imprisonment or harsh physical punishment.

We aren’t talking about the Japan of today, but the Japan of the early parts of the 20th century. Apologists for the Japanese occupation of Korea remind me of apologists of any other brutal and cruel regime.