In the NYT, Norimitsu Onishi writes about Incheon’s Chinatown and the odd lack of Chinese people [NYT] residing there. It’s not a bad piece, but I’m really surprised Onishi could talk about the lack of Chinese people in Incheon’s Chinatown without mentioning the Wanpaoshan Incident of 1931 [Wikipedia], in which inflammatory and factually questionable reports about a squabble between Korean and Chinese farmers in Manchuria printed in a certain conservative Korean newspaper whose name we needn’t mention led to bloody anti-Chinese riots in several Korean cities [Dong-A Ilbo, Korean], including Incheon, in July of that year.
Anyway, here are some photos of Incheon’s old concession areas—including Chinatown—that I took last year. That area of Incheon—as inactive as it may be—is actually quite charming, home as it is to one of the largest concentrations of Treaty Port-era architecture in Korea. It’s even got a small museum [Naver blog, Korean] dedicated to Incheon’s architectural heritage, and Incheon City—recognizing the tourist potential—has been working to restore some of the concession areas’ lost charm.
This expatriate blogger in Incheon [Incheon Landings] has more photos of the city’s unique architecture.
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Another Potemkin Village in the making brought to you by the hub(ba hubba) of cosmopolitanism
That Chinatown needs a Madame Wong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Wong
Some great photos there BTW.
a lof of hwa-gyos left in the 80s, due to racial discrimination.
I met three of these families in California.
I think the policy was they couldn’t own land, enter University, and some other bs laws. I would have left if I were them, too. Very racist.
These people were good people, who left due to a forced hand. They were very Koreanized.
Not sure if laws were different, for say, like the Underwood family. I get the feeling it must have been.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard sometime ago that Joo Hyun Mi, the 80s top star in Korean trot-kayo (probably a Japanese loan word), was a hwa gyo.
The Wanpaoshan Incident shows Koreans were perpetrators and collaborators with the Japanese
imperial expansionist rather than the victims of
the Japanese colonial rule as they always depict
themselves. As a matter of fact there was no major
uprising by Koreans against the Japanese rule after the 1917 incident. They were good citizens
of Japan until 1945.
why would good citizens establish a exile govt, wage guerilla warfare in Manchuria with the Chinese, and attempt to assasinate generals, politicans, and the Emperor himself?
you might as well blanket all the French for being collaborators and happy citizens under the Germans.
wjk wrote:
Not sure if laws were different, for say, like the Underwood family. I get the feeling it must have been.”
The law is the law. The Underwoods lived on the Yonsei campus as per the terms of the agreement when the university was established by foreign missionaries more than 100 years ago. To my knowledge, they did not own property in Korea, other than a beach house on the west coast. Horace Underwood Jr. had to get a Korean cosigner when he got a credit card from a local bank.
Korea can boast of being the only East Asian nation where the Chinese couldn’t establish a strong community.
There is a small, nearly invisible ethnic Chinese community in Yonhui-dong, centered around a school that flies the flag of Taiwan.
At least you recognize the racism, wjk.
The incidents wjk referred to all took place outside the Korean peninsula. The was no single
Korean resistant in the Korean peninsula who stood up to the Japanese rule after the 1917 uprising while the French put up a strong resistance under the German occupation.
The ethnic Chinese community was on its last breath when I arrived here. Behind the Central Post office was the Taiwanese Embassy and the largest Chinese school. Most of the businesses in the neighborhood were Chinese run–I recall they couldn’t own a business larger than 20 pyong or so. When Korea switched diplomatic recognition and the mainlanders took over the compound the neighborhood pretty much emptied. The neighborhood was a pretty subdued “Chinatown” without the touristy gates, loud colors, lanterns, etc. Pretty much was the only place to buy bottled oyster sauce, loose-leaf tea, etc. No dim sum place, though.
The Korean guerilla warfare in Manchuria is nothing but a joke. It was the propaganda by
North Korea to legitemize late-Kim Il-sun’s regime.
At least the polyester clothing on sale is probably made in China.
tocchin, you never heard of General Kim Jwa Jin, who was Kim Doo Hwan’s father, and who was betrayed into Japanese hands by a Korean communist?
I suppose Kim Jwa Jin’s Chung San Dae Chup was to legitimize Kim Il Sung as well? Strange. Kim Jwa Jin was not a communist. He was on the other end. Kim Doo Hwan dedicated his life to torturing, killing communists after he learned how his father ended up in Japanese hands.
If the Korean/Chinese rebels in Manchuria were a joke, why was the Kuan Tong Army of the Japanese regularly waging warfare in Manchuria? Because it wasn’t secure at all. They weren’t even fighting the Russians except for near Mongolia around 1941, and August 1945.
What French resistance?
After Vichy France came about, the only real resistance came when the 101 US Airborne started parachuting into France and the Allies landed in Normandy.
You’ll be pretty hard pressed to find evidence that French were tortured under occupation.
Again, what colony succesfully led any rebellion of any sort without an army of men with rifles.
If you check out Kimsoft’s website, he accounts a tiny local rebellion by his father with the aid of communist guerillas. Inside Korea.
If Japan was such a benevolent master to Korea, does it make any sense to you that Japan withdrew in August 1945, and revoked citizenship of all the Chosun people from the Japanese Empire, when they already had close to 40 years of occupation and a lot of Japanese people legally owning most of commericial and residential property in Korea?
Furthermore, why did both South and North go on a hunting spree of pro-Japanese collaborators, much like the Dutch and the French?
Are you Japanese?
The majority of the rebels in Manchuria the Kuan
Tong Army encountered in their warfare were not
Koreans but Chinese. In the Korean peninsula, there were hundreds of thousand of Korean volunteers in the imperial army. They were all
armed. Why did they not rebel against the Japanese ? After the end of the WW 2, It was not the Japanese government to have decided to revoke the citizenship of Koreans from the Japanese
Empire.
wjk wrote:
“Are you Japanese?”
Please don’t start nationality baiting. Attack the arguments, not the person.
I don’t care if this post gets deleted, because for the record, tocchin started this first. And that is the truth.
So, it would be wrong to ask, “tocchin, are you Japanese”?
“Did you receive money from Japan?”
Why is wrong for me to ask like that, when Ponta does the same?
Hmm?
tocchin, what colony owner asks for volunteers to join their army? They were forced. Directly or indirectly. Did the British have volunteer Indians at all positions?
There’s some absurd argument going around your neck of the woods that the Japanese were kind masters in Korea with ample Korean volunteers, because there was no way all those Japanese police controlled all those Koreans.
Yeah, right.
How did the British, French, and Spanish manage to control territory 20 to 30 times their own homelands? They certainly didn’t match it with British soldiers. The answer is weapons to mow down the masses. Machine guns, cannons, etc.
Do you know what revolutionalized “resistance” guerrilla fighting?
Machine guns, portable missiles, and portable artillary.
This is why colonies in Africa, South America, Cuba, Middle East, Vietnam, Southeast Asia were able to get their “independence” after 1945, whether or not the colony holders agreed to it or not. This is why it’s difficult to wipe out those terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One man hidden somewhere being able to take out more than 3, most likely average in the teens.
Syria and Iran are happy to supply these people with portable rocket missiles and mini-mortar artillary, endless ammunition, and machine guns, and bombs.
Syria and Iran should be bombed mercilessly.
Coalition forces are there for the good of the Iraqi people. Look at the Kurds. Compare to the Shiites and the Sunnis, each armed by Iran and Syria, respectively to kill each other and Americans. Take Syria and Iran out, it all stops.
However, even in current times, superior weaponary suffices to control a population 10 to 50 times, even a 100 times the armed force.
How many coalition troops are in Iraq? Perhaps 300000? How many people are they trying to protect/control, so they don’t kill each other and they don’t wipe out the coalition troops in Iraq? Almost 27 million people.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iz.html#People
Don’t bring up Kim Wan Sup became he jives with your sandboxed theory on how great Nippon was in Korea. Alright? The model doesn’t work then and it doesn’t even fit now.
Remember, it was a Korean who tried to kill the Emperor with a bomb in Kyoto, Japan. It was a Korean who shot Ito Hirobumi in Manchuria with a 6 shot revolver. It was a Korean who threw a bomb to kill and maim top rank Japanese generals in Manchuria.
Korea was under tight control by the Japanese. Enough that Japanese nobles and rich men bought up and owned all sorts of valuable property, took up residence districts in the best parts of the land, such as in the center of Seoul and Pyong Yang. Which were historically prime land, because of relatively good weather, a river running thru it, and such. They wouldn’t “live” in Korea, extracting the best and taking the best, if it wasn’t secure enough for the Japanese. How did they secure it?
Teachers wearing swords in classrooms. Guns in the hands of Japanese only. Koreans only in lower ranks, strictly under the watch and guidance of Japanese army peers and superiors.
How easy is it these days in either the ROK army or the US army for a soldier or even a group of soldiers to hide ammo, and go on a shooting rampage?
I heard from my father’s days 1in the ROK army, one bullet missing would result in the entire group of soldiers being forced to search for it or do physically taxing work or drills all night. And get up basically when the sun rises to resume their daily work.
The only wild west version of the Japanese empire was Manchuria for the Koreans. Which some Koreans regard a portion as Gando, and thus technically Korean land. Thus, technically Korean land where they waged guerilla warfare on the Japanese.
I guess you forget that in 1931, the time of the Korean violence to the Chinese and Japanese protection of Koreans, Koreans were nominally citizens of Japan, whereas the Chinese were not. I guess you discount that when a violent earthquake shook Japan in the 1930s or 1940s, the Japanese started similar abuse against Koreans, simply because they believe Koreans caused an earthquake. Go to kimsoft.com. The earthquake and the Japanese violence against Koreans is described.
also, who decided Okinawa, and Hokaido were to remain with Japan instead of being robbed of Japanese citizenship?
Why didn’t they go independent? Because those people wanted to remain with Japan. They never wanted independence. Koreans did.
Name the exile govt for Ainus and Okinawans, despite the racism and segregation they faced from Honshu and Kyushu.
To my knowledge, the Ainus and Okinawans only became Japanese citzens in the latter 1800s.
wjk,
Let me remind you that Robert chided Ponta for referring to your Korean-American identity on another blog.
Don’t respond to nationality baiting with the same. As I have told Ponta, we all have our biases, don’t we?
yes we do, I’m sorry.
The hardship forced upon the Chinese community in South Korea was injustice, and I hope it doesn’t happen again to the Chinese or any ethinic minority in South Korea.
“I hope it doesn’t happen again to the Chinese or any ethinic minority in South Korea.”
WJK, Sadly, it occurs every single day against any ethinic minority in forms of discrimination, ignorance, contempt, hatred and racism in Korea.
wjk, you evidently drank the water when visiting “Independence Hall”.
It was the U.S. (and its allies) who liberated you from 35 years of alliance with the Japanese. It had nothing to do with supposed lack of weapons and everything to do with mindset.
P.S. Cortez didn’t have machine guns.
cortez had cannons, guns (firesticks), and a cavalry.
How else did some 300 soldiers at maxiumum take an entire continent?
I’d like to hear your explanation.
If you’re talking about the Independence Hall in Choong Chung Do, that’s a short drive from where my grandfather, his father, and his father, are buried.
I saw it being built, explored it being built, but never saw the completed thing.
There used to be a farming relative, but they quit that around 1990. That’s where I saw a pig eat anything fed to it.
There was mutual trust between Koreans and Japanese
in the imperial army. Therefore, many Korean military officials were promoted to important positions. The Korean soldiers were all loyal to
the imperial Japan. That was why the US had never
tried to encourage them to rebel againt Japan during the WW 2. If the US had thought the most of
the Korean soldiers were unhappy about the Japanese
military, they would have made the utmost to help
Korean rebels.
in fact, one of my dead grandfather’s usual drunken talk went something like this,
” I was trying to get into this elite school. My Japanese school teacher talked to me in private, saying, ‘You’re a Chosunese. You can’t make it to a school like this. Know your places, you Chosunese.” And the story goes that, he had a score good enough to make it anyway.”
What kind of school teacher tells his pupil that he can’t make it to a certain school, because of his racial background?
Here’s a good breakdown of the Korean independence movement. Just because it doesn’t get western press, it doesn’t mean it never existed.
http://www.answers.com/topic/k.....e-movement
Here’s more
http://japanflag.com/english/e-doklip.htm
tocchin’s talking nonsense, if not, blatant lies.
There was never Japanese trust of Koreans in their military. This link explains exactly why.
http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~rur55/E/epage12.htm
“The neutrality of this introduction is disputed.”
“It has been claimed that some or all of this article or section is incoherent and not understandable, and should possibly be reworded if the intended meaning can be determined.”
Two reasons I never trust _any_ Wikipedia article related to Korean history.
Ahem, to get back to the original topic (by the way, has the admin gone from policing every post to policing none?)…
Thanks for the photos, Robert…I was there a year ago, in the spring of ‘06, on a cloudy day. You saw a lot more than I saw, and I thought I covered it all. Anyhow, it’s a neat daytrip: take the subway train to the last stop, cross the street and through the gate, up the main route and the stairs, check out MacArthur’s statue, walk a few steps to the promontory overlooking Chinatown, and take in a superb view of the harbour.
Funny thing, though. Years ago, when my grandmother passed away, I was in Montreal for her funeral in dreary November, and feeling homesick. As a Vancouverite, I ended up in Chinatown, and suddenly felt like I was back home. Heh. I didn’t get that same eerie sense of familiarity when I was walking through Incheon’s Chinatown, however—it felt just as Korean as any other place in Korea…which is not a bad thing, but it certainly didn’t “feel” “Chinese,” despite the architectural adornishments.
“adornishments” (sic) ==> “adornments”
Sewing wrote:
“As a Vancouverite, I ended up in Chinatown, and suddenly felt like I was back home. Heh. I didn’t get that same eerie sense of familiarity when I was walking through Incheon’s Chinatown, however—it felt just as Korean as any other place in Korea…which is not a bad thing, but it certainly didn’t “feel” “Chinese,” despite the architectural adornishments.”
Well, it’s not surprising that a Chinatown in one North American city would remind of a Chinatown in another. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to China, but speaking as a former resident, I must say that Chinatowns in North America do not resemble the streets of any Chinese city I spent time in. Seeing rows of bitter melons and pomelos and hearing Chinese voices gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, but I never felt like I was back in China while strolling through the streets of Chinatown in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Seattle, Boston, or Vancouver. Chinatowns in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Japan each have their own distinct look. When I’m in a Chinatown, I feel like I’m in a Chinatown, not in China!
Yeah, I know I’d be in for a good deal of culture shock if I actually went to China…keeping in mind, however, the old Chinese-North American communities were predominantly Cantonese on top of that. But it felt like a Korean neighbourhood with Chinese ornamentation, not a neighbourhood of Chinese immigrants or their descendants. I don’t even recall seeing many signs in Chinese characters, no more than one sees hancha anywhere else in Korea. It wasn’t alive the way the Chinese neighbourhoods in the Vancouver area are. (Note taken of the historical, discriminatory pressures exerted on Chinese residents in Korea that might have led to this situation.) …Despite what should have been a positive reinforcement because I was in a port city on the West Coast (of Korea)!
Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. It was still a good trip for a day…I stopped at the Fantastic Studio in Bucheon en route, and checked out the outdoor set where so many 20th-century historical dramas are shot.
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