Wonderful rare footage of the funeral of Emperor Sunjong in 1926:
And here’s some color footage taken of Seoul in 1938 by a Swedish diplomat in Japan:
(HT to Hamel)
Rare Video Footage of Old Korea
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice videos. The people in the 1938 video looked pretty content and happy to me. Also, Korean culture seemed to be doing just fine under Japanese rule.
#1,
Yeah, just like how the Jews filmed on Nazi propaganda were happy in their concentration camps.
#1,
Yeah, just like how the Jews filmed on Nazi propaganda were happy in their concentration camps.
Excellent film clips.
#1 – “The people in the 1938 video looked pretty content and happy to me. Also, Korean culture seemed to be doing just fine under Japanese rule.”
That’s beyond weak. We knew you were obsessed with Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt rocks. We knew you were likely just as obsessed with finding any excuse to shit on Korea and alienate the average Korean. Now we know that your concept of analyzing historical evidence involves watching a couple of You Tube videos and immediately making them fit your slant. I hope your “research” on the islets involves a little more historical scrutiny/professionalism than your comments about these videos would suggest.
this is also deja vu.
Mr. Bevers, assuming what you believe is right, would you say the American Revolution War was also a facetious, unnecessary, brouhaha, simply because English subjects in the new continent were unhappy to pay taxes to King George?
You could argue the 13 colonies were immensely benefited by the British Empire.
Why do Americans celebrate July 4th?
let’s assume Bevers’s universe.
1/ Boston tea party is Samil woondong?
2/ George Washington is Kim Jwajin?
3/ Benedict Arnold is Lee Wanyong?
this is not right, however.
why it is NOT right, is a long story.
for starters, Koreans and Japanese are not one stock.
Otoritakeo,
There were no concentration camps in the video or in Korea at the time. However, there are concentration camps in North Korea now.
Globalvillageidiot,
I was making a simple observation about the video. What is weak about it? Did the Koreans seem unhappy? Were they being forced to wear Japanese clothing? Were they living in squalor?
How do you analyze the video, Globalidiot?
WJK,
All I am trying to say is that the Korean claims of enormous suffering and cultural extermination are exaggerations, at best.
“All Canadian American citizens are to report to one of these death camps right away. Did I say death camps? I meant happy camps! Where you’ll eat the finest meal and have access to fabulous doctors.”
Gbevers: See?! See?! They’re happy!! What the fuck are Terrence and Phillips and those damn elementary school kids bitching about?
Lol. I had to laugh at #1. It’s almost as if Robert had called Gerry and told him “Be on the lookout for a post today of old videos of Korea under Japan. Be sure to be the first to comment, and make sure to stir the pot.”
Gerry, you don’t disappoint, and it is nice to see that you have a sense of humor.
There seems to be a lot of people here who are disappointed that Koreans were not suffering more in the video.
gbevers…the kids are smiling for the waegook Swedish saram. Doesn’t prove or not prove anything…
Yes, this was filmed by a Swedish fellow not by the Japanese. Nazi concentration camps? Do people really believe such comparisons are valid? Read some Korean literature from this period (Peace under Heaven 태평천하, 1938, by Chae Man Shik for example) and what you get is Koreans going about their everyday Korean lives more or less as they please.
Gerry: I for one am not disappointed not to see scenes of torture and/or suffering here.
I am not expert on history or colonization (or the history of colonization) but I suspect that, in most colonies in the last 1-200 years, for the ordinary commoner, most of their lives went on with as little change as possible. Isn’t this pretty much the case in any event? In war, if you are not a soldier or the family of a soldier, life still goes on. Peoplel still eat, work, make babies, defecate, and sleep – in all the possible permutations and combinations.
As for answering the question “were people at that time happy about Japanese occupation and colonial rule?” this video doesn’t address it at all. But it is great to see, so let’s sit back and enjoy the show.
Actually, I was surprised at how underdeveloped Korea still was after decades of occupation. I thought all of this Japanese modernization would have had more effect. Remember this images of Seoul in the most developed area of Korea at that time. These would hardly be representative of your average Korean especially if we consider the whole nation at the time.
Gerry, regarding Korean culture. what happened to the traditional Korean mens’ topknot hairstyle?
Koreans had to be happy………or else.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/japan-korea-treaty3.jpg
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/japan-korea-treaty4.jpg
This interesting political cartoon summarizes Korea’s situation in 1904.
http://dokdo-takeshima.com/07-KoreavRJ-lg.jpg
Here are the happy Tibetans going around happy and smiling. Aren’t the Chinese doing a great job? Look at all the modern buildings. Gbevers will be the first one to agree Chinese rule has been very good for Tibet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxniWic82Gc
Assuming Turbo had watched South Park movie before, I was watching it when I wrote that, and the line was just perfect.
But no, I don’t wanna ruin your fun, Turbo. Keep going with that. Gotta unload a fucked up week somehow, right?
17
Keep going with what? South Park? Like I said, try reading some colonial literature.
Well, Gerry, Japanese military did have camps for ‘criminals’, where they would do infamous medical experiments on human subjects.
I’m surprised no one’s taking the analogy about the US-UK thing into more depth.
“All I am trying to say is that the Korean claims of enormous suffering and cultural extermination are exaggerations, at best.”
No, I think you’re trying to suggest something more than that. I’m fully aware that the average Korean probably wasn’t interned, tortured on a daily basis, habitually beaten for speaking Korean, experimented on, gang raped, or massacred. That some Koreans would claim that the occupation was worse than it may have been, does not make it acceptable to try to suggest that, in fact, the period wasn’t bad at all. (Or, to take it a step farther, that it was good for Korea and its people.) You know better than that.
“There seems to be a lot of people here who are disappointed that Koreans were not suffering more in the video.”
No, nobody has written that. As a couple of people have commented, they wouldn’t have expected to see glaring evidence of such suffering in this type of film clip.
“How do you analyze the video, Globalidiot?”
As a two or three minute snippet of scenes from Seoul as filmed by a Swede in Seoul in 1938. No more. No less. Very interesting, but hardly evidence to support the notion that life was grand for the average Korean during the Japanese occupation, or on the contrary, that life was absolutely terrible each and every day.
Would you apply that same superficial degree of critical thinking/analysis to maps and documents related to your favorite obsession in the Sea of Japan/East Sea? I’d certainly hope not, at least if you are remotely concerned about people taking your claims seriously.
Put it this way – there are no contemporary Korean accounts of the type that Koreans talk about these days, such as Koreans left to starve after having rice ‘stolen’, etc. Go and read something like ‘Offspring of Empire:The Kochang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism’. What is interesting is not what is in it but what is not in it, and that is the sheer lack of the kind of nonsense that we hear from Koreans about the Japanese administration.
fhakujachi
If you’ve been conquered and not wiped out, you’re already better off than all the tribes and peoples that sunk into history.
In an established colony, the majority of the populace are only concerned with going about their daily lives. They may hold varied levels of ethnic/regional nationalism sentiments, but only the rare few radicals will actually do something about it.
If every conquered people reacted like the Bali royalty from day #1, they’d have all been wiped out long ago.
Globalvillageidiot (#20) wrote:
I am glad to see that you have not been deceived by all of Korea’s anti-Japanese propaganda.
Globalvillageidiot (#20) wrote:
I did not mean to suggest that all was good during Korea’s colonial period. I strongly suspect that Koreans were treated as second class citizens, much as African Americans, Mexican Americans, and other ethnic minorities have been treated in the United States and other countries, but Koreans did have rights, and they had more rights and freedoms under the Japanese than they had during Korea’s Joseon period. They also lived longer, were better educated, and lived in a more healthy environment.
I believe that much of Korea’s anti-Japanese propaganda was created by Korean President Rhee Syngman during his “Anti-Japan, Anti-Communism” campaign after he became president in 1948. I believe that President Rhee brainwashed most Koreans to believe that the colonial period was worse than it really was and that the Japanese were some kind of subhumans.
When Koreans talk about the horrors of the colonial period, they have very few examples they can point to, so they are forced to use less horrific examples, such as, they were forced to change our names and they were not allowed to use the Korean language, which are, themselves, distortions of the truth.
After listening to all the generalizations about how horrible the colonial period was, one would expect to find numerous examples in a Korean history book of all the terrible things that the Japanese did to the Koreans during that period, but, instead, one finds that after exaggerating what the Japanese did to put down the March 1st Movement in 1919, the history starts talking about various labor strikes, being forces to pay their respects to the Japanese emperor, claims that the Japanese were trying to get rid of Korean names and the Korean language, and then, finally, that Koreans were subjected to forced labor and sexual slavery (comfort women) during World War II.
As for the “forced labor,” the United States also mobilized workers and drafted men for military service during World War II, and, according to Wikipedia, used “hundreds of thousands of enemy prisoners of war as farm laborers.”
As for the “comfort women,” Koreans say the women were forced, but the Japanese say they volunteered. Though some women may have be deceived or forced by some sleazy Japanese and Korean pimps, ads for “comfort women” in Korean newspapers and articles about Japanese police arresting pimps who did kidnap women suggest that it was voluntary. I suspect that economic hardtimes, the lure of high pay, and maybe even patriotism were the main reasons for Korean women becoming “comfort women.”
Things were not perfect in colonial Korea, but the Japanese left the country better than they found it.
“Things were not perfect in colonial Korea, but the Japanese left the country better than they found it.”
I wonder, Gerry, if you would argue the same thing for every colonial experience, including that of the United States.
Adeptitus: sure, alive is better than dead in most circumstances (though sometimes I look at NK and I wonder). Reminds me of a very short story by Brecht that I once read, called “Massnahmen gegen die Gewalt.” You can read it in an English translation here: http://books.google.com/books?id=AURkQH9EiyMC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=%22measures+against+power%22+brecht&source=bl&ots=rvnb1SSZe1&sig=1d_8YBTwh1f4Xz-rYd9HsWGlbz0&hl=en&ei=Y8CwSbnYN6CSsQPR0omRAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result
Basic message of Brecht is this: outwardly subserviant, inwardly defiant and ALIVE are better than outwardly defiant and DEAD.
Another (thread)example of how anyone can find “information” to “support” their “ideas” on the “interwebs”. Puhleez. Are the pseudo-educated out there so stupid as to believe that their spewage is the end-all be-all of human knowledge. I dare any of you to intentionally take the opposing view and find info to support it. Viola. You are suddenly your own enemy.
The viola is a much neglected instrument.
#7, #8
I never said there were concentration camps in Korea. What I am saying is that people under oppression and occupation are often forced to smile on camera in fear. This is what the Jews in the concentration camps did and this is what the Koreans, under occupation and oppression, are doing.
I don’t know what Koreans did to you when you were little, but seriously, occupation and oppression are never justified.
Try telling that to the hundreds and thousands of comfort women and those who died trying to fight for the independence of their nation.
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