Consequences of Japanese colonial exploitation of Korea

§ 1. The enslavement of Korea by samurai from the East

On the geographical atlas of the world, the territory of Korea looks like a bizarre peninsula in the east of the vast Eurasian supercontinent. Stretching for almost a thousand kilometers from north to south, cutting through the Yellow and Sea of ​​Japan, the peninsula has been located since the second half of the 19th century. has become a kind of “solar plexus” in the foreign policy strategy of the neighboring geopolitical giants - China, Japan, Russia. Over its centuries-old history, the Korean ethnic group has known everything - fierce inter-tribal hostility and the birth in the throes of national statehood, stubborn resistance to foreign invasion and the phenomenal flourishing of its own civilization. But nothing left such a deep, unhealed wound in the soul of every Korean as the long-term Japanese colonial rule, which was finally established in August 1910.

Japan's colonial rule in Korea can be chronologically divided into four periods: first (1905–1910) - Japanese protectorate over Korea; the second (1910–1919) – military control, or “saber regime”; the third (1919–1939) – “cultural management”, or the period of the “velvet cat’s paw”; the fourth (1939–1945) was an attempt to forcefully assimilate Koreans into the Japanese cultural space.

The complete annexation of Korea by Japanese militarism in August 1910 meant that Japan, rapidly modernizing on the basis of the famous Meiji reforms, was stronger than other Far Eastern rivals, primarily China and Russia. It was precisely because of their strategic superiority in the region of the Mikado Empire that they were able to establish their absolute control over Korea, an ancient and distinctive country, without a major colonial war.

From that time on, the Japanese Governor-General became the sovereign ruler of the entire Korean Peninsula. Japanese officials took control of all the posts of provincial governors without exception and established complete control over financial, diplomatic, trade, economic, judicial, police and other services. Overnight, a sovereign state with its roots in distant historical times ceased to exist.

But Korea's loss of national sovereignty was due not only to external, but also to internal factors. By the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. Korean statehood entered a period of deep entropic (all-encompassing) crisis and decline. Behind the façade of strict bureaucratic regulation, built on Confucian principles, was hidden the almost complete paralysis of the state machine. None of the key government departments - the Ministry of Official Affairs, the Ministry of Taxes, the Ministry of Ceremonies (Protocol), the War Ministry and others - were able to even minimally fulfill the functions assigned to them. Taxes were not collected, the state treasury was empty, and the armed forces could not reliably guard not only state borders, but even the palace complex of the ruling Li dynasty. Blatant arbitrariness and lawlessness occurred in the districts and provinces, although according to the law, governors and local administrators were replaced every two years.

It should be noted here that Russian diplomacy quite shrewdly foresaw the impending catastrophe. Thus, in search of the reasons forcing King Kojong (ruled since 1863) at the end of the 19th century. persistently seek foreign patronage, the Russian diplomat A. N. Speyer reported in September 1897 to Count M. N. Muravyov in St. Petersburg:

“The ugly state in which Korea currently finds itself, the upper classes of which, not excluding the king, elevate bribes to the level of a necessary, if not the only factor in domestic politics, that total deception and that hopeless lie that now reigns in all layers of Korean society , lead me to the sad conviction that no efforts of ours will be able to raise our unfortunate neighbor to that moral height, below which the independent existence of the state is unthinkable and cannot be allowed by its neighbors.”

There was not the slightest exaggeration in this alarming report. In conditions of increasing external expansion, the Korean state was in the stage of self-disintegration. In court circles there was a fierce internecine struggle, court intrigue and mutual envy reigned, and a complete inability to perform the most necessary administrative functions. The Achilles heel of the ruling elite was the inability to basic consolidation and unity for the sake of preserving the national-state sovereignty of the country. The ancient, distinctive country of East Asia, burdened with the exorbitant weight of conservative traditions and the arbitrariness of the bureaucratic-bureaucratic caste, could not help but turn out to be a relatively easy prey for the rapidly rising Japan. Japanese annexation meant the collapse of the centuries-old national statehood of Korea.

Realizing the impossibility of holding enslaved Korea solely by the policy of the police whip, Japan from the very beginning began to pay close attention to creating its social support in the colony. A special decree of the Japanese monarch provided for “proper and appropriate treatment” with representatives of the ruling Li dynasty if they showed appropriate loyalty to the colonial power. The nominal ruler of Korea, Sunjong (ruled since 1907), retained the title of Imperial Highness after the annexation in 1910, and budgetary funds in the amount of 1.5 million yen were allocated for its maintenance. In addition, by decree of the Japanese emperor, 76 specially selected representatives of the ruling class of yangban (roughly equivalent to European nobles), who previously occupied important administrative, military, diplomatic and other posts, received high titles of the Japanese empire. Among them were 6 “kosaku” (marquises), 3 “hakusaku” (counts), 22 “shisaku” (viscounts), 45 “dansaku” (barons). Each of the representatives of the new Korean compradors was paid monetary rewards from the Japanese treasury. Representatives of the middle management of the yangban, who occupied less significant and significant bureaucratic positions in the administrative apparatus, were not left out either. Crumbs from the master's table were also thrown to the “representatives of the people” - Confucian preachers. Over 9.8 thousand “correct” interpreters of Confucian dogma received 24 yen from the Mikado as a one-time gift. This was symbolic compensation for serving the new foreign power.

At the same time, in Tokyo they were aware that to govern Korea they would need not only a new system of ideological intoxication, but also a considerable number of low-level officials and employees with basic literacy skills. After the suppression of the nationwide March First Uprising of 1919, the metropolis carried out a series of school reforms in Korea, the purpose of which was to expand the scope of primary, secondary and vocational education with a special emphasis on the development of the Japanese language and primary labor skills. The opening of the Seoul Imperial Korean University, intended mainly for people from privileged families, was widely advertised.

However, contrary to official declarations about the transition to the “era of cultural management,” the foreign system of colonial education was fundamentally discriminatory. As “second-class” people, Koreans were forced by all means to renounce their native language, change their Korean names and surnames to Japanese ones, and become Japanese citizens. The gigantic Japanese propaganda machine tirelessly convinced Koreans that their future depended on the degree to which they were unconditionally naturalized into rapprochement with mainstream Japanese society. Those few inhabitants of the peninsula who fell for this propaganda bait and forgot about national self-identification, Koreans began to call “new Japanese” even in pre-war times with a clear shade of sarcasm.

In accordance with decrees promulgated by the Japanese General Government, the indigenous population of Korea and Japanese settlers had formally equal access to education. However, in practice, there were two separate education systems: one, primitive, for Korean children and youth, and the other, privileged, for Japanese colonists. The famous South Korean scientist Lee Gi Baek provides the following data about the mythical “equality” of Koreans and Japanese in receiving education in colonial Korea in pre-war times. Out of every 10 thousand population, 208 people were enrolled in the Korean primary school, and 1272 people in the Japanese school, 5 people in the Korean secondary school, and 106 people in the Japanese secondary school, 1 person in the Japanese secondary school, and 128 in the Japanese secondary school. people, professional Korean school - about 3 people, Japanese - more than 62 people. etc. At Seoul Imperial University, including its Faculty of Industry, the total number of Japanese students significantly exceeded the number of Korean students, although the Japanese constituted only 3% of the colony's population. It was already noted above that from the first days of their rule, the Japanese authorities began to pursue a policy of discrimination and even persecution of the Korean language.

This campaign was completed by the end of World War II, when the country legally prohibited the teaching of the national script, Hangeul, in schools.

The victims of the Japanese colonial policy of forced recruitment of “human goods” are innumerable. During their thirty-year rule in Korea, the Japanese authorities gradually implemented the Law on General State Mobilization, the Order on Universal Labor Service, the Law on Labor Service for All Adults, the Decree on the Service of Women in the Self-Sacrifice Unit, etc. These legislative acts were not only a gross violation of human rights, but also violated generally accepted international codes of conduct in the temporarily occupied territory. According to the investigation of the “Society of Koreans Victims of Forced Recruitment by the Japanese Authorities,” presented in November 2003 to the UN Human Rights Committee, the far incomplete lists of victims of forced wartime mobilization included 427 thousand 129 Koreans. The lot of these unfortunate people was hard labor for meager pay in coal mines, mines, road construction, and logging. Masses of young Korean women were sent as “sex slaves” to the Japanese military. The total number of Koreans who had to experience the brunt of the mobilization of “human goods” reached 8.4 million people, of which more than 1 million people. died in captivity.

Japanese colonial rule paralyzed the natural development of the sovereign Korean state, its education, science, and national culture for an entire historical era. The entire policy of Japanese “cultural management” on the peninsula was subordinated to one goal - the spiritual intoxication of the population of the colony, its total decoration and Japaneseization in order to create the so-called “Great East Asian Sphere of Prosperity,” which meant a colonial empire covering the entire region of Northeast Asia.

Let's talk about Asian languages: Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Which of these languages ​​is the easiest to learn? What might be right for you? How are these languages ​​different? Knowing the differences is especially useful if you are just getting started with Eastern languages ​​and choosing which one will suit you best.

A little geography

To begin with, we must recall that China is a very large country, almost a continent. And Japan and Korea are small neighboring countries.

Why do we think that these languages ​​are the same or very similar?

For greater clarity, let’s draw an analogy with Europe and remember how things stand with the similarity of languages ​​due to the geographical proximity of countries. Being in France, we are an hour from England by boat. But French and English are very different.

With Belgium, where they speak Flemish, and with Germany, where they speak German, the French generally have common borders. But the languages ​​of these countries are different. As with Spain and Italy, where they also speak other languages. No European can speak all European languages ​​unless he has studied them specifically.

It is obvious that neighboring languages ​​influence each other. Spanish influences Italian, German influences Flemish. Exactly the same applies to eastern languages.

Korean

The Korean language has been heavily influenced by China. For a long time, Korea was captured by Chinese culture, since China was the most powerful country in the region. The Korean language's vocabulary is 60–70% Chinese in origin.

For example, “egg” is pronounced the same in Korean and Chinese, but spelled differently. In Korean, a word will consist of several elements because the language has a phonetic alphabet. But in Chinese there is no alphabet as we understand it. Korean has about 20 characters that can be combined to form syllables.

In 15–20 minutes, using small mnemonic tricks, you can learn to read Korean. You won’t understand it yet, but you are guaranteed to read it. This is impossible with Chinese. Korean uses some Chinese characters, and you will recognize them immediately.

Chinese character in Korean text

But they are used very rarely, for example in scientific texts when obtaining higher education, in everyday life - hardly.

This is what the text looks like when written in Korean. Small circles, parallel and perpendicular lines. Phonetically, this language is close to Chinese.

Japanese

The first big difference is at the grammatical level. Chinese and Korean do not have gender, number, articles or conjugations. The Japanese language has grammar.

Second, Japanese uses Chinese characters. But the characters there are not the same ones that are studied when learning Chinese.

Chinese characters in Japanese

These are either traditional Chinese characters or characters that have been simplified. Chinese underwent a reform to simplify its characters in the 1970s, as did Japan. But the Japanese, naturally, did not make a copy of the Chinese, but introduced their own simplifications.

But next to these hieroglyphs, the Japanese phonetic alphabet remained. And even two alphabets: Iragana and Katakana. One is used to write Japanese words. And the other - the same phonetic alphabet, but with different icons, is used for foreign words.

Japanese phonetic alphabet

So, two phonetic alphabets, 2000-5000 Chinese characters and letters from our Latin alphabet!

That is, the Japanese use four different writing systems simultaneously in one text.

Chinese

Chinese only uses simplified Chinese characters. Hieroglyphs are always proportional, always placed in an imaginary square. It's the same in Japanese. Chinese text gives the impression of a grid, without circles, like in Korean.

There will be no slanted lines with apostrophes like in Japanese. Straight lines and squares.

So, what is the visual difference between the texts in these languages? Compare.

Chinese

Korean

Japanese

What is the easiest language to learn?

By structure

Phonetics and reading are easy in Korean. There is almost no grammar. But the structure of phrases is quite complex: subject, direct object, verb.

Spoken Japanese is relatively easy. But when it comes to writing, there is a lot to understand and learn.

Chinese. Pronunciation is easy, grammar is easy. But how to remember all these hieroglyphs? How to retain all these ideas in memory, since the Chinese do not have a phonetic alphabet?

We must admit that there is no language that would be easier than others. Everything will depend only on you.

If you don't like grammar, Chinese and Korean are good languages ​​for you. If, on the contrary, grammar is your strong point, then you will achieve great success in Japanese.

According to your motivation

Your choice can be based not only on the structure of the languages, but also on your personal motivation for why you need these languages.

Do you like drama, iggy pop, music? Then Korean.

Japanese manga, cosplay? Then Japanese.

Do you like the history, the culture that underlies all these countries? Do you want to spruce up your resume and speak the same language as 20% of the world's inhabitants? Then Chinese.

Everything will depend only on you. There is no language that is more difficult than another if you have the right approach and techniques.

Important element

The teacher is also an element that must be chosen correctly.

Reframe the question

Therefore, the right question is not “which language is easier?”, but “which language do I want to learn?”

From the editor

Is it possible to learn Japanese quickly? Knows the answer to this question Tata Kononova, English teacher and language coach: .

Learning new languages ​​with a leaky memory will be difficult. So before starting training it would be a good idea to train her. The book Idriz Zogay will help with this “Minne, or Memory in Swedish. Methodology of the famous trainer for memory development": .

What about early learning of a foreign language? Is it worth “tormenting” children with babble in a dialect they don’t understand? Translator Alena Belevich thinks it's worth it, and here's why: .

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About the history of relations between Korea and Japan. Bonus - about the appearance of the word "kamikaze".

Antiquity.

The expression “good neighborly relations” has long been a cliché in official documents, but in reality, relations between two neighboring states are rarely particularly cordial. This is understandable - a common border inevitably creates problems, and the temptation to snack on a weaker neighbor has always existed. To be convinced of this, it is enough to remember how relations between Russia and Poland, Germany and France, Greece and Turkey developed. It is not surprising, therefore, that Korea and Japan also lived, let’s say, not very amicably, and in recent decades anti-Japaneseism, sometimes quite hysterical, generally plays a special role in the Korean official ideology.

True, at one time, in the 17th-19th centuries, official rhetoric described Japanese-Korean relations as “good neighborly”, but in practice, relations between the two countries during this time were not easy: not so much tense, but, I would say, wary. This is understandable: at the end of the 16th century, Korea became the victim of large-scale Japanese aggression, known to us as the Imjin War, and even before that, for a couple of centuries, raids by Japanese pirates on coastal Korean settlements were commonplace.

After the Imjin War of 1592-98. The Korean authorities did not allow any Japanese official missions, and especially private “persons of Japanese nationality,” to visit Seoul or generally travel more than a few kilometers from the coast. This ban lasted for two and a half centuries and was lifted only under the guns of Japanese ships in the 1870s. The main reasons for this ban and other restrictions on contacts with Japan were security concerns, which were taken very seriously in the traditional states of East Asia. The Korean leaders remembered well that the path from Busan to Seoul was once the main direction of movement of the Japanese armies, and understood that in the event of a new war they would inevitably take this very road. Therefore, Seoul did not want to give its neighbors additional opportunities to collect strategic information and draw up detailed maps. which the Japanese invading army could take advantage of. We now know that between 1609 and 1868. no Japanese government planned a new invasion of Korea. However, given all the sad experience of Japanese-Korean relations, all these precautions and fears can hardly be considered unfounded.

However, a certain level of official representation was still necessary, so the Japanese side was allowed to create a trading base and a small settlement in those places where the city of Busan eventually grew (at that time the city as such did not yet exist). This trading base, called Wegwan, also served as a Japanese diplomatic mission, but its activities were strictly controlled by the Korean authorities. The Japanese could only reside permanently on the territory of the mission and could not, under any circumstances, move a significant distance away from it. Private trips to Japan, and indeed abroad in general, were strictly prohibited for Koreans in those days, and anyone who violated this prohibition risked his life. As far as is known, there were no particular takers, so all trade was carried out by Japanese merchants who stayed in Wegwan.

The impossibility of direct contacts between the central governments meant that diplomatic negotiations between Japan and Korea proceeded very slowly. If the Japanese government decided to discuss certain problems with Seoul, it first had to send representatives to Busan. Strictly speaking, it was not representatives of the shogunate, that is, the central government of the country, who went to Korea, but officials of Prince Tsushima, who represented the central government in relations with Korea. Arriving at the Japanese settlement, officials would have to hand over the prepared papers to the head of the local Korean administration. If he did not find anything inappropriate in the Japanese papers (it happened that he did), then the documents were sent to Seoul, where the issues raised by the Japanese were discussed in government authorities. Once the decision was finally made, the response was sent to Busan, where it was transmitted to the Japanese through the same official. During this entire time, Japanese envoys were to remain at their mission. Sometimes the wait for an answer dragged on for many months.

It goes without saying that no normal diplomatic communication was possible under such circumstances, but, to be honest, neither side was very keen on having “normal” diplomatic relations. Korea needed peace on its shores, but at the same time preferred to keep Japan at some distance. Japan had some interest in trade with Korea, but the Japanese government also struggled to limit its interactions with the outside world. For both countries, the 17th-19th centuries were a time of self-isolation policies, so purely ceremonial relations and periodic exchanges of pleasantries fully served their strategic goals.

The quintessence of such ceremonial relations were the rare visits to the Japanese capital by Korean diplomatic missions, which were officially called “liaison embassies” (tonshinsa). During the Tokugawa period, Korea was the only foreign country whose ambassadors could occasionally appear in Tokyo (then called Edo) and Kyoto. Of course, there was no question of a permanent Korean mission in the capitals: ambassadors appeared there for a short period of time and departed, having made all the required speeches.

Visits by Korean ambassadors were quite rare: in 250 years, only 12 Korean embassies visited Japan. For the receiving party, each such visit was associated with large costs and required careful preparation. For the arrival of the ambassadors, roads were repaired, hotels were built, and a large staff of accompanying people was prepared. The ambassador and his huge retinue moved very slowly, so the journey from Seoul to Tokyo took several months. Along the way, the embassy often stopped, and its members actively communicated with Japanese officials, intellectuals and scientists, many of whom specially came from afar to discuss with their Korean colleagues some issues of interest to them. At that time, Japan remained a closed country, but educated Japanese had a great interest in the world around them, and the opportunity to see a “real foreigner” meant a lot to them. In addition, they could talk with Koreans without an interpreter: in both countries, all educated people were fluent in the ancient Chinese language. True, the pronunciation of the hieroglyphs was different, so instead of an oral conversation between the Koreans and the Japanese, notes were exchanged. To describe this form of communication, there was even a special term (of course, ancient Chinese) - “conversation with a brush.”

The Korean ambassador's retinue usually included from 300 to 500 people. Among them were famous scientists and writers, so that a visit to Japan by the Korean embassy sometimes turned into a kind of traveling exhibition of Korean culture. Indeed, it was cultural diplomacy that was the main task of the embassy: the mission was to demonstrate Korean achievements in those areas that were then considered important, and thus contribute to strengthening mutual respect between the two countries. The visits of Korean ambassadors often served as subjects for paintings by Japanese artists, and recordings of conversations with members of the embassy retinue were published in considerable editions. Of course, the embassy collected information about the situation in Japan, but this was done, rather, just in case, since such information did not represent any operational value.

Preparations for sending the embassy began after receiving a request from the Japanese side, which informed Seoul that it would like to accept the next mission. Usually the embassy was sent to congratulate the new Japanese shogun on his accession to the throne (in those days in Japan, the power of the emperor was purely symbolic, and the real leader of the country was the hereditary supreme commander, the shogun). However, this did not happen under every new Japanese ruler. The large expenses associated with such visits ultimately forced the Japanese to reduce their scope, so that the 1764 embassy was followed by a long break, and the next mission (which turned out to be the last) was invited from Korea only in 1811. At the same time, the 1811 embassy did not visit Edo, but limited myself to visiting the island of Tsushima, which lies between the two countries.

At that time, the island of Tsushima was an autonomous domain, and its rulers from the So clan were supposed to act as representatives of all of Japan in relations with Korea. It was the officials of this small principality who solved the current problems of relations between the two countries. During the visits of the Korean ambassadors, it was the representatives of Tsushima who were responsible for all the preparations for the ambassadors' trip along the entire route all the way to Edo. The necessary work along the ambassadors’ route was carried out by the local administration and paid for by local budgets, but it was the inspectors from Tsushima who had to check whether everything was properly prepared for the arrival of distinguished guests.

The Korean language was taught in Tsushima at a special school, and some of the island's officials traveled to Busan to live there for a while, improving their language skills. On the other hand, Japanese was studied in Seoul, where there was a school of foreign languages. Those of its graduates who managed to find work served in the local administration in the area of ​​​​the future Busan. However, official diplomatic documents were drawn up in Hanmun, that is, the ancient Chinese language, which was understandable to all educated people in both countries. In addition to Japan-wide ceremonial diplomacy, the Domain of Tsushima maintained similar ritual exchanges at the local level, and its princes received congratulations from the Korean authorities upon their accession to the throne.

All this carefully constructed diplomacy of symbolic exchanges and mutual containment collapsed in the mid-19th century, when European imperialist powers swept into the region. Japan embarked on the path of decisive reforms, and Korea for some time unsuccessfully tried to preserve the way of life that had existed for centuries. In such a situation, the old system was doomed, and it was replaced by a much more dynamic European-style diplomacy: with permanent missions, intriguing envoys, high-level negotiations and other forms of behavior familiar to us.

History and PRESENT

From the point of view of an outside observer, Japan and South Korea should be inseparable. Both are members of the G20, developed modern countries with functioning democratic institutions. Both are allied with the United States, and they have common threats - the same North Korea. Economic ties are strong, cultural ties are even stronger: similar languages, Buddhism (which came to Japan from Korea), the wild popularity of the “Korean wave” (TV series and K-Pop) in Japan and the “Japanese wave” (anime and J-Pop) in Korea .

But that was not the case: reading news about Japanese-Korean relations without laughing has recently become absolutely impossible. The APEC summit is being held in Indonesia, and within the framework of the summit, negotiations are taking place between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye. These negotiations took less than 60 seconds. After which Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga noted that it is very good that “the leaders of the two countries can meet regularly and exchange greetings.” In other words, it’s good that at least they greet each other, but it could have been worse.

And it immediately got worse. Abe thought that 60 seconds was somehow undignified, and the Japanese began to beg for a full-fledged bilateral summit. It would be better if they didn’t do this: the Korean response smelled of such frost that the Japanese Foreign Ministry probably translated it while sitting by the heater: Park Geun-hye stated that until Japan repents of its historical sins, it has nothing to talk about with Abe. And then Park Geun-hye added to the control that she was ready at any moment to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Just yesterday.

The Japanese media helpfully packaged the two stories into one, and in the eyes of many Japanese, Korean foreign policy had lost all traces of rationality. “You captured and colonized us over a hundred years ago? We don’t want to see you!” And then: “You threatened us with war just this spring? Come in, sit down, let's talk. Would you like some tea?

From the Japanese point of view, it is especially offensive that Abe’s very friendly initiative received such a rebuff. Meanwhile, North Korea has torpedoed several South Korean diplomatic initiatives this year alone, launched missiles and detonated bombs, and yet it is still invited to the table. So how did Japan and Korea get to this point?

...When can we fight?

The ability of the Japanese and Koreans to create a scandal out of nowhere is phenomenal. A Japanese “article” is posted on the Internet about how Korean hwarangs (warriors of the Silla kingdom) are just wrong samurai, and a factory for the production of natural fertilizers instantly starts working. The funny thing here is that the hwarans appeared before the samurai by about five hundred years, but who cares about the facts?

You can fight both at football and at figure skating. “Valiko, if Hidetoshi Nakata and Park Ji-sung are tied with a chain, who will win?” Any victory of Mao Assad over Kim Yo Na (or vice versa) is described in such terms as if one hit the other on the side (and added a stick to the head). There is a banner war going on in the football stands: according to journalist Koichi Yasuda, it was the defiantly anti-Japanese behavior of Korean fans during the 2002 World Cup that made many Japanese passionate enemies of everything Korean. By the way, we are talking about the very World Championship that Japan and South Korea held together, and which, according to the organizers, was supposed to bring the two countries closer together. They didn't guess right again.

Korean dislike for Japan is quite understandable: a sad historical experience from the Imjin War of the 16th century to annexation and colonization in the 20th century. The Japanese were not colonized, but their feelings towards Koreans are not much warmer: one of the best-selling books of the past decade was a comic book called “Hating Korea.”

The Japanese have many complaints about their neighbors, but the main one is: Korea in their eyes looks like an ungrateful younger brother, whom they picked up on the sidelines of history, washed, dressed up and trained with their own money. Well, they also forced me to work a little for myself, but then they apologized for this and paid compensation. And everything is not enough for him.

From the Korean point of view, all this looks, of course, completely different: the barbarians from the East enslaved and robbed a unique civilization older than their own, took away their native culture, language and even names, and now they do not want to admit it. This debate is endless because both sides are right.

Plague and two houses

One day, out of curiosity, I took two school history textbooks, Japanese and Korean, and compared them in the part that talks about the Japanese colonization of Korea in 1910-1945. The Japanese was limited to one paragraph, which included investments, construction and education. The authors considered the only negative aspect of Japanese rule to be the dispossession of peasants. All. One sentence.

In the Korean textbook, an entire chapter was devoted to those harsh years with a detailed description of all Japanese arts and the national liberation struggle of the Korean people. The difference in historical consciousness turns out to be even greater if we consider that the majority of modern Japanese schoolchildren master the history of the 20th century somehow: when they are in their final year, they have to prepare for the local Unified State Exam, but they don’t ask about colonial policy. This is where historical education ends and anti-Korean comics and “articles” about the wrong Korean samurai begin.

The Koreans are not much better: their national history completely disappears, for example, from the fact that many Koreans quite successfully collaborated with the colonial administration and got rich from it. Dennis McNamara in his book “The Colonial Origins of Korean Enterprise: 1910-1945” notes that modern Korean industrial giants are in many ways a product of the colonial era, and the first industrialization of Korea actually took place under the Japanese. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Koreans went in search of a better life and education in the metropolis - you can read about this, for example, from Kang Chol Hwan in Pyongyang Aquariums. The father of current South Korean President Park Geun-hye, General Park Chung-hee, served in the Japanese army. A significant part of the modern Korean elite, paradoxically, is a product of Japanese colonialism, and for obvious reasons, the topic of collaboration in modern Korean society still remains taboo.

This same elite, led by the already mentioned Park Chung-hee, signed an agreement on the normalization of relations with Japan in 1965. Japan paid $800 million for normalization - a huge amount of money by then standards, especially for poor South Korea. I paid and considered the topic closed.

But it turned out that the agreement, which in form restored relations between Japan and South Korea, essentially laid several time bombs under these very relations at once. Firstly, it was not the victims themselves who received the money under the agreement, but the South Korean government. It wasn't even called compensation; $800 million was passed as grants, so no one in Korea received any moral satisfaction. However, the Seoul of that time was not particularly sentimental - it needed economic growth and money for this growth. The Japanese gladly paid the money and stopped reflecting on the topic of the past: “Do we need it more, or what?” This is mine number two.

And third: the 1965 agreement closed the topic of compensation forever. Therefore, when the Koreans, two decades later, “due to newly discovered circumstances,” began to present new claims to the Japanese, they, in bewilderment, began to point their fingers at the text of the agreement and checks: “Well, everything has already been paid for, what else do you want? Is this where your signature is?”

The irony of history is that the normalization agreement was signed by one of the poorest countries in Asia at the time. Over the past five decades, the country has made economic and technological leaps forward, nearly catching up with Japan in terms of GDP per capita, and overthrowing an authoritarian regime that forbade its citizens to remember the past if those memories jeopardized the flow of money from Japan. The 1965 agreement was signed, in the apt Korean expression, by “a shrimp among whales.” Half a century later, the shrimp itself became a whale, gaining a voice and memory. The Korean government and the Korean elite got everything they wanted from Japan. Korean people - almost nothing.

Japan is probably right that pacta sunt servanda - “treaties must be respected.” True, the same Japan a hundred years ago itself was obsessed with revising the humiliating unequal treaties imposed on it by the Western powers at the end of the 19th century. And I revised them as soon as I became strong enough to do so.

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Today's Japan-Korea dispute also has a very personal dimension. Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of the current Japanese prime minister, was a high-ranking official of the Japanese colonial administration in Manchuria, where millions of Koreans worked. Little did he think that his grandson Shinzo Abe would have to deal with the consequences? Park Chung-hee, the father of the current president of South Korea, personally signed an agreement on the normalization of relations with Japan (on the Japanese side it was signed by Prime Minister Eisaku Sato; Shinzo Abe is his great-nephew) and freed the Japanese from responsibility for the past. Although not free: in addition to the already mentioned compensation of $800 million, Japan, according to the CIA (referred to by Bruce Cumings in his book “Korea’s Place in the Sun”), from 1961 to 1965 simply supported the ruling government in South Korea the party of General Park. So, in the eyes of many Japanese, his daughter’s claims look like stunning hypocrisy and treachery.

It's sad that there's no end in sight. The more the Koreans stir up the past, the more the Japanese become indignant at their black ingratitude. “You can’t please these Koreans,” the Japanese voter thinks and votes for right-wing politicians who are less and less inclined to foreign policy delicacy. Japanese politicians feel this demand and from time to time treat their electorate with judgments about history that are ambiguous at best, and disgusting at worst. Koreans are outraged, and the cycle repeats from the beginning. As a result, the more sensitive Korea becomes to the past, the less sensitive Japan becomes to it.

In an amicable way, both states should forget about past grievances, as they did in Europe. But we certainly won’t get this from two countries that have just achieved national pride after the humiliating 20th century. Ian Bremmer recently tweeted that the US Secretary of State needs to abandon the Arab-Israeli peace process and focus on trying to reconcile South Korea and Japan. In my opinion Arabs and Jews will come to an agreement sooner.

Korea, which had the fate of being a vassal of China for many centuries, has a unique fate for the country of the East during the period of colonialism. This is the only country that found itself under the colonial rule of not a Western, but an Eastern power, Japan. This circumstance in itself did not change much in the historical destinies of Korea, but it is nevertheless worth recalling, as well as the fact that Japan was the only eastern power that had colonial possessions. Not vassal territories, like China, but colonial possessions, exploited by Western-style colonial methods, including colonial trade, the import of capital, the development of resources and the industrial development of the colony, including the creation of the infrastructure necessary for all this.

Although Korea was considered a vassal territory of China (this vassalage, by the way, was not very noticeable), at the end of the 19th century. many influential sections of its population were more oriented towards Japan, seeing in its post-reform development a model for their country. Local pro-Japanese reformers in the early 1880s. They even tried to organize a coup with the support of the Japanese consul, but it failed. The result of this was the strengthening of China's position in the country, but not for long. Sino-Japanese War 1894-1895 ended Chinese influence in Korea. Supporters of reforms came to power. And although, along with Japanese capital, the influence of Russian capital in the country also increased during these years, under the terms of the Russian-Japanese agreement of 1898, Russia officially recognized the predominant economic interests of Japan in Korea. After Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was turned into Protectorate of Japan.

Almost deprived of natural resources itself, Japan actively took up the capitalist development of Korea. Mines and forests, railways and light industry, Korean foreign trade - everything ended up in the hands of Japanese companies, at least, mainly in their hands. In 1910 it was officially proclaimed annexation of Korea, which was administered on behalf of the Japanese emperor by the colonial administration headed by the Japanese governor-general. Optimal conditions were created in the country for the development of Japanese capital, whose interests were protected by a well-thought-out system of military and police coercion. To the detriment of Korean, the Japanese language was artificially implanted. Korean workers in factories were subjected to brutal exploitation. As for the sphere of agrarian relations, the privatization of land was proclaimed in Korea, and a significant part of it turned out to be the property of Japanese settler colonists, as well as capitalists or the General Government, i.e. Japanese state. As in Japan itself, agrarian reform helped to increase the marketability of agriculture, and landless peasants went en masse to the cities, where they joined the ranks of workers in industrial enterprises and mines, the number of which was growing all the time.

The powerful popular uprising of 1919, suppressed with difficulty by the colonialists, forced them to make certain concessions and abolish military forms of government. Korean legislative assemblies were introduced under Japanese administrative bodies. The number of Korean and mixed Japanese-Korean companies has increased. Trade unions, public associations, and parties began to be created in Korea. After Japan invaded China and created Manchukuo, Korea became the Japanese military-industrial bridgehead on the continent. Industrial production here, as in Japan itself, developed at an accelerated pace, which is worth noting as a positive fact that played a role in the subsequent development of the peninsula. Metallurgical plants, power plants, and chemical plants were built. Since the late 1930s, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese tried to attract Koreans to their side by putting forward the pseudo-patriotic slogan “The Japanese and Koreans are brothers.”

The defeat of Japan in World War II resulted in the appearance of Soviet and American troops in Korea and division of the peninsula into two parts. In the northern part, as is known, a course was set for the construction of Marxist socialism in its most severe modification. South Korea has undergone much the same transformation as Japan. These transformations, based on the socio-political, financial and economic industrial base created by the Japanese colonialists, contributed to the development of the country in the same direction and at the same rapid pace as in Japan. However, the lower starting level for quite a long time did not allow the South Korean state to achieve the same impressive results in all spheres of the economy and way of life as modern Japan has achieved. But today the South Korean standard in this regard is almost equal to the Japanese one.