Japanese Borderland Colonialism and The Koreans In JIANDAO, 1905-1932

Abstract

Between the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and the foundation of the puppet state of Manzhouguo (1932), Japanese imperial actors sought to extend their influence in the Sino-Korean borderland of Jiandao (currently known as Yanbian). They did so through extraterritorial privileges, police activities, development of infrastructure and transport routes, and above all through the medium of the Korean residents who constituted Jiandao's demographic majority. Japan's Foreign Ministry and Government-General of Korea, together with capitalist organizations like the Oriental Development Company and the Chosen Bank, exercised colonialist forms of control over Korean society in Jiandao through financial services, the building of schools, hospitals and other facilities, and especially through direct contacts between Japanese agents and Korean People's Associations. Japanese bureaucrats and army officers thus took advantage of the Korean presence in Jiandao in order to establish a forward position in the strategically important region, justified through a discourse of Koreans as 'Japanese subjects' requiring 'protection and control' in the midst of Chinese revolution and political upheaval.

Successive Chinese governments engaged in a colonization program of their own in Jiandao, encouraging the mass immigration of Han Chinese and passing discriminatory laws against Koreans. A situation of overlapping jurisdiction thus emerged, in which the lives of the Koreans in Jiandao were affected by the collision between two expanding states, China and Japan. Meanwhile, Koreans in Jiandao asserted their desire for autonomy in various ways, and Jiandao became a crucible for the Korean Communist Party, with profound implications for East Asia's future. Ultimately, political and social unrest in Jiandao was a significant factor triggering the Japanese military takeover of Manchuria in 1931-32.

Imperial Japanese policies and activities in Jiandao constituted a case of borderland colonialism, or the development by a nation-state/empire (and its 'sub-imperialist' agents on the ground) of 'power networks' within a disputed territory. This thesis places Jiandao within an international context of latter-day great power imperialism and the emergence of new political movements in the borderlands of declining empires such as the Qing. It aims to clarify the complex interactions between ethnic groups, colonialist agencies and various levels of government in Jiandao through an exploration of this borderland's 'power networks.' It inquires of the nature and origins of Japanese colonialism in Jiandao, of how the history of this borderland shaped, and was shaped by, Japanese policy, and what the historical effects and legacies may have been. Show more