Hollywood movies and Western cosmetic brands were...

Lim Jangsu (림장수, 林長守) was a Korean...

Korean schoolgirls attend a five-day swimming camp...

This 1942 stuttering correction seminar for Korean...

April 1945 Seoul dining: the public endured...

Japanese teacher in Japan-colonized Korea punished her...

Part 2 – Thousands of young Korean...

Seoul police busted some British and American...

Converted Korean ‘ideological criminals’ (a.k.a. independence activists)...

Koiso’s 1943 ‘Great Leader’ Strongman Tours: Surprise...

Imperial Japanese and Korean collaborator elite partied...

Korean schoolgirls make improvised ‘tadon’ coal dumplings...

Korean father and sushi chef boasts that...

Onerous regulations prescribing long lists of permissible...

Imperial Japanese colonial regime instilled intense fear...

Month: January 2023

Daily Life

Korean kindergartners holding rising sun flags shouting ‘Banzai!’, schoolchildren worshiping at Shinto Shrines vowing to ‘defeat the U.S. and Britain’, high school girls ice skating on Chundangji Pond in Changgyeonggung Palace grounds – a series photos of student life in Seoul, late January 1943

2023-01-26

648

The third and final school semester (January to March) began in Seoul in late January 1943, and the Keijo Nippo

Daily Life

Imperial Army general describes crowded movie theaters and cafes in Myeong-dong where Japanese and Korean ‘young people in flashy overcoats would flow into coffee shops, chatting with their friends using exaggerated American gestures’ in his January 1943 essays about daily life in Seoul

2023-01-23

561

I found these four ‘slice-of-life’ personal essays written by an Imperial Army general in the Imperial Army press department describing

Daily Life

In January 1943, Hollywood films were banned in Korea, but 2 French films and 6 German films were showing in Seoul movie theaters: only ‘working women’ could watch Wunschkonzert, a Nazi propaganda drama, and only ‘industrial warriors’ could watch Kora Terry, a German spy thriller

2023-01-20

683

In January 1943, exactly eighty years ago, Imperial Japan was at war, but some Seoul residents still had time to

Japanese Language

Governor Koiso likened Korea to a disabled body whose brain (regime) could not talk to the limbs (Korean people), so an ‘exclusive use of Japanese’ policy was forced on Koreans, starting with Seoul city employees who were labeled ‘inferior’ and ‘weak-willed’ if they still spoke Korean at work

2023-01-15

791

In 1943, Governor-General Koiso kicked off the new year by intensifying his campaign to further restrict the public spaces in

Business

Western firms including Shell, Mobil, HSBC, Otis Elevator, Singer were active in colonial Korea, a US firm had a corn starch factory in Pyongyang, until the regime confiscated their assets with the outbreak of war, accused of having a ‘Jewish spirit’ which ‘exploits the entire wealth of mankind’

2023-01-11

815

This is an article from December 1942, and it particularly stands out for its especially antisemitic, anti-American, and anti-British messaging.

Philosophy

Master Imaizumi Teisuke, the spiritual leader of the ruling class of colonial Korea, taught that Japanese-Korean unification should be thought of as a relationship between husband and wife, between a horse and its rider, and between a parent and a child, during his 12-day tour of Korea in 1942

2023-01-07

680

Master Imaizumi Teisuke was a prominent Shinto theologian and spiritual leader of Imperial Japan. By 1942, when he went on

Japanese Language

‘Jeon’ became ‘Takamatsu’ and ‘Park’ became ‘Masaki’: 1940 profiles of Korean families in Seoul adopting Japanese names to purportedly honor their Korean roots, be accepted by Japanese neighbors, to better interact with the public, to instill a ‘spirit befitting Imperial subjects’ in their children

2023-01-02

723

This 1940 article profiles two Korean families in Seoul who adopted Japanese names: the Jeon family, which became the Takamatsu