Month: October 2023

Military

In June 1945, Imperial Japan announced a mass mobilization of nearly all able-bodied Korean civilian men ages 12-65 and women ages 12-45 into Volkssturm-like ‘Volunteer’ Corps (義勇隊) and Suicide Squads (特攻隊) to wage last resort armed combat against Allied troops stepping into Korea

2023-10-31

484

I’d like to bring to your attention a fascinating article from June 1945, which I found in the archives of

Military

Japanese Keijo Nippo reporters interviewed Korean abductee held captive in May 1939 by Kim Il-sung’s Korean communist guerrillas in Taehongdan (대홍단, 大紅湍)-the fighters mostly conversed in Chinese, abducted young men for recruiting, beheaded comrades for breaking strict male-female conduct rules

2023-10-27

508

I found these remarkable 1939 Japanese articles about Kim Il-sung and his comrades in Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo), the official

Military

Shamseinoor Berikova, 19-year-old blue-eyed Russian Tatar refugee woman and Seoul resident in 1938, featured in Keijo Nippo as a pro-Imperial Japan patriotic model minority speaking fluent Japanese and supporting Imperial soldiers on their way to China

2023-10-23

472

This article from 1938 features Shamseinoor Berikova, a 19-year-old blue-eyed Russian Tatar woman who was a daughter of a clothing

Post-Liberation

In Dec. 1945, an ethnic Japanese Keijo Nippo journalist wrote a heartfelt personal essay to the Korean people asking for forgiveness for not understanding their desire for independence, and predicted that Korea will “become the birthplace of a new world culture in literature and in the arts”

2023-10-19

478

This is another interesting article that I found at the National Library of Korea last month. The article is from

Military

This is the only known bilingual Japanese-Korean wartime propaganda poster that Imperial Japan is known to have published on Keijo Nippo (October 7, 1944)

2023-10-15

494

This rare Korean-Japanese bilingual wartime propaganda poster, published in Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo) on October 7, 1944, was extremely interesting,

Police

Japanese abductee escaped Korean Communist guerrillas in 1939 and told police about meeting Kim Il-sung and his comrades, many of whom were women

2023-10-13

565

This is a short article from 1939 where a Japanese abductee escaped captivity from Korean Communist Guerrillas to tell the

Daily Life

Korea in November 1945 was beset by rampant inflation, which the Koreans editors of newly liberated Keijo Nippo blamed on ‘Korean traitors’ and departing Japanese who liquidated their property and spent cash ‘indulging in lavish eating and wastefulness’

2023-10-11

422

In my recent trip to Seoul, I visited the National Library of Korea and took many photos of pages from