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Exposing Imperial Japan

Exposing Imperial Japan

Viewing the suffering of colonized people through the lens of the colonizer's propaganda

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Simon Young Kim (김영근), a South Korean...
Korean Woman in Hanbok Detained by Imperial...
Imperial Japanese news staff departing Korea wrote...
Korean family of radio broadcasting official lived...
Koreans faced up to 10 years in...
In 1941, Tokyo officials forcibly settled 1,400...
Governor Koiso told Korean conscripts in Imperial...
Tracing the origins of the myth that...
Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo) was Korea’s largest...
Converted Korean ‘ideological criminals’ (a.k.a. independence activists)...
Korean candidate defiantly ran for office in...
In March 1944 in Seoul, an angry...
Imperial Japan’s railway system in Korea was...
In February 1943, a massive network of...
Propaganda story of Japanese couple adopting poor...

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

2042

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

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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

1486

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

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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

960

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

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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”
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

856

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

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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

524

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

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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

320

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

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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

1283

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

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Recent Posts

  • In 1945, Imperial Japan trained almost every able-bodied Korean man, woman, and child to stab Americans to death with bamboo spears in suicide combat militias under direct Imperial Army command
  • Imperial Japan banned passengers wearing chima skirts from boarding trains, escalating its campaign against traditional Korean garments in May 1945
  • “If Japan loses, Koreans will fight each other, divided by foreign powers”: June 1945 warning by Korean collaborator (박춘금, 朴春琴) who urged authorities to redirect Korean nationalism into support for Imperial Japan
  • Imperial Japan called Korean women in chima dresses ‘the most filthy and ugly sight’ and shamed them with posters captioned ‘there are still women like these’ (April 1945)
  • Imperial Japan shamed Koreans for going to theaters instead of preparing for invasion (March 1945)

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    • Imperial Japanese penal official said Korean 'ideological criminals' (independence activists) were 'not well made as human beings', but 'if only their thoughts could be corrected, then they will get better' so they can be 'used' for wartime labor, but 'this is not the case with ordinary criminals'
    • Nostalgia for Imperial Japan and its undercurrents in Kishi Nobusuke's legacy in postwar Japan, in Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan's legacy in South Korea, and why access to wartime newspapers of Japan-occupied Korea is important to combat historical misinformation by the far-right in both countries
    • Simon Young Kim (김영근), a South Korean violin virtuoso and disciple of famous violinist Jascha Heifetz, Simon was once my teacher and mentor, and his son was my best friend in elementary school
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