Category: Military

Military

Imperial Japanese Army finally acknowledges Korea’s imminent independence just over a week after liberation (Aug. 23, 1945) with a jumbled announcement full of desperate denials, threats, and unconvincing reassurances to fend off Korean armed resistance

2023-11-28

This is another fascinating historical article that I stumbled upon during my visit to the National Library of Korea a

Military

A mere 3 days after surrender, liberated Koreans were already attempting to overthrow the colonial regime in Korea, alarming the Imperial Japanese Army who made this radio broadcast on August 18, 1945 to threaten military action against ‘individuals harboring evil thoughts’

2023-11-24

This is another fascinating historical article that I stumbled upon during my visit to the National Library of Korea a

Imperial Way

A tour of Sinuiju Yamato Imperial Boarding School in 1942, where Korean nationalism was considered a moral defect to be ‘purified’ away so that Korean ‘thought criminals’ become ‘completely Japanese’

2023-11-07

In June 1942, a magazine called “Chōsen” (Korea) published an article that offers a stark window into a grim chapter

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

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

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

Foreign Residents

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

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

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

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

Military

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

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

Military

Imperial Japan’s manhunt for the “Communist Bandit Kim Il-Sung” in the late 1930’s was sensationalized in news headlines all over Korea, capturing the imagination of the Korean public under colonial rule

2023-09-03

Continuing my exploration of Korean colonial-era newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s, available on the Internet Archive since 2021, I

Military

Imperial Japan had postwar plans to quadruple Japanese settlers in Korea to dominate the most technologically intensive industries, and suppress Korean access to higher education to quell ‘dissatisfaction’ (June 1943)

2023-07-01

I recently came across two intriguing news articles from the Japanese colonial period of Korean history that shed light on