Exposing Imperial Japan

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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

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

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

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

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

Police

Saiga Shichirō (斎賀七郎), an Imperial Japanese Ideological Police officer responsible for the torture, false imprisonment, and deaths of countless Korean patriots, was assassinated in Seoul on Nov. 2, 1945 (reported by newly liberated Keijo Nippo)

2023-09-28

For my fourth post that I am making during my stay in Korea, I am sharing a Keijo Nippo news

Press

Korean staff at the newly liberated Keijo Nippo Newspaper published this editorial and illustration in December 1945 denouncing the atrocities of Japanese Imperialism and repudiating the myth of ‘Japanese-Korean Unification’

2023-09-26

For my third post that I am making during my stay in Korea, I thought it would only be fitting

Press

Korean staff at Keijo Nippo took over news operations from their former Japanese bosses in Nov 1945 and then sent this message to Korean readers announcing continued publication in Japanese for the time being until Korean typefaces are ready for use

2023-09-25

For my second post that I am making during my stay in Korea, I thought it would only be fitting

Uncategorized

I finally accessed the 1945 Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo) archives in-person at the National Library of Korea – Korean employees apparently rebelled against their Japanese bosses in Nov. 1945 and took over news operations until the last issue published on Dec. 11, 1945

2023-09-24

For over two years, I have been passionately posting about Keijo Nippo (Gyeongseong Ilbo), a newspaper from the Japanese colonial

Police

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

Daily Life

Imperial Japanese colonial regime instilled intense fear and paranoia among Koreans by forcing them to listen to this 20-minute radio broadcast mobilizing the entire nation in counter-espionage to snitch on each other even for complaining about food shortages (July 1943)

2023-08-07

It’s been just over 80 years since a terrifying radio broadcast was delivered to the entirety of the Korean nation