Korean Workers In Japan
The topic I was assigned for Colin’s visit is Korean Workers In Japan. The image I chose was an image of colonial workers recruiting workers in Korea to take to Japan. Due to the shortage of labor in the Japanese economy in the 1920’s, Koreans who wanted employment and educational opportunities migrated to Japan. At this time, most of the workers were mainly men, but there were women as well. These workers engaged in work involving physical labor because they were poorly educated and usually illiterate. The two jobs that were very populated by Koreans were mining and factories. According to the Stanford Program on International and Cross- Cultural Education,” Between 1939 and 1945, the Japanese government brought 700,000-800,000 Koreans to work in Japan.” A large amount of these Korean workers in Japan faced many difficulties such as racial discrimination and economic exploitation, and the Japanese nationals wanted the Koreans to fully assimilate to Japanese society by offering Japanese education and even the promotion of intermarriage.
While doing some research on Korean workers in Japan, I came upon an article called,
” Survivor of forced labor in Japan seeks true apology.” The article states that Yang was,” Duped into moving to japan in 1944 with the promise of a better education, only to end up working in a munitions factory.” I find this to be very disheartening because Yang was just a young girl, and her hopes were high for this opportunity, but it ended up to be the opposite of what she imagined. She also states how she was barely fed, always hungry, and she was working all day long causing physical pain that would last a lifetime. This single experience is very similar to many other Korean workers in Japan as they are promised educational opportunities, but when they arrive they are forced to work without pay or little pay if that.
It is saddening to read about the struggles the workers faced, but it is a vital part of history and we must familiarize ourselves with this topic.
It is so disappointing to hear about the ways Koreans were treated in this time period. I find that most of what I have heard about discrimination, colonialism, exploitation, mistreatment, etc., has been focused on western countries and occasionally South American countries. Besides this, I had not learned of many ways that countries in the East have participated in these same issues. To me, this sounds very similar to the propaganda tactics that the US has used in the past to get people to participate and assist in helping America. For example, the propaganda used to recruit men for the military largely showed how they could help their country, their family, gain benefits and an education. It sounds like other countries (such as Japan) participated in this as well.
ReplyDeleteIt is always saddening to hear when peoples who are frequently illiterate get treated poorly. The world always benefits from educated people, however people are greedy and always need some class of people below them.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of history of Japan being pretty cruel to people of other East Asian nations during this time period, and this seems like an example. I wonder if there are any effects of this kind of forced labor that can still be seen in Japan today. Do Koreans in Japan continue to face racial discrimination?
ReplyDeleteIt's very sad to hear that hundreds of thousands of Koreans were taken advantage of and lied to. Many of the jobs that the Japanese were not willing to do were assigned to the Koreans. This is just one example of many throughout history were one race in society discriminates against another race. Thanks for sharing this important history.
ReplyDeleteThis is what war and imperialism is, an exploitation of goods and people to create a cheaper product or more of a product for the conquering nation to use, it is a cycle that ensures that those who are not imperialists are always lagging and can never develop as full countries with their resources being sucked out of them.
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to recognize these as effects of imperialism, and we have seen these play out through literary texts across the world and across time periods in this course. This research topic is especially helpful, I think, to understanding the circumstances of Yoseb's and Isak's treatment in Osaka where they work as Koreans.
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