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FTR#1368 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1369 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
FTR#1370 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: These programs set forth developments in Korea, past and present. FTR#1368 relies heavily on excerpts from FTR#1141, setting forth the history of Japan’s centuries-long looting of Korea, culminating in its brutal colonization. Following the end of World War II, the Japanese influence in Korea remained dominant.
That influence derives from the preeminent position in Korean society of collaborators with Japan during its decades-long occupation.
Those collaborators dominated the military, police, political culture and corporate life of South Korea.
A key person involved in cementing the Japanese dominance over post-World War II Korea is Nobusuke Kishi, whose rise to prominence took place during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.
The Japanese dominance of South Korea is a significant factor in President Yoon’s recent attempts at declaring martial law, staging provocations to justify his actions and (apparently) using false-flag attacks on U.S. military personnel and installations in an attempt at re-starting the Korean War.
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: The tactic of tarring all opponents of the sitting regime as “communists”–a tactic that dates to the Japanese occupation of Korea; eventual Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s role in drawing the 38th Parallel as the dividing line between the Koreas; Rusk’s position as a key member of the China Lobby; General Kim Suk-won’s role as a key Japanese officer during World War II, as well as his position as the commander of Syngman Rhee’s border forces; Japanese-occupied Manchuria as a dominant producer of opium and heroin for the global market and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang.
1a. The program begins with review of the history of Japan’s colonization of Korea. That colonial occupation was another target of the late Park Won-soon’s criticism.
Japan’s looting of Korea took place over centuries. In Gold Warriors, the Seagraves present the history of Japan’s rape of Korea, beginning with their account of the grisly murder of Korean Queen Min in 1894. ” . . . . the defenseless queen was stabbed and slashed repeatedly, and carried wailing out to the palace garden where she was thrown onto a pile of firewood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An american military advisor, General William Dye, was one of several foreigners who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace compound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. . . .”
A snapshot of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, a focal point of criticism of Park Won-soon:” . . . . [General] Terauchi was extraordinarily brutal, setting a precedent for Japanese behavior in all the countries, it would occupy over coming decades. Determined to crush all resistance, he told Koreans, ‘I will whip you with scorpions!’ He set up a sadistic police force of Korean yakuza, ordering it to use torture as a matter of course, for ‘no Oriental can be expected to tell the truth except under torture’. These police were closely supervised by Japan’s gestapo, the kempeitai. . . . ‘Japan’s aim,’ said Korean historian Yi Kibeck, ‘was to eradicate consciousness of Korean national identity, roots and all, and thus to obliterate the very existence of the Korean people from the face of the earth.’ . . . the peninsula was stripped of everything from artworks to root vegetables. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the transfer of cultural property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal something that already belongs to you? . . .”
Key elements of analysis of the Japanese political, economic and cultural decimation of Korea: The looting of Korea took place over centuries; the Black Ocean and Black Dragon societies (forerunners of the Unification Church and, possibly, the Shincheonji cult) played a key role in instigating the incremental Japanese conquest of Korea; the economic and cultural looting of Korea had already rendered that country one of the weakest in Asia by the nineteenth century; (Korea had been one of the most advanced civilizations on earth, prior to Japanese conquest); for centuries, China had functioned as a military protector of Korea; as noted above, there was wholesale economic and cultural plunder; millions of Koreans were enslaved to work in Japan and, during World War II, in Golden Lily facilities, where they were worked to death or buried alive; many more Koreans were conscripted as soldiers into Japan’s army; torture was routine in Japan’s occupation of Korea, as was summary execution and imprisonment on trumped-up charges; Koreans were forbidden from speaking their own language; even Japanese school teachers wore uniforms and carried swords; as highlighted in the previous program, many Korean women were forced to become slave prostitutes for the Japanese army–“Comfort Women.”
. . . . During the night of Octoer 7. 1895, thirty Japanese assassins forced their way into Korea’s royal palace in Seoul. Bursting into the queen’s private quarters, they cut down two ladies-in-waiting and cornered Queen Min. When the Minister of the Royal Household tried to shield her, a swordsman slashed off both his hands. the defenseless queen was stabbed and slashed repeatedly, and carried wailing out to the palace garden where she was thrown onto a pile of firewood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An american military advisor, General William Dye, was one of several foreigners who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace compound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. Japan declared that the murders were committed by “Koreans dressed as Japanese in European clothes”–a gloss greeted with ridicule by the diplomatic community. According to the British minister in Tokyo, Sir Ernest Satow, First Secretary Sugimura of the Japanese legation in Korea led the assassins.
The grisly murder of Queen Min was a turning point in Japan’s effort to gain control of Korea. Her husband King Kojong was a weakling, controlled by the queen’s faction, who were allied with China against Japan. Once the queen was dead, the Japanese could easily control the king, and put n end to Chinese interference.
The coup was planned by Miura Goro, agent of Japan’s aggressive Yamagata clique. At first, the killing was to be done by Japanese-trained Korean soldiers, so it could be passed off as an internal matter. But to make sure nothing went wrong, Miura called for help from the Japanese terrorist organization Black Ocean. Many of its members were in Korea posing as business agents of Japanese companies, including the oldest zaibatsu, Mitsui. Black Ocean and another secret society called Black Dragon functioned as Japan’s paramilitaries on the Asian mainland, carrying out dirty work that could be denied by Tokyo. They were in position throughout Korea and China, running brothels, pharmacies, pawnshops, and building networks of influence by supplying local men with money, sexual favors, alcohol, drugs, pornography, and Spanish Fly. While Black Ocean was obsessed with Korea, Black Dragon (named for the Amur or Black Dragon River separating Manchuria from Siberia) was dedicated to blocking Russian encroachment, and seizing China for Japan. Black Ocean provided Miura with the professional assassins he needed, and the rest of the killers were security men from Japan’s consulate. Whether they intended to kill the queen in full view of foreign observers is another matter. Japanese conspiracies often began quietly, then went out of control.
Many Japanese leaders like statesman Ito Hirobumi were enlightened and reasonable men who would have vetoed the murder, had they known. But there was a deep contradiction inside Japan following the Meiji Restoration in the nineteenth century. Two cliques competed ruthlessly for power behind the throne, and for influence over the Meiji Emperor. Those associated with Ito were more cosmopolitan, emulating the role of Bismarck in guiding Kaiser Wilhelm, or Disraeli in guiding Queen Victoria. Those allied with General Yamagata were throw backs to medieval Japan, where power worked in the shadows with assassins, surprise attacks, and treachery. While Yamagata built a modern conscript army to replace Japan’s traditional samurai forces, he also built a network of spies, secret police, yakuza gangsters and superpatriots. These were key elements of the police state Yamagata was creating in Japan. Underworld godfathers were vital component of Japan’s ruling structure. Members of the imperial family, and the financial elite that controls Japan, had intimate ties to top gangsters. When Yamagata’s armies invaded Korea and Manchuria, gangsters were the cutting edge. Thereafter, Japan’s underworld played a major role in looting Asia over fifty years, 1895–1945.
Queen Min’s murder marks the beginning of this half-century of extreme Japanese brutality and industrial scale plunder. Her killing shows how easily the mask of Japan’s good intentions could slip, to reveal hideous reality.
Other Japanese strategies also began quietly, then got out of hand. For example, it is unlikely that Japan intended all along to have its army stage the Rape of Nanking in 1937, butchering some 300,000 defenseless people in full view of foreign observers with cameras. Had the Rape happened only once, it might have been a grotesque accident. But variations of Nanking occurred many times during Japan’s lightning conquest of East and Southeast Asia. By the time they overran Singapore in 1942, the atrocities committed against Overseas Chinese civilians there—the Sook Ching massacres—were happening all over Southeast Asia, and not only to Chinese. That this occurred so often suggests there was more to Japan’s aggression than a purely military operation. Why, after successfully conquering a neighboring country, did Japan torment the Chinese and others who had money or property? The explanation lies in the shadows behind the army. Few history books take into account the role of the underworld, because scholars rarely study outlaws. With Japan, we must always consider the underworld because it permeates the power structure, as darkly satirized by the films of Itami Juzo.
The conquest of Korea was Japan’s first experiment in foreign plunder on an industrial scale, so there was plenty for the underworld to do. Westerners know so little about Korea that it is surprising how much there was to steal. Today, North and South Korea are only vestiges of a distinguished past. Historian Bruce Cumings points out that “Korea’s influence on Japan was far greater than Japan’s influence on Korea”. In ancient times Japan was raided by marauders from the Korean peninsula, and raided Korea in return, but these were bands of swordsmen and archers, not armored regiments. Such raids caused mutual loathing of Koreans and Japanese that has its parallel in the Catholic and Protestant troubles of Northern Ireland. A quick thumbnail history explains this hatred, and show how Japan’s aggression began.
When they first started feuding two thousand years ago, there was no Korea or Japan, as we know them today. In different parts of the Korean peninsula were city-states with highly developed economies supporting magnificent religious, literary and artistic cultures. Their porcelain is among the most prized in the world today, along with elegant paintings, sculpture, and gold filigree. The elite lived in palaces on great estates, with thousands of sales. Taking no interest in commerce or warfare, they developed astronomy, mathematics, wood block printing, and invented movable type long before anyone else. Until the sixteenth century, Korea had one of the world’s most advanced civilizations.
Meanwhile, in the secluded islands of Japan, immigrants from China and Korea were linked in a loose confederation ruled by Shinto priests and priestesses. For a thousand years, these rival domains feuded among themselves, before finally submitting to the central military dictatorship of the shoguns. Chronic conspiracy produced what one historian calls Japan’s ‘paranoid style’ in foreign relations. If Japanese treated each other ruthlessly, why treat foreigners otherwise?
Koreans regarded Japanese as ‘uncouth dwarves. Chinese were more cultivated, so Korea willingly accepted tributary role with China. In return, China protected Korea from Japan.
In the sixteenth century, after Japan was unified by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he launched an invasion of Korea with 158,000 men. His plan was to crush Korea and erase its culture from the face of the earth. He nearly succeeded. After several years of cruel occupation, Korea was rescued by Admiral Yi Sun-shin’s famous Turtle Ship, the world’s first ironclad—65-feet long, firing cannon balls filled with nails. Admiral Yi cut Japan’s supply routes and destroyed its ships. Humiliated, Hideyoshi died soon afterward.
Despite this failure, the invaders profited richly by looting Korea. Their army included monks and scholars assigned to steal Korea’s finest manuscripts. Samurai kidnapped masters of ceramics such as the great Ri Sam-pyong, and made them slaves in Japan. A Korean scholar said the Japanese were “wild animals that only crave material goods and are totally ignorant of human morality”. Centuries later, when Japan invaded Korea again, its armies once more included teams of monks and scholars to find and loot the finest artworks.
Korea never recovered. In the nineteenth century, it was the weakest, least commercial country in East Asia, ripe for picking. China’s Manchu government, on the verge of collapse, was in no shape to defend Korea.
Following the Meiji Restoration, Japan made a convulsive effort to modernize, becoming the first Asian nation able to compete militarily with the West. As her army and navy developed, she was in a position to launch a campaign of mechanized conquest on the mainland, to acquire a colonial empire of her own. Her fist target was Korea. Politicians and army officers argued that if Japan did not grab Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan, they would be grabbed by Russia, France or England. General Yamagata and Black Ocean boss Toyama Mitsuru needed an incident that would give them an excuse to invade, while putting the blame on Korea. Yamagata told Toyama to “start a conflagration”—then it would be the army’s duty to go “extinguish the fire”.
Starting a fire in Korea was easy. Black Ocean terrorists attacked a rural religious sect called Tonghak. The Tonghaks struck back, causing some Japanese casualties. With this excuse, Tokyo rushed in troops to ‘protect’ its citizens in Korea. When news came that China was sending 1,500 soldiers aboard a chartered British ship, the S.S. Kowshing, a Japanese squadron intercepted the vessel and sank her with all aboard. This surprise attack set a precedent, followed many times by Japan in later decades.
China’s tottering Manchu government foolishly declared war on Japan. In September 1894, in the mouth of Korea’s Yalu River, the Japanese destroyed half of China’s navy in a single afternoon. Japan then captured Manchuria’s ‘impregnable’ Port Arthur, and the fortified harbor at Weihaiwei in Shantung province sinking all Chinese ships in the harbor. China sued for peace. By the end of February 1895, Japan controlled the whole of Korea and also Manchuria’s strategic Liaotung peninsula. China also gave Japan control of Taiwan, which became Tokyo’s first colony. When South Manchuria and Port Arthur also were turned over to Japan, France, Germany and Russia pressured Tokyo to return them.
It was at this point that Queen Min refused to cave in to Japanese bullying, and was murdered. The stage was now set for the unprecedented cruelties of the twentieth century. . . .
. . . . Now feeling invincible, Japan formally declared Korea a colony. Nobody asked Koreans what they thought. Western governments did not protest. Great numbers of Japanese arrived in the peninsula to make their fortunes. With them came legions of agents for the great zaibatsu conglomerates, seizing every commercial opportunity, every natural resource. Japan took control of law and order, creating new police and secret police networks. No longer making any pretense of chivalry, Japanese abused Korean sovereignty at every turn, crushing all resistance. A newspaper editor was arrested when he wrote: “Ah, how wretched it is. Our twenty million countrymen have become the slaves of another country!”
Not all Japanese were predators. Some earnestly believed that they were in Korea to help, not to plunder. Ito Hirobumi told Korean officials, “Your country does not have the power to defend itself. . . I am not insisting that your country commit suicide. . . I expect that if you thrust forward boldly, the day will come when you will advance to a position of equality with us and we will cooperate with one another.”
The appointment of Ito as the first Japanese viceroy of Korea gave the country some hope of rational government. But General Yamagata saw to it that Ito’s staff included Black Dragon boss Uchida Ryohei. Secretly financed from army funds, Uchida’s thugs went on a rampage, murdering 18,000 Koreans during Ito’s time s viceroy. Disgusted by the bloody meddling, Ito resigned in 1909 only to be shot dead by paid assassins. His murder was used as a pretext to demand full annexation of Korea. On August 22, 1910, Korea ceased to be a mere colony and was fully incorporated into Japanese territory. Japan’s army now had its own domain on the Asian mainland, free of interference from Tokyo politicians. One of Yamagata’s most rabid followers, General Terauchi Masatake, was appointed first governor-general of Korea. Terauchi, who had lost his right hand during a great samurai rebellion in the 1870s, had been army minister during the Russo-Japanese War. He now supervised the looting and plunder of Korea.
Although some Japanese Army officers were chivalrous, showed mercy, or refused to indulge in wanton killing, Terauchi was extraordinarily brutal, setting a precedent for Japanese behavior in all the countries, it would occupy over coming decades. Determined to crush all resistance, he told Koreans, “I will whip you with scorpions!” He set up a sadistic police force of Korean yakuza, ordering it to use torture as a matter of course, for “no Oriental can be expected to tell the truth except under torture”. These police were closely supervised by Japan’s gestapo, the kempeitai.
Many kempeitai agents wore civilian clothes, identified only by a chrysanthemum crest on the underside of a lapel. Eventually Japan spawned a network of these spies, informants, and terrorists throughout Asia. At the height of World War II, 35,000 official kempeitai were deployed throughout the Japanese Empire. The unofficial number was far greater, because of close integration with Black Dragon, Black Ocean, and other fanatical sects, working together ‘like teeth and lips’. Black Ocean boss Uchida reviewed all appointments of kempeitai officers sent to Korea.
Korean resistance was intense, but futile. In 1912, some 50,000 Koreans were arrested; by 1918 the number arrested annually rose to 140,000. During Korea’s first ten years of Japanese rule even Japanese schoolteachers wore uniforms and carried swords. Japan’s army stood guard while kempeitai and Black Ocean thugs pillaged the peninsula. Japanese police controlled rice production from paddy field to storehouse, so the majority could be shipped to Japan Yakuza were expert at extortion. In Japan, they used intimidation, extortion, kidnapping and murder, restrained only by prudence in selecting the victims. On the mainland there was no need for such restraint. Because Terauchi’s style was so brutal, Japanese bankers and businessmen made a public display of showing contempt for mercy. Eventually, the Terauchi style spread across Asia, remaining in place till 1945.
To be sure, Japan did modernize Korean industry, to some extent, but at terrible cost. Korean workers were paid one-fourth the wages of Japanese counterparts in the same factories. Terauchi forced Koreans to eat millet, while their rice was sent to Japan.
In this merciless way, the peninsula was stripped of everything from artworks to root vegetables. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the transfer of cultural property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal something that already belongs to you?
First on the wish-list was Korea’s famous celadon porcelain, which many thought surpassed China’s Tang porcelain. Korean stoneware was distinctive for its translucent blue-green glaze, with floral designs incised in the clay and filled with color before glazing. A Western expert called it “the most gracious and unaffected pottery ever made”. Although Japan had kidnapped Korea’s celadon masters in the sixteenth century, and these experts had discovered sources of fine clay in Kyushu, the porcelain they made in Japan was not the same spiritually. Japanese valued Korean celadon above all others for rituals and tea ceremony. Coveted also were examples of Korea’s punch’ong stoneware, and Choson white porcelain.
Some of this plunder was put on display at Tokyo’s Ueno Museum. Most ended up in private Japanese collections where it was never on public view, and rarely was seen even in private. Japanese collectors keep their treasures in vaults, taking single pieces out for personal viewing. So, most of Korea’s stolen antiquities remain lost from sight to this day.
When all Korea’s private collections were confiscated, experts studying court records and ancient manuscripts determined that the finest celadons still slept in the tombs of kings. To disguise the looting of these tombs, Terauchi introduced laws for the ‘preservation of historic sites. By preservation, he meant that the tombs would be looted and the valuable contents preserved in Japan. He then opened some two thousand tombs, including a royal tomb in Kaesong, which were emptied of their ancient celadons, Buddhist images, crowns, necklaces, earrings, bronze mirrors, and other ornamental treasures. Along the Taedong River near Pyongyang, some 1,400 tombs were opened and looted.
This wholesale theft was overseen by General Terauchi, personally. One of his first acts was to destroy the 4,000-room Kyungbok-goong Palace to make way for the construction of a residence for himself. To decorate his personal quarters, he chose 600 artworks from thousands being prepared for shipment to Japan.
Japanese private collectors and antique dealers carried off not only artworks, but classic literary texts and important national archives—all in the name of academic research art Japanese museums and universities. Tens of thousands of the finest books listed as Korean national treasures, including all 1,800 volumes of the Ri dynasty archives, were shipped to Japan. Scholars say some 200,000 volumes of ancient books of lesser distinction were then burned, as part of a deliberate program to erase Korea’s distinctive culture. They list more 42,000 cultural relics including ancient manuscripts, taken to Japan for ‘study’, and never returned. For good measure, the Japanese used dynamite to blow up a monument to King Taejo (1396–1398) and a monument to Sam-yong, the militant Buddhist priest who led the resistance to Japan’s samurai invasion in 1592.
“Japan’s aim,” said Korean historian Yi Kibeck, “was to eradicate consciousness of Korean national identity, roots and all, and thus to obliterate the very existence of the Korean people from the face of the earth.”
Once stripped of their heritage and identity, Koreans were to be made-over into second-class Japanese. Divested of their inherited land, they had their names changed into Japanese names, and were forced to adopt Shinto in place of their own Buddhist, Confucian or Christian beliefs. Japan’s emperor would be their only god, and any Korean who refused to acknowledge his divinity was arrested. Temples were looted of bronze bells and Buddhist statuary. Even ordinary religious metalwork was removed and melted down for weapons as ‘spiritual cooperation behind the guns.’ Koreans were to speak only Japanese; Korean writers could only publish in Japanese, and all schools taught only in Japanese. At home, Koreans were expected to speak Japanese to each other.
In 1907, Tokyo forced King Kojong to abdicate in favor of his retarded ten-year old son. They styled the boy ‘Crown Prince Imperial Yi Un’ and sent him off to Tokyo, claiming he would be educated side-by-side with Meiji’s grandsons—Princes Hirohito, Chichibu and Takamatsu. In truth, the boy was a hostage, whose survival depended on continued cooperation by Korea’s royal family. For some reason, Emperor Meiji found the oy sympathetic, and lavished attention and gifts on him, the sort of affection he never demonstrated toward his own grandsons. The boy was easily persuaded to sign away his claim to the Korean throne.
In subsequent decades, thousands of other Korean cultural artifacts were forcibly removed by Japan and never returned, despite promises. When people are so thoroughly terrorized, it is impossible to come forward later with a precise list of what was stolen, or a stack of receipts. In 1965, the South Korean government demanded the return of 4,479 items that it was able to identify individually. Of hose, Japan grudgingly returned only 1,432, taking another thirty years to do so. The great mass of Korean cultural treasure remains in Japan to this day, in private collections, museums, and the vaults of the Imperial Family. Much of this patrimony is beyond price. Here alone is evidence that Japan was far from bankrupt at the end of World War II.
There always are collaborators. Over forty years, a Japanese antique dealer named Nakada amassed a fortune looting and exporting ancient Koryo celadons. His partner was a former high official of the Ri dynasty, who also became a millionaire.
Most Korean landowners were stripped of their estates and agricultural properties, which were snapped up by Japanese developers. One developer acquired over 300,000 acres in Korea, where he intended to settle Japanese immigrants. As tenant farmers lost their land, they and the urban poor were rounded up and shipped off as slave labor to work in mines and construction brigades in Japan, or in the desolate Kurile Islands. Sixty thousand Koreans were forced to toil as slave labor in coal mines and military factories in the Sakhalin peninsula of Siberia. Of these 43,000 were still in Sakhalin at the end of World War II, when they came under Soviet control, and had great difficulty getting home.
Before 1945, it is believed that over six million Korean men were forced into slave labor battalions. Of these, nearly one million were sent to Japan. Others were sent to the Philippines or to the Dutch East Indies, to do construction work for the Japanese Army and navy, and to dig tunnels and bunkers for war loot, where they were worked to death or buried alive to hide the locations. On August 24, 1945, a group of 5,000 Korean slave laborers who had spent the war digging a major underground complex for war loot in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, were put aboard the warship Ukishima Maru to be ‘taken home to Korea.’ The ship sailed first to Maizuru Naval base on the west coast of Japan. There the Koreans were sealed in the cargo holds, and the ship was taken offshore and scuttled, by blowing a hole in the hull with dynamite. Out of 5,000 Koreans aboard, only 80 survived. Tokyo claimed that the Koreans locked in the hold had scuttled the ship themselves. Fifty-seven years later, 15 of these survivors, and relatives of others, at last won a lawsuit against the Japanese government, for compensation. A court in Kyoto ruled in August 2001 that the Japanese government must pay 3‑million yen (less than $30,000) to each of the plaintiffs. But the court also ruled that there was no need for the government of Japan to apologize for the ‘incident’.
Aside from the six million Korean men dragooned as slave labor, tens of thousands of young Koreans were conscripted into the Japanese Army, to serve as cannon-fodder n campaigns far to the south, many ending up in Burma or New Guinea.
Saddest of all were thousands of Korean girls duped into going to Japan for employment, instead ending up in brothels. It was in Korea that the kempeitai set up its first official army brothels in 1904. These were filled with kidnapped women and girls, forerunners of hundreds of thousands of Korean women later forced to serve as Comfort Women in army brothels all over Asia. Koreans were targeted because it was believed that if Japanese women and girls were forced into prostitution for the army, soldiers might mutiny. The Japanese Army to pains to characterize Korean women and girls as mere livestock. Mercy was in short supply. [Again, the late Park Won-soon was outspoken on behalf of the Comfort Women and against Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea—D.E.]
Bruce Cumings sums up their predicament: “Millions of people used and abused by the Japanese cannot get records on what they know to have happened to them, and thousands of Koreans who worked with the Japanese have simply erased that history as if it had never happened.”. . .
As a Japanese blogger posting content about Imperial Japan’s colonization of Korea, I have been following the latest news coming out of South Korea and noticed the dismay that many Korean citizens have about the “pro-Japanese” nature of their conservative politicians. By “pro-Japanese,” they refer to the way Korean conservative politicians are deferential toward Japanese politicians in matters of historical disputes, economic collaboration, and security agreements.
This deferential stance is often seen in the handling of contentious historical issues, such as the acknowledgment of wartime and colonial atrocities and abuses, reparations for victims of forced labor and sexual slavery, and the preservation of Japan’s national narrative over these events. Furthermore, it is reflected in agreements or compromises that seem to prioritize Japan’s strategic and diplomatic interests over addressing long-standing grievances held by South Korean citizens. These actions have often left a significant portion of the Korean populace feeling that their leaders are neglecting national dignity and justice in favor of maintaining close ties with Japan.
In this post, I’m going to tell a narrative to partly answer the question as to why these “pro-Japanese” tendencies persist in the Korean conservative movement in Korea, including some links with sources for further reading. This is by no means a comprehensive answer, but I hope this post becomes a resource to gather much of the relevant historical information about this issue in one place. In this narrative, I trace how Kishi Nobusuke organized former war criminals and other prominent former Imperial Japanese government and military officials to reconstitute as much of the former Imperial Japanese regime as possible in the post-war environment, then exert influence in Korea. Others have posted more detailed information online which explain how Kishi and his successors came to dominate the Liberal Democratic Party and Japanese politics, but in this post, I will focus more on the interactions that Kishi’s associates had with Korean government officials and businessmen over the decades to exert power and influence over South Korea in the postwar era. Through this exploration, I hope to provide readers with a deeper understanding of why these pro-Japanese tendencies persist in Korea and what it reveals about the ongoing impact of Imperial Japan’s colonial legacy in Korea.
We will begin this narrative in 1940’s defeated post-war Japan, ravaged by World War II and occupied by Allied forces. The Americans have imprisoned the class A war criminals at Sugamo Prison. However, other war criminals were released once the Americans decided that they could become useful anti-Communist leaders of postwar Japan. Among the released war criminals was Kishi Nobusuke, a key architect of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy. Kishi emerged from Sugamo Prison in the post-war years with a renewed ambition: to reconstitute as much of the old Imperial Japan as possible. He was emboldened by his observation that the Americans did not care what his true political beliefs were, as long as he was a staunch anti-Communist. Imprisoned as a suspected Class A war criminal, Kishi befriended two fellow war criminals who would become instrumental to his vision—Ryoichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama. Together, these men cultivated a network that blended political influence, corporate ambition, and organized crime to reshape Japan’s role in East Asia.
In wartime Japan, Sasakawa was the founder and leader of the National Essence League (国粋同盟), one of the most extreme right-wing political organizations in Imperial Japan. Sasakawa admired Benito Mussolini and modeled his organization on Italian Fascist principles, even visiting Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in 1939. While he held a position as a Diet parliament member, Sasakawa spent much of the war giving motivational speeches to the Imperial Army and the general public across the Empire to boost war morale. In his remarks during one visit to Korea in 1943, he encouraged leaders to “punch Koreans with an iron fist” if they seemed unsteady and unfocused (ふらふら), claiming that such actions were acts of love (可愛ければこその鉄拳である) necessary to bring them back in line. This philosophy aligned with the broader Imperial Japanese military culture, which heavily relied on corporal punishment. In this way, he normalized the physical abuse of Koreans and rationalized it as an act of tough love to mold the Koreans into ‘true Japanese people’.
While incarcerated at Sugamo Prison, Sasakawa kept a detailed diary that highlighted his belief in aligning Japan with a pro-American, anti-communist stance. During his time at Sugamo Prison, he worked tirelessly to improve the treatment of prisoners, earning respect from both high-ranking war criminals and lower-tier detainees. Sasakawa famously referred to Sugamo Prison as his “ultimate university,” a place where he built relationships that later connected him to Japan’s post-war establishment.
Sasakawa later supported the controversial Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon in his anti-communist activities. From 1968 to 1972, Sasakawa was the honorary president and patron of the Japanese branch of the International Federation for Victory over Communism (Kokusai Shōkyō Rengō), which forged intimate ties with Japan’s conservative politicians. Allen Tate Wood, a former top American political leader of the Unification Church of the United States, recalled his surprise upon hearing Sasakawa telling an audience, referring to himself, “I am Mr. Moon’s dog.”
Kodama, who was designated as the “fixer” by Kishi, utilized his connections to play a pivotal role in normalizing Japan-South Korea relations in 1965. Following the normalization treaty, Kodama frequently visited South Korea, where he liaised with members of Park Chung-hee’s administration, serving as a fixer for Japanese corporations and the yakuza. Kodama’s influence facilitated the inflow of $500 million in reparations and economic aid from Japan, which jump-started South Korea’s industrial development and created lucrative opportunities for Japanese businesses.
One of Kishi’s most significant collaborations was with Ryuzo Sejima, a former Imperial Army officer turned corporate strategist. Sejima, who survived 11 years as a Soviet prisoner of war, joined Kishi in forging the Japan-South Korea Cooperation Committee, which solidified ties between the two nations. This committee laid the groundwork for deep economic and political collaboration, with figures like Sejima serving as trusted intermediaries.
The normalization of relations between Japan and South Korea in 1965, made possible by a partnership between Kishi and South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee, was not merely a diplomatic milestone; it was a strategic alignment against the shared threat of communism. The reparations package and subsequent economic cooperation enabled Japanese firms to enter the Korean market, further intertwining the two countries’ fates. Park Chung-hee, a former officer in the Japanese-controlled Manchukuo Army, shared ideological and personal ties with Kishi and his associates. Park preferred to surround himself with fellow Imperial Army academy graduates, such as Paik Sun-yup, a decorated hero of the Korean War but a controversial figure due to his earlier service in the Gando Special Force of the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria from 1943 to 1945. Paik was also involved in putting down the Yeosu-Sunchon Rebellion (거수·순천 사건) of October 1948, a brutal operation marked by ransacking, raping, and killing of civilians, with many of the soldiers still wearing old Japanese army uniforms. This choice of associates reflected Park’s reliance on figures who, like himself, shared a connection to Japan’s colonial and military institutions.
The predominance of pro-Japanese sentiments within South Korea’s conservative elite can be traced back to the early days of Syngman Rhee’s presidency. Rhee, whose domestic support base was weak, was forced to rely on collaborators with Imperial Japan to staff key positions in the police and military. The South Korean army, for instance, was largely founded and commanded by former officers of the Japanese military, while the police force was similarly dominated by those who had served under the colonial administration. This extended to other sectors as well, including the judiciary, media, education, culture, and religion. While Rhee himself cannot be described as pro-Japanese, the pillars of his government overlapped significantly with individuals who had thrived during Japan’s colonial rule.
The Special Committee for Prosecution of Anti-National Activities, established in October 1948 to address collaboration during the colonial period, was quickly dismantled after just over a year of activity. Although the committee compiled a list of approximately 7,000 alleged collaborators and arrested some prominent figures, its efforts were suppressed by the very police force that included former colonial officials. The committee’s offices were raided, effectively curbing its operations. [Source: Asahi Webronza Article]
The narrative of South Korea’s conservative elite shifted after independence. Their justification for maintaining power and influence centered on staunch anti-communism, pro-Americanism, and conservatism. Many former collaborators, once aligned with Japan, rapidly recast themselves as pro-American defenders of South Korea’s nascent democracy. In the context of a fierce Cold War rivalry with North Korea, this repositioning allowed them to frame their actions as vital for the survival of the state, rather than remnants of colonial oppression.
During the postwar period, Kishi and his allies cultivated relationships with South Korea’s emerging conservative elite, including Reverend Sun Myung Moon and business magnates such as Samsung’s Lee Byung-chul and POSCO’s Park Tae-joon. Lee Byung-chul’s business empire had its origins during the colonial era in Korea, with the establishment of Samsung Sanghoe in Daegu on March 1, 1938, initially focused on exporting dried fish and apples. His business success during this period likely would not have been possible without at least some collaboration with Imperial Japanese authorities. Samsung continues to exert significant political influence in conservative circles to this day. For example, The People’s Power party recruited Koh Dong-jin, an adviser to Samsung Electronics, ahead of the April 10 general elections in 2024.
Sejima played an instrumental role in shaping South Korea’s export-driven economy by advising on the establishment of trading companies and industrial giants. His insights were so valued that employees at Samsung Group organized book clubs around the Japanese novel Fumou Chitai (The Wasteland), whose protagonist was modeled after Sejima.
Another key contact for Kishi’s associates was Kim Jong-pil, head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) and a close associate of Park Chung-hee. Kim’s support for the Unification Church, led by Reverend Moon, exemplified his efforts to consolidate a conservative, anti-communist bloc within South Korea. Notably, Kim, along with Park Chung-hee and Park Tae-joon, spoke Japanese so fluently that a Japanese diplomat once remarked that they seemed indistinguishable from native Japanese speakers. Additionally, Kim’s brother held secret discussions in Japan with Ichiro Kono, leading to an agreement to leave the contentious Takeshima/Dokdo issue unresolved, encapsulated by the phrase “settlement by not settling.”
Sejima’s deep connection with South Korea is evident in his memoir Many Mountains and Rivers (Ikuzanga), published in 1995. Sejima praised former President Park Chung-hee as “a self-disciplined leader with profound insight and leadership,” and expressed special respect for Lee Byung-chul, the founder of Samsung, calling him “a revered senior, brother, and teacher.” Through Lee Byung-chul, Sejima also forged ties with former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, both military generals-turned-presidents who succeeded Park Chung-hee after his assassination in 1979, admired Sejima as a senior officer and respected his strategic insights. Chun Doo-hwan, in particular, felt that defending the Korean Peninsula from the North Korean threat was not solely South Korea’s burden but a shared responsibility with Japan. Chun argued that Japan, given its proximity and vested interests in regional stability, should actively contribute to South Korea’s defense capabilities. This stance led Chun to push for economic and military support from Japan, framing it as essential for the collective security of East Asia. These appeals resonated with Japanese leaders, who viewed a stable and anti-communist South Korea as a crucial buffer against Northern aggression.
A key episode highlighting Sejima’s close connections with South Korean leadership was his meeting with Kwon Ik-hyun, a prominent member of the Democratic Justice Party with strong ties to Samsung. In December 1982, acting as a special envoy for Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, Sejima met Kwon Ik-hyun at Gimhae Airport for a secret meeting. The two reached a fundamental agreement to resolve the strained Japan-South Korea relations caused by issues such as Japan’s history textbook controversies and economic cooperation loans. This agreement paved the way for Yasuhiro Nakasone’s official visit to South Korea, aimed at resetting bilateral ties. Kwon, known for his strategic thinking and influence within South Korea’s conservative elite, worked closely with business magnates like Lee Byung-chul to align political and corporate interests. Through Kwon, Sejima was able to deepen his understanding of South Korea’s economic and political dynamics, further solidifying the partnership between Japanese and Korean elites.
Yasuhiro Nakasone‘s historic visit to Seoul in 1983 marked a new phase of Japan-South Korea cooperation. Behind the scenes, Sejima’s quiet diplomacy helped negotiate key economic loans that funded South Korea’s infrastructure, including the Seoul subway and power plants, while advancing Japan’s regional interests. This allowed Japan to influence South Korea’s political and economic trajectory in the 1980’s, culminating in events like the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which bolstered South Korea’s global standing.
The historical legacy of this network resurfaced in later years when Park Chung-hee’s daughter, Park Geun-hye, served as President of South Korea. In a poignant moment of historical significance, she met with Shinzo Abe, the grandson of Kishi Nobusuke, in 2015 during her presidency. This meeting resulted in an agreement intended to “finally and irreversibly” settle the contentious issue of comfort women. As part of the agreement, the Japanese government pledged $9 million to a fund for the surviving victims. For Japanese conservatives, this relatively small sum was seen as a way to put the darker aspects of Imperial Japan’s past to rest permanently, effectively allowing them to bury the history of wartime atrocities and abuses without further scrutiny. They viewed this as a significant political victory, expressing gratitude to South Korea’s conservative leadership for facilitating such a resolution. Indeed, Korean conservatives honored this agreement by refraining from criticizing Japan on the comfort women issue at a recent UN conference discussing women’s human rights issues.
This 2015 meeting between Park and Abe also symbolized the enduring influence of their respective family legacies in shaping Japan-South Korea relations. The interaction highlighted how the ideological and political frameworks established by Kishi and Park Chung-hee have continued to influence the bilateral dynamics between the two nations.
So what now? How is this relevant to the present? Many of the politicians and businessmen mentioned in this post have descendants and proteges who continue to carry on their legacy and dominate Korean conservative politics today. For instance, Paik Sun-yup’s daughter, Paik Nam-hee (백남희), recently established the Paik Sun-yup Memorial Foundation, describing it as “an organization of hope that consoles the hearts of the victims of the Korean War and their bereaved families.” This foundation portrays her father’s career in the most favorable light while omitting references to his controversial actions. Similarly, Samsung remains a family-run enterprise, with the founder Lee Byung-chul’s grandson now serving as its chairman, perpetuating the legacy of its founder.
The People’s Power Party of Korea today has strong incentives to safeguard the reputations of their predecessors, actively avoiding any revelations that might tarnish their image. This includes downplaying or suppressing colonial history, as such scrutiny could expose uncomfortable truths about Korean collaborators during the Imperial Japanese colonial period. As long as the collaborators and their descendants retain influence, a comprehensive and honest examination of Korea’s colonial and Cold War history may remain out of reach.
Ultimately, the neo-Imperialist ambitions of Kishi Nobusuke and his allies were not a direct attempt to restore Imperial Japan but rather to secure Japan’s position as a regional leader in the Cold War context. Through alliances with figures like Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, and South Korea’s business elite, they leveraged historical ties and strategic interests to reshape East Asia. Today, their legacy remains deeply embedded in the political and economic structures of Japan-South Korea relations, for better or worse.
1c.“Gold Warriors” by Douglas Valentine; Counterpunch; 9/25/2003.
” . . . . They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
. . . . It would be meaningful to objectively analyze the roles, logic and impact of pro-Japanese collaborators in post-colonial South Korea, a nation that has been and continues to be haunted by the issue of collaboration. I want to point out that many who have been labeled collaborators possessed a certain human capital that proved useful to the rulers of the new state-formation. In considering their role and their achievements in South Korea, however, we wish to call attention to something big (the so-called structural factor). That is the question of U.S. hegemony in the Cold war era.
Manchurians as the ultimate victors
The most dramatic case of the rise of a former collaborator in South Korea is that of general and ex-president Park Chung Hee who is widely credited with leading its startling economic surge in the 1960s. He attended military academy in both Manchukuo and Japan, and became a low ranking officer in the Manchukuo Army. After liberation, he joined the newly founded Korean Army and his 1961 coup d’état inaugurated a nearly two decade long reign. Park thus reenacted in South Korea two historical events witnessed earlier in Manchukuo: military revolt followed by state-led industrialization. Park was not alone. His rise in South Korea went hand in hand with the rise of others who served in Manchuria (now Northeast China where Japan’s Kwantung Army founded the puppet state of Manchukuo from 1932–45).
Until the 1960s, numerous South Korean politicians claimed to have fought the Japanese in Manchuria. Manchuria was a mythic land in which people freely drew their own self-portrait. Even those who had never been there did so. For instance, the Nobel laureate ex-president Kim Dae Jung falsely claimed during his 1971 presidential election that he had attended Jianguo University in Manchuria. Regardless of their past, a number of Koreans who had been in Manchuria during the colonial period, after returning home, transformed themselves into anti-Japanese fighters. Actually, there had been an exodus of some 700,000 Koreans to Manchuria on the initiative of the colonial government in the 1930s. The number of Koreans in Manchuria exceeded two million by 1945. Manchuria became their El Dorado while grappling with the harsh conditions on a new frontier. Many rose to prominence in postliberation Korea. In particular, those who had studied at flagship military academies and colleges in Manchukuo would lead South Korea’s industrialization and urbanization drives in the 1960s.
In numerous Western colonies, native agents of the state who mastered the master language were among the first to be exposed to the winds of colonial modernity. They were schooled in such ingredients of modernity as punctuality, monthly salary, bureaucratic skill, as well as military skills of drill, firearms, even counter-insurgency. Colonial armies, in particular, were their school.
Koreans gained valuable technical and managerial experience in government, army, the Kyowakai (the fascist party aspiring to link government and people), and police, as well as in the hospitals and factories of Manchukuo. This differs greatly from the experience of most of the Koreans who migrated to (or studied in) Japan during the colonial period, the majority of whom were confined to jobs as manual workers there. Manchukuo was a land of opportunity not only for Japanese but also for Koreans. These “Manchurians” possessed comparative advantages in the quest for power and position in postliberation Korea, where a power vacuum emerged following the departure of Japanese rulers.
U.S. hegemony
The necessary condition for the employment of their talent was U.S. hegemony, which was established in South Korea after liberation. [2] South Korea was very different from North Korea, where landlords and pro-Japanese collaborators were eradicated or fled to the South. Nationalists, particularly those who emerged from the anti-Japanese resistance, were not welcomed into the South Korean administration, Army, or police force built by the occupying U.S. forces. A special committee set up under the new Korean congress in 1948 to investigate the activities of those who had worked for the Japanese empire was suppressed by the U.S.-backed Syngman Rhee government, particularly by the Korean police whose higher echelons were largely staffed with ex-colonial police. It was disbanded within half a year. [3]
Koreans who had been trained by and served in Japanese forces in Manchuria were favored in the Korean Army. Former officers of the Manchukuo Army attained recognition for suppressing the revolutionary guerrillas in “bandit” suppression campaigns in Manchukuo. Later they became the main pillar of Park’s regime, which confronted the North Korean state that was built on the foundations of the anti-Japanese guerilla movement on the Manchukuo-Korean border.
The “Manchurians” led several realms in Park’s modernization project, including the formulation of the military nationalist hwarang ideology. Even in the music world, they led the way, organizing the Korean Navy Orchestra and Army Orchestra, producing numerous songs that served the regime during important moments of state-building as well as in the dispatch of Korean forces to participate in the Vietnam war.
Interestingly, those who had been high officials of the colonial state in South Korea were overshadowed in the 1960s, their positions largely secured by the “Manchurians” who spearheaded the competition with the northern regime throughout the Cold War era. With often only the slightest change of ideas, plans, institutes, even the very words employed in Manchukuo were subsequently revived by them in South Korea. The focus was on transforming South Korea into an industrial warrior nation capable not only of competing with North Korea, but also ultimately of climbing the ladder of the capitalist world system.
The rise of “Manchurians” was facilitated by the Korean-Japanese normalization of 1965 masterminded by the U.S., which was a kind of reunion of Manchurians on both sides. Ex-Japanese prime minister Kishi Nobusuke and his right hand man Shiina Etsaburo who had run the control economy of Manchukuo, were behind the normalization. . . .
2b. “Kim Suk-won;” wikipedia.org.
Kim Suk-won (29 September 1893 – 6 August 1978) was a Korean officer in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Kim was one of the highest-ranking ethnic Koreans in the Japanese Army during the Second World War. He later became a general in the Republic of Korea Army during the Korean War . . . .
Invasion of Manchuria
During the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, Kim was captain of a mechanised artillery division, which had a distinguished combat record. After the 1937 outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Kim was further promoted to major, and assigned to the IJA 20th Division based outside of Seoul, which was a singular indication of the trust that he had attained within the Japanese military.[2]
Second Sino-Japanese War
Kim was dispatched to mainland China in July 1937. Prior to departing, he announced that he intended to die for the Emperor in battle and asked that a school be established in his memory, to be financed partly by the 700 won reward money he had received from Emperor Hirohito for his previous victories in Manchuria. However, this request alarmed the officials in the Japanese administration in Korea, who felt that such a school in honor of an ethnic Korean that might foster Korean nationalism.
Kim distinguished himself again at the Battle of Dingwon on 28 July 1937, where he led two companies of Japanese soldiers in a seven-hour hand-to-hand combat that smashed a Chinese division. He was awarded several medals and the Governor-General of Korea gave his permission for a school, the “Won Suk Academy” to be founded in 1938. This academy is known today as Seongnam Junior and Senior High Schools.
Following the 1939 implementation of the sōshi-kaimei (name change) policy, Kim adopted the Japanese style name Kaneyama Shakugen, by adding the character for “mountain” to his Korean surname Kim; his Japanese given name “Shakugen” was just the Japanese reading of his Korean name.
In March 1939, Kim was promoted to lieutenant colonel soon after returning Seoul, reassigned to the 78th Infantry Regiment of the IJA 20th Division, located in Yongsan. He awarded the Order of the Golden Kite, 3rd class. In 1944, Kim was further promoted to colonel; he was active on the home front in Korea during this time, giving speeches at schools and publishing articles in the official newspaper Maeil Sinbo encouraging Korean youths to volunteer to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army. He was also instrumental in the implementation of the draft on the Korean peninsula, which began from 20 January 1944.[3]
After World War II
After the surrender of Japan ended World War II, Kim joined the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea’s military affairs commission, and later the Republic of Korea Army, where he held the rank of brigadier general.[2] In 1948, President Syngman Rhee put Kim in charge of the South Korean border units. . . .
2c. “Charles H. Bonesteel;” Wikipedia.org.
. . . . After carrying out a series of command and staff assignments, he served in the United States and Europe during World War II in a number of senior positions. With the surrender of Japan imminent, Bonesteel, General George A. Lincoln, and Colonel Dean Rusk of the Strategy Policy Committee at the Pentagon were tasked with drawing up General Order No. 1 to define the areas of responsibility for American, Soviet and Chinese forces. On August 10, 1945, with Soviet forces already moving through Manchuria into northern Korea, Bonesteel proposed the 38th parallel as the Division of Korea. The draft General Order was cabled to the Soviets on 15 August and accepted by them the following day.[7] . . . .
. . . . The State Department assigned an Assistant Secretary of State to meet once a week with the committee representing the sixteen nations [which had contributed troops to the war], to give them their briefing. But this official, Dean Rusk, was himself the darling of the China Lobby and even declared in a speech at the Waldorf Astoria on May 18 that the United States recognized Chiang Kai-shek because he “more authentically represents the view of the great body of the people of China” and would help them if they tried to throw off Communist “tyranny.”. . .
3a.“South Korea’s Chaebol Challenge” by Eleanor Albert; cfr.org; 04/5/2018.
Many of South Korea’s chaebol date to the period of Japanese occupation before the end of World War II, modeling themselves after Japan’s powerful industrial and financial conglomerates, known as zaibatsu. As U.S. and international aid flowed into Seoul [PDF] following the Korean War (1950–1953), the government provided hundreds of millions of dollars in special loans and other financial support to chaebol as part of a concerted effort to rebuild the economy, especially critical industries, such as construction, chemicals, oil, and steel.
These enterprises flourished under the leadership of General Park Chung-hee, who led a military coup in 1961 and then served as president from 1963 to 1979. . . .
. . . . The top five, taken together, represent approximately half of the South Korean stock market’s value. Chaebol drive the majority of South Korea’s investment in research and development and employ people around the world. Samsung Electronics, the largest Samsung affiliate, employs more than 300,000 people globally (more than Apple’s 123,000 and Google’s 88,000 combined).
Which are the largest chaebol?
Samsung. Founded in 1938, Samsung Group is South Korea’s most profitable chaebol, but it began as a small company that exported goods, such as fruit, dried fish, and noodles, primarily to China. Today the conglomerate is run by second- and third-generation members of the Lee family, the second-wealthiest family in Asia, according to Forbes. Over the past eighty years, the company has diversified to include electronics, insurance, ships, luxury hotels, hospitals, an amusement park, and an affiliated university. Its largest and most recognized subsidiary is Samsung Electronics, which for the past decade has accounted for more than 14 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Hyundai. Hyundai Group was a small construction business when it opened in 1947 but grew immensely to have dozens of subsidiaries across the automotive, shipbuilding, financial, and electronics industries. In 2003, following the Asian financial crisis and the death of its founder, Chung Ju-yung, the chaebol broke up into five distinct firms. Among the standout offshoots are Hyundai Motor Group, the third-largest carmaker in the world, and Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s largest shipbuilding company.
SK Group. The conglomerate, also known as SK Holdings, dates back to the early 1950s, when the Chey family acquired Sunkyong Textiles. Today, the chaebol oversees around eighty subsidiaries, which operate primarily in the energy, chemical, financial, shipping, insurance, and construction industries. It is best known for SK Telecom, the largest wireless carrier in South Korea, and its semiconductor company, SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest maker of memory chips.
LG. LG Corporation, which derives its name from the merger of Lucky with GoldStar, got its start in 1947 in the chemical and plastics industries. Since the 1960s, the company, under the direction of the Koo family, has heavily invested in the development of consumer electronics, telecommunications networks, and power generation, as well as its chemical business, which includes cosmetics and household goods. In 2005, LG split, spinning off a separate entity called GS, a chaebol whose core businesses are in energy, retail, sports, and construction.
Lotte. Shin Kyuk-ho founded Lotte Group in Tokyo in 1948 and brought the chewing gum company to South Korea in 1967. The conglomerate’s main businesses are concentrated in food products, discount and department stores, hotels, and theme parks and entertainment, as well as finance, construction, energy, and electronics. Lotte Confectionery is the third-largest gum manufacturer in the world. In 2017, the company opened the Lotte World Tower in Seoul, the tallest building in South Korea, with 123 stories. . . .
Conglomerates that sprawl across the society trace their roots to the nation’s rise into a world power and have been tightly controlled for generations.
For decades, South Korea’s economy has been dominated by a handful of family-run conglomerates that hold outsize wealth and influence and factor into nearly every aspect of life in the country.
Because of their political heft, the chaebol, as these families are known, have long been a matter of immense public interest. The marriages, deaths, estrangements and legal troubles of these families are chronicled in the South Korean press. Fictional chaebol families have been depicted in Korean dramas. The Lee family of Samsung, the Koos of LG, the Cheys of SK, the Shins of Lotte and the Chungs of Hyundai are household names that have tightly held the reins of the companies that are some of the country’s largest private sector employers.
Their power has been increasingly scrutinized — both inside and outside South Korea — as an economic vulnerability, deepening inequalities and fostering corruption.
Chaebol families have controlled South Korea’s biggest companies for generations.
The chaebol system is a legacy of South Korea’s history. After an armistice ended the Korean War in 1953, the country’s military dictators anointed a handful of families for special loans and financial support to rebuild the economy. The companies expanded quickly and moved from industry to industry until they morphed into sprawling conglomerates.
ven as the companies grew in size, wealth and influence, and sold shares on stock exchanges, they remained under family control — typically run by a chairman who also presided as head of the family. Generational leadership changes have sometimes unsettled chaebol families, forcing companies to split or spin off into smaller groups.
More than two decades ago, during a family struggle, Hyundai was divided among the founder’s six sons. The eldest son took control of Hyundai Motor, now one of South Korea’s biggest companies. Under Chung Eui-sun, the founder’s grandson, the family is still in charge of the global automaker.
These conglomerates make up a sizable portion of South Korea’s economy.
South Korea’s rapid rise from postwar poverty to a major developed economy in a couple of decades was closely tied to the rise of chaebol companies. Their early successes boosted wages and living standards, and drove the country’s exports.
The total sales of the five largest conglomerates have consistently made up more than half of South Korea’s gross domestic product in the past 15 years, topping 70 percent in 2012, according to the book “Republic of Chaebol” by the economist Park Sang-in. Their businesses also permeate South Korean life — from hospitals to life insurance, from apartment complexes to credit cards and retail, from food to entertainment and media, not to mention electronics.
Chaebol families have had cozy relationships with the political leadership.
Patronage from political leaders was crucial to the chaebol companies’ growth into industrial conglomerates, particularly under the regime of Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a coup and ran the country for two decades until his assassination in 1979. For Mr. Park, the chaebol were an instrumental part of his ambition to enrich and industrialize South Korea. To that end, his government steered funds to companies that were cooperative with his agenda, protected them from competition and spared them of public accountability.
While the close ties between the government and the businesses have lessened in recent decades, political leaders still frequently turn to them for support or counsel. In turn, the companies have at times been shielded as being too vital to the economy to be broken up or scrutinized — something critics have assailed as a “too big to jail” problem.
This summer, chaebol heads traveled with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on a trip to Europe as part of South Korea’s bid for the World Expo. They also accompanied him on his visit to the United States to meet with President Biden and were among the guests at a White House state dinner.
Several scandals have tarnished their public image.
Chaebol companies have become enmeshed in political corruption cases.
One of South Korea’s biggest political scandals in recent years demonstrated the close ties between the political leaders and the family-run conglomerates.
Park Geun-hye, the country’s former president, was ousted from office in 2017 and later sentenced to prison after she was convicted of bribery, abuse of power and other criminal charges. Ms. Park and a longtime confidante were found to have collected or demanded bribes from three chaebol conglomerates: Samsung, SK and Lotte. Ms. Park was pardoned in 2021 after serving almost five years of a 20-year prison sentence.
Lee Jae-yong, chairman of Samsung Electronics, the country’s biggest chaebol, was also sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for his role. He was paroled and later pardoned by President Yoon in 2022, a move that allowed him to return to running the company.
3c.“The enemy within: shadow of Japanese past hangs over S. Korea” [AFP]; france24.com; 03/07/2019.
. . . . Some of the South’s biggest conglomerates were founded during the colonial period. High-profile executives, including Hyundai Group’s chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun, have sued to remove ancestors’ names from the collaborators list. . . .
South Korea took a step toward improving ties with its traditional rival Japan on Monday, announcing a plan to compensate Koreans who performed forced labor during Tokyo’s colonial rule that doesn’t require Japanese companies to contribute to the reparations.
The plan reflects conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol’s push to mend frayed ties with Japan and solidify security cooperation among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington to better cope with North Korea’s nuclear threats. President Joe Biden quickly hailed it as “a groundbreaking new chapter” of cooperation between two of the United States’ closest allies.
The South Korean plan, which relies on money raised in South Korea, drew immediate, domestic backlash from former forced laborers and their supporters. They’ve demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies and a fresh apology from the Japanese government.
…
Many forced laborers are already dead and survivors are in their 90s. Among the 15 victims involved in 2018 South Korean court rulings that ordered two Japanese companies — Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries — to compensate them, only three are still alive and they are all in their 90s.
South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin told a televised news conference the victims would be compensated through a local state-run foundation that would be funded by civilian donations. He said South Korea hopes that Japanese companies would also make voluntary contributions to the foundation.
“If we compare it to a glass of water, I think that the glass is more than half full with water. We expect that the glass will be further filled moving forward based on Japan’s sincere response,” Park said.
Later Monday, Yoon called the South Korean step “a determination to move toward future-oriented Korea-Japan ties.” He said both governments must strive to help their relations enter a new era, according to Yoon’s office.
South Korean officials didn’t elaborate on which companies would finance the foundation. But in January, Shim Kyu-sun, chairperson of the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan, which would be handling the reparations, said the funds would come from South Korean companies that benefited from a 1965 Seoul-Tokyo treaty that normalized their relations.
The 1965 accord was accompanied by hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and loans from Tokyo to Seoul that were used in development projects carried out by major South Korean companies, including POSCO, now a global steel giant. POSCO said Monday that it will actively consider a contribution to the foundation if it receives an official request.
Japan insists all wartime compensation issues were settled under the 1965 treaty, and retaliated for the South Korean court-ordered compensation from the Japanese companies by slapping export controls on chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor industry in 2019.
South Korea, then governed by Yoon’s liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in, accused Japan of weaponizing trade and subsequently threatened to terminate a military intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, a major symbol of their three-way security cooperation with Washington.
Their feuding complicated U.S. efforts to reinforce cooperation with its two key Asian allies in the face of confrontations with China and North Korea. In his statement, Biden said that he looks forward to continuing to enhance the trilateral ties, adding, “Our countries are stronger — and the world is safer and more prosperous — when we stand together.”
…
On Monday, the U.S. flew a nuclear-capable B‑52 bomber to the Korean Peninsula for a joint drill with South Korean warplanes. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement the B‑52’s deployment demonstrated the allies’ “decisive, overwhelming capacities” to deter North Korean aggressions.
During a parliamentary session on Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he stands by Japan’s previous expression of regrets and apologies over its colonial wrongdoing but said that the restoration of trade ties is a separate issue.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that Japan “appreciates” the South Korean announcement as a step to restore good ties, but noted that it doesn’t require contributions from the Japanese companies.
When asked about South Korea’s failure to ensure that the Japanese companies participate in the compensation of forced laborers, Park, the foreign minister, said he doesn’t expect Japan’s government to block “voluntary donations” by its civil sector.
Later Monday, the South Korean and Japanese trade ministries simultaneously announced plans for talks to restore their trade relations. South Korea’s Trade Ministry said it decided to suspend its dispute proceedings with the World Trade Organization over the Japanese trade curbs.
Former forced laborers, their supporters and liberal opposition lawmakers berated the government plan, calling it a diplomatic surrender. About 20–30 activists rallied near Seoul’s Foreign Ministry, blowing horns and shouting slogans, “We condemn (the Yoon government)” and “Withdraw (the announcement).”
Lim Jae-sung, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs, called the South Korean plan an “absolute win by Japan, which insists it cannot spend 1 yen” on forced laborers. He said lawyers will press ahead with steps aimed at liquidating the Japanese companies’ assets in South Korea to secure the reparations.
The main liberal opposition Democratic Party called on Yoon to immediately stop what it called “a humiliating diplomacy” toward Japan and withdraw its plan.
The opposition to the government’s announcement cast doubts on the prospects to end the disputes. When the Democratic Party led by Moon was in power, it took steps to dissolve a foundation funded by Japan to compensate Korean women forced to work as sex slaves during World War II because it didn’t have the victims’ consent.
Despite the backlash, Yoon has likely decided to press ahead with steps to ease the disputes with Japan to bolster the alliance with the United States because “there is no magic solution that can satisfy everyone,” said Bong Young-shik, an expert at Seoul’s Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies. He said Yoon likely felt pressure to boost defense against North Korea’s advancing missile threats.
Choi Eun-mi, a Japan expert at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said it has been obvious that a third-party reimbursement of forced laborers was the only realistic solution for South Korea because there are “fundamental” disagreements with Japan over the 2018 court rulings.
A South Korean government-backed foundation tasked with paying compensation to plaintiffs who won lawsuits over wartime labor during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula is short some 12 billion won ($8.8 million) in paying damages to the plaintiffs, the foundation’s chief said Monday.
Shim Kyu Sun, director of the foundation, told JoongAng Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, that he hopes the Japanese business sector will contribute to the group so it can pay damages to plaintiffs, including those who won their lawsuits recently.
In March last year, the government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol decided to compensate the plaintiffs and bereaved family members with money from the government-backed fund, rather than seeking restitution directly from the Japanese companies that were sued, in a bid to improve ties with Japan.
Due to the 12 billion won shortfall, compensation payment by the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan is now “at a crossroads,” Shim said.
“The solution (of compensating through the foundation) would gain the support from the South Korean public only if Japanese businesses participate in” the funding, Shim said, while also requesting further donations from South Korean companies.
The foundation has received 4 billion won from South Korean steelmaker POSCO Co.
Ties between Seoul and Tokyo deteriorated after South Korea’s top court in October and November 2018 upheld orders in separate judgments against Nippon Steel Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., requiring that they pay damages for forced labor during the colonial rule between 1910 and 1945.
The top court in December last year and January this year made similar rulings, ordering several Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy, to pay damages to South Korean plaintiffs.
…
. . . . Joining hands with former collaborators, Rhee Syngman announced that the most pressing issues of the post-liberation era would be anti-communism and the establishment of a separate government in the South. . . . the colonial Japanese government collectively stigmatized all Korean resistance fighters as “commies,” regardless of their actual political affiliations, thereby initiating a practice that continues to ripple through many of Korea’s present-day social issues. Through the post-liberation years and the Korean War (1950–1953), the act of labeling someone a “commie” evolved from a tool for covering up one’s former pro-Japanese activities into a ubiquitous political weapon that was actively used to remove anyone who was critical of Rhee’s government and the establishment. In the six decades of division since the Korean War ended in a “cease-fire,” the association between Japanese collaborators and the anti-communist movement has become entangled with various other elements, fueling the rise of powerful and complex forces that continue to subsist off the division system. . . .
. . . . As mentioned, immediately after Korea’s liberation in 1945, collaborators who had reaped the benefits of pro-Japanese activities during the colonial period took cover under the banner of anti-communist and pro-American causes. Since then, the vestiges of Japanese colonial rule have used various other ostensible causes (e.g., liberal democracy, regional rivalry, Christian values) to similar effect, thus cementing their status as a cornerstone upholding the system of the North-South division. . . . .
. . . . In an August 2023 speech—a few days before he visited Camp David—Yoon warned of a fifth column of “anti-state forces” working to destroy South Korea from the inside out. “The forces of communist totalitarianism,” he declared, “have always disguised themselves as democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists while engaging in despicable and unethical tactics and false propaganda.” Yoon similarly cited the threat posed by “anti-state elements” and North Korea sympathizers when he announced the imposition of martial law. . . .
Opposition lawmakers are alleging the full scope of President Yoon’s coup involved a months-long plot to trigger a “limited war” with North Korea
As South Korea’s political crisis continues following President Yoon’s failed attempt to declare martial law on December 3, new details are emerging in the country’s legislature that suggest the full scope of Yoon’s coup plot may have included plans to trigger a “limited war” with North Korea. Planning documents circulated among accomplices prior to the martial law order also demonstrate that Yoon and former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun looked to past martial law orders as precedents, including those issued prior to the Gwangju Massacre and the Jeju Massacre.
A possible timeline of how Yoon’s coup plans interacted with escalations against North Korea has begun to emerge. Yoon’s tenure in office has been characterized by unbridled aggression against Pyongyang, and a cozy military relationship with Washington and Tokyo that sent tensions soaring throughout Northeast Asia. It is now known that Yoon’s coup plans began in July of 2023.
Upon coming into office in 2022, Yoon adopted a military policy towards North Korea known as the Kill Chain Doctrine, which advocates the use of preemptive strikes in the event of suspected attacks. Over the next two years, the rate and magnitude of joint military exercises with the US exploded; over 200 days of US-ROK war games were held in Korea in 2023, and in August of this year the two countries held their first joint nuclear tabletop exercise to rehearse plans for a nuclear strike on the peninsula. Consequently, inter-Korean relations have entered a historic nadir. In December 2023, North Korea took the unprecedented step of renouncing its policy of peaceful reunification.
From garbage war to “limited war”
Following this historic falling out between the two Korean governments, tensions spiked along the de facto land and sea borders of the divided peninsula. One of the more iconic signs of the deteriorating relationship have come in the form of garbage-laden balloons landing in South Korea from the north. For decades, Pyongyang tolerated US-funded NGOs in the south sending propaganda balloons across the DMZ. The fleets of garbage balloons that North Korea began to fly south this spring marked an end to this policy of patience.
In Seoul, the garbage balloons triggered a series of escalatory actions over the course of the summer. But in October, a new line was crossed. For the first time, North Korea reported a series of drone incursions into its territory—an allegation which South Korea’s Defense Ministry stated it could not confirm at the time. The incident led to Pyongyang detonating roads and bridges at the DMZ in an attempt to forestall potential invasion. Now, lawmakers are alleging the drone incursion may have been part of a months-long effort to trigger a military response from North Korea that would end in a “limited war.”
On Sunday, December 8, a military container used to house drones and launchers caught fire. The next day, Democratic Party lawmaker Park Beom-gye announced he had received a tip from a military whistleblower alleging South Korea’s armed forces were responsible for the drone incursion in October. On December 10, Kim Yong-dae, head of Drone Operations Command, submitted to questioning by parliament. He explained to lawmaker Kim Byung-joo that the fire was caused by a short circuit. However, when Kim Byung-joo inquired who ordered Drone Operations Command to send a drone to Pyongyang, Kim Yong-dae replied, “I cannot confirm that.” Kim Yong-dae provided an identical answer to the lawmaker’s follow-up question inquiring where the drones had been launched from. This prompted Kim Byung-Joo to accuse the military of setting the fire in order to destroy evidence of the drone incursion.
Suspicions of a plot to restart the Korean War have also been raised by lawmaker Lee Ki-heon, who reported on December 7 to the National Assembly that former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun attempted to order a direct strike on North Korea in order to “hit the origin of the garbage balloons” on November 28, just a week prior to the coup attempt on December 3. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have denied such an order was given, and reiterated the military’s position that a strike in retaliation for the garbage balloons would only be authorized in the event that they caused injury or death.
Meanwhile, correctional officials reported that Defense Minister Kim, who was detained on Sunday, December 8 , attempted suicide in custody on the evening of December 10. He is in stable condition and remains in detention awaiting an expected indictment.
While lawmakers allege that Yoon’s objective was to foment a “limited war,” any attack by either Korean government on each other’s de facto territory could rapidly escalate to a conflict involving the US, Russia, and China. All three of these countries have strategic military agreements on the peninsula.
A massacre in the making?
Other emerging details have demonstrated premeditated plans for repression in Yoon’s coup. Lawmaker Choo Mi-ae has circulated planning documents from the martial law order that reference the infamous massacres that put down popular uprisings in Jeju and Gwangju.
From 1948 to 1949, South Korean soldiers, police, and paramilitaries slaughtered between 30,000 and 60,000 people in Jeju, and burned 70% of the island’s villages as part of a scorched earth campaign conducted in response to a local armed insurgency against US occupation, and the impending 1948 election to establish the Republic of Korea, which was opposed by a majority of Koreans at the time. The counterinsurgency war in Jeju was prosecuted with the knowledge, support, and oversight of the US military.
In Gwangju, paratroopers acting under the orders of then-dictator Chun Doo Hwan killed up to 2,000 residents of the city, and engaged in a campaign of mass torture and rape. The incident occurred after Chun’s declaration of martial law on May 17, 1980, prompting students and workers in the city to rebel against the military and establish a people’s government that lasted for 9 days and resembled the Paris Commune. Once again, US support and foreknowledge was critical to enabling the massacre. President Jimmy Carter directed the Pentagon to assist Chun; South Korean paratroopers were permitted to be transferred from the DMZ, and an aircraft carrier and reconnaissance planes were deployed to the area.
Evidence of Yoon’s plans for repression go beyond historical citation. Choo Mi-ae has further revealed plans to secure hospitals in the early phases of the martial law order, a sign that she claims indicates preparations for acts of mass violence. Several high-ranking military and police officials have attested to receiving personal orders from President Yoon to arrest key political figures, including opposition leader Lee Jae Myung. In an exclusive interview with JTBC News, a Special Forces Officer revealed that second-day plans for the martial law order included the deployment of South Korea’s 7th and 13th Airborne Brigades to Seoul.
Allegations of a wider war plot
Further testimony at the National Assembly suggests a grander plan for war than the “limited war” theory outlined above.
Citing anonymous military sources, lawmaker Kim Byung-joo, a former four-star general, Kim told fellow lawmakers on December 10 that 20 members of the Special Forces’ Headquarters Intelligence Detachment (HID) unit “were on standby at a location in Seoul” on the night of the martial law order. Kim claims the HID unit would have been mobilized to the National Assembly to arrest lawmakers, and questions whether they would have killed those who resisted, possibly while wearing fake North Korean uniforms. The HID unit is normally deployed to the DMZ and is tasked with operations in North Korea, including sabotage, kidnappings, and assassinations. Kim has also said that the HID unit’s second-day orders were to cause disturbances at the National Election Commission, saying, “they were not a simple arrest team.” Kim is calling for further investigation.
On December 13, influential independent journalist Kim Eo-jun appeared before the National Assembly with a bombshell claim. According to Kim, whose studio was targeted by the military in the early hours of the coup attempt, a source from “the embassy of an allied country” told him Yoon planned to assassinate Han Dong-Hoon, the leader of the president’s ruling party, on the night of the martial law order.
Kim Eo-jun claimed Special Forces in North Korean uniform were to act as an “assassination squad” undertaking the following plot: “First, Han Dong-hoon is to be assassinated during transportation after his arrest. Second, attack the arrest unit escorting Cho Kuk, Yang Jeong-cheol and myself, pretending to rescue them. Third, North Korean military uniforms will be buried at a specific location. Fourth, after some time, the uniforms will be discovered, and the incident will be attributed to North Korea.”
Cho Kuk is an anti-Yoon politician who leads the minority Rebuilding Korea Party, and Yang Jeong-cheol is an influential former aide of former President Moon Jae-in.
Kim Eo-jun also said he received tips that Yoon planned to “kill American soldiers to induce the US to bomb North Korea,” and that a biochemical terror attack had also been under consideration. Yoon would have thereby manufactured a situation from which he could emerge as the “reunification president” who successfully ended Korea’s division by means of conquest. . . .
. . . . Journalist Kim further alleged that the First Lady, Kim Gun-hee, had also made contact with an OB (Old Boy, term for retired intelligence agent). Though he could not confirm the content of the call, journalist Kim raised the matter before the National Assembly out of consideration “that her husband is the Commander-in-Chief, so if there is even the slightest possibility these calls are related to disturbing public order, no risks should be taken.” Journalist Kim called on the National Assembly to restrict the First Lady’s communications.
The Democratic Party has vowed to investigate further, while the ruling People’s Power Party floor leader Kwon Sung-dong dismissed the testimony as “fake news.” The US Embassy in South Korea denied that it had provided information to Kim Eo-jun, clarifying that US intelligence would have been able to distinguish a false North Korean attack and notified the South Korean government. However, this statement has only raised further suspicions against the US Embassy in some circles due to its similarity to a pronouncement made by Congressman Brad Sherman in an interview with the South Korean outlet MBC News the day before.
Uncle Sam and The Swastika
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