Academic literature on the topic 'Korean resistance movemonts, 1905-1945'

This study focuses on the descriptions of North Korean history textbooks about the Japanese colonial period(1905-1945) in the Korean Peninsula, and aims to analyze North Korean textbooks by utilizing four materials including the ‘Joseon Ryeoksa’(Joseon History) and ‘Hyeongmyeong Ryeoksa’(History of the Revolutionary) published under the Kim Jong-il regime and the ‘Ryeoksa’ (History) and ‘Hyeongmyeong Ryeoksa’(History of the Revolutionary) under the Kim Jong-un regime. This study also focuses on their descriptions about the empires and the revolutionary struggle, and examines differences and changes between the Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un regimes. Findings of this study are summarized as follows: North Korean history has been a history of ‘resistance,’ of struggle against the imperialism. Their values had been suppressed by the empires and their resistance was sublimated into a revolutionary struggle. Kim Il-song led their history and he was the only figure who could legitimize the North Korean history. The North Korean historical identity, which legitimates resistance history against the empires, was projected through its national, social, and cultural learning materials.

Abstract This paper examines transportation infrastructure in the Japanese empire and its role in positioning Korean migrants in the labor markets of the metropole. To do so, it focuses on the Pusan–Shimonoseki ferry which, between 1905 and 1945, transferred over 30 million people between Japan and Korea. During this time, the ships that comprised this ferry line helped articulate new borders between the metropole and its annexed colony. In this capacity, the vessels helped constitute and control the flow of a new class of colonial migrants as they entered the labor markets of Japan. Historically, transportation networks have been looked on as modes of conveyance or as symbols of political amalgamation. Colonial era descriptions of the Pusan-Shimonoseki ferry commonly maintained this view. However, rather than stress the spatial integration brought by the line, this paper highlights its function as a source of delineation. The ferries connecting Japan to its closest colony not only served as a conduit for Korean workers, but also introduced forms of constraint and contingency that shaped their ability to sell their labor in Japan. Transportation thus became an issue of political contestation and resistance. Korean workers and union activists employed an array of tactics to undermine the borders imposed through the regulation of transportation. Doing so was part of an attempt to assert greater control over the migrant's position in regional markets and mitigate the unevenness of the colonial system.

The Korean Independence Movement was a four decades long endeavor from 1905 to 1945 by Koreans to liberate Korea from Japanese colonization. Korean immigrants in America played a vital role in the movement. They contributed money, organized patriotic activities in their communities to raise awareness and issued appeals for support to the U.S. government. Throughout the years, and from generation to generation, Korean immigrants remained loyal to Korea's cause for liberation. This study discusses how this intense patriotic involvement to their homeland affected Koreans immigrants' experiences in America, namely, how such intense overseas nationalism shaped their Americanization process. Korean immigrants have told about their experiences in the form of memoirs, short narratives, interviews and speeches. These provide many first-person perspectives from which to understand Korean immigrants' changing senses of community, patriotism and acculturation. Many of these sources have come available in the last twenty years, but academic scholars have left these source largely untouched. Historians of Korean immigrant history often discuss the political components of the K.I.M. Although recognizing the importance of the Korean Independence Movement to Korean immigrants, scholars have, nonetheless, said very little as to how this movement affected them socially. This study examines how America influenced historical developments culturally by shaping the attitudes of Korea's most politically active nationalists--the Korean immigrants in America. Furthermore, this study argues that Koreans in America utilized the K.I.M. for much more than Korean independence and that their motives evolved throughout the decades. The early immigrants used the K.I.M. as a means to establish a Korean community and establish social networks while the later activists, particularly after 1919, used their demonstrations to broadcast their distinct Asian identity as well as their assimilation and loyalty to America. More simply put, Korean patriotism and Korean immigrant "Americanization," are intimately connected.