The Economic Aspect of Japanese Colonialism in Korea

Introduction

Since ancient times, no other country enjoyed more intimate exchanges with Japan than Korea. While much has been done to normalize the Japanese-Korean relations, a lot still remain to be done. According to Mcormak and Haruki (2005), while Japan normalized relations with the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) in 1965, it has not yet formally recognized the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). This asymmetry is a major obstacle not only to repairing Japanese-Korean relations overall, but ending the Cold War in Asia.  Although Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro made two diplomatic visits to North Korea in the last four years, raising prospects of a breakthrough in Japan-North Korea relations, progress on normalization remains stalled.

In the beginning

Less than two decades after having being opened, Japan first made its ambitions about Korea known by forcing the country open to trade in 1876 (Cha, 2004) . Defeating Russia in the war of 1905, Japan virtually annexed Korea, which was made official five years later. What replaced the feeble and predatory bureaucracy of the Choson dynasty was a developmental state. Drawing on the Meiji government's experience, the colonial state introduced a set of expensive policy measures to modernize Korea.