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FIGHTING FOR THE ENEMY

Koreans in Japans War 19371945
B R A N D O N PA L M E R

Korean Studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

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Edited by Clark W. Sorensen,

University of Washington

Over the Mountains are Mountains:

Korean Peasant Households and Their Adaptations to Rapid Industrialization
by Clark W. Sor ensen
Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 19201925
by Michael Edson Robinson
Offspring of Empire:
The Kochang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism,18761945
by Carter J. Eck ert

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Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea

by Gi-Wook Shin

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Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions:

Yu Hyngwn and the Late Chosn Dynasty
by Ja mes B. Palais

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The Origins of the Chosn Dynasty

by John B. Du ncan

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Protestantism and Politics in Korea

by Chu ng-shin Park

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Marginality and Subversion in Korea:

The Hong Kyngnae Rebellion of 1812
by Su n Joo Kim

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Building Ships, Building a Nation:

Koreas Democratic Unionism under Park Chung Hee
by Hwasook Na m

Japanese Assimilation Policies in Colonial Korea

by M ark Capr io
Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 19101945,
edited by Clark Sor ensen and Yong-chul Ha
Fighting for the Enemy: Koreans in Japans War, 19371945
by Br andon Palmer
Heritage Management in Korea and Japan: The Politics of Antiquity and Identity
by Hy u ng Il Pai
Wrong ful Deaths: Selected Inquest Records from Nineteenth-Century Korea
compiled and tr anslated by Su n Joo Kim and Ju ngwon Kim

FIGHTING FOR THE ENEMY

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Koreans in Japans War, 19371945

BR A N D ON PA L M ER
U niversity of Washington Press | Seattle and London

This publication was supported in part by the Korea Studies

Program of the University of Washington in cooperation with
the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.
The University of Washington Press gratefully acknowledges the
support of the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. (AAS), which
provided assistance through its First Book Subvention Program.
2013 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States
Composed in Minion Pro, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach

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2019181716151413 87654321

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

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www.washington.edu/uwpress

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University of Washington Press

PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Palmer, Brandon, 1970Fighting for the enemy : Koreans in Japans war, 1937-1945 / Brandon Palmer.
pages cm. (Korean studies of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99257-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-295-99258-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. KoreaHistoryJapanese occupation, 1910-1945 2. World War, 1939-1945Korea. 3. World
War, 1939-1945Participation, Korean. 4. World War, 1939-1945Conscript laborKorea.
I. Title.
DS916.54.P363 2013940.540089957dc232013011466
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, A NSI Z39.481984.
All photographs courtesy of the Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization
under Japanese Imperialism.

CONTENTS

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Acknowledgmentsvii

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Abbreviationsix

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1. Koreas Mobilization in context 15

Introduction3

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2. The Korean Volunteer Soldier Systems 43

3. The Korean Conscription System 92

4. Mobilization of Colonial Labor 139

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Notes195

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Conclusion183

Bibliography224
Index240

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Acknowledgments

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I have finally come to the end of this journey. I know that my friends and
family feel it is about time. My debt to my friends, family, colleagues, and
mentors who have contributed to Fighting for the Enemy is enormous.
This project would not have come to fruition without the generosity of Dr.
Kim Do-hyng (of the Independence Hall of Korea), who sent me research
materials and provided me room and board during my visits to Korea. I also
thank my wife, Sunny, for all her patience and assistance.
When I was a graduate student at the University of Hawaii, the History
Department, the Center for Korean Studies, and the Center for Japanese
Studies provided support that was invaluable to the formation of this
research topic and to the progression of my academic career. Namely, I
extend my appreciation to Yng-ho Choe and Peter Hoffenberg for the
extra time they took to provide quality feedback; to Margot Henriksen and
George Akita for the advice and humor that sustained me during some difficult times; and to John Haig and Kakuko Shoji, who gave freely of their
time to double-check translations (saving me from myself). Of course, any
errors in writing, translation, or interpretation are my own. Funding for the
publication of this project was made possible through the Association for
Asian Studies First Book Subvention Program and the Korea Foundations
Publication Support Program.
I wish to thank my colleagues in the history department at Coastal Carolina University, especially Amanda Brian, Aneilya Barnes, and Carolyn
Dillian, for their support (and for the free meals). I hope that our lottery
numbers come up soon. Also, I wish to extend my gratitude to the faculty
and staff at the University of Washington Press for their careful proofreading and insight that have been critical to the refinement of this project.
Thanks to Lorri Hagman, Clark Sorensen, Mary Ribesky, and the outside
readers for their advice throughout the editing process.
vii

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ABBREVIATIONS

company-directed recruitment

GDR

government-directed recruitment

GGK

government-general of Korea

ICCCSC

Ilcheha chnsi chejegi chngchaek saryo chongs (Historical

document collection of the policies of the wartime regime
under Japanese imperialism)

LMP

Labor Mobilization Plan

NGML

National General Mobilization Law

POW

prisoner of war

SAJAN

Selected Archives of the Japanese Army-Navy, 18681945

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CDR

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Teikoku gikai setsumei shiry

TGSS

(Collection materials of extragovernmental organizations of the

Korean government-general under the war system)

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STCSGDS Senji taiseika Chsen Stokufu gaikaku dantai shirysh

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FIGHTING FOR THE ENEMY

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Introduction

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On June 22, 1939, a Japanese brigade captured Wanshan, a small village in

Shanxi in northern China. By nightfall, however, Chinese nationalist forces
regrouped and launched a series of counterattacks that drove the Japanese
from their positions. One of the Japanese casualties in this battle, private
Yi In-sk, an ethnic Korean, was fatally wounded by a hand grenade. In the
last moments of his life, Yi allegedly grabbed the hand of a fellow soldier
and cried out, Tenn heika banzai! (Long live the emperor!).1 Private Yi
was the first Korean soldier to die in the Asia-Pacific War (19371945). Few
people realize that Koreans served in the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy
during the last global conflict.
The story of Yis death begins with Japans annexation of Korea in 1910.
As the ruler of Korea, it was the Japanese governments prerogative to
mobilize its colonial subjects for wara practice common among Western
colonial powers. According to Japanese and Korean sources, from 1937 to
1945, Japanese colonial authorities mustered at least 360,000 Koreans to
serve in the Japanese military as soldiers or civilian employees, another
750,000 Koreans to work in mines and wartime industries in Japan, and a
million more industrial laborers within Korea. By the end of World War
II, between four and seven million Korean men, women, and students had
been mobilized throughout Japans wartime empire.2 Given the colossal
number of people who served Japan, the Koreans participation in Japans
war effort, which has received extensive treatment in Korean and Japanese
languages, remains a major lacuna in English historiography.
Fighting for the Enemy fills this void by accentuating Japans mobilization of Korean human resources for war from 1937 to 1945. By analyzing
the multifarious ways that Koreans served imperial Japan, scholars of
modern Korea and Japan can develop a fuller understanding of one of
the most tumultuous periods in Korean history. Japans exploitation of
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Koreans during the war period, while undeniable, should not be the sole
focal point of analysis. Instead, the totality of experiences related to imperial Japans mobilization of Koreans, such as volunteer soldiers, conscript
soldiers, industrial laborers, and civilian employees of the military, need
to be included to portray Koreas wartime history in a more complex light.
Japans populace and bureaucracy considered the Korean population
educationally and ideologically unprepared to contribute to Japans war
efforts, and, as a result, Japanese bureaucrats were hesitant to include
Koreans as an integral part of Japans war effort. Underlying the Japanese
hesitancy was decades of negative publicity within Japan proper that highlighted the Koreans social and cultural backwardness. In this context, it
was no simple task to incorporate hundreds of thousands of Korean soldiers
and laborers in the mobilization process. An important part of this story
is that Japan cautiously implemented wartime policies to marshal Koreans
in a way that minimized ethnic resistance and prevented a sense of entitlement among the Korean population. Japans control over Korea, while
heavy-handed, was not absolute. In fact, the Japanese state began recruitment by eliciting Korean cooperation and compliance; this gave Koreans a
choice to participate. Thus, Koreans were active agents (not passive victims)
throughout the mobilization processes. Of course, if Koreans opted against
cooperation, the colonial regime exerted pressure on the unwilling.
An examination of the Japanese colonial regimes policymaking process
reveals that wartime manpower laws for Koreans were watered-down versions of policies used to mobilize Japanese citizens. The average Korean
subject was educationally and culturally unprepared to contribute to the
war effort on a level comparable to that of the average Japanese; and the
mobilization had to account for this. The alteration of laws provides a
window through which much knowledge can be gained. These differences
indicate that Koreans were not completely trusted and that Korea held an
ancillary position in Japans wartime empire.
The mobilization of Korea was not an automatic feat at the outbreak of
war in 1937, nor was it a knee-jerk reaction to the declining war fortunes of
Japan in the 1940s. The decision to involve Korean manpower, especially as
soldiers, was plagued with anxiety and much hand-wringing by Japanese
authorities. The dilemma for Japanese authorities was that they needed
Korean soldiers and laborers to enhance Japans fighting capacity, but colo-

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nial bureaucrats had reservations about the readiness and usefulness of

Koreans for wartime service because they considered Koreans ideologically
and educationally unsound. A fundamental political concern harbored by
many Japanese citizens was that Korean military service would remove
a major obstacle to the granting of citizenship and political equality to
Koreans.3 By forbidding military service, the conservative Japanese could
keep clear the boundaries between imperial citizen and colonial subject;
Japanese authorities realized that including Koreans in the war effort as
soldiers would empower the Korean population, which then might demand
political autonomy or equality, as happened in India during World War I.
Thus, Japanese bureaucracies in Tokyo and Seoul carefully fashioned and
implemented mobilization laws that would not provoke Korean support for
Korean nationalists or communists.
Analysis of the implementation process reveals that Japan sought to
secure Korean loyalty and cooperation through indoctrination (propaganda and education), tangible benefits (social and material), and coercion
(if the other two failed). Indoctrination and propaganda, as part of the
assimilation policies, were primarily designed to promote Korean support
for Japans war, or to at least weaken Korean resistance. The GovernmentGeneral of Korea (GGK) and the war industries sought to win Korean cooperation through inducements that included stable wages, military glory,
and improved social status. When enticements failed, the colonial regime
coerced Koreans by manipulating the socioeconomic nexus of power to
ensure the cooperation of individuals and families. The Japanese colonial
regime had tremendous ability to coerce Koreans to comply, as well as to
strike fear into Korean society, but its power should not be mistaken for
absolute power.
The Japanese regime acted carefully throughout most of the war
period to not antagonize the Korean population excessively; colonial
authorities and businessmen thought that the regime could best marshal
Koreas human resources by offering economic and social opportunities.
The Korean response to mobilization ranged from active cooperation to
determined resistance. Many took advantage of the multifarious jobs and
social positions created by the war economy; they opted to work as laborers in factories, to serve as policemen, and so forth. Conversely, uncounted
numbers were coerced into serving the Japanese state, and still others com-

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pletely evaded wartime demands. But the vast majority of Koreans quietly
acquiesced to mobilization policies as a fiat accompli in order to avoid
coercion and unwanted attention from the bureaucracy. The point here is
that Koreans were not solely victims of the colonial state; instead, they were,
as a whole, agents in the state-society relationship. Japans efforts to win the
support of the Korean populace, along with the GGKs inability to police
noncompliance, show that the colonial regime was not an all-powerful
monolithic bureaucratic organ; it had vulnerabilities that the Korean people
exploited to their own benefit.4
Japans mobilization of Koreans is placed in a more global context in
order to show that Japans colonial policies were consistent with Western
colonial practices. One of the great ironies that imperial powers, including
Japan, faced when mobilizing subaltern peoples was that the superior
races entrusted the welfare of their empires to the colonized races. The British and French used their colonial troops from Africa and Asia to expand,
police, and sustain their empires. European powers had few qualms about
utilizing colonial subjects as an expendable resource; the Japanese, on the
other hand, were much more reluctant to delegate the responsibility of
soldiering.
Comparison of Japans mobilization of Korea with European colonial
practices shows that the Korean experience was not unique in global history. In fact, Japans policies and actions were not as far-reaching as many
Western colonial policies. Specifically, the French utilized hundreds of
thousands of Africans and Indochinese as soldiers or laborers, and the British recruited even greater numbers of colonial subjects from India, Africa,
Malaya, and wherever else the Union Jack flew. These analogies highlight
the similarities and differences between the methods used by the Western
and Japanese empires to mobilize their colonies for war. Acknowledging
the exploitation of other colonies in no way diminishes the suffering that
is such a large part of Koreas historical remembrance; nor does it justify
Japans actions, but it is instead an indictment of all colonial powers wanton abuse of their colonial subjects.

Historical Views on Colonial Korea

The discussion of wartime Korea is best understood as part of the wider

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historical narratives on modern Korea. South Koreas collective national

memory of the colonial period, including scholarship, has since the 1970s
been dominated by the nationalist historical paradigm (elsewhere called the
internal development theory, K: naejaejk palchn non), which describes
Koreas colonial experience in value-laden terms. This paradigm draws
heavily on a revisionist history from the perspective of the common people
(K: minjung) that highlights the exploitation of the average peasant.5
These studies portray the colonial regime as a totalitarian and fascist
political machine that wrung out the lifeblood and economic vitality of the
Korean people, who were powerless victims. In support of these claims,
individual suffering is extrapolated into national suffering, and individual
acts of resistance are represented as national resistance. Korean historiography continues the binary representations of imperial repression and
colonial resistance, colonial exploitation and national development. Some
authors label the colonial era a period of enslavement.6 No room is left for
a middle ground.7 The nationalist historical paradigm has strong vested
interests within Korean society and is the nationalized version of history
taught in public schools, displayed in museums, and shown on television.
One branch of the nationalist historical paradigm that relates to scholarship on the wartime use of Koreans as laborers, soldiers, and prostitutes is
forced mobilization studies (K: kangje ynhaeng; J: kysei renk). Kangje
ynhaeng (literally, forced taking [by the police]) is an emotive word used
by scholars to describe Korean and Chinese laborers taken to Japan during
the war. The first scholar to undertake a serious examination of Korean
wartime labor was Pak Kyng-sik, a Korean resident in Japan. His A Record
of the Forced Displacement of Koreans (J: Chsenjin kysei renk no kiroku),
published in 1965, is a seminal work on wartime Korea. Pak, evoking the
themes of the nationalist historical paradigm, stated that Koreans suffered
inhumane slavelike labor conditions and were victims of colonial semifeudal fascist oppression.8 Forced mobilization studies include coverage of
the forcible recruitment of foreign laborers for work in Japan.
Subsequent Asian and English works on wartime Korea have adopted
the above themes and have focused on Japans exploitation, coercion, and
victimization of Koreans. Forced mobilization studies accentuate the inhumane treatment of the comfort women and of Korean workers by focusing
on unequal pay, harsh working conditions, poor housing, discriminatory

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treatment at the hands of Japanese, and so forth.9 In other words, the

wartime colonial relationship is shown in a wholly negative light. These
works frequently urge the Japanese government to correct past wrongs. For
example, Pak Kyng-sik, Miyata Setsuko, Hayashi Eidai, and Utsumi Aiko
use their academic studies as a polemic to prod the Japanese government to
apologize and to pay restitution to Koreans who suffered as a result of their
involvement in Japans war.10
The forced mobilization paradigm remains prominent in Korean- and
Japanese-language scholarship on colonial Korea. Books and journals
continue to disseminate the nationalist historical paradigm by highlighting compulsory labor (K: kangje nodong), the comfort women, and other
issues related to the exploitation of Koreans.11 The South Korean government provides financial support to museums, public monuments, and
research centers, such as the Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization
under Japanese Imperialism (K: Ilche Kangjmha Kangje Tongwn Pihae
Chinsang Kyumyng Wiwnhoe) and Independence Hall of Korea (K:
Tongnip Kinymgwan), to propagate this paradigm to the Korean public.
The perception created by forced mobilization studies is that all Korean
men, women, and children, with the exception of a handful of collaborators, suffered during the war.
The Japanese militarys exploitation of Korean industrial workers and
comfort women dominates Korean- and Japanese-language historiography of Korea during World War II. Kim Min-yngs Research on Japans
Korean Manpower Exploitation (K: Ilche i Chosnin nodongnyk sutal
yngu, 1995) and Chng Hye-gyngs Korean Forced Displacement, Forced
Labor (K: Chosnin kangje ynhaeng, kangje nodong, 2006) are representative studies of this paradigm; each places the exploitation and suffering of
Korean workers at the center of attention but provides limited analysis of
the structural conditions in which mobilization took place. This is also true
of collections of oral histories. Personal accounts, unedited, provide terrific
insight into how policies were implemented and how people responded
to state demands, although the bureaucratic level of analysis is ignored.
However, most editors of these personal narratives are selective as to which
accounts are included; only the most damning accounts are published. English-language works that substantively address wartime Korea often adopt
the themes of forced mobilization by highlighting the suffering of Korean

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miners and comfort women, but pay little attention to Korean soldiers or to
structural isses.12 Few works within this field address the international and
historical context of colonial subjects mobilized for war.
Coverage of Korean soldiers has slowly grown over the past two decades.
The most prolific authors in the Japanese language are Higuchi Yichi and
Utsumi Aiko; while in Korea, Kim To-hyng has numerous studies about
Koreas military participation in the war. Higuchis Koreans Who Were
Forced to Be Imperial Army Soldiers (J: Kgun heishi ni sareta Chsenjin,
1991) and Korean People and Conscription during the War (J: Senjika Chsen
no minsh to chhei, 2001) are meticulously researched studies that focus
on Japans program of military mobilization in Korea, making them the
most important secondary works in this field. Utsumis study, The Korean
Imperial Army Soldiers War (J: Chsenjin kgun heishitachi no sens,
1991) provides a nice survey of Korean soldiers; she has also published
extensively on the postwar conditions of Korean soldiers and laborers. And
Kims numerous articles and pamphlets published through the Independence Hall of Korea and the Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization
stress the plight of Koreans in New Guinea, Burma, and the Philippines.
Critics of forced mobilization studies note that South Korean scholarly
efforts blur the lines between critical and popular understandings of Koreas
modern history.13 One outcome of this approach is that Korean scholarship
protects and promotes the nationalist Korean political and social identity.14
The marriage of scholarship and wider society has increased this scholarships rigidity to such an extent that all other historical explanations are
ignored.15 In other words, counternarratives or contradictory evidence are
generally dismissed.
In recent decades, the nationalist historical paradigm has been challenged by Korean and Western scholars who advocate the colonial modernization theory, which contends that Japans colonization of Korea,
including the wartime mobilization, was critical to the modernization of
the peninsula. This revisionist approach moves beyond a rigid nationalist
view and explores the ways that Koreans encountered modernity within
Japanese colonialism. Studies in this field examine educational advancement, technical training, industrial development, modern infrastructure,
and legal systems as Japanese contributions that helped Koreas postwar
growth. Since the early 1990s there has been a growing movement to exam-

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ine colonial modernity as yet another alternate view of the colonial era.
Colonial modernity moves beyond the rigid interpretations of nationalism
and colonialism found in the historiography of modern Korea by analyzing
the formation of Korean identity under colonialism. These studies claim
that the use of emotive terms obscures our understanding of the colonial
era, as well as the options available to the Korean people. More significantly,
this paradigm challenges the binary explanations (exploitation versus
resistance) of nationalist history by adopting a more pluralistic approach
to historical studies.
Studies of modernity evaluate the intricate relationship between the
Korean people and the colonial regime, between colonialism and modernity, and between personal and national motives. Yun Haedong is one of the
best scholars in this field. His works Another Reckoning of Modern Times
(K: Kndae rl tasi ingnnda, 2006) and A Rediscovery of History before and
since Liberation (K: Haebang chnhusa i chaeinsik, 2006) are examples of
recent Korean scholars willingness to recognize positive outcomes of the
colonial era. English-language works such as Carter J. Eckerts Offspring
of Empire (1991), Soon-won Parks Colonial Industrialization and Labor
in Korea (1999), and Theodore Jun Yoos The Politics of Gender in Colonial
Korea (2008) offer a revisionist understanding the colonial era. While
addressing larger issues of capitalism, industrialization, and gender, respectively, these works provide insight into the role Koreans played in shaping
their own lives under Japans rule; they show that Koreans participated
in the creation of a modern society. These scholars maintain that, while
morally objectionable, the colonial era was not necessarily detrimental to
Korea.
In terms of wartime mobilization, a majority of English-language works
recount the experiences of the comfort women, placing emphasis on their
victimization. One welcomed exception to these studies is C. Sarah Sohs
The Comfort Women (2008). Her study provides an anthropological interpretation of the comfort womens victimization that resulted from Japanese
and Korean patriarchy. Soh terms their experience as gendered structural
violence.16 Beyond The Comfort Women, there are no English-language
monograph-length studies focused solely on Korean industrial labor or
soldiers; most of the published research on wartime Korean soldiers and
laborers have been book chapters or journal articles. For example, Utsumi

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Aiko has published articles in Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire
(2005) and Perilous Memories (2001), but, unfortunately, none of her books
have been translated into English.
The most significant works on Koreans in the Japanese military have
been by Takashi Fujitani, who has published articles in Senri Ethnological
Studies (2000) and Representations (2007), as well as a monograph, Race for
Empire (2011). His works compare the biopolitical policies and discourses
of the Japanese toward Koreans in the Japanese Army and the United States
toward Japanese Americans in the United States Army.17 Fujitani provides
excellent coverage of the volunteer soldier and conscription systems, as well
as insightful chapters on war-era movies and literature. However, Fujitanis
works rely almost exclusively on English- and Japanese-language sources.
The result is that his works do not incorporate Korean opinions and
responses to Japans policies. Fighting with the Enemy, on the other hand,
utilizes a variety of Korean sources and explores in much greater detail the
Korean wartime experience.
Revisionist and postcolonial studies portray Koreans as active agents in
the creation of Korean history, not as victims of unmitigated exploitation.
The colonial regime was not capable of imposing its unabridged policies
upon the Korean people. Fighting for the Enemy differs from Higuchis,
Utsumis, and other major works in two important ways: It moves beyond
an emphasis on the suffering of Koreans, and it places Koreas mobilization in a global context. Furthermore, it contributes to the field of colonial
modernity by arguing that the economic and social conditions accompanying wartime industrialization created opportunities for Koreans who cooperated with and worked within the colonial system. Countless Koreans at
the local and national level chose to become policemen, educators, soldiers,
bureaucrats, laborers, heads of local neighborhood units, and businessmen.
The Colonial Regimes Power
Many Korean and Western scholars implicitly or directly portray the GGK
as a monolithic, hegemonic, and demonic structure. This misrepresentation
needs to be replaced by a more nuanced treatment that judiciously questions the limits of the colonial regimes powers. In 2005 a Korean scholar
stated to the author that the colonial bureaucracy had absolute power over

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every aspect of every Koreans life, and that any resistance was due to
Korean ingenuity. While this opinion does not hold universal support
among Korean scholarship, widespread misconceptions such as this are
common in this field. Any claim that the GGK held absolute power should
be questioned. Michel Foucault aptly noted, Power is not something that
is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to
slip away; power is exercised from innumerable points.18 And no government, including the Japanese colonial regime in Korea, can control every
point of power. For example, despite an all-out assimilation policy to force
Koreans to speak Japanese, less than one-quarter of Koreans were able to
do so. Quite simply, the GGK, like other colonial regimes, had weaknesses.
The colonial state was not monolithic, nor was it omnipotent. It lacked the
foresight to predict its future needs, and instead reacted to circumstances
as they arose.19 The GGK realized its vulnerabilities and adapted the way it
dealt with the Korean population throughout the period under examination. These weaknesses left room for Koreans to act, with limitations, of
their own volition.
Colonial regimes, while powerful entities, were neither monolithic nor
omnipotent organisms. They controlled many aspects of life within their
colonies, but that power had limitations and vulnerabilities. The actions
of all colonial bureaucracies were shaped by a nervousness that colonial
subjects would rise up against the imperial power, as happened in India
in 1857. Imperial powers learned quickly that colonized peoples could not
be forced to abandon their indigenous political consciousness, history,
or loyalties. Colonial regimes understood that colonies were better ruled
through laws and cooperation from native elites than by a reliance on
brute force. Of course, military action was necessary from time to time.
For example, in the 1890s the British in India reacted to frequent peasant
uprisings by passing tenancy actswhich were haphazard and ineffective.
The British did not have the manpower to properly patrol the provinces to
prevent uprisings; they reacted to events as they arose.20 Colonial regimes
focused on policing outward behavior and demanding obedience, but were
powerless to control personal thoughts and behavior behind closed doors.
Consider the extreme example of African slaves in the American South.
They were chattel, and therefore politically and legally powerless. Yet they
retained a degree of agency and, by extension, power within the relation-

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ship. Even in enslavement they developed effective protest techniques in

the form of indirect retaliation.21 Slaves would feign illness, make themselves lame, run off for a short while, destroy their masters property, abuse
the animals, and malinger. Slaves could be beaten, locked up, and sold,
but some masters feared that severe punishment would provoke greater
resistance. The same may be said of the Japanese bureaucrats apprehension
about Korean workers and soldiers who lived in conditions that were far
from enslavement. Japan attempted to force conformity on the everyday
behavior of Koreans through a colonial bureaucracy that utilized local
officials, hundreds of semigovernmental organizations, and 23,000 police,
one-third of which were Korean. Despite these powerful political and social
tools, resistance remained an option for Koreansand resistance, of any
sort, exposed cracks in the colonial regimes hegemony.
Resistance, in a colonial setting, is any action that runs counter to the
ideals or goals of the state. It can be undertaken by individuals or groups; it
can be enacted in public or in private.22 This definition fits colonial Korean
resistance quite well, because most Korean resistance consisted of small,
individual acts that, taken by themselves, are insignificant. A mosaic of
economically motivated individual and occasional group resistance was
exhibited through feigning ignorance, conveniently disappearing, and so
forth. Resistance is not inevitable or accidental; it is a choice. More importantly, the colonial regime was unable to prevent or effectively respond to
everyday forms of resistance, thereby showing that the GGK lacked complete power over the Korean people.
Everyday forms of resistance are undertaken by the socially and politically weak. Such people employ foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion,
false compliance, pilfering, feigning ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage,
and so on. Additionally, those lacking power can pretend to be ill or
incompetent, or can damage equipment to slow work.23 The weaker classes
of people use everyday forms of resistance because these require little or no
coordination or masterminding and are impossible to police. While these
activities cannot change the status quo, they are often the only options
available to the dispossessed. These forms of protest are obvious and significant only when done in large numbers, as happened in Korea.
This subject is a sensitive subject, and it is not my intention to support
either the Korean or the Japanese viewpoint. Some may consider the find-

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ings detailed herein to be objectionable or insensitive. The suffering and

exploitation of the Korean people cannot be denied or ignored, nor should
it be minimized. Rather, the best way to approach this subject is to examine
the historical documents, the legal foundations of Japans mobilization of
Koreans, and the impact that those policies had on individual Koreans.
This approach unveils the intersections between the colonial regime and
the Korean people during the last years of Japans rule in Korea, and shows
that the process used to marshal Koreans for war was more complex than
was previously supposed.

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