The Japanese colonial rule of Korea ran from 1910-1945 with the conclusion of the Second World War ( Uchida, 2011) . During the takeover, Japan renamed the country to ‘Chosen’. Japan governed Korea under a governor general who was directly under the Japanese prime ministers while the high ranking officers were all Japanese. While it seemed like the Koreans were ruled under the same rules as their Japanese counterparts they rule was harsh at first leading to a nationwide protest which saw the military rule relax somewhat. The Japanese rule of Korea has been credited with rapid urban growth and expansion of commerce in the country. At the end of the Japanese rule in August 1945, Korea was the second most industrialized nation in Asia with Japan being at the forefront.
The colonizers took most of the leadership positions both in the government and the corporations and industries set up around the country. For this reason, all the growth and economic development taking place in Korea had little benefit on the natives. One way of discouraging the emergence of any Korean ran industries was to have then- Koreans- charged interest rates that were 25% higher than those by Japanese ( Uchida, 2011) . Their farms were taken over by the Japanese and the Koreans were reduced to being sharecroppers and others were forced to make migrate to Japan.
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The rule by the Japanese did not only affect the administration and the economy of the nation, it was also extended to other social aspects of the country. At one point the Koreans were even forced to take on Japanese names and other intellectual influences heavily borrowed from the west found their way into the country. Korean artists and writers adopted western literary forms. Attempts to reject the changes brought on by the colonizers were quickly shut down ( Hildi, 2001). The colonial regime pushed for a policy of assimilation whose main aim was to force the Koreans to leave their ways of life and take up the Japanese culture. Belief in Japanese deities and divinities was encouraged as and speaking Korean in and out of schools was highly discouraged.
According to Uchida (2011) , the colonizers imposed strict military rule over their subjects which discouraged any resistance groups from emerging. While some Koreans collaborated with the Japanese rule, most opted to pay lip service to avoid jail time and other punishments meted by the colonial government. The eventual end of the Second World War saw the rule of Korea by Japan come to an end with a truce and division of Korea which remains till date.
References
Hildi, K. (2001). Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 , Cornell University Press
Uchida, J. (2011). Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876–1945 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
