Divisions of East Asia

To say that China, Korea, and Japan are all alike would usually be taken as a sign of the speaker’s racism. Despite some shared cultural roots, the societies have entirely different histories and vastly different attitudes. China and Korea have similar unfortunate histories of invasions from their mutual neighbor Japan. Whereas Japan went from imperial power to capitalistic powerhouse, China and Korea went from Japanese oppression to becoming key players in the Cold War. Korea stands alone in the disintegration of its national unity.

Stereotypes of Asian people are nothing new. Terms like ’ cunning’ and ‘shrewd’ are standard adjectives in stereotypes of Asians; ‘brutal’ is another, at least since Genghis Khan, with Pol Pot and Mao reinforcing the image in our time. The broadest distinction between the static or indolent East and the dynamic, progressive West goes all the way back to Herodotus and Aristotle” (Cumings 1). These characterizations are merely the result of biased perspectives that lack the proper concepts to truly understand the East. Despite these ancient stereotypes, in recent years, China, Japan, and Korea have become economic powers. South Korea has achieved its clout by a “gain in its relative economic command over world resources, measured by the increase in per capita income expressed in U.S. dollars” (Wade 276-277). Korea’s boon of valuable resource deposits enables the economic success of South Korea, but it also set the stage for a theater of tragedy in the Twentieth Century.

Korea, before the Twentieth Century, had been an agrarian state lacking in advanced forms of technology. In centuries past, “the basic Korean lifestyle had been stable, with a population of subsistence farmers topped by a thin layer of educated elite” (Kang 1). Despite its esoteric distribution, Korea at the time highly valued education. Long before the Japanese occupied their homeland, Koreans “made educational attainment a social priority: since the 14th century, education had been revered as the chief means to political and economic success, and for over 500 years access to the civil service had come through attendance at the Songgyun-gwan, or National Academy” (Haggard, Kang, & Moon 877). However, the early Twentieth Century saw the domination of Korea by Imperial Japan and the institution of a bureaucratic, Japanese-controlled government over Korea. In this puppet government, “Koreans did not play a central role in the bureaucracy, and certainly not at its upper levels. Under the Colonial Governor-General, the highest bureaucratic rank was Shinin (Emperor’s personal appointee). No Korean was appointed to this rank throughout the entire Japanese period” (Haggard, Kang, & Moon 873). The Koreans lived under this puppet government for a prolonged period of time, and the government itself fluctuated in the way it treated the Koreans. The Japanese occupation of Korea is usually partitioned into three eras. The occupation begins with a brutal period of subjugation, “when the military ruled by threat and violence (1910-1919). After the Korean Independence Movement in March 1919, the Japanese eased into a time of cultural accommodation (1920-1931), allowing some freedoms… Then came the years of assimilation, 1931-1945, with a renewed tightening of controls and forced participation in the Japanese war effort” (Kang 2). In typical colonialist fashion, Japan viewed the Korean people as resources to be exploited. Japan took much of Korea’s rice harvest for itself, putting Koreans at risk of starvation. The exploitation hardly stopped with the rice harvest, as cotton growers “produced 200 million pounds of cotton in 1939, but shipped 160 million pounds of it to Japan. And although the Japanese in Korea accounted for only 2.5 percent of the population, they held more than 80 percent of all senior government posts” (Kang 2). In this context of invasion, the clash of these two cultures reveals the depth of their difference.

As for one difference, the rejection of certain foreign influences characterizes Korea. In 1860, a religious reform movement known as Tongbak began in Korea. The name meaning “eastern learning”, it “‘rejected western things as defiling Korean tradition.’ By 1894 this sect became a full-fledged rebellion, as peasants struggled against both indigenous Korean injustices and increasing Japanese influence.” (Kang 2). Koreans saw the influence of the West as toxic to traditional Korean culture and values. A Korean interviewed about his experience under Japanese occupation said, “The bridge they built in our village lasted through all the rains and flooding. They also brought little things – sharp razor blades, matches that caught fire quickly, the record player – I know that those came from Europe, so eventually we would have gotten them. But the Japanese brought them first” (Kang 10-11). To the Koreans, the Japanese brought corrupting Western influence and forced it upon them. The Japanese, through superior technology, were able to effectively suppress Korea. In some interpretations, “the Japanese form of imperial bureaucratic government was superior to the indigenous Korean institutional structure that preceded it. Bureaucratic reforms, including both internal incentives as well as patterns of recruitment, permitted the colonial state to penetrate and control society and pursue Japan’s economic interests” (Haggard, Kang, & Moon 872). Japan’s ability to overwhelm Korea and utterly exploit it so efficiently, along with its ability to develop the country’s infrastructure, demonstrates the key economic difference at play. Because Japan was more industrialized, it could utilize its resources to go about aggressively invading its neighbors. Korea, on the other hand, was a stable agrarian community that lacked the proper capabilities to repel the invaders.

After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, it became a successful capitalist nation. China and North Korea, however, took a markedly different direction. North Korea and China adopted Communist governments. Like all other Communist regimes in the 1950s, “North Korea was indeed Stalinist in its state-run industrialization drive, and modeled its administration and much of its system on Stalin’s Russia… Chinese Communism had greater influence, but the DPRK isn’t often called Maoist” (Cumings 2). North Korea’s government has been the subject of much interest in recent years, partly because of the humorous aspects of “the North Korean regime’s own habit of lying, and its grotesque exaggeration of its achievements and the merits of its leaders” (Cumings 3). The key difference between North Korea and China lies in their respective economic integrities. In 1995, North Korea suffered a series of “torrential rains and floods… Soon industrial cities such as Ch’ongjin were creaking to a halt, their equipment scavenged for black market barter, and the regime’s endlessly touted Kim Chaek Steel Works was permanently shut down. For the past decade the regime has not been able to feed its people” (Cumings 8-9). North Korea operates by keeping its people in ignorance and weaving a heroic tale of grandiosity starring its beloved leader. By controlling the flow of information, it is able to maintain a stranglehold on a starving society.

Korea stands as a house divided. The South is a democracy and the North is a Communist dictatorship. This state is the result of decades of cultural stress under a Japanese colonialist government. This invasion, and subsequent invasions, has left the North haunted with xenophobia, isolated and alone in an ever-globalizing world.

Works Cited

Cumings, Bruce. “We look at it and see ourselves.” London Review of Books 24.15 (2005): 11-14. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Haggard, Stephan, Kang, David, and Moon, Chung-In. “Japanese Colonialism and Korean Development: A Critique.” World Development 25.6 (1997): 867-881. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Kang, Hildi. Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Wade, Robert. “East Asia’s Economic Success: Conflicting Perspectives, Partial Insights, Shaky Evidence.” World Politics 44.2 (1992): 270-320. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.