ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 will cover the transition period from port opening in 1876 to the end of colonial period in 1945.
In 1876, Chosŏn Dynasty Korea, which had confined its diplomatic and trade relations with China as a tributary state only, was forced by the Japanese to open its door to the Japan and Western nations. Korea signed unequal trade treaties with Japan, China and nine Western nations within the next two decades, letting into Korea their diplomats to establish legations and traders to open commercial businesses and take over mines. At the same time, Korea became an independent kingdom, Imperial Korea, free from Chinese domination and influence, and began reforming efforts, replacing Confucian institutions adopted from China with those imported from the West via Japan and undertaking kŭndaehwa (modernization) projects with a focus on expansion of a new (Western) educational system and industrial development in order to catch up with the West and Japan.
The kŭndaehwa efforts Korea came under control of Japan in 1905 when Korea became its protectorate. What Korea could do under the influence the Protectorate Regime was mainly legislating numerous reform measures to make Korea more institutionally compatible with Japan and to stall the spread of anti-Japanese sentiment among Koreans and foster pro-Japanese sentiments.
During the colonial period (1910–1945), Korea went through limited kŭndaehwa as a peripheral part of the Japanese empire in its scheme of building the Great Asia Sphere. The colonial government began with the major land survey in order to assess the actual amount of land that could be taxable for the purpose of increasing the government revenue. It then launched the Rice Increase Plan in 1920, the prime objective of which was to solve the rice shortage problem in Japan. With the start of Japan’s invasion into Manchuria in 1931, Korea was called on to participate in its war efforts through industrialization focused on the development of war industry.
