Seoul part 2: On being colonised
I’m on my way from the airport to Seoul. Incheon Airport is quite far from the city center: the 50 minute train ride gives me plenty of time to catch up on sleep, look around and try to adjust to my new surroundings.
I’m a bit tired, but also excited to explore. The scenery outside my train window is surprisingly varied: green hills, small cities, huge bridges. Before the train starts to make its way inland, I can even spot the sea.
Compared to the flatlands of London and Milan, the terrain here is much more hilly — something that’s very clear walking around the city of Seoul itself.
Suddenly, sound catches my attention: the train loudspeakers are announcing a stop.
Now, that’s interesting: the announcement is in 4 different languages. The recorded voice begins with a rather articulate speech in Korean, which flies right over my head. Then a much welcome shorter version in English and then, surprisingly, the announcement is repeated in Chinese and Japanese.
From what I could understand, Korean history is interwoven with those of China and Japan.
China supported the Joseon dynasty from the 16th to the 19th century, during an otherwise isolationist period for Korea.
The Japanese influence is more recent and it has a definite negative connotation. Here I should point out that I have very little knowledge of Korean history and this is my personal interpretation of what I could read and see.
The most recent interaction with Japan is the Japanese Imperial Period, which went from 1910 to 1945. Korea was annexed to the Empire of Japan and, after more than 500 years, that was the end of the Joseon period.
As it’s often the case with colonialism, the annexation treaty was a formally political act backed by military threats: it was declared void in 1965 because it had been obtained under threat of force.
Incidentally, Japan worked its way into Korea by waging wars: its victory in the first Sino-Japanese war led to Korea’s independence from China and its victory in the Russo-Japanese war removed a potential competitor from the picture.
I expected history and the Korean population to have a very negative picture of Japanese colonialism, but as it turns out things were not so black and white.
Japan contributed greatly to the modernisation of Korea and I’m sure a number of Koreans benefited from reforms and opportunities offered by the Japanese.
On the other hand, Japanese rule was often harsh — especially in the dire straits of WWII — and it came with the inevitable attempts at cultural assimilation.
My impression is that Koreans are still ambivalent about the colonial period, but all in all they have little sympathy for the Japanese.
An example of the dark side of Japanese rule in Korea was the ruthless repression of the strong independence movement that had emerged in those years.
Visiting Seodaemun Prison was where this side of Korean history first came to my attention. Under Japanese rule, the prison was used to detain activists and it was the place of many atrocities and tortures.
Walking around the buildings and reading about their grisly history was a sobering experience, as if all that suffering was still trapped in the walls.
To me, it felt similar to visiting the German concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. It displayed the same ruthless efficiency in dealing with human misery and it led to the same depressing awareness of how cruel and inhuman we can be to each other.
Japan’s influence over Korea came to a close when Japan was defeated at the end of WWII. Another dark period in Korean history loomed ahead, but we’ll look at that next time, when we’re going to talk about a not too distant war.
If you’re curious, the previous entry in my diary was on beating jet-lag.
