The immiseration of the Korean farmer during the Japanese colonial period

Abstract

Focusing on the late 1920s to the mid-1930s, this paper determines and analyses the societal conditions and structures leading to the immiseration of Korean farmers during the colonial period. Specifically, these were the deterioration of aspects of traditional society, indebtedness, and interest rates. These led to wide-scale smallholder bankruptcies, resulting in their transformation into landless tenants, and ultimately resulting in a bifurcation into the "haves" and the "have-nots" in the Korean countryside.

Physicality in Postcolonialism: Tensions at the Asian Rural Institute

“…This is particularly significant because places and land itself are part of individual and collective identities (McCue-Enser, 2020;Na'puti, 2019). Japanese colonizers used space strategically not only for resources but also to control people (Nam, 2018). Lei Song (2021), for example, detailed how prison functioned towards these ends: "the panopticon surveillance [of Japanese guards] embedded in the Chiayi Prison [in Taiwan] served as a tool of physical oppression and mental domination" (p. 10).…”