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I am aware that North Korea did not exist as a state under Japanese rule but the entire region was under Japanese rule anyways and the region of North Korea was heavily industrialized during the colonial period. In any case, who were/are the better rulers, the Kim dynasty or the Japanese?
I'd say Japan in the long run. Once the war was over, had Japan been allowed to continue as an imperial power I imagine conditions in their colonies would have improved far beyond those now afforded by the current NK regime. We'd probably be better off today had we worked out an agreement with Japan and then turned them loose on the Chinese, Koreans and Russians.
I am aware that North Korea did not exist as a state under Japanese rule but the entire region was under Japanese rule anyways and the region of North Korea was heavily industrialized during the colonial period. In any case, who were/are the better rulers, the Kim dynasty or the Japanese?
Millions starved during the japanese occupations of Korea, Vietnam, China, and the Phillipines. Women were simply taqking and forced to be sex slaves. Then there was the rape of Nanking and the experiments on human beings. Sorry Japan was every bit as sadistic as Nazi Germany.
Millions starved during the japanese occupations of Korea, Vietnam, China, and the Phillipines. Women were simply taqking and forced to be sex slaves. Then there was the rape of Nanking and the experiments on human beings. Sorry Japan was every bit as sadistic as Nazi Germany.
You don't think some of that has been hyped just a bit? Living under Mao and Stalin was no picnic. Who even knows what's going on now in NK?
You don't think some of that has been hyped just a bit? Living under Mao and Stalin was no picnic. Who even knows what's going on now in NK?
How does one "hype" millions of deaths. For North Korea to practice genocide on that scale for that period of time they would have a negative population.
I would say that what is now North Korea was better off overall as a colony of Imperial Japan than as a state run by the Kim Family for the following reasons.
1. Longevity
I do not have actual stats right now with me, but I've read sources that indicate that the modernization implemented by Japanese rule in Korea following the 1910 annexation lengthened the lifespans of Koreans of that era. This was due to modern sanitation, better medical care, and improved instruction. This of course has to do with more available food. As we all know, communist states were notorious for rationing foodstuffs, and the famines North Korea has seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union (and Soviet aid ended even before the USSR went out of existence) have killed millions of civilians and contributed to stunted growth by a generation.
2. Quality of life
Before I "insult" any pro-Korean city-data members (let alone any posters of Korean ethnicity), I wish to clarify that I am very aware that the 36-year rule of Korea by Japan brought about very deep wounds which I won't detail here - I'm assuming that if you're reading, that you have at the very least a cursory grasp of what happened in Korea during the 1910-1945 period.
Having said that, while it is true that Koreans were discriminated against, often bullied, humiliated in public, sometimes arrested and tortured, killed, and that many were forcibly mobilized by the Japanese military during World War II for factory labor, frontline action, and sexual slavery, I say it is ALSO true that Koreans were not living every day in and out in abject and utter terror and fear.
Korean civilians of that time knew that theirs wasn't the happiest lot, but they also knew that if they stuck by the rules, obeyed the laws (yes, many of them unfair and imposed by their Japanese colonial overlords), and didn't step out of line, they could have a "normal" life - work, get married, have an income, raise kids.
Now the same is technically true in North Korea. But whereas Japanese authorities had strict rules (rules which were not always monolithic during the occupation) regarding what Koreans could and couldn't do, North Korea's Workers' Party has imposed a totalitarian system whose penalties are far worse. Let's remember that as horrible as it was to be arrested by the Japanese Kempeitai Police and to be tortured by them, that the Japanese in Korea never opened, maintained, and ran prison camps. I would venture that at least some of you are not even aware that Kim Il-Sung (North Korea's founder) devised an elaborate prison camp system which his son and grandson have perpetuated. These prison camps can be seen through Google Earth and according to testimonials by the few who have escaped them and even some who were guards within them, they are the most hellishly cruel and inhumane prisons since Auschwitz and Stalin's gulags.
I'm not taking anything away from the brutality of the Japanese, which surviving American, British, and Australian POWs remember less than fondly. I'm not excusing nor defending the racism and unfairness that often characterized Japanese colonial policies. But as bad as the Japanese often were in Korea, the North Korean system of today is even worse for a few reasons:
- it proclaims itself as a righteous, nationalistic Korean-system-for-Korean-people government while it deliberately spends what little money it has on nukes while allowing its populace to go hungry
- it employes the most shocking methods of torture on suspected (yes, suspected) as well as "proven" traitors - AND THEIR EXTENDED FAMILIES
- it barely provides even the most basic of services: food
Now, Koreans in northern Korea didn't exactly feast on gigantic platters of sushi, sake, and wear silk and fur; they didn't live in mansions, and they didn't drive the cars that Japanese nobility did. But there is no known history of prison camps the way North Korea has become famous for today.
But after having read the testimonials of several North Korean defectors, I conclude that as harsh and unfair, as brutal and unkind as the Japanese imperialists were, life in colonial Korea was less oppressive than it is in today's North Korea.
It should be noted that NK wasn't always as bad as it is now. For a while, in the 1950's and perhaps even a bit later, NK's economy was comparable to that of South Korea. And until 1990's, it was decent middle-income country, not unlike many others in the Communist Block at that time. Starvation was almost unknown.
Reforms in China in the 1980's and the collapse of the Soviet Union were absolutely disastrous for NK. Not only did the subsidies end, but the supply chains got completely disrupted. NK was left without any trading partners nor anything useful that it could export to the developed world. At that point NK really did become the "Hermit Kingdom".
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