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World War II veterans who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor by imperial Japanese forces salute on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in the naval port in Hawaii, in October 2003, in this file photo. / AP-Yonhap |
 By Choi Deok-kyoo
Scholars of South Korea, Japan and the United States held an international symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii, from April 23 to 24, to bring new light to Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The Northeast Asian History Foundation of South Korea and University of Hawaii's School of Pacific and Asian Studies co-organized the event under the title ``Personalities and Politics in Japan's Annexation of Korea.''
The symposium drew attention as the participants reached a consensus that the annexation issue should be illuminated from a global perspective. They acknowledged that research on the topic has so far been made only in the context of the history of two nations ― Korea and Japan.
They also shared a view that it is necessary to expand the horizons of the studies. In the case where the annexation is seen only as matter of the two Asian countries, this may justify the former imperial power's colonization of Korea. At the time of annexation, Japan was a country that had become powerful since the Meiji Restoration, while Korea was a small, weak nation.
To repudiate such a justification, Korean scholars re-evaluated King Gojong, the last monarch of the Joseon Kingdom, as a ruler who sought to modernize the nation. They stressed that the kingdom, once called the ``Korean Empire,'' was an independent state.
The scholars succeeded in revealing that Japan coerced Korea to sign two treaties that led to the colonization of the latter, pointing out that they were illegal. By using threats and intimidation, the island nation concluded the Japan-Korea Protocol in 1905 and the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty in 1910.
Considering that we now live in an era of globalization, it is high time for us to develop a new method of research to help not only Koreans but also people around the world to recognize the illegal aspects of the treaties.
This method should be objective and go beyond the existing paradigm of research. As such, it is necessary to take a new approach to dealing with the annexation issue from a global perspective by breaking out of the narrow boundaries of individual states or the regional framework of Northeast Asia.
We are now living in a global village where we can look at things and grasp phenomena through images sent by communication satellites. Thus, a ``global history'' approach will be one of the most efficient research methods to enable people the world over to acknowledge the illegality of Japan's annexation of Korea.
During the imperialist era, Japan was a strong nation that occupied and ruled its neighbors in Northeast Asia. But Japan's power could still not match that of the United States and European countries. Besides, Japan was usually subject to intervention and containment by the Western powers which collaborated in blocking the Asian empire's expansion.
Russia, France and Germany entered into an agreement in 1895 in which they intervened in forcing Japan to return Liaodong Peninsula to China. In the end, Japan yielded to the triple intervention and gave up the peninsular, which was ceded to Tokyo following the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War. The second triple intervention came in 1908 when Germany, the U.S. and China tried to keep Japan in check after its victory in a war with Russia.
Especially, the U.S. administration of then-President William Howard Taft, which was installed in March 1909, adopted a strong containment policy toward Japan. It appointed H. Wilson, who harbored anti-Japanese sentiment, as deputy secretary of state, to effectively put the brakes on Japan's territorial ambitions.
As a result, Japan's pace of march toward China had to be slowed due to interventions and restraints by the U.S. and other Western countries. In particular, America's open door policy and its efforts to help China preserve its territories were found effective to contain Japan.
These U.S. moves ran counter to Japan's ambition to make inroads into China after the imperialist island nation made Korea and south Manchuria its colonies in the wake of its win in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.
In the end, Japan was forced to make a choice: to give up its vested interests in Korea and south Manchuria, or strengthen its foothold in the region to advance further into China. Regrettably, Japan chose the belligerent course that paved the way for a war against the U.S. instead of taking the road to peace.
For the buildup of its naval force, Japan began work to expand its port facilities in Jinhae, southern Korea, in February 1910, six months before its annexation of the peninsula. Japan also struck a secret deal with Russia in July that year, under which the former acknowledged the latter's sway over Mongolia in exchange for Korea. Japan did all these things to choose war over peace.
After participating in the two-day symposium, I visited USS Arizona Memorial, the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors killed on the U.S. warship during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by Japanese forces.
Upon leaving the memorial site, it struck me that Japan's imperialism and militarism started with the annexation of Korea and ended up in a war with America.
Choi Deok-kyoo is a researcher at the Northeast Asian History Foundation (www.historyfoundation.or.kr) in Seoul. He specialized in modern Korea-Russia foreign relations. He is specially interested in global history.
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