By Andrei Lankov

The colonial period in Korean history was a time of great transformation which was both dramatic and traumatic. It was an era when the vast majority of Koreans came into contact with modernity for the first time. They began to ride trains, read newspapers, listen to radio broadcasts and attend schools where they studied math and physics (not Classical Chinese and the works of ancient Confucian sages, as was the case for centuries). Amongst other things, the colonial period was a time of intense urbanization.

The urban population constituted some 13.2 percent of the population in 1944. This does not appear particularly large, but some 30 years earlier, in 1915, this percentage was merely 2.8 percent, so the growth was quite considerable.

It’s remarkable that most of this urban growth took place after 1935. Indeed, in the decade between 1935 and 1945, the share of urban population nearly doubled while the population of Seoul increased some 250 percent.

The old city of Seoul (officially known as Hanseong) was a relatively small walled settlement. For centuries its population fluctuated near the 150,000 mark. In 1915, the population of Seoul was 240,000.

In 1910, Korea was absorbed into the Japanese Empire, soon afterwards, in 1911, the Japanese launched administrative reform which reduced the city area to 36 square kilometers. The city of Seoul (or Keijo/Gyeongseong, as was its new official Japanese/Korean name) was located on the northern bank of the Han River. Around 1930 it began to grow rapidly.

The Japanese strategists saw Korean Peninsula as the ideal industrial base for the future expansion of their empire into China. Unlike a majority of colonial overlords worldwide, they invested huge amounts of capital into Korean industry and infrastructure. Most of this new investment was in what is now North Korea, but this money had to be managed from Seoul, so Seoul had to grow. Therefore, the population of Seoul increased from 340,000 in 1925 to 440,000 in 1935 to 989,000 in 1944.

Most of the new residents of late colonial Seoul were the sons and daughters of subsistence farmers who came to Seoul looking for job opportunities. They were poorly paid but worked hard. Some of them eventually were successful.

For instance, a young boy who stole 80 won from his father (back then the equivalent to three to four months’ income of a skilled worker) used the job as a delivery biker and porter to launch his career in Seoul. In due time he was the richest man in Korea and one of the key players in the world automotive and ship building industries (we are talking Chung Ju-yung, the founder of the Hyundai group).

Such capitalist fairy tales were rare, of course. We should not forget that most residents of Seoul worked hard just to have their daily bread (more often, rice). Nonetheless, life in Seoul gave newcomers many chances that they would not have in their native villages.

New arrivals included a large number of Japanese settlers. In the present popular imagination, the Japanese settlers of the colonial era are often remembered as brutal policemen or ruthless officials. Such types were not in short supply, but a majority of the influx was composed of economic migrants _ fisherman, farmers and semi-skilled workers. They were attracted to Korea by the manifold job opportunities available for a Japanese speaker and stories about the privileged and relatively easy lifestyle a Japanese person could have in this ‘newly-found’ land.

The colonial system was indeed sometimes quite similar to apartheid but the interactions between Japanese and Korean residents was more frequent and less strictly regulated than many Koreans tend to believe nowadays.

In Seoul, for most of the colonial era, Japanese settlers constituted around 25 percent (26 percent in 1915 and 28 percent in 1935 to be exact) of the population.

The growth of the city led to the 1936 reforms of its administrative structure. The Keijo/Gyeongseong area was dramatically enlarged to include 136 square kilometers.

As a result of these reforms, the city, for the first time in its history, crossed the Han River. At the time, Yeouido and the adjacent area of Yeongdeungpo became part of the city proper. The newly constructed tram line connected these new areas with the urban core. At the time, Yeouido was a large, low lying, sandy island subject to frequent flooding in summer and hence with a very small permanent population. To the people of Keijo/Gyeongseong it was known as above all, the place where the city air field was located.

Little is left of the colonial Keijo. The explosive economic growth of the 1960-90 period virtually wiped out this city, and the lifestyle of the Korean capital is very different from what it used to be. But the grandchildren of those subsistence farmers who came here in the 1920s are the people who inhabit Seoul nowadays.

Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.