(524) Foreigners

By Andrei Lankov

As every resident of Seoul knows only too well, the Korean capital is becoming a multinational, multiethnic city. For decades, a foreign face on a Seoul street would attract much attention, but this is not the case anymore.

However, this is not really an unprecedented phenomenon. In the first few decades of the 20th century, Seoul was an ethnically diverse place, with Koreans constituting sometimes less than 75 percent of its population.

It was the Japanese, citizens of the imperial country, who made the second largest ethnic group in colonial Seoul. The first Japanese settlers arrived in Seoul around 1884 when the Japanese diplomatic mission began to operate.

The numbers were small at first. In 1885 there were merely 19 Japanese households in Seoul, with 71 male and 18 female residents. They settled down around the Japanese mission which was located on the slopes of Mt. Namsan.

This area centered around Myeongdong district (known under the Japanese name of Honmachi throughout the colonial days) remained the major center of the Japanese community until 1945.

In 1900, the number of Japanese increased to 2,107. This was a sign of things to come. Compared to the 1900 level, the Japanese population of Seoul increased nearly four times by 1905 and almost 20 times by 1910 when the city had 38,217 Japanese residents.

In a sense, the city growth in the early 1900s was driven largely by the arrival of Japanese immigrants.

The current Korean historical mythology maintains that most Japanese were greedy officials or brutal policemen or perhaps predatory merchants.

Well, such people were present, of course, but most of the migrants consisted of the Japanese poor. Due to the shortage of skilled labor, a good craftsman or worker could make better money in Korea than in Japan, while the cost of living was lower. This made immigration attractive for many.

The net result was a semi-Japanization of the Korean capital which reached its highest point around 1935 when ethnic Japanese formed 27.3 percent of the Seoul population.

Their share dropped later, because around 1935 the wartime demands led to explosive economic growth which created a number of jobs and thus attracted an unprecedented number of Korean migrants from the countryside.

Colonial-era Seoul had a clear territorial distinction between the Japanese and Korean quarters. The Japanese inhabited ``Namchon'' or ``Southern Village,'' that is areas to the south of the Cheonggye Stream, while Koreans lived in the northern part of the city.

The second largest group was the Chinese whose numbers reached the 100,000 level nationwide. Their migration began in the 1880s. For the most part, Chinese were unskilled manual workers who came to find employment at construction sites and farms.

Some of the Chinese were businessmen as well, but, contrary to the common perception, few Chinese ran food stalls or restaurants in colonial times.

The restaurant business became their major occupation much later, when in the 1960s the discrimination laws drove Chinese from regular businesses.

In the colonial era, more affluent Chinese made money in foreign trade: Chinese merchants played a major role in economic exchanges with China. They dominated the economy of Incheon, through which this trade was conducted. The less fortunate ran small grocery shops.

In Seoul, there were 1,828 Chinese in 1910 (0.7 percent of the city population). By 1935, their numbers increased to 6,899 (1.6 percent), but still remained fairly low. Most Chinese preferred to reside in Incheon or in the countryside, close to the vegetable farms and construction sites where they were employed.

Unlike them, Westerners lived largely in Seoul. In 1930, there were merely 454 citizens of European and American states residing in Seoul. Those Westerners overwhelmingly were Christian missionaries, teachers and educators of all kinds.

A handful of Western businessmen were also present, but in general Japanese were not happy about other nations' competition, so Western business interests were limited.

From the mid-1930s when Japan's relations with the U.S. began to deteriorate, many Western missionaries and businessmen were driven away, so by 1935 the number of Western residents went down slightly, to 407 people, and in the early 1940s most of those people were gone as well.

A specific group of Western residents of Seoul were the ``White Russians,'' remnants of the anti-communist forces which lost the Russian civil war of 1917-22. Many of them fled to Korea in the early 1920s, but soon moved out, to China, Europe or the Americas.

A hundred or so stayed in Seoul or around, doing assorted work, ranging from baking quality pastries to producing home-made cosmetics.

But all these groups were gone by the late 1940s. The Japanese were expelled by the fiercely nationalistic Syngman Rhee regime, the Chinese usually left themselves, and Westerners moved to safety, fleeing Korean civil strife. So, when the foreign community began to grow again after 1953, it consisted of new people.

Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea,'' which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.