By Andrei Lankov
In the period 1910-1935 few posts in the Japanese government could rival that of the governor general of Korea in their significance. This post was often seen as the second most important in the empire, and a stepping stone to becoming prime minister. Within Korea, the governor general had nearly unlimited power, virtually ruling as a quasi-monarch.
In the years 1910-1945 a new governor general was appointed 10 times, but twice the position was taken by a person who had been governor general earlier. Thus, throughout the colonial period, eight Japanese dignitaries served as governor generals of Joseon (as Korea was officially known in those days).
All of them were either Army generals or Navy admirals. The average tenure of a governor general lasted four and half years. Actually, it varied from the 12 years of Saito Makoto (1919-1927 and 1929-1931) to the single year of Abe Nobuyuki (1944-1945).
The first governor general was Terauchi Masatake; he first arranged the annexation in 1910 and then assumed the newly established position of governor general. His appointment testified how important this post was within the power structure of the Japanese empire.
In 1910 General Terauchi was one of the heavyweights of Japanese politics. He served as minister for the Army during the Russo-Japanese War, and was widely seen as the architect of Japan's spectacular victory in this important conflict. He left Korea to become Japan's prime minister in 1916 (and to die soon afterwards).
Terauchi is not popular in Korea these days _ to put it very mildly. Indeed, his rule was the time of heavy repression of Korea's national identity and police terror. Hasegawa Yoshimichi continued the ``government by sword." Being ``merely" a field marshal without much political ambition, he followed his predecessor's policy. It did not end well; in March 1919 Korea was in open rebellion. The rebellion was suppressed brutally, but reforms were needed.
The reforms were executed by Admiral Saito Makoto, the longest serving governor general. He arrived in Korea in August 1919, barely escaping an assassination attempt by a Korean patriot who greeted him at the Seoul railway station with a bomb. However, the two terms of his rule (1919-1927 and 1929-1931) constituted a period of considerable relaxation.
The Korean press was harassed by censorship, but not banned completely, and the most notorious forms of the colonial rule _ like corporal punishment _ were curtailed.
Like Terauchi, Saito Makoto left Korea to become a new prime minister of Japan in 1932. In this capacity he unwillingly presided over Japan's slide into the mindless militarism of the late 1930s _ a direction he did not approve. In 1936 he was killed by young militarists who believed that he was not aggressive enough (in all probability they were correct in this assumption).
In 1927 Saito was replaced by General Ugaki Kazushige, the former minister for war and future minister of foreign affairs. Ugaki's first tenure was short, from April to December 1927, but in 1931 he replaced Saito once again.
Like Saito, Ugaki can be described as a moderate militarist, and in Korea Ugaki generally followed Saito's line. However, Ugaki's second tenure (1931-1936) was also marked a period when Japanese economic policy in Korea underwent a dramatic transformation.
Until the early 1930s, Korea was a place to squeeze raw materials and agricultural products from. In the early 1930s it came to be seen as a forward base for the future invasion of China, and Japanese companies were encouraged to invest in the heavy industries of the colony, as well as to recruit Korean workers as semi-skilled labor.
The next Governor General Minami Jiro (1936-1942) proved to be very different from his moderate predecessors. He was a militant nationalist, and before his appointment to Korea Minami had served as the commander of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
In this capacity Minami had been responsible for the Japanese annexation of this Chinese region. Eventually he played a major role in the Pacific War. This landed him at Tokyo Tribunal, where he was condemned to life imprisonment as a war criminal. In Korea, Minami rolled back the liberal reforms of the 1920s, outlawed the Korean language press, and forced Koreans to replace their names with Japanese ones.
Minami was replaced in 1942 by General Koiso Kuniaki whose biography mirrored that of Minami himself. Koiso also was a former Kwantung Army commander, and in 1948 he also received a life sentence as a war criminal. After the end of his tenure in Korea in 1944 he briefly served as prime minister. His policy in Korea was what we should expect from a convicted war criminal.
The last governor general was General Abe Nobuyuki (1944-1945). Unlike his predecessors, he did not move to become prime minister, since by the time of his appointment he had already occupied this position, albeit briefly (for a mere three-month period in 1939). It was Abe Nobuyuki who on Sept. 9, 1945, signed the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea. Japanese rule came to end, leaving behind a large and very controversial heritage.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.