러일전쟁과 평안도의 사회경제상

Abstract

The Russo-Japanese War resulted from the slogan “National Unity” in Japan during the imperialist period of the greatest awareness of “patriotism.” Although the Korean Peninsula was not included in the Japanese war mobilization system, it became the object of collective and organized military mobilization and exploitation based on the treaties and provisional military rule during wartime. In this regard, this research focuses on how the Japanese military gained the areas around the Korean Peninsula in order to invade Manchuria, and, furthermore, on how Japan placed restrictions on social life and the local economy in Pyeongan Province, which had to play the role of a future colonial town, and the meanings and influences of these restrictions, and does not focus on the military situation during the Russo-Japanese War. The Pyeongan Province region concentrated in Pyeongyang was the central zone for overland warfare during the Russo -Japanese War. During that period, the Pyeongan Province area underwent constant doubled shocks in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War of ten years earlier. The Russo-Japanese War in Pyeongan Province came to a real end at the Yalu River battle in May, 1904. But from that time until the end of the war, every matter in the region was decided by Japanese Imperialism, because the region performed roles as advanced bases for Japanese troops to invade the Chinese mainland. Japan continued the forceful mobilization of human and physical resources used for substitute soldiers drafted. As stated in various reports at that time, the areas from which refugees had fled remained empty, which could almost be considered a massive exodus. The miserable lifestyles of some local residents who remained there were too appalling to be seen. If some workers barely drafted into battle were found to have committed a petty theft and their friends or local residents turned a blind eye, they were punished by being beheaded, shot, or receiving lashes for the violation of “military rule” and the crime of “not reporting bad deeds.” With prices surging and military currency in widespread circulation, local residents experienced unprecedented, devastating lives. The regions were restricted in currency stocks more so than anywhere else in the nation. In addition, building colonial urban infrastructure in Pyeongyang and Jinnampo and reorganizing the order of a particular region through the “Daedong River Project,” mindful of Japanese immigrants, was another factor that ruined the lives of those people. In the process, peasants were deprived of farmland and urban residents of housing space. And fishermen were reduced to fishing workers, having been deprived of their fishing rights and even fishing grounds by Japanese fishermen.