조선인의 만주 이주 정책과 ‘대륙신부’

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the colonial authority’s policy for the immigration of Koreans to Manchuria. The Korean immigration policy by the colonial authority was discussed in the early and mid-1930s and started in full scale after the Sino-Japanese War, but this policy failed to consider an independent and consistent immigration policy regarding Korean women. The gender role structure of the Korean agricultural society was directly passed on to Manchuria, and the colonial authority made women invisible in the political discourse while mobilizing Korean women within the rhetoric of ‘adaptability of Korean settlers’. However, when young male settlers in Manchuria faced a marriage crisis, the colonial authority mobilized women in the name of ‘continental brides’ for the success of its ‘exploitation of Manchuria.’ The Korean continental bride policy was unsystematic compared to the policy for Japanese people because it was a stopgap measure. For this reason, the story of the Korean continental brides is still in the invisible domain in the modern history of Korean women. Nonetheless, women were actually mobilized as the continental brides, and the colonial authority tried to pursue the ‘national interest’ of ‘expanding the empire’ by intervening in the immigration of Korean women to Manchuria. Female settlers in Manchuria, including the continental brides, were forced to play the feminine role of ‘comforting and working people’ between the political circumstance of war mobilization and the primitive goal of survival.