재북한일본인들의 사회경제적 지위와 북한의 일본인기술자 정책(1945~1950)

Abstract

Issues regarding Japanese in Korea have not received attention compared to issues relating to Koreans in Japan. That is one reason why issues concerning Japanese in Korea have been understood as a matter of Japanese modern-contemporary history, while the issue of Koreans in Japan has been clearly treated as a national problem of Korean modern-contemporary history. However, while preparing this article, I recognized that if the problem of Japanese in Korea is left in a vacuum, it will be a mistake to skip important situations in Korean contemporary history without sufficient understanding of them. The desire of Koreans for autonomy that had been suppressed during the period of Japanese imperialism started to spurt with liberation. Koreans dominated authority by taking over organizations which Japanese had monopolized. Also, Koreans arrested and punished high-ranking Japanese government officials. North of the 38th parallel, autonomy could be realized due to the Soviet Union’s military support. In fact, the Soviet military transferred the administrative power that Japanese had exercised to the People’s Committee. Subsequently, they arrested Japanese civil service, justice, and police officials. The authorities’ actions to seize Japanese properties redoubled the hardship of Japanese. Japanese whose houses were confiscated were accommodated in poor facilities until their return to Japan. The majority of them tried to escape from North Korea to South Korea, taking risks. Although seizing Japanese properties progressed automatically according to local situations, seizures reached legal procedures with the introduction of the Land Reform Act and the Nationalization of Important Industries Act after the construction of central administrative agencies. After the liberation of Korea, Japanese had to endure difficult lives. Of course, the lives of Koreans too were in crisis, but the lives of Japanese were worse. Japanese who fell to being people of a defeated nation had their properties confiscated and they began to receive discrimination. After many Japanese had suffered, Soviet military and Korean officials changed their policies against Japanese, and simultaneously earnestly propelled their return to Japan. Immediately after liberation, Japanese technicians, laborers, and clerks were thrown out of factories now dominated by Koreans. It was expected to be difficult to manage those factories without Japanese technicians, but most Koreans argued that Koreans had to manage factories by themselves instead of entrusting management to Japanese, this as a symbol of the independence of Korea. As time passed, problems arose from managing factories. Accordingly, some people raised the opinion to re-hire Japanese technicians, but those opinions were buried under the strong narrative of “urgent business in the current circumstances is the fulfillment of the independence of Korea.” However, the suppressed realism under radicalism was achieving power slowly. With this change, the re-hiring of Japanese technicians was begun. In other aspects, even regarding Japanese technicians there were various opinions about North Korean industry construction. One side, which insisted that Japanese had to throw away narrow nationalism and have the attitude of internationalism, clearly expressed the opinion that Japanese technicians had not to save the technical support for North Korean nation-building. Meanwhile, the other side asserted reconstruction of Japan as their ultimate goal, which made their stance that support of the restoration of North Korean industry was just their means of living, and not an ultimate goal. The latter was the opinion of most Japanese technicians. Japanese were still receiving good treatment in terms of wages and rations, but they eagerly hoped to return to Japan because they felt psychological anxiety for the disconnected situation between Japan and North Korea in terms of politics. There is no doubt that North Korean’s actions of arresting and using Japanese technicians were too much. However, North Korea’s concern that Japanese technicians might reveal industrial and military secrets was also appropriate.