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Postwar Shanghai Korean Community’s Awareness of Collaboration for Japan during the War - With Focus on the Contributions in the Shanghai Korean Newspaper Daehan Ilbo -

  • The Review of Korean History
  • 2014, (115), pp.335-380
  • Publisher : The Historical Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Kim Kwang Jae 1

1국사편찬위원회

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Liberation on August 15, 1945 was certainly dramatic to Korean community in Shanghai, but at the same time, it was very abrupt and embarrassing. After Yun Bong-gil’s patriotic deed at the Hongkou Park in 1932, the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai was chased by Japanese imperialism and left Shanghai, and most of the Koreans in Shanghai were under the control of Japanese power. Particularly, at the time of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941, they were taken into, and mobilized for, “Korea and Japan Are One” and “Subjecting to Japan” movements, and after the Liberation, they could not be free from the criticism of their being collaborators of Japan. Right after the Liberation, in the Shanghai overseas Korean newspaper Daehan Ilbo, the outcry to punish the treachery was high. First, a person named “Underground” raised the settlement theory that “Hangan” i.e. Korean collaborators for Japan should be punished. As opposed to this, in another overseas Korean newspaper in Shanghai Korean community, Sinhan Ilbo, there appeared so-called tolerance theory that “intellectual benign policy” should be given to the collaborators for Japan. Against these settlement and tolerance controversies, a person named Nam Jeong-ho asserted a kind of “reality theory” that goes beyond the settlement theory and the tolerance theory. Considering various difficult situations that Shanghai Korean community faced, he emphasized that the livelihood protection of Shanghai overseas Koreans should take precedence over any further controversies about the punishment of the collaborators for JapanAfterwards, what became of the controversies? The controversies appear to have ended without continuing any further. Against the backdrop of the abrupt cessation of the controversies, there appears to have been arbitration and mediation of the Korean Provisional Government or the overseas Korean organizations. The key figures of the Korean Provisional Government who had come to Shanghai on November 5 were about to return home on November 23. It seems that the Korean Provisional Government also appears to have turned around to realistic position, realizing that it is not easy to punish Korean collaborators for Japan in Shanghai, a foreign territory, by continuing the controversies any further. They appear to have judged that it is more urgent to resolve the realistic problems of Shanghai overseas Koreans who lost their economic base and were in difficulties in a foreign land.

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