KOREAN PENINSULA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1943, Page 4

KOREAN PENINSULA

LIFE UNDER JAPANESE RULE RESISTANCE BY PEOPLE A BITTER STRUGGLE Korea, the re-establishment of whose independence has been included in the Allied war aims, has stubbornly resisted attempts at subordination since it was brought under virtual Japanese rule after the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. The country was formally annexed in 1910, but before that war decided Korea’s present status both Imperial China and Japan were striving for domination there. Japanese armies over-ran the'kingdom in 1592, but after their withdrawal six years later it reverted to internal independence under a vague Chinese overlordship, which lasted to the end of the 19th century. Japan imposed a treaty of commerce on Korea in 1876, completely ignoring Chinese suzerainty and beginning a period of diplomatic intrigue which culminated in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895. Russia afterward secured her great naval base at Port Arthur and reasserted her influence at the Korean Court, manoeuvres which were the direct cause of the unsuccessful war with Japan.

VIOLENCE OF POLICY

Since then Japan's one object has been to stamp out Korea’s separate national existence and the violence of the conflict has been evident in the arrest of 250,000 Koreans annually for political offences. Koreans are excluded from the administration and business life and are recruited for the hardest labour in Japan. While there they have no rights of any kind, are herded together like cattle and their women and children degraded. Less than 140 miles from the main islands of Japan Korea, with its 25,000,000 people of supposed Mongol origin, is a natural base for any operations against Japan. The bitterness of the struggle against the Japanese has prepared the Koreans for co-operation with the Allies and, in fact, many of them are already fighting with the Chinese. ACTIVITY OF COMMUNISTS' From about the turn of the century there existed in Korea a party which favoured a more modern form of State with a strong nationalist tendency. The .effect of the Russian and Chinese revolutions was to give hope to the revolutionaries and actually (resulted in the formation of a provisional Government in the French Concession at Shanghai after the last war and in a similar movement in Hawaii. Since the Russian revolution Korean Communists have worked in co-operation with Japanese Communists, hoping for the eventual establishment of a Korean Republic. Geographically, Korea (also known as Chosen, “the land of morning calm”) is a mountainous, heavilytimbered peninsula stretching southward from Manchuria for about 600

miles. The territory also includes about 200 islands, the majority of which are inhabited. Since 1937 the Japanese have worked extensively the rich mineral deposits available, but the country is mainly .agricultural, producing grain, cotton and fruit as the main crops. Iron is found in abundance, and rich copper ore and silver are common. The capital is the inland city of Seoul, with a population of over 300,000, .and there are other large towns in the warm and fertile southern provinces.