In 1894-5 Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War. With that victory the Japanese had hoped that Korea, a territory that had been giving tribute to China for centuries, would fall under it's control. It didn't, because Imperial Russia had military and economic interests in Korea that it was willing to go to war to defend. So, in 1904-1905, Japan and Russia went to war, partly over the question of who would be the dominant power in Korea. To the shock of almost everyone except the Japanese, Russia was defeated, and in the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the war and which won American president Theodore Roosevelt the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in sponsoring and hammering out the treaty, Japan was recognized as having control over Korea, though no one asked the Koreans about it.
The Japanese “control” of Korea fell a little short of outright conquest, however, and by 1910, the Japanese had managed to put themselves in an economic, political and military position that made Korea an occupied Japanese colony.
Korea from 1910-WWII
As we've said before on this channel, we've got nothing against the Japanese people or government of today, or since 1945, but it's important to know that there are parts of Japanese history that are downplayed or even completely ignored in Japanese textbooks, and that's not right. The United States government has played a role in this too, as you know from watching our other videos. After WWII, the USA, while dominating Japan, was still wary of alienating its people, for it needed Japan as an outpost against the Soviet Union and Communist China in Asia, and so the history of the Japanese occupation of Korea is little known outside of the Korean peninsula and China.
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Sources:
Blakemore, Erin. "How Japan Took Control of Korea." HISTORY. Last modified February 28, 2018. [ Ссылка ].
Kang, Hildi. Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910–1945. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013.
"Korea in World War II." WW2DB. Accessed April 19, 2023. [ Ссылка ].
"Korea Under Japanese Rule." Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed April 19, 2023. [ Ссылка ].
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