韓國人의 渡日狀況과 日本에서의 生活實態 : 解放前을 中心으로 Pre-Liberation Period = Koreans' Migration to Japa nand Their Life in Japan

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

At present there are more than 600,000 Koreans residing in Japan. They are leading a hard life, facing various problems such as racial discrimination derived from Japanese prejudices, assimilation problems of a minority racial group among the majority Japanese, a unique problematic socio-economic status, and problems involving nationalities. The hard life of Koreans' in Japan can be traced back to the period of Japanese rule,
Studying the Koreans who went to Japan before 1945, the present paper will examine the actual conditions of the Korean passage to Japan and its historical background, Korean life in Japan and their problems in assimilating themselves into the Japanese life situation. The study is mainly helped by the existent literature in and outside Korea, and the author's observations and listening to other opinions made the study possible.
1. The Actual Conditions of Korean Emigration to Japan and Its Historical Background
About of 35,000 Koreans went to Japan before 1920, attracting no special attention. However, a vigorous passage of Koreans to Japan began around 1920.
Korean emigration to Japan was temporarily checked by the travel certificate system in the beginning of the 1920s. However, shortly afterwards, during the same period a total of about 350,000 Koreans were successful in getting to Japan
During the years of 1930-1938, the number of Koreans who went to Japan reached a tremendous 460,000.
There were several periodic factors which encouraged so many Koreans to go to Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. One is the "land investigation project" conducted from 1905 to 1918; another was the increasing number of Japanese land owners inside Korea; and the third factor was the falling price of rice caused by the "rice production multiplication plan." These three factors mainlyc aused aggravation to those Koreans in the rural areas. In other words, these factors produce dan increasing number of wandering farmers, tenant-farmers and farmers finding their way to Japan crossing the sea.
The period between 1939 and 1945 witnessed the outbreaks of the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, in the wake of which most Japanese laborers were mobilized to the front lines, creating a personnel shortage filled up by Korean laborers. During the seven-year period a total of 820,000 Koreans were drafted to Japan and the number of other Koreans who went across the sea to Japan amounted to 410,000. However, about 160,000 Koreans returned home before the American invasion and during the bombing of Japan, and the rest of them(1,060,000 were left in Japan) stayed in Japan. The seven-year period sent around 58.2 percent of all Koreans to Japan, a significant period.
Those Koreans commandeered in this period were put into work-places with poor working conditionssuch as in coal-mines, factories, and military construction. At the time of Korean liberation from Japan a total of 2,100,000 Koreans were
residing in Japan.
2. Actual Conditions of the Life of Korean Residents in Japan
(1) Regional distribution of Koreans in Japan
Throughout the period of Japanese rule over Korea, most Koreans lived in the west of Kansai district, particulary converging in in the big cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, and coal mining areas in Kyushu. However, a considerable part of the Korean emigrants lived in the eastern part of Japan, particularly in Tokyo, Nagoya districts and Hokkaido. Most of the Koreans who came to Japan were from four provinces in the southern tip of Korea.
(2) Occupation
Before the outbreak of World War Ⅱ, most of the Koreans living in Japan worked as manual laborers in civil enginnering and construction, coal-mining and in factories. In addition, some of them served as manual laborers for removing excrement, collecting rags or as house servants. These Koreans were virtually factory work forces ready for employment.
The general characteristics we can find among these Korean workers in Japan were low wages, longer work hours and "dirty" overwork. Several factors are responsible for these labor conditions. Most of them were from farming villages in Korea and they had little work experience at factories. Furthermore, they had little education, so it was hard for them to understand Japanese. Moreover, one of the most important reasons for their poor condition was "because they are Koreans."
(3) Patterns of Residence
The then-existing residence patterns of Korean residents in Japan could be described as "dirtiness and densely populated segregation," which were due to Koreans' economic poverty, cultural similarity, the housing shortage and convergence of relatives and persons from the same home land. The patterns of Korean residence in terms of concentration can be divided into two categories: that is, one for the Koreans who lived together with Japanese in their slum districts and the other for the Koreans who only formed a new slum.
The Koreans, for the most part, were living in rented houses or rented rooms. Therefore, their patterns of living were irregular, types of houses and hygienic facilities were the worst among the bad houses.
(4) Family Structure
The Koreans who went to Japan until the middle of the 1920swere seasonal laborers whose purpose of going to Japan was only to make money for short time, but, on the contrary, from the latter part of the 1920s to the year 1939 the patterns were turned into settlement and family-accompanied migration.
(5) Crime
The criminal acts of Korean residents in Japan were issues of serious concern in Japan since before the second World War because of the higher frequency of criminal acts in proportion to Koreans' rate in the population and for their violent acts. However, two phenomena must be pointed out. In the first place, the criminal acts of Koreans were those produced by circumstances, such as larceny, gamb1ing, injury, etc. In other words, admitting the high rate of their occurrence, those criminal acts resulted from the indigent standards of living.
Therefofe, all Koreans do not have an inborn nature of committing crimes. In the second place, we should ponder the fact that Koreans are generally regarded as people who committed crimes more highly than Japanese. The Japanese scholar Takashi suggests a clear, unguestionable conclusion ahout this question. When we discuss the high rate of Koreans' committing crimes, he said, we do not take into consideration the discrepancy of the qualitative composition of population between the two nations. of committing crimes When we take various factors of qualitative structures such as age, sex, occupation, etc., we will surely find that there is no difference in Japan between Koreans and Japanese.
3. Korean Problems as Residents in Japan and the Problems of Their Assimilation
The Korean residents in Japan during this period were a minority racial group who could not be assimilated with Japanese, showing a parallel line. This relation between the two nations was visibly expressed by the Japanese massacre of Koreans in the time of the "Great Kanto Earthquake," positive resistence toward Japanese by Korean intellectuals in and outside Japan and in the work boycott by Korean laborers in Japan. This disagreement between the two nations can be explained by several factors: mutual distrust deeply rooted in them, cultural heterogeneity, the low class or lowly evaluated jobs occupied by Koreans in Japan, Koreans' increasing hatred toward Japanese by Korean nationalism, the inconsistency of the Japanese policy of assimilation and the lack of Japanese generosity, the poor life of Korean residents in Japan, and finally the fact that Korean laborers were in competition with Japanese counterparts.
However the fundamental cause was Japanese racial prejudice toward Koreans and racial discrimination. And these two factors repulsed Koreans' feelins toward them.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 序言
• Ⅱ. 韓國人渡航의 始源과 進展
• Ⅲ. 韓國人渡航의 背最
• Ⅳ. 戰時韓國人渡日과 炭鑛勞動
• Ⅴ. 在日韓國人의 生活實態(職業, 住居, 家族構成, 犯罪)
• Ⅵ. 同化의 問題와 在日韓國人
• Ⅶ. 結語