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Japan's Annexation of Korea and the Colonial Land Survey

1910–1926 · East & Southeast Asia

Displacement Territory Seized

Displaced

600,000

Displacement was gradual and is measured by emigration rather than by any register: Korean migration to Manchuria and to Japan rose sharply after the land survey of 1912-18, and by the mid-1920s several hundred thousand Koreans were living in Manchuria and well over 100,000 in Japan, with the numbers continuing to grow through the 1930s. Britannica records that dispossessed cultivators either took to slash-and-burn farming in the hills or emigrated to Manchuria and Japan in search of work, and that the Korean communities in those places descend from them. The evidence is the colonial Government-General's own statistics and Japanese and Chinese immigration records.

Share of the population affected

3.8%

of the population of Korea at the time of the Japanese annexation, 1910

Killed

500–7,500

direct killing

Territory

220,847 km²

The whole of Korea, about 220,000 square kilometres, was annexed and administered by a Government-General under military rule until 1919. The land-survey ordinance required registration of holdings and voided the rights of those who failed to register or whose title was customary or communal; village and clan lands were expropriated as no individual could claim them, and much of the confiscated land was sold cheaply to Japanese buyers and to the Oriental Development Company.

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What happened

Japan established a protectorate over Korea in 1905 and annexed it by the treaty of 22 August 1910, abolishing the Korean state and governing through a Government-General under a military governor. Between 1912 and 1918 a cadastral survey required all landholders to register title; customary, communal and clan holdings, and those of cultivators who did not or could not register, were voided, and Britannica records that many farmers were thereby deprived of their land, much of which was sold cheaply to Japanese purchasers. The dispossessed moved to marginal hill cultivation or emigrated to Manchuria and to industrial Japan, forming the communities from which the present Korean populations of those places descend. The March First Movement of 1919 was suppressed with several thousand deaths and mass arrests, after which Japan replaced military rule with a nominally civil 'cultural policy'. Rice was exported to Japan in growing quantities through the 1920s while Korean per capita consumption fell.

Parties

Japan annexed Korea by treaty in August 1910 and its Government-General carried out a cadastral land survey that transferred large areas to the state, to the Oriental Development Company and to Japanese settlers, displacing Korean cultivators

Disputed

The legal validity of the 1910 treaty is disputed between South Korea, which regards it as void because it was imposed under duress, and Japan, which has maintained that it was validly concluded and was rendered null by the 1965 normalisation treaty; the extent of land actually confiscated by the survey is debated among economic historians.

The denominator

The Government-General's household registration counted about 13.1 million in 1910, but registration was incomplete and the figure rose to 17.3 million by 1920 largely through better enumeration; demographers therefore put Korea's actual population in 1910 at roughly 16-17 million. The colonial cadastral survey of 1910-18 registered land titles in ways that transferred large holdings to the state and to the Oriental Development Company.

Where the baseline comes from

Korea under Japanese rule — Wikipediaopen-edited
Japan–Korea Treaty of 1910 — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

Annexation and the land survey were not directly lethal. The principal identified death toll of the period is the suppression of the March First Movement of 1919: Japanese official figures gave about 550 deaths, while Korean nationalist sources give roughly 7,500 killed, 16,000 wounded and 46,000 arrested. The gap between the two is a longstanding dispute over the counting of casualties in a nationwide series of demonstrations.

Documented forms of violence

DenationalizationDestruction of PropertyCultural Destruction

The abolition of Korean statehood and nationality, the voiding of customary land title and the suppression of the Korean language and press in the colonial period are documented in the Government-General's own ordinances and statistics, summarised by Britannica and Columbia's Asia for Educators.

Movements mapped

Dispossessed Korean cultivators -> labour migration to Osaka and industrial Japan
Northern Korea -> settlement in Manchuria (Jiandao)

Countries touched, on present-day borders

South Korea, Japan, North Korea, China