The Effects of Japanese Colonialism to Korea Essay

The Effects of Japanese Colonialism to Korea - Essay Example Korea is a country with a long history of foreign invasions. The most recent invasion of Korea was unwanted annexation of Korea to Japan in 1910. The Japanese were in control of Korea between 1910 and 1945, and during this time the Japanese colonization was so brutal that most of Korean thinks Japan as an eternal enemy who only gave negative effects to Korea. Most of Koreans have a tendency to think that Japan is always bad because there are unforgivable conducts in history. Koreans are objective on the theory that Japanese colonialism effected positively on Korea's modern development, furthermore, majority even argues that the effect of Japanese colonialism is just obstacle on Korea's growth; " The nationalist point of view, well represented in Korea, is that there's no such thing as a good colonial legacy, and therefore the contribution of Japanese imperialism to growth was really minus zero. There are anything good or useful deriving from imperialism as incidental to ruthless pursuit of Japanese interests" (Cumings, 1997, pp. 34). According to Cumings, he agrees that it is hard to argue that Japan developed Korea without placing Koreans' feelings against Japanese cruel colonialism, but it needs 'long-term view' (Cumings, 1997, pp.34). However, Koreans shouldn't deny the fact that Japanese colonialism introduced "modernization", and effectively brought Korea into the global economy. This can be a challenge to the reputation and the evaluation of colonialism in modern globalization that it effects just negatively. The annexation of Japan in Korea was cruel and hostile like others, but it is unique because it actually effected positively in Korea's modern globalization unlike others. 1. What is colonialism 2. How was Japanese colonialism system in Korea 3. What are some positive effects of Japanese colonialism in Korea Colonialism The definition of colonialism from dictionary is "The practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth" (http://eedic.naver.com). And colonialism was one of the systems in history of globalization. The history of globalization dates back to colonial and even ancient time periods; when strategic and monetary aims were first being seen from an intercontinental perspective and were usually achieved to increase the power and wealth of the state: "The essential feature of the new economic system was the monopolization of land. This by itself was sufficiently important to shape the social and political relationships of the colonial civilization, since in a predominately agricultural economy one's livelihood depends almost entirely upon access to land," (Griffin, pp. 79). In other words, relatively early in the history of civilization, more powerful groups saw it as advantageous to exploit the land a nd labor of their neighbors for their own betterment. Cecil Rhodes, in the 1890s, summarized the notion almost perfectly: "We must find new lands, from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies,"