Clearly the Japanese didn’t go far enough with the Total Empire thing with Korea. They should have made the Koreans...
Clearly the Japanese didn’t go far enough with the Total Empire thing with Korea. They should have made the Koreans (subordinate) partners in Manchuria, even with making everything be in Japanese. There were enough Chinese in Manchuria that they could have used the top 30% of Korean men as administrators, leaving Korea for the Japanese and completely overtaken Korea itself culturally.
What I’m saying is the Japanese administration of Korea set up to serve their geopolitical purposes did leverage extensive comprador networks, and the Korean state the United States subsequently set up to serve their geopolitical purposes often employed the exact same structures and personnel.
Which was not the only force claiming authority over the Korean nation in the wake of WWII! There was a whole war over this! We only bombed Korea back to the Stone Age enough for this force to attain hegemony over half of it! (As basically a military dictatorship until the late 80s!)
But more particularly its path of development under that regime was “focus on development through tightly interwoven conglomerates and gangsterish labor pools as a bulwark against communism, then advance through heavy industry, electronics, and automobile manufacturing on your way to pre-packaged popular entertainment with heartthrob ‘idols’ with angular, dyed hair”
And at some point I have to assume someone was like “um”.