Japanese Colonial Rule in Korea

Japan annexed Korea in 1910 and replaced Korean sovereignty with a colonial administration led by a governor-general. Police power, censorship and controls on political organisation were joined to land surveys, industrial development and economic systems designed around imperial priorities. Opportunities created by modern education and industry existed within an unequal structure that privileged Japanese authority.

The March First Movement of 1919 demonstrated mass opposition and helped strengthen independence activism at home and abroad. In the 1930s and during the Pacific War, the colonial state intensified assimilation policies, labour mobilisation, military recruitment and pressure to adopt Japanese names and public forms of imperial loyalty.

The Living Reed follows successive members of the Kim family through colonial repression and the independence struggle to Japan’s defeat in 1945.