Caricaturing “traitors”: Communal reactions to indigenous collaboration in Japanese-occupied Korea

Abstract

Under foreign rule, indigenous collaborators pose a serious challenge that betrays the trust and faith of their compatriots with whom they have long shared experiences. This being the case, the question arises concerning how the occupied define “betrayal” and execute their sense of morality and justice against those considered as switching allegiance from being their fellow nationals to being considered as outsiders. For this analysis, I investigate the practice of the Korean news media under Japanese colonial rule, developing the concept of verbal caricature. I find that the indigenous media create outrageous verbal images of collaborators: (1) sinners, (2) pawns, and (3) criminals. By exploring the media's social justice under political constraint, this project contributes to the accumulation of knowledge on the unique practices of deviance-making, prompting a dialog between the two isolated research realms – social deviance and foreign occupation.