The Aesthetics of Total Mobilisation in the Visual Culture of Late Colonial Korea

Abstract

Colonial Korea underwent a major transformation as the Japanese Empire mobilised the colonial population to aid its expansion into the Asian mainland during the Second Sino‐Japanese War (1937–45). This article examines the development of colonial print culture and the use of visual images to generate support for Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese colonisers did not undertake their wartime mobilisation alone, for Japan’s spectacular military victories encouraged prominent Korean collaborators to join in the war effort. This analysis of the visual representations from late colonial Korea provides a glimpse into the internal logic and symbolic universe of Korean collaborators and discusses the techniques of mobilisation that were deployed in a bid to achieve hegemony in colonial Korea.