The Traumatic Twentieth Century of Korea: Japanese Imperialism, the Korean War, and the Korean Military Governments

Abstract

The chapter aims to deliver the modern history of Korea from a new perspective, concentrating on Koreans’ traumatic experiences in the twentieth century. First, it explains Japanese imperialism’s cultural policies, which attempted to obliterate the Korean ethnicity, and its massive industrialization of Korea, which purported to use the peninsula as a military supply base to invade other countries in Asia. Second, it elucidates that, before and during the Korean War, Koreans extremely suffered from a series of massacres by the S. and N. Korean governments and the U.S. Armed Forces. Last, it explains how the Korean military governments controlled and oppressed S. Koreans with the politics of terror and anxiety—Syngman Rhee’s enactment of the National Security Law against communism, Park Chung-hee’s establishment of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), and Chun Doo-hwan’s special forces to attack anti-government activists and special camps to brainwash them with torture-like training programs.