Forced Mobilization in Late Colonial Korea: Self-Mobilizing Labor in the Colonial Imagination

Reparations to Koreans forcibly mobilized for the war effort by the Japanese during World War II remain a thorny issue between the two countries. This tragic history that affected the lives of millions of Koreans is the singular focus of nationalist narratives that condemn the Japanese occupation (1910-1945). The forced labor mobilization began with the implementation of the National Mobilization Law in 1939 and took place in several stages that gradually increased the level of coercion. Without question, this forced mobilization was one of the most brutal chapters of the Japanese colonial period. However, the phenomenon contains many layers of complexity that resist efforts to categorize historical actors into simplistic binaries of the colonizers and the colonized. For techniques of labor mobilization during the Japanese colonial period did not always rely on force. Colonial subjects were encouraged to volunteer their labor as part of an overall effort to negotiate and navigate themselves through a complex colonial grid of power relationships. This paper will examine the phenomenon of "self-mobilization" in the colonial imagination under Japanese occupation. The forced mobilization of Korean labor took place as the Japanese transformed the nature of the relationship between colonized subjects and the colonial state. Through an examination of labor mobilization during the Japanese occupation, we may discover an example of mass dictatorships in a colonial guise and view the emergence of a powerful mobilization regime that would be embraced by the postliberation Korean developmental state.