In 1910, Japan took control over Korea by military and political force. Then, in 1945, Korea was arbitrarily divided by the Soviet Union and the United States into North and South Korea. The Soviets impeded all United Nations efforts to hold elections and reunite the country under one government. Korea has been struggling for independence and reunification ever since. In this memoir, Won Tai Sohn recollects the unusually harsh Japanese treatment of Korean people in Korea, Manchuria, China and Japan, and remembers his close relationship with North Korean president Kim Il Sung from their boyhood to President Kim's sudden death in 1994. According to Dr. Sohn, President Kim devoted his entire life to the liberation of Korea, starting with fighting against the Japanese stationed in North Korea and China. He became the first premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea when it was established in 1948, and led his nation in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. In 1993, President Kim's nuclear program and defense policy became a great concern for the United States when intelligence analysis estimated that North Korea was less than two years away from being able to strike South Korea and Japan with nuclear missiles. President Kim died two months after talks with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter about ending North Korea's nuclear program.
This book is a study of how the theories and actual practices of a Pan-Asian empire were produced during Japan’s war, 1931–1945. As Japan invaded China and conducted a full-scale war against the United States in the late 1930s and early 1940s, several versions of a Pan-Asian empire were presented by Japanese intellectuals, in order to maximize wartime collaboration and mobilization in China and the colonies. A broad group of social scientists – including Rōyama Masamichi, Kada Tetsuji, Ezawa Jōji, Takata Yasuma, and Shinmei Masamichi – presented highly politicized visions of a new Asia characterized by a newly shared Asian identity. Critically examining how Japanese social scientists contrived the logic of a Japan-led East Asian community, Part I of this book demonstrates the violent nature of imperial knowledge production which buttresses colonial developmentalism. In Part II, the book also explores questions around the (re)making of colonial Korea as part of Japan’s regional empire, generating theoretical and realistic tensions between resistance and collaboration. Japan’s Pan-Asian Empire provides original theoretical perspectives on the construction of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural empire. It will appeal to students and scholars of modern Japanese history, colonial and postcolonial studies, as well as Korean studies.
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