Published on July 12, 2019.
Based on the Sankei Shimbun serial feature “Across the Strait: Tales of the Land of the Morning Calm,” this chapter introduces how Keijō developed into a modern city during the period of Japanese rule.
By examining the conditions of Hanseong before annexation, the improvement of the Japanese settlement at Chinkoge, and the emergence of bustling districts with department stores and movie theaters, it argues that the Korean Peninsula experienced a peaceful and prosperous period under Japanese administration.

July 12, 2019.
This is the true reality of the Korean Peninsula at the time of the Japan-Korea annexation.
Thanks to the fact that Japan came to govern it, the Korean Peninsula spent a peaceful and prosperous period unrelated to the Second World War.
The following is a chapter I published on May 5, 2018.
It is taken from the serial feature published on page 6 of today’s Sankei Shimbun, “Across the Strait: Tales of the Land of the Morning Calm.”
When I reluctantly appeared on the Internet carrying The Turntable of Civilization with me, the president of South Korea was Lee Myung-bak.
As a subscriber to the Asahi Shimbun who watched the news programs of its affiliated television stations and NHK, I knew that South Korea was a country that continued anti-Japanese education.
That is why I never once felt any desire to go to South Korea, and because I did not go, I knew nothing about the Korean Peninsula.
Utterly astonished by his abnormal words and actions in his later years, I investigated South Korea on the Internet for the first time and, in the space of just one hour, came to know the reality of the Korean Peninsula.
Now that reality is finally being printed in a newspaper.
That is the feeling I had when reading this article, but it is a genuine article conveying unmistakable facts, and needless to say, it is an article that every Japanese citizen must read.
Emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
Why Did Keijō Become a City of One Million?
The Japanese District That Developed from “Muddy Ground.”
Seoul, the capital of South Korea, has a population of about ten million and is the center of politics and economics, as well as the forefront of culture and information.
It is now one of the major cities not only of Asia but of the world.
Since the end of the fourteenth century, this city had been the capital of the Yi dynasty, Hanseong, for five hundred years.
During the period of Japanese rule, from 1910 to 1945, it was called “Keijō,” developed as a modern city, and its population, the Keijō-fu population, had already exceeded one million before the end of the war.
The philosopher Abe Yoshishige, 1883–1966, who later became principal of the former First Higher School, Minister of Education, and president of Gakushuin, lived there for about fifteen years as a professor at Keijō Imperial University and left many essays depicting this beautiful and glittering capital.
In “Keijō and Athens,” written in 1928, he wrote as follows.
“When I first came to Keijō, I immediately thought that it somehow resembled Athens in Greece… The view looking down over the Han River from in front of the Korean Shrine reminded me of the memory of looking out over the sea from the Acropolis…”
Abe was appointed to Keijō in 1926, more than fifteen years after the Japan-Korea annexation.
If Abe had come to this city in the late Yi dynasty or the Korean Empire era, when “premodern” customs and traditions seemed to have been enclosed as they were within the city walls, how would he have felt?
In 1905, before the Japan-Korea annexation, Katō Masanosuke, a journalist who later served as a member of the House of Peers, wrote about this city.
“Only the main streets were comparatively clean. However, when one reached the back streets of the city, the roads were eight or nine shaku wide, around two and a half meters, and there were places where vehicles and horses could not pass. The stench arising from the decay of sewage and refuse struck the nose… The buildings worth seeing within the city were no more than the two palaces of Gyeongbok and Changdeok, the Japanese barracks, and the legations of the various countries.”
From Korean Management.
It was the Japanese who took over the businesses from the Westerners who had initially handled electricity, waterworks, and streetcars in Keijō, who developed the infrastructure and social capital through several rounds of urban planning, and who transformed it into a modern metropolis.
The Land Avoided by Koreans.
At the end of the nineteenth century, when Japanese began living in this city, the first settlement was a place on the northern foot of Namsan called “Chinkoge.”
It was literally low, wet land, and when it rained, water flowed down from Namsan and turned it into mud.
It was an area where Koreans also did not live much.
The Japanese diligently improved this land, built roads, and constructed houses, shops, and public institutions.
From there, bustling districts such as Honmachi, later Chungmuro, and Meiji-machi, Myeongdong, spread outward, and the area south of Cheonggyecheon, which crosses the city, came to be distinguished as the Japanese district, while the area north of it became the Korean district.
Let us rely once again on Katō’s pen.
“The houses in the Japanese settlement include Western-style buildings and Japanese-style two-story houses. The shops are spacious and neat, and the traffic is busy… The number of Japanese settlers increases year by year… The population in April 1905 was 6,296…”
Ibid.
In the Japanese district, department stores such as Mitsukoshi, Chōjiya, and Sanchūi opened, and hotels, restaurants, cafés, and movie theaters opened one after another.
Fashionable young people called modern girls and boys flocked there, and playing in Honmachi, the central entertainment district, was called “Hon-bura,” in imitation of Tokyo and Osaka expressions such as “Gin-bura” and “Shin-bura,” meaning strolling around Ginza or Shinsaibashi.
Masaki Chiyoko, 91, whose father served as an architectural engineer for the Government-General of Korea, was born in Keijō in 1927, and after graduating from a girls’ high school, she worked at a fisheries company in the center of Keijō.
“Honmachi was a lively entertainment district that was no less than anything in the homeland. I often went shopping at department stores such as Mitsukoshi and Chōjiya. On holidays, I listened to records, and I also remember going to see the cherry blossoms at Changgyeongwon. Until the end of the war, goods were abundant, and there were no air raids. It really was a good city.”
This is the true reality of the Korean Peninsula at the time of the Japan-Korea annexation.
Thanks to the fact that Japan came to govern it, the Korean Peninsula spent a peaceful and prosperous period unrelated to the Second World War.
Today, the Korean Peninsula claims against Japan that it was colonized and that people were forcibly taken away, telling “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies.”
The reason for this is nothing more than the propaganda of the Kim family’s dictatorial state and the result and product of the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, who falsified history in order to oppose Kim Il-sung and began the totalitarianism called anti-Japanese education.
The time has long since come when not only the Japanese people but people all over the world must know this.
This article continues.