Korean Economy Research Paper

How much did Japan change the Korean Economy between 1930 and 1940?

Hanna LaPointe

IB History HL

Mrs. Bultemeyer

January 22, 2018

Total word count: 1,972

Identification and Evaluation of Sources

In 1910, Korea was first occupied by Japan. At the time, Korea was a mainly agrarian society with no connections to the western world. However, by the time that WWII was over, Korea was the second most industrialized country in Asia, only second to Japan. This investigation will focus on the question: How much did Japan change the Korean economy between 1930 and 1940? The first source evaluated is The Japanese Role in Korea’s Economic Development was edited by Andrea Savada and William Shaw for the United States Government Publishing

Korean went from a mostly agricultural economy to one that had free markets and an economy that was becoming rapidly industrialized by the day. The reason that Japan was successful at this was in part due to the policies introduced by Kazushige Ugaki and also because Japan needed the raw materials that Korea would provide. Because Japan had industrialized and modernized Korea so much, by the time 1940 was over, Korea was the second most industrialized country in all of Asia, second only to Japan. Today, the effects of Japan’s occupation of Korea are prevalent. Korea has the 4th largest economy in Asia, 11th in the world, and leads in industries such as electronics and

For example, finding sources that were useful was hard and I had to spend hours combing through each one. A historian may come across the same problem if they are researching a niche event. I also used many resources that were written years after the event occured. I found that this was an advantage because the facts were more consistent compared to the older sources. Sources that were written during, or close to the time, that Korea was a colony can be useful because the author is using their own personal experience to write about the event. Using sources from countries that were not directly involved in this event, like the US, can be a disadvantage because they are removed from the event and can not give exact context to what happened. The value to using these sources is that there may be less bias that one that is published in Korea or Japan. I also found that researching the economic effect of the colonization of Korea was also difficult because Korea is no longer a colony of Japan. This is limiting because data stops being relevant after 1945, when Korea became its own country. Doing this investigation showed me that the job of the historian is to sift through many sources and find the ones that are the most relevant and least biased. It is much easier to do this in a country where all sources are available and not censored. This