Colonial period While the term has taken on a meaning of "[national] traitor", only a minority of the early collaborators were opportunists. Most of the high officials working with the Japanese in the beginning believed they were doing what was in the best interests of their country as it struggled to adapt to modernity. The collaborators were one of a number of factions that existed at that time. They were distinguished by concerns with modernizing Korea along a pattern set by another country (e.g. a Russian faction, Chinese faction, American faction, and so on). This term was not coined until 1966 by scholar Im Chongguk (1929–1989).
Treatment of collaborators following independence In the immediate liberation of Korea, American General
Douglas MacArthur initially requested that the Japanese colonial authorities and their Korean trainees continue to run Korea until natives could be trained to replace them. Korean outrage did lead to the former being purged, but many of the latter collaborators were able to hold onto their positions. Similar to the United States's incomplete
denazification of Germany and
reverse course in Japan, the
United States Military Government of Korea believed these right-wing collaborator officials were useful in light of the nascent
Cold War and the deteriorating situation among political factions in the
Korean Peninsula. The
Special Committee for Prosecution of Anti-National Offenders () was set up in 1948 to prosecute the collaborators. It handled 682 cases; 559 cases were handed over to a special prosecutor's office, which handed down indictments in 221 cases. A special tribunal tried 38 cases, and sentenced persons convicted as guilty in 12 cases. One person was sentenced to death. Eighteen others had their civil rights suspended, six others were declared innocent, and the remaining two were found guilty but were exempted from punishment. The Supreme Court suspended the execution in March 1950, just before the
Korean War. The dictator at that time,
Syngman Rhee, sabotaged and dissolved the
banmin teugwi. Under
Rhee's regime and in subsequent governments before the
Sixth Republic, many of the former collaborators enjoyed the same wealth and power they had under Japanese rule. Rhee employed many former collaborators in government and
military in order to combat
North Korea and communist sympathizers in South Korea. The next of South Korea's prominent dictators,
Park Chung Hee, had been a collaborator, serving was himself a collaborator who served in the Imperial Japanese military system. During the
Cold War, collaborators were seen as a somewhat taboo subject given that many authorities were at one time collaborators themselves, and thus criticism of collaborators could be seen as questioning the legitimacy of the regime. Similar pressure to silence was also applied to some collaborator literary figures. An early study into collaborators was done by "maverick scholar" Im Chongguk (1929–1989), whose 1966 work ''Ch'inil Munhak-ron'' (친일문학
론 Treatise on Pro-Japanese Literature) broke the silence on the subject matter. Although it was obscure in its day and didn't have a wide readership, a smattering of articles on the subject appeared in the late 1970s and by the 1980s, Im took his quarter-century's worth of study on the subject and began to publish more systemic works about collaborators in general, not just literary studies. Chongguk's personal zeal about honestly examining darker pages from national history were not very popular in his day, but by the 1990s, his legacy had strengthened and the topic became more accepted by the South Korean public. However, the old stigma still persisted to some extent in academia, as established mainstream scholars were seemingly "reluctant to dabble in such an irrelevant and 'humiliating' subject" as collaborators, and much of the interest and writing on the topic came from junior scholars and nonacademics such as independent researchers, literary critics, and journalists. defines "pro-Japanese and anti-national actions" () as follows. :article 2 :Under this act, "pro-Japanese and anti-national actions" means any of the following actions committed between the outbreak of the
Russo-Japanese War that began the deprivation of Korean sovereignty by the Japanese imperialism, and August 15, 1945. ::1. Any act to attack or order to attack the military forces fighting against the Japanese imperialism to keep sovereign power. ::3. Any act to kill, execute, harass, or arrest the persons or their families participating in the independent movement or anti-Japanese movement, and an act to instruct or order those violences thereto. ::6. Any act to agree, join, or conspire in the treaties that interfered with the sovereign power, including the
Eulsa Treaty,
Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, and others. ::8. Any act of participating in the
National Diet of the Japanese Empire as a member of the
House of Peers or
House of Representatives. ::9. Any act of participating as vice chairman, adviser, or member of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the Choson Government-General. ::10. Any act of participation in the invasion war (
World War II) as an officer of the Japanese imperial armed forces above the rank of lieutenant. ::14. Any act to manufacture military supplies for the Japanese imperial armed forces, or donate money and goods to them above the amount determined by Presidential Decree. The law is concerned about the independence movement, unlike the ex-Nazi prosecution which concentrated on war crimes. Most remarkable are items 8 and 9. Being a law-maker during that time qualifies one as a "pro-Japanese and anti-national Collaborator" regardless of what one did as a law-maker.
Developments On August 29, 2005, a civic organization, the
Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities disclosed a list of 3094 Korean collaborator suspects including
Park Chung Hee, the former Korean president,
Kim Seong-su, a former publisher of
The Dong-A Ilbo and the founder of
Korea University, and , a former president of
The Chosun Ilbo. On December 6, 2006, a South Korean presidential commission, the
Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators' Property revealed the first official collaborators list of 106 persons during 1904 to
March First Movement in 1919 was including four of the
Five Eulsa Traitors. On August 18, 2006, the commission started the investigation before seizing the property obtained by collaborators during Japanese colonization. On May 2, 2007, the South Korean government announced its plan to seize assets gained by pro-Japanese collaborators during Japanese colonial rule, amounting 3.6 billion won (US$3.9 million, €2.8 million) worth of land from the descendants of nine pro-Japanese collaborators. On August 13, 2007, the commission decided to confiscate about 1 million square meters of land valued at 25.7 billion won that is now owned by the descendants of another ten pro-Japanese collaborators. On September 17, 2007, the commission revealed the second list of 202 collaborators focused on pro-Japanese figures between 1919 and 1937. The list includes
Song Byeong-jun who sent letters to the Japanese government asking for a merger;
Lee Ji-yong, who is one of the Five Eulsa Traitors;
Lee Doo-hwang, who participated in the murder of
Empress Myeongseong in 1895 and later became a governor of the
North Jeolla Province; novelist
Yi In-jik, the author of
Hyeoleuinu (Tears of Blood);
Yoo Hak-ju, a council member of the
Iljinhoe;
Bae Jeong-ja, foster daughter of the first
Resident-General of Korea who spied on Korean independence activists and recruited
comfort women; and
Park Je-bin, who formed a tribute group to pay condolences at Ito's funeral in 1926. On the same day, the Seoul administrative court rejected a lawsuit against the commission to erase the names of the son and grandson of
Daewon-gun (father of
Gojong of the Korean Empire) from the list, who allegedly attended the signing of the
Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty as representatives of the royal family. The official list during the most controversial period (1937–1945) that may contain persons who played important roles in South Korean development after the independence and enlisted in the 2005 list of the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities had not been revealed as of September 2007. Since the enactment of the
Special Law on the Inspection of Collaboration with Japanese Imperialism in 2004 and the
special law to redeem pro-Japanese collaborators' property in 2005, the committee has made a list of 452 pro-Japanese collaborators and examined the land of 109 among them. The total size of the land is estimated at 13.1 million square meters, worth almost 100 billion won. The confiscated properties will be appropriated, with priority, to reward Koreans who contributed to the independence of Korea from Japan. ==See also==