This week, the NK News Study Guide goes to the root of the Korean question, taking a look at the years of Japanese colonial rule (1905-1945). For centuries, before North and South were divided, Korea had been a unified and mostly independent country, until the late of the 1800s, when Japanese navy forced the hermit kingdom to open its ports to international trade. This was the first step towards the establishing of a protectorate over Korea in 1905 and then a full annexation in 1910, which would drastically alter the fate of Korea, hijacking its journey into modern times. The importance of forty yeas of Japanese rule, between two world wars and the rapid development of new technologies, can hardly be overestimated, as it is essential to understand what North Korea is today and why it behaves the way it does on the international scene.
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This week, the NK News Study Guide goes to the root of the Korean question, taking a look at the years of Japanese colonial rule (1905-1945). For centuries, before North and South were divided, Korea had been a unified and mostly independent country, until the late of the 1800s, when Japanese navy forced the hermit kingdom to open its ports to international trade. This was the first step towards the establishing of a protectorate over Korea in 1905 and then a full annexation in 1910, which would drastically alter the fate of Korea, hijacking its journey into modern times. The importance of forty yeas of Japanese rule, between two world wars and the rapid development of new technologies, can hardly be overestimated, as it is essential to understand what North Korea is today and why it behaves the way it does on the international scene.
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Gianluca Spezza earned his PhD in 2017 from the University of Central Lancashire under the supervision of Professor Hazel Smith, on the strength of research on the cooperation between UNICEF and the DPRK in education and childcare. Dr Spezza is an assistant professor of international relations and a senior researcher at the DPRK Strategy Center at KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan; he is writing a monograph on education, international cooperation, and human capital in North Korea (Palgrave 2021). His work on the DPRK, articles or interviews, can be found, among others, on the websites of the BBC, The Guardian, The Diplomat, IRIN News, NK News, DR.dk, Newsweek Korea, and El Confidential.
