In the century proceeding the Second World War the historical geography of Korea, increasingly influenced by Imperial Japan, experienced rapid change. From a macroscopic perspective, Korean port cities' unprecedented spatial changes were deeply related to Korea's incorporation process into the capitalist world-system and direct Japanese rule from 1910. This study uses two conceptual categories (the underdeveloped colonial city and the modernized colonial city) to explain the massive urban transformations of four Korean port cities. Because Korea's incorporation into the world economic system has gained relatively little attention, this paper contributes to filling this gap in the literature. Furthermore, it allows us to explore the macro geopolitical and geo-economic changes in port cities via a microscopic perspective.

在第二次世界大战前的一个世纪，朝鲜的历史地理越来越受日本帝国的影响，经历了迅速的变化。从宏观上看，韩国港口城市史无前例的空间变化与韩国从 1910 年开始融入资本主义世界体系的过程和日本的直接统治密切相关。本研究使用两个概念类别（欠发达的殖民城市和现代化的殖民城市）来分析解释四个韩国港口城市的大规模城市转型。由于韩国融入世界经济体系的关注相对较少，本文有助于填补这一文献空白。此外，它使我们能够从微观角度探索港口城市的宏观地缘政治和地缘经济变化。