Historical geographies of Korea's incorporation: The rise of underdeveloped and modernized colonial port cities

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Highlights

  • Major port cities' massive transformation with Korea's incorporation process.

  • The classification of port cities into colonial city and colonial-modern city.

  • Kunsan and Mokpo as underdeveloped colonial cities.

  • Pusan and Inch’ŏn as modernized colonial cities.

Abstract

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.

Introduction

World-systems theory has expounded a particular historical geography of capitalism.1 In this narrative, Northwest Europe's colonial endeavours played a crucial role in the transition to imperial capitalism and thereafter promoted an expansion of the world-system. By establishing a sophisticated trade system, including ‘country trade within Asia’,2 and using exploitation strategies premised on physical violence, European countries in the capitalist world-system occupied major trade routes in non-European areas and strived to obtain the human and non-human resources of the peripheral regions. East Asian regions, as with other regions that turned into colonies or semi-colonies of the major core countries, had become a major target for core and semi-peripheral countries after the nineteenth century. The more colonial powers infiltrated East Asia in earnest, the quicker East Asian countries were incorporated into the new global order of the capitalist world-system.3

The entire process, characterised as a coercive expansion of the capitalist world-system and the responses of East Asia to the new global order in the longue-durée, was often called East Asia's incorporation process into the capitalist world-economy. What happened during this process? Immanuel Wallerstein argued that an external arena's incorporation process involved two fundamental structural transformations.4 One was the reorganisation of the production process. Faced with the capitalist world-economy's expansion, an external arena's economic system was reorganised to serve the globalised production networks of capitalism. The second involved a change from an ancien régime to an interstate system as society was restructured within a globalised hierarchical frame. In other words, almost all parts of pre-capitalist political structures declined and were reconstituted as part of the interstate system in response to the capitalist world-economy.

However, the most striking distinction of East Asia's incorporation process was an unprecedented degree of geographic reorganisation, largely the product of continuous pressure from the capitalist modes of production.5 This, in turn, transformed and added the incorporated areas' major port cities to the production system. I argue that the economic and political interconnections of port cities with the capitalist world-economy made them the heartland of incorporation and that they were the first to embrace the logics of capitalism.

As such, China's incorporation studies help to disclose modern China's massive geographical changes, such as the decline of interdependent inland cities connected by waterways, the simultaneous rise of independent port cities under the influence of colonial powers, and the forging of port city–hinterland relationships in connection with the capitalist world-economy.6 Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig, taking a slightly different approach, stressed the role of port cities in fostering Japan's incorporation process.7 When Commodore Perry's black ships forced Japan to open trade (1853), Japan had to open its ports, such as those of Shimoda and Hakodate. As a follow-up measure, the shogunate named Yokohama ‘Kanagawa's Yokohama’ and selected it as an open port.8 In a short period, the village of Yokohama emerged as a settlement for foreigners and a centre of international trade in Japan. Korea's incorporation into the capitalist world-system was no exception. During the incorporation process, Korea's port cities had to experience unprecedented changes. Yet, compared with the incorporation process of China and Japan, the most distinctive thing that can be confirmed in the process of Korea's incorporation was the emergence of colonial space from the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Korean port cities had been converted into colonial spaces since Japan's colonial occupation (1910). Given that Korea had to undergo Japanese colonial aggression during the process of capitalist incorporation, how should we approach colonial space in Korea? for theoretical inspiration I draw attention to the works of Anthony D. King.

Anthony D. King argued that a colonial city is where people from the mother country live together in its colonies and gain economic interests from colonial societies.9 (In a similar vein, Frantz Fanon's description of a bifurcated system of colonial city provides us with an engrossing story of exploitation).10 In addition, as a colonial city is a passageway that carries institutions, politics, the economy, and culture from the mother country into the colonies, such a city could be a space of imitation and representation of the mother country that allows colonial people to experience industrialisation or modernisation directly or indirectly.11 Furthermore, King pointed out that colonial cities and their economic, political, social, and cultural changes should be understood in the context of global capitalism since the colonial port cities internalized capitalist logics.12

As King claims, Korean cities experienced exploitation and modernisation at the same time and thus remained on the periphery in the capitalist world-economy, but Bruce Cumings asserted that they sometimes played a semi-periphery role under the Japan-led regional system.13 Under the assumption that the colonial context and logic of the capitalist world-economy are embedded in Korea's incorporation process, I distinguish two types of colonial port cities (see Fig. 1):

  • A.

    Underdeveloped colonial cities in Korea: Mokpo and Kunsan refer to newly built urban spaces under the influence of colonial power(s) which mainly served the socioeconomic advantages of the mother country. For this reason, native industries were often destroyed for the production of raw materials, foodstuffs, and cheap labour for the metropole's needs or merely used for export. Indeed, as their political and economic links with colonial powers were severed after the independence of the colonies, those cities found it difficult to take self-sustaining developmental paths and often fell into the trap of underdevelopment.

  • B.

    Modernized colonial cities in Korea: Pusan and Inch’ŏn refer to port cities remodelled under colonial rule. Although these cities' urban form and functions were changed mainly because of the pressure of Japanese colonial rule, they were not completely exploited by colonial powers. Hence, they did not fall into the trap of underdevelopment even after the end of colonial rule. They rather experienced capitalist and industrial transformation during and after colonial occupation.14

In sum, I examine Korea's incorporation process by analysing which of Korea's port cities underwent socioeconomic and cultural changes during this process. To that end, I will give a brief history of Korea's incorporation process and then present the massive changes in major port cities in Korea, categorising the cities into two types: colonial underdevelopment and colonial modernisation. In doing so, I will show how these port cities, influenced by the governing practices of Japanese colonial powers, had different developmental paths.

Section snippets

Korea's incorporation process into the capitalist world-system (1860s–1940s)

The incorporation process into the capitalist world-system has been used as a core concept in examining socioeconomic, political, cultural, and spatial changes in modern or contemporary non-European regions.15

The rise of underdeveloped colonial cities

The enquiries into Korean cities' incorporation processes below are conceptually divided into two: the rise of the underdeveloped colonial city and that of the modernized colonial city. As a theoretical approach to the former, I argue that some port cities' urban transformations had been suited for colonial exploitation, and thus, their socioeconomic changes heavily depended on Japan's colonial plans.41

Conclusion

In conclusion, I analysed two sets of ports. Kunsan and Mokpo tended to be underdeveloped, while Pusan and Inch’ŏn showed a tendency toward modernisation and industrialisation. Why did these different development pattern emerged in these two sets of ports? The neoclassical port-city model pointed out that port cities can enjoy geographical advantages in terms of the ‘convenience of exports of final products and imports of other regions’ goods.93

Acknowledgements

I will thank Pusan Museum, Gunsan Modern History Museum, Kyujanggak institute for Korean Studies, and Seoul National University Library for providing valuable archival data for this research. Plus, I point out that this work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A6A3A02065553).

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