The Postcard
A postally unused Excelsior Series postcard of N.Y., Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin. The card was published on behalf of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The card was produced in Germany.
In the space for the stamp it states:
"Postage: United States
and Island Possessions,
Cuba, Canada & Mexico
One Cent.
For All Other Countries
Two Cents."
Itinerant vendors in Korea in the early part of the 20th. century generally used to transport their wares on large wooden frames carried on their back.
The man's burden of live poultry would have been heavy.
The Korean Gat
The man in the photograph is wearing the traditional Korean gat (Korean: Hunminjeongeum 갓)
A gat is a traditional hat worn by men along with hanbok (Korean traditional clothing) during the Joseon period. It is made from bamboo or horsehair with a bamboo frame, and is partly transparent.
Most gats are cylindrical in shape with a wide brim on a bamboo frame. Before the late 19th. century, only noble class men could wear gat, which represented their social status and protected their topknots.
Robert Neff of the Korean Times has written the following about Korean male headware:
'One of the most important articles of clothing for Koreans in the late 19th. century was the hat. The elderly man with his majestic black horse hair hat, often seen in pictures, is the iconic image of Korean male society during the Joseon Dynasty (1392 - 1910).
According to Percival Lowell, an American who stayed in Seoul in the winter of 1883-84:
"No Korean can in decency appear
without it [hat], except only to make
room for some other hat."
It was a sign of manhood, "the most essential of attributes," and a badge of one's position in Korean society.
Lowell seemed amused with the difference between Korean and American culture. In the United States it was considered poor manners to wear a hat indoors, and one would rarely remove one's shoes, but the opposite was true in Korea:
"A man would part with any or all of
his clothing sooner than take off his
hat. On entering a house, he leaves
his shoes outside to await his return,
but he and his hat go in together.
As he sits down to eat, he divests
himself of his outer garments that he
may eat with greater freedom, but his
hat stays on; and so it sticks to him
through life ― a permanent black halo."
There were many types of hats. The iconic hat, the gat, was made from horse hair and bamboo and was black and somewhat transparent.
It had a fairly wide brim that in the past, according to popular legend, was much wider as a means of preventing unrest. Because of its wide brim, conspirators were kept apart, and were unable to whisper their plans to one another.
There was also a large mourning hat made from bamboo. It was designed to hide the face of mourners from others they might encounter on the streets. It was considered a grievous breach of etiquette to look into the face of the mourner.
Early French missionaries used the mourning hat to disguise themselves as they traveled the Korean peninsula before the 1880's. They were able to move about in relative secrecy for no one would attempt to communicate with a mourner.
Court officials' hats had slightly bent-forward ear-shaped horizontal wings. It was said they symbolized the wearer's attentiveness and willingness to "catch every word of command that the King may utter."
As Korea entered the 20th. century, there were many reforms forced on the population. Some were readily accepted and appreciated, but others, especially those that dealt with hair styles and hats, were vehemently opposed.
"A man is much more firmly bound to
his hat than he is attached to his wife.
He may put away the latter; without
the hat, life becomes a hollow mockery,
for the hat makes the man. Without it
he remains forever a boy."
Hats remained a part of male culture throughout the first half of the 20th. century, but have since disappeared. The only exceptions are those worn by elderly males in the Jongno area, or the bright colorful caps that young teens and adults wear while out with their friends. The "permanent black halo" is no more.'
How Japan Took Control of Korea
Erin Blakemore has written the following for history.com in 2018, and updated it in 2023:
In 1910, Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan after years of war, intimidation and political machinations; the country would be considered a part of Japan until 1945. In order to establish control over its new protectorate, the Empire of Japan waged an all-out war on Korean culture.
Schools and universities forbade speaking Korean, and emphasized manual labor and loyalty to the Emperor. Public places adopted Japanese, too, and an edict to make films in Japanese soon followed.
Topographical and other postcards of Korea were published with descriptions in Japanese text.
It also became a crime to teach history from non-approved texts, and authorities burned over 200,000 Korean historical documents, essentially wiping out the historical memory of Korea.
During the occupation, Japan took over Korea’s labor and land. Nearly 100,000 Japanese families settled in Korea with the land they had been given; they chopped down trees by the million and planted non-native species, transforming a familiar landscape into something many Koreans didn’t recognize.
Nearly 725,000 Korean workers were made to work in Japan and its other colonies, and as World War II loomed, Japan forced hundreds of thousands of Korean women into life as “comfort women”—sexual slaves who served in military brothels.
Korea’s people weren’t the only thing that was plundered during Japan’s colonization—its cultural symbols were considered fair game, too. One of the most powerful symbols of Korean sovereignty and independence was its royal palace, Gyeongbokgung, which was built in Seoul in 1395 by the mighty Joseon dynasty.
Soon after assuming power, the Japanese colonial government tore down over a third of the complex’s historic buildings, and the remaining structures were turned into tourist attractions for Japanese visitors.
As historian Heejung Kang notes, the imperial government also attempted to preserve treasures of Korean art history and culture—but then used them to uphold imperial Japan’s image of itself as a civilizing and modern force.
This view of Korea as backward and primitive compared to Japan made it into textbooks, museums and even Koreans’ own perceptions of themselves.
The occupation government also worked to assimilate Koreans with the help of language, religion and education. Shinto shrines originally intended for Japanese families became places of forced worship.
Historian Donald N. Clark explains:
"The colonial government made Koreans
worship the gods of imperial Japan,
including dead emperors and the spirits
of war heroes who had helped them
conquer Korea earlier in the century.”
This forced worship was viewed as an act of cultural genocide by many Koreans, but for the colonists, it was seen as evidence that Koreans and Japanese were a single, unified people.
Though some families got around the Shinto edict by simply visiting the shrines and not praying there, others grudgingly adopted the new religious practices out of fear.
By the end of its occupation of Korea, Japan had even waged war on people’s family names. At first, the colonial government made it illegal for people to adopt Japanese-style names, ostensibly to prevent confusion in family registries.
But in 1939, the government made changing names an official policy. Under the law, Korean families were “graciously allowed” to choose Japanese surnames.
At least 84 percent of all Koreans took on the names since people who lacked Japanese names were not recognized by the colonial bureaucracy, and were shut out of everything from mail delivery to ration cards. Historian Hildi Kang writes:
“The whole point was for the government
to be able to say that the people had
changed their names ‘voluntarily.’”
The Plundering of Korea by Japan
(a) Historic Korean Artifacts
Koreans accuse the Japanese of plundering hundreds of thousands of ancient Korean artifacts, mostly during their 36-year occupation of the peninsula. Most Japanese consider the issue a dead one, resolved by the 1965 Japan-Korea Treaty, which led to the return of some 1,400 items.
However the treaty was not definitive, as it neglected artifacts in Japanese private collections, as well as those originating in North Korea.
The size of the haul is astounding. Eighty percent of all Korean Buddhist paintings are believed to be in Japan. And, says Seoul art historian Kwon Cheeyun:
"35,000 Korean art objects and
30,000 rare books have been
confirmed to be there, too."
However that is only the tip of the iceberg: vastly more is believed to be hidden away in private collections.
Determining legal ownership is far more difficult than with the art looted by the Nazis. Toshiyuki Kono, a law professor at Kyushu University. states:
"It's almost impossible to trace the
provenance of centuries-old artifacts."
Besides, the Japanese annexation was internationally recognized in 1910, meaning that relocating Korean artifacts within "Japanese territory" was lawful at the time.
To Korea's annoyance, Japan holds many items of particular value. More than 1,000 bronze, gold and celadon pieces owned by the late businessman Takenosuke Ogura now make up the core of the Tokyo National Museum's Korean section.
A lot of precious Korean artifacts are now owned by private Japanese citizens or organizations, which means that the Japanese government can’t just acquire them and hand them back to Korea. So, unless the Korean government offers to actually spend millions of dollars to buy back the artifacts, it is unlikely they will ever be returned.
As well as removing cultural artifacts to Japan, the Japanese also burned countless Korean government buildings and palaces.
(b) Natural Resources
The Japanese also removed vast amounts of Korea's natural resources, including lumber, rice, coal, iron ore and many other minerals.
The land itself was also appropriated by the Japanese; by 1910 an estimated 8% of all arable land in Korea had come under Japanese control. This ratio increased steadily, and by 1932, the ratio of Japanese land ownership had grown to 53%.
Japanese landlords included both individuals and corporations. Many former Korean landowners became tenant farmers, having lost their entitlements almost overnight because they could not pay for the land reclamation and irrigation improvements forced upon them. As often occurred in Japan itself, tenants had to pay over half their crop in rent.
