-
Minority Success, Assimilation, and Idenity in Prewar Japan: Pak Chungǔm and the Korean Middle Class
- The Journal of Japanese Studies
- Society for Japanese Studies
- Volume 34, Number 1, Winter 2008
- pp. 33-68
- 10.1353/jjs.2008.0025
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
During the 1930s, an entrepreneurial class began to form within the overwhelmingly working-class Korean minority community in prewar Japan. This article examines how certain Koreans attained socioeconomic success and how they became assimilated into Japanese society in the process. As a case study, it focuses on the career of prewar Japan's most successful Korean en-trepreneur-turned-politician, Pak Chungŭm, to reveal how the internalization of Japanese values that came with success disconnected such individuals from the vast majority of Koreans residing in Japan, while offering them only a problematic sense of identification with the Japanese.