Colonial Rule and Social Change in Korea, 1910-1945

6. Japanese Assimilation Policy and Thought Conversion in Colonial Korea

6 Japanese Assimilation Policy and Thought Conversion in Colonial Korea Keongil KIM Introduction An early definition of thought conversion (K. chŏnhyang; J. tenkō 轉向)1 was framed through the collective studies of thought conversion in 1959. At that time, thought conversion was defined as “the change of thought as a result of power forcibly exerted.”2 This definition is too broad to indicate if thought conversion is specific to any specific time period or geographic region, for instance, Japan in the 1930s. Various types of forcible conversion, such as the Tokugawa suppression of Christianity in the seventeenth century, the purging of opponents by the Bolsheviks in the establishment of the Soviet regime, and the communist witch hunts of McCarthyism after World War II can be subsumed under this definition. However, thought conversion originated in Japan from around the 1930s to the end of World War II and was later applied to colonial Korea. Under this process, recalcitrant Koreans, whether leftists, nationalists, or Christians, had “impure” ideas winnowed out of their heads by totalitarian methods of interrogation until they were ready to confess their political “sins” in writing, and after the late 1930s they had to join local branch groups for those who had “reformed” their thoughts.3 Seen from the perspective of an individual, it had meant succumbing to physical force, such as torture, which was sanctioned by the state. The state in turn officially recognized conversion by converts who openly confessed in public, which implied that the change in their thoughts was an official statement. Modern laws are applied to the behavior of people, not to their thoughts or beliefs. In contrast, thought conversion was designed to punish not only a Japanese Assimilation Policy 207 prohibited act but also the thought underlying the act. Through open confession and official criticism of the thought or belief that motivated the act, the Japanese state sought to make its mark—largely a negative or counter one— on individual minds. This meant that individuals had to place their thoughts beyond the reach of state power. Thought conversion has generally been regarded as reflecting the peculiarities of Japan. Far beyond the narrow but generally understood meaning of thought suppression by anti-government activists, especially orthodox Marxists, Japanese thought conversion reflects the modernization strategy in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. In this respect, Tsurumi Shunsuke asserted that the term tenkō was formed in the political atmosphere of the fifteen interwar years in Japan and that the word depicted the intellectual and cultural inclinations of this period.4 This concept succinctly reveals the inherent dilemmas of modernity as pursued by the Japanese state. These dilemmas are, for instance, those of the East versus the West, of tradition versus modernity, of the self versus the other, or further, of the particular versus the universal. The case of thought conversion would typify how the Japanese state molded its own identity. It left, in turn, an indelible stigma on the Japanese national identity that has persisted even to this day. Major works on thought conversion have often explained this phenomenon in relation to traditional features of Japanese society. For instance, thought conversion was either linked to the concept of rehabilitation, which has a long tradition in Japanese society, or, as Tsurumi mentioned,5 it was contrived as a mild punishment for thought criminals since traditional village customs did not physically punish people who held eccentric beliefs. Within a broader perspective, Bellah asserts that the Japanese converts, being Japanese, tended to return to the primordial loyalties of family and nation.6 This peculiarity was also reflected in studies of thought conversion after World War II. According to these studies a sense of frustration, indignation, shame, or feeblemindedness was followed by the act of thought conversion. Thought conversion meant discarding and negating one’s cherished beliefs or ideologies, which implied one betraying one’s loyalty to a committed group. Thought conversion in this context was, in principle, considered to be undesirable, and converts deserved to be blamed. What would happen, however , if the so-called betrayers were to become the majority within a society? Keongil Kim 208 This phenomenon partially explains why mainstream Japanese scholars after World War II hardly reproached the wartime converts,7 in sharp contrast to the case of Korea, where the convert was criticized as much as those who imposed the thought conversion. Since conversion, for example, was understood as the transformation of collective ideology...