Korea under Japanese rule

Beginning in the 1870s, Japan began to force Korea away from China's sphere of influence. In 1895, Empress Myeongseong of Korea was murdered by the Japanese under Miura Goro (Kim et al. 1976). In 1910, Korea was annexed by Japan. The Japanese occupation built Shinto shrines in Korea, replaced use of Korean with the Japanese language, and forced name-changes to Japanese names. Koreans resisted the colonization, which led to brutal police actions, political unrest, and economic exploitation. During the suppression of independence movement in 1919, 7,000 Koreans were killed by Japanese police and soldiers.

During the Pacific War (World War II), Koreans were used by Japanese to support the Japanese war effort; Koreans were conscripted into Japanese military, used as forced laborers, and as sex slaves, called "comfort women" (Cumings 1997). Although statistics are difficult to verify, around 60,000 Korean laborers in Japan are known to have died between 1939 and 1945.

Japanese occupation lasted until 1945 when it was defeated by the Allied Forces at the end of World War II. Anti-Japanese sentiment still runs strong in Korea, as a result of what Koreans see as Korean-Japanese disputes.