Church Document Depicts Japanese Police Crackdown During Korean Colonial Period

This document has been making the rounds in the Korean media, but really it doesn’t state anything we don’t already know:

Japanese police sexually abused female Korean protesters during the occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, an old report by an American missionary group shows.

The report details incidents where Japanese police stripped, tortured and even raped Korean women who took part in the March 1 independence demonstrations in 1919.

The Korean Methodist Church in New York on Saturday revealed the 27-page report compiled by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America detailing the abuses by Japanese police based on accounts from American missionaries in Korea at the time.

Titled “The Korean Situation,” it explains the historical background that led to the protests, as well as Japan’s brutal crackdown on protesters and changes in Tokyo’s colonial policies after the demonstrations.

The Korean Methodist Church in New York was established in 1921 and served as the U.S. support base for Korea’s independence movement. It discovered the report in its archive while going through old documents to prepare for a book to mark its 100-year history.

The report contains statistics on the brutal crackdown. It shows that 631 Koreans died from March 1 to July 20, 1919 as well as nine Japanese, mostly police. Some 28,934 Koreans were arrested — 5,156 jailed and 9,078 released after being whipped.

“Among the tortures and brutalities dwelt on by writers and especially emphasized by the American press were those dealing with young women and school girls who were stripped and examined, tortured and maltreated,” it says. “No charge is made of rape under these conditions.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

The article opens about the Japanese police raping Korean women, but according to the quote from the document it said no charge is made of rape so I don’t know what is true.  However, the fact that Japanese police were generally pretty brutal against protesters is nothing new.  I recommend everyone read this article about the March 1st Movement that provides a more balanced account of what happened.