Koreans across the Sea: Migration of Laborers to the Metropole, 1910–1937

Abstract

This paper is concerned with Korean farmers who were transformed into laborers during the Korean colonial period and migrated to Japan to enhance their living conditions. The author’s research adopts a regional scale to its investigation in which the emergence of Osaka as a global city attracted Koreans seeking economic betterment. The paper shows that, despite an initial claim to permit the free mobility of Koreans, the Japanese empire came to control this mobility depending on political, social, and economic circumstances of Japan and Korea. For Koreans, notwithstanding poverty being a primary trigger for the abandonment of their homes, the paper argues that their migration was facilitated by chain migration and they saw Japan as a resolution to their economic hardships in the process of capital accumulation by the empire.