The case concerning demolition of the Japanese General Government Building in Seoul, South Korea, from the Japanese colonialism has been discussed since Korea’s liberation in 1945, but the building had been used for many functions during that time frame. This building was finally demolished during the period 1995 to 1997, despite the national and international protestations. This research analysed newspaper articles to study the conflict between pro-demolition and pro-conservation groups in the newspapers to see how, and why the conflict proceeded. Korean newspaper archives were used to search four newspapers from the time period of 1991 to 1998, using the keyword ‘Japanese General Government Building’. The collected data was analysed with qualitative methodology to understand the conflicts in the newspapers. This analysis revealed three reasons put forward by the pro-conservation, Memorial and Educational Value, Art and Use Value, and Economic Value and, two reasons of pro-demolition, the Memorial Obstacle and Socio-cultural obstacle. Most reasons for both groups were classic arguments relating to other difficult heritage buildings, however, two different reasons are pertinent to this particular case: First, the government did not present any practical reasons to destroy the building. Second, Feng-Shui was presented as one of the main reasons for destroying the building. This socio-cultural element has been a fundamental and strong belief system in Korea.

This thesis discusses the emergence of anti-Japanese resistance movements based on mission schools in Seoul and Pyongyang established by American Northern Presbyterian missionaries in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Korea. It examines how Korean elites from the schools, despite Japanese surveillance, took part in national independence activities by orchestrating diverse systematic anti-Japanese organizations at home and abroad. It is also explored how educational missionaries influenced the formation and development of Koreans’ national consciousness and anticolonial activism, thereby unveiling missionary attitudes toward Korean independence and the Japanese colonial regime. This thesis broadly explores three key issues. Firstly, this research demonstrates the subtle interplay between mission education and socio-political dimensions of Korea in the imperialist milieu of East Asia. This issue pays particular attention to hegemonic contest between American missionaries and Japanese colonialists over mission schools, emerged in the imperialist landscape of Western powers. This study traces how the unique but mutually incompatible projects of evangelization and colonization pursued by missionaries and colonialists respectively encountered in a site of mission education. It is also important to note the clash between American democratic ideas and Japanese values, each in their own way trying to civilize the Koreans. Secondly, this study illuminates the connection between Koreans’ expectation of mission education amidst foreign imperialist threats to Korea and their collective vision of making a sovereign nation. Especially, pro-Protestant Korean reformers attributed Korea’s inability to check the imperialist intrusion to Confucian civilization and sinocentrism deeply rooted in Korea. Therefore, under an epoch-making slogan of ‘civilization and enlightenment’, the reformers sought modern Western elements derived from mission education in order to protect Korea from imperialism and simultaneously to develop it into a strong ‘civilized’ nation. For them, mission schools were not simply religious institutions for evangelism, but incubators to produce national leaders for Korean independence and restoration of sovereignty by diffusing liberating knowledge and patriotic sentiment throughout Korea. Mission education thus had multiple objectives and roles in a particular historical condition of Korea. Lastly, this thesis considers the anticolonial discourse and praxis of mission-educated Koreans during Japan’s early colonial era of Korea. The modernizing vision of Korean reformers flowed into the curricula and contents of mission education, Korean students imbibing Western concepts such as democracy, equality, and freedom related to Korean nationalism. This intellectual interaction imbued the students with critical consciousness reflecting their colonial reality, leading them to form anti-Japanese organizations intended to subvert the colonial regime. The anticolonial activism of Korean students reinforced the tense interaction between missionaries and colonialists. The principle of political non-interventionism taken by the missionaries crumbled away when the students engaged in anti-Japanese movements, and the missionary involvement in colonial politics resulted in the colonialists’ policies to eliminate missionary power in mission education. Observing the advent of anticolonial activism in mission schools, this research elucidates the unintended missionary links with Korean resistance movements against Japanese colonialism and for Korean independence.

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Après la Seconde guerre mondiale, plus de 6,5 millions de sujets japonais, dont la moitié était des civils résidant dans les territoires japonais d’outre-mer, ont été rapatriés au Japon. Le Japon n’avait pas prévu l’éventualité d’un rapatriement en cas de défaite, et les Alliés, s’ils avaient planifié le retour des soldats japonais, n’avaient pas préparé le retour des civils. Pourtant, le rapatriement des civils japonais fut, dans sa majeure partie, rapide et efficace. Entre octobre 1945 et décembre 1946, 5,1 millions de Japonais purent rejoindre le Japon. Pour d’autres, le processus put durer jusque la fin des années 1950. Une fois au Japon, les rapatriés, confrontés à un Japon en ruines, se virent imposer une nouvelle identité, celle de hikiagesha, personne rapatriée. La mémoire et l’identité des rapatriés, confrontés à l’hostilité et la méfiance de la population de métropole, connurent plusieurs mutations pour finalement se réintégrer au sein du mémoriel discours dominant sur la guerre. Après une analyse des processus de rapatriement, cette thèse se penchera donc sur la formation de l’identité des rapatriés en tant que groupe, leur mémoire, et comment ce groupe au départ marginalisé est parvenu à intégrer son récit mémoriel au sein du discourra officiel. / After the Second World War, Japan saw the return of more than 6.5 million Japanese nationals, of which about half were civilian overseas residents of Japan’s colonial empire. Japan had no plan for the evacuation of foreign territories in the event of defeat, and but although provisions had been made by the Allies for the repatriation of the military personnel, the return of civilians was initially outside their scope, and left to the Japanese. The Allies would later assign military transports to help with the task of ferrying millions of men, women and children back to the mainland. However, despite this lack of previous planning, the repatriation of Japanese nationals was fast and efficient: between October 1945 and December 1946; over 5.1 million Japanese were brought back to the mainland. Some, however, had to wait until the second half of the 1950s. Once in Japan, the returnees found that a new identity had been imposed on them, one that stemmed from their shared experience as returnees: that of hikiagesha, or repatriates. Joined by their war experiences, they found themselves part of a heterogeneous group with an identity that still awaited definition. The meaning of the memory of their experience was shaped by the very way in which they defined and re-defined themselves and their experience, as they encountered marginalisation, hostility and distrust as they reintegrated to mainland Japanese society. After analysing the process of repatriation, this thesis will attempt to map out the process by which this initially marginalised group became acceptable, by integrating its narrative within an official discourse.

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