{"id":12057,"date":"2023-09-23T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T17:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/?p=12057"},"modified":"2023-12-05T08:37:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T23:37:19","slug":"6-6%e3%80%80did-japan-increase-the-level-of-education-and-literacy-in-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/?p=12057&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"6-6\u3000Did Japan Increase the Level of Education and Literacy in Korea?"},"content":{"rendered":"\nA massive number of the victims of the Japanese military\u2019s comfort women system couldn\u2019t go to school or left school before graduating, and were consequently illiterate. Was this a special case during the colonial period in Korea?
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nFirst of all, as opposed to on the \u201cMainland\u201d (Japan), a compulsory education system wasn\u2019t implemented in Korea until August 1945. Hence many children couldn\u2019t enter elementary school. (Note: elementary schools for Koreans were called futsu gakko [normal schools] until the 1937 school year, jinjo shogakko [ordinary elementary schools] from the 1938 school year, and kokumin gakkou [National schools] from the 1941 school year.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nBelow are the results of a survey conducted in 1944, during the final stage of the war (Figures 1 and 2, Japanese only). We have to recognize that a huge portion of Korean society had no experience with school attendance, as shown by the blue portion of the charts below. Here we see the figure divided by age, and in particular, there was a great difference between men and women. 57.1% of men and 90.7% of women between the ages of 20 and 29 had no experience with education. In other words, nine out of every ten women would have never gone to school.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nBy contrast, because of a policy among the Japanese in Korea to establish elementary schools in their place of residence, almost all of these so-called \u201cmainlanders\u201d could go to school. Only 0.8% of Japanese men and 1.2% of Japanese women in Korea between the ages of 20 and 29 had no experience with school attendance. In other words, there was an overwhelming difference depending on your ethnicity.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\n\"q4-1\"<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\"q4-2\"<\/a>\r\n
\r\n \r\n\r\nStill the literacy rate was in fact higher than the school attendance rate, as reading and writing was in fact also taught at home in some cases, or outside of the educational system. Below are the results of the 1930 National Census (Figures 3 and 4, Japanese only) Yet as once might expect, we see that the percentage of women unable to read and write Japanese kana (syllabic Japanese script) and hangul (Korean script) was overwhelmingly higher than that of men, with the numbers at 44.3% for men and 85.8% for women between the ages of 20 and 24.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\n\"q4-3\"<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\"q4-4\"<\/a>\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nIt is incorrect to attribute these results to insufficient education in Korea. During the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897), there was a high degree of literacy because of private schools like the seodang (similar to terakoya in Japan), widely established in rural areas, with study focused on classical Chinese. Hunminjeongeum (Korean script), which was invented in the 15th century, was also variously used, for example in teaching\u00a0 classical Chinese education, or as a communication tool for women of the upper class. Starting from the end of the 19th century, the orthography of public and private documents was gradually converted from classical Chinese to the \u201cnational language,\u201d a mix of Korean script and Chinese characters, and significant changes were also made to the educational system. All kinds of private schools increased particularly as Japan began encroaching on the nation, and in the year of 1909 alone more than 2,000 were established.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nThen befell the \u201cannexation\u201d. Private schools were closed down or suppressed. Even well-equipped educational facilities were labeled \u201cprivate academic schools\u201d and put in the unstable position of having to obtain approval every year. By contrast, so-called futsu (normal) public elementary schools played the leading role in the school system. These aimed at nurturing \u201cnational character\u201d and teaching the \u201cnational language\u201d (Japanese). But these schools weren\u2019t established so easily. It wasn\u2019t until the middle of the 1930s that there was one school was for every myeon (a unit denoting a town or village). And they weren\u2019t \u201cestablished for the benefit of Korean children\u201d by the Government-General of Korea. In fact, the Government-General of Korea used the donation of land and construction funds by influential local figures to approve the creation of schools that included the integration of the \u201cprivate academic schools\u201d mentioned above and were forced to adopt a Japanese curriculum.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nBefore the adoption of compulsory education, primary education could only be obtained through the payment of tuition. For that reason, impoverished families found it difficult to send their children to school. For instance, according to the results of a survey in one region, 63% of landowner families and 6% of tenant farmer families sent their children to school. (South Jeolla Province, Kosaku kanko chosa sho [A Survey of Tenancy Customs], 1923) Therefore there was also a class difference (wealth disparity) in school attendance.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nIn examining the roots of the gender disparity in school attendance, we have to look at the system and at society. In the case of the co-educational \u201cnormal\u201d elementary schools, there was usually a difference in admissions numbers between men and women. This would be a systematic factor. And impoverished families with many children, being unable to send all of them, usually favored sending their sons to school over their daughters. This is a social factor. Such a combination of systematic and social factors caused the school attendance disparity between men and women.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nWe see how in colonial Korea a combination of ethnicity, class and gender came to effect whether you able to go to school and \/ or become literate.
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nWhen we approach the issue of the low literacy rate in Korea, we also have to remember how the multiplicity of languages and methods of writing complicate the situation. During the colonial period, although the Japanese language maintained dominance, there was a lopsided mix of tongues: Japanese and Korean, and scripts: kana (Japanese syllabic system), Chinese characters and hangul (Korean script). After Japan\u2019s defeat, North Korea and South Korea both abolished the Japanese language and launched a Korean script literacy movement called the \u201cextermination of illiteracy\u201d, and North Korea declared it finally exterminated in 1949 (Chosen kyoiku shi 3 [History of Education in Korea 3], Publ. Shakai Kagaku Shuppansha, 1990). The percentage of South Koreans unable to read decreased sharply from 77.8% in 1945 to 41.3% in 1948, down to and 13.9% in 1954. (Bunkyo geppo [Monthly Educational Report], No.49, November 1959)
\r\n\r\n 
\r\n\r\nSeen this way, the circumstances of colonialism in Korea had not a positive but negative impact on school attendance and literacy.
\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nReferences:\r\n\r\nKim Pu-ja, Shokuminchi chosen no kyoiku to jenda (Education and Gender in Colonial Korea) (Seorishobo, 2005)
\r\nItagaki Ryuta, Literacy Survey in Colonial Korea, Journal of Asian and African Studies, No.58, 1999)
\r\nhttp:\/\/repository.tufs.ac.jp\/handle\/10108\/21863<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A massive number of the victims of the Japanese military\u2019s comfort women system couldn\u2019t go to school or left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":12538,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"swell_btn_cv_data":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[210,134,17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12057"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12062,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12057\/revisions\/12062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fightforjustice.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}