The history of Japan’s invasion of Korea records many crimes of plundering precious resources of Korea at random through a colonial predatory system and oppression. Among them is the crime of plundering Korea’s land under the pretext of land survey.

From the first day of their occupation of Korea, it had its eye on the fertile land of Korea.

At that time, feudal landownership prevailed over the country and peasants accounted for over 80% of the population. Therefore, to seize Korea’s land meant for the Japanese to put under their control the basic means of production in the rural areas and peasants making up the overwhelming majority of the population and, furthermore, to create material conditions for their ruling over Korea.

Japan set land confiscation as part of their efforts for laying economic foundations for its colonial rule, and resorted to every possible means and method to this end.

Having already opened the way for possessing Korea’s land in a legitimate way by enacting several evil laws, it buckled down to land confiscation under the pretext of land survey from 1910.

In March 1910, it enacted the Provisions of the Temporary Land Survey Bureau in a bid to legitimate land confiscation in Korea and, later, appointed a Japanese as head of the measuring department of the bureau, and made public the Land Survey Act and its regulations.

The Act stipulates that a land owner shall declare his or her name, domicile, classification and grade of land and other contents to the director of the bureau within the period fixed by the governor-general of Korea (head of the Government-General of Japan installed in Korea).

Based on it, Japan declared null and void the landownership approved by the feudal Joson government, and “legalized” the ownership of land “declared” to and “approved” by it.

It made the methods and procedures for declaration of landownership complicated so as to ensure that the land of many peasants come into its hands and those of Koreans who were faithful to it. Through land survey, it deprived the Korean peasants of land amounting to over one million hectares. As a result, a large number of Koreans who had tilled land through generations were reduced to tenants.

Later, it drove the Korean peasants into abject poverty through usurious exploitation.

It enforced deceptive agricultural policies to wrest more grains from Korea and forcibly carried to Japan not only the grains for food but seeds under the pretext of “public delivery.”

Such plunder proves that Japan was not only an invader of Korea but a vicious plunderer.

The crimes of Japan, which inflicted untold misfortunes on the Korean nation, running amuck to plunder even the rural areas during its illegal occupation of Korea for over 40 years in the first half of the last century, still arouse the surging indignation of the Korean people.

The Korean people are hardening their will to settle accounts with their sworn enemy.

Pak Hyon Ryong