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Paper short abstract

This presentation analyzes wartime thought and activities of economists at Keijō Imperial University, showing how their work on food security, northern industrial development, and Korea’s role in the co-Prosperity Sphere both reflected and shaped Japanese imperial economic policy debates.

Paper long abstract

During the 35 years of Japan’s colonial rule in Korea, the peninsula was systematically incorporated into the Japanese Empire’s industrial, monetary, and commercial strategies aimed at supporting imperial expansion across Asia. In 1926, Keijō (Gyeongseong) Imperial University was established as the sixth Imperial University and the only one in Korea. Within the Faculty of Law and Letters, a group of professionally trained economists founded the Korean Economic Research Institute, which became a central hub for colonial economic studies. Working closely with the Government-General of Korea and various statistical and administrative bureaus, these economists engaged with practical issues ranging from fiscal policy and market restructuring to labor relations and macro-historical analyses of Korea’s modern capitalist transformation.

Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Korea’s role within Japan’s total war system was redefined as “military and logistic base for Japanese advancement to the Continent” (Tairiku Zenshin Heitan Kichi). The newly established “National Mobilization Direction Committee” (Kokumin Sōryoku Chōsen Renmei) replaced earlier mobilization organizations, with a central agenda focused on two primary objectives: strengthening the productive capacity of Korea and implementing peninsular-wide civil defense training. More deeply embedded in the wartime imperial apparatus than ever before, the economists at Keijō Imperial University began reassessing Korea’s strategic function within the Empire. Their research and writings increasingly emphasized Korea’s critical importance in food provisioning, labor mobilization, and the spatial reorganization of industrial zones to meet wartime demands.

This presentation examines the economic thought and wartime collaboration of the Keijō economists. It identifies three recurrent thematic priorities in their works during the wartime: (1) food security, (2) industrial development in the northern prefectures such as Hamgyeong-do and Pyeongan-namdo in order to build a strategic corridor between Korea and Manchuria, and (3) Korea’s function within the Greater East Asia co-Prosperity Sphere from a historical and macroeconomic perspective. This presentation first highlights key individuals, journals, and the role of both governmental and non-governmental actors in shaping these discourses. It then explores how economic knowledge produced in colonial Korea both reflected and influenced contemporary debates on economic policy within mainland Japan.