Nationality after World War II

Japan's bilateral talks with ROC and ROK

By William Wetherall

First posted 1 August 2006
Last updated 22 January 2022

Government, territory, people Empire of Japan • Terms of surrender • Sovereignty, control, jurisdiction • Affiliation • Occupations and separations
Occupation Authorities  The Allied Powers as a supernational legal body 22 Mar 1952 DS notifies KDMJ that SCAP's jurisdiction will end
San Francisco Peace Treaty  The political watershed of postwar settlements with Japan
ROC and peace treaty  Negotiations between two states only one of which had been at war
ROK and peace treaty Yang-Rusk exchanges • 19 July 1951 Yang request • 2 August 1951 Yang request • 9 August 1951 Rusk reply

1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks  SCAP deems the legal status of Koreans in Japan the first and only priority
Personae dramatis 15 February 1952 conferees Republic of Korea Syngman Rhee • Yang You Chan • Yu Chin O • Karl Hongkee • Kim Yong Shik • Kim Dong Jo • Robert T. Oliver Japan Iguchi Sadao • Chiba Kō • Matsumoto Shun'ichi • Tanaka Mitsuo • Hiraga Kenta • Nishimura Kumao United States George Atcheson • Dean Acheson • John Foster Dulles • William J. Sebald • Alva C. Carpenter • Richard B. Finn • William H. Sullivan • Charles A. Willoughby • John J. Muccio • Dean Rusk and other American officials
Chronology Meetings 1945 to September 1951 • October 1951 • November 1951 • December 1951 • January 1952 • February 1952 • March 1952 • April 1952

ROK-Japan talk sources Hiraga 1950-1951 • Nik-Kan kaidan bunsho kai 2005 • Sebald 1965 • Sung-hwa Cheong 1990, 1991 • Kim Dong Jo 1993 • Kim Tae-gi 1997, 2011 • Nantais 2011 • Nishioka 1997 • Ōnuma 1979-1980 • Ōnuma 2004 • Takasaki 1996 • Takasaki 2004 • Yi Yangsu 2007 • Tae-Ryong Yoon 2008 • Yoshizawa 2005
ROK and Japan archives dongA.com zip and tif files • Nik-Kan Kaidan Bunsho Kai pdf and xdw files • Other sources • Most important ROK files • Most important Japan files Status agreement drafts Citations, transcriptions, translations, markup • Nik-Kan Kaidan Bunsho Kai activism • Yoshizawa et al. v. State ROK Japanofile list
Related article   Separation and choice: Between a legal rock and a political hard place

Click to see full details below

Overview

Contentious but bilateral

Many people claim that Japan unilaterally separated Chosenese and Taiwanese form it's nationality in 1952 when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect and Japan formally lost Chōsen and Taiwan as parts of its sovereign territory. Many writers also claim that Japan's actions in 1952 both violated international law and were illegal under its own domestic laws.

The following official English, Japanese, and Korean documents related to the 1951-1952 talks between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK), observed by officials of the Diplomatic Section (DS) and at times the Legal Section (LS) of the General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) in Tokyo, show that these contentions are incorrect.

What Japan did in 1952 was in full accord with a ready-to-sign bilateral nationality and treatment agreement between the two states. The agreement took into consideration the recognition by Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK), based on their often contentious discussion of nationality issues, that reciprocal nationality choice-provisions, of the kind that are commonly but not universally made when territories change hands, were not politically feasible in their case.

Nationality impasse

ROK was then at war with the Democractic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, it held that it was the sole legitimate government of the entire peninsula, which it called Korea and not Chōsen. It also regarded all people in peninsula household registers as its nationals, and refused to acknowledge that they had ever been Japanese. However, under Japanese law, and in accordance with GHQ/SCAP's directives which recognized Japanese law, people in Chōsen registers had been Japanese, and Chosenese in Japan were still its nationals. Moreover, Japan would not force those who supported DPRK to be ROK nationals.

ROK and Japan circumvented this nationality impasse by agreeing that nationality did not qualify as a bilateral issue. The two states agreed that Koreans in Japan would be ROK nationals, though individuals would have to register their intent with an ROK legation in Japan. They also agreed to recognize the effects of their respective domestic civil status (household register) laws on nationality prior ro the coming into force of their nationality and treatment agreement.

Nationality territorial

Japan's recognition of Chosenese as ROK nationals, like its recognition of Taiwanese as ROC nationals, would be concomitant with their loss of Japan's nationality when Japan formally lost Chōsen (Korea) and Taiwan (Formosa). Japan's nationality had been, was then, and continues to be based entirely on whether one's primary domicile register (honseki 本籍) -- or household (family) register (koseki 戸籍) -- is affiliated with a municipal (village, town, city, ward) polity within Japan's sovereign dominion. Japan's nationality thus comes and goes with territorial cessions to and away from Japan. The loss by Chosenese and Taiwanese of Japan's nationality in 1952 is predicated on the separation of Chōsen and Taiwan from Japan pursuant to the SF Peace Treaty.

The suspension of Japan's nationality for people with domicile registers in Okinawa, concomitant with the suspension of Japan's sovereignty over the prefecture, during the period that it was administered under the control and jurisdiction of the United States, was based on the same principle.

Top  

Government, territory, and people

Understanding the legal settlements that followed Japan's surrender to the Allied Powers in 1945 -- especially those that determined the borders of states and reach of their nationality -- requires making clear distinctions between different kinds of governments and territories, and the statuses of people in governed territories. Governments include states and state-like entities which exercise absolute (sovereign) or qualified authority through their control and jurisdiction of one or more territories, the inhabitants of which are subject to a government's laws and regulations according to their legal status.

Top  

Empire of Japan

The Empire of Japan, as a state, consisted of territories that were part of its sovereign dominion, and other territories that were legally under its control and jurisdiction.

Sovereign Empire

At the time Japan surrendered, its sovereign dominion included the Interior or prefectures including Karafuto, and also Taiwan (Formosa) and Chōsen (Korea). Karafuto (southern Sakhalin) had been incorporated into the Interior as a prefecture in 1943. The Kuriles, which had belonged to Japan since 1875, were part of Hokkaidō. Hokkaidō and Okinawa, though governed somewhat differently than other prefectures and sometimes spoken of as though they were not part of the Interior, were in fact very much a part of the Interior as a subnational territory.

Legal Empire

Territories within Japan's legal dominion, but outside its sovereign dominion, included the Kwantung Leased Territory and the South Sea Islands. Russia had leased Kwantung from China in 1898 but transferred the lease to Japan in 1905. Kwantung was part of Manchuria, but after the creation in 1932 of Manchoukuo, mainly out of Manchuria, Japan regarded Kwantung as part of Manchoukuo rather than China. Russia had also given Japan its leases of right-of-ways and other land in the Railway Zone outside the Kwantung territory, but Japan's jurisdiction in the zone ended in 1937 with the end of extraterritoriality in the state.

Manchoukuo

Though Japan was instrumental in the establishment of Manchoukuo, and continued to wield enormous control over the state through its considerable involvement in the territory and its government, it regarded the entity as an independent state. As such, Manchoukuo was never part of the Empire of Japan. China continued to regard Manchuria as part of its sovereign dominion, and when the League of Nations sided with China, Japan resigned its membership. A number of other states, however, recognized Manchoukuo and established diplomatic ties with the entity.

Occupied territories

As of 2 September 1945, when Japan and the Allied Powers signed the general Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo, ending World War II in Asia and the Pacific, Japanese military forces were occupying or present in a number of territories in parts of China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, the result of both invations, and diplomatic relationships and manipulations, before and after the start of the Pacific War on 8 December 1941 Japan time. These territories were temporarily occupied by third-party Allied commands for the purpose of receiving Japan's surrender and facilitating an orderly transfer of power to the state having governmental rights under the terms of surrender or later treaties.

The Empire of Japan, however, did not include territories outside its sovereign dominion or legal control and jurisdiction. Manchoukuo, China, and countries like the Philippines -- as much as they had been subjected to Japanese military incursions and invasions, and partly or fully occupied by Japan, or partly under Japanese control after Japan established relations with them as states -- were never part of the Empire of Japan.

Top  

Terms of surrender

The terms of surrender set down in the Potsdam Declaration of July 1945 specifically referred to and thereby included the terms in the Cairo Declaration of November 1943. It did not refer to or otherwise include the Yalta Agreement of February 1945, as it was still secret. The general order issued at the time of the signing of the general Instrument of Surrender on 2 September 1945, however, included surrenders related to the Yalta Agreement.

Cairo Declaration

The Cairo Declaration of November 1943, issued by the United States, the Republic of China, and Great Britain, viewed Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores as territories which Japan had "stolen from the Chinese" and would be "restored to the Republic of China".

The "Three Great Allies" which signed the declaration also determined that, "mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea", Korea would "in due course . . . become free and independent".

The phrasing is extremely important, for it implies that China would recover its sovereignty over the "stolen" territories, while "Korea" was merely a territory -- not a state -- which, in time, would become a "free and independent" state.

Yalta Agreement

The Yalta Agreement of February 1945 -- between the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain, and implicitly endorsed by China -- was kept a secret until later in the war, because at the time it was signed, the Soviet Union was still bound by a neutrality pact it had concluded with Japan in April 1941.

The agreement provided that the southern part of Sakhalin and adjacent islands -- meaning Karafuto -- would be "returned" to, and the Kuril islands "handed over" to, the Soviet Union.

The lease of Port Arthur as a naval base would also be "restored" to the USSR, and other provisions for the protection of Soviet interests in the region -- while recognizing that "China shall retain full sovereignty in Manchuria".

Top  

Sovereignty, control, and jurisdiction

When signing the general Instrument of Surrender on 2 September 1945, Japan delegated the "authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state" to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), who was then General Douglas MacArthur.

"Formosa" and "Korea"

Japan continued to have control and jurisdiction in other parts of the formal and informal empire until the effectuation of local surrenders. These took place in Korea later in September, and in Taiwan in late in October.

Under the terms of surrender, Japan had agreed it would lose these territories. It lost effective sovereignty when it signed the general Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo, and it surrendered its actual control and jurisdiction when it surrendered the territories to designated Allied commanders -- the entirely of Formosa to the Republic of China, which claimed the territory -- and Korea by halves to the Soviet Union in the north and the United States in the south, which would occupy the peninsula until they could establish a Korean state to govern the territory.

However, Formosa and Korea were not formally separated from Japan's sovereignty until the provisions of the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in April 1952. This lag between the loss of effective sovereignty in 1945, and the loss of formal sovereignty in 1952, effected the status of people in Occupied Japan whose family registers were affiliated with Formosa and Korea.

"Japan"

The sovereign dominion of "Japan" as an empire, prior to its surrender, had included the Interior, Formosa, and Korea. But under the terms of surrender, "Japan" was reduced to an occupation zone defined as the Interior minus two prefectures -- Okinawa and Karafuto. The Kurile islands, which had been parts of Hokkaidō, and number of islands associated with Tokyo and Kagoshima prefectures, were also excluded from "Occupied Japan".

Japan, in its view, retained residual sovereignty over all parts of its Interior entity except Karafuto and the northern Kuriles. Japan continues to claim the southern Kuriles, which remain under the control and jurisdiction of Russia, and two small island groups, one claimed by the Republic of Korea, the other by the People's Republic of China.

Japanese government

"Occupied Japan" became the foundation for the "Japan" that signed a peace treaty with the "Allied Powers" in September 1951, according to which the Occupation ended and Japan regained its sovereignty in April 1952. During the Occupation, the imperial government of Japan continued to operate under its own powers, exercised under its own laws and regulations, limited and otherwise qualified only by SCAP directives.

The transition from an imperial government under the 1890 Constitution, to a post-imperial government under the 1947 Constitution, was effected in an orderly manner by the Japanese government itself. Many of the strings that animated the government were pulled by SCAP, especially during the early months of the Occupation. But most governmental strings continued to be pulled by duly elected representatives of "the Japanese people" by one or another definition.

SCAP, who held sovereign powers over Occupied Japan as an occupation zone, hitched the Japanese government to his General Headquarters. While GHQ/SCAP in principle governed Japan's national and local governments, it permitted these governments -- out of both political considerations and practical necessity -- to continue to operate under laws and regulations in force in Japan at the time its surrender, including the 1890 Constitution

SCAP nullified or revised only legal measures and related policies and practices, or disbanded or restructured only agencies or other offices, that conflicted with Allied reconstruction plans, such as they existed at the time Japan surrendered, and as they developed during the course of the Occupation. Government powers limited at the start of the Occupation were gradually restored as laws were revised to reflect the standards of government set down in the 1947 Constitution.

Negotiations with ROC and ROK

During the half year or so that elapsed between the signing of the peace treaty on 8 September 1951 and its enforcement from 28 April 1952, Japan regained effective control and jurisdiction over most of its domestic affairs. In preparation the restoration of its sovereignty, it also began to take charge of more its diplomatic affairs.

After Japan signed the peace treaty, GHQ/SCAP -- still formally an Allied authority but by then far more than originally an essentially American operation -- directed Japan to negotiate settlements with concerned states regarding Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea (Chōsen), and the status of Formosans (Taiwanese) and Koreans (Chosenese) in Japan, most of whom were still considered Japanese nationals. The concerned states favored by GHQ/SCAP were those the United States recognized, namely the Republic of China (ROC) and the Republic of Korea. These were also states with which the United States was allied in its own cold and hot wars against Communism.

The government of Japan, having been staunchly anti-communist and anti-socialist since the spread of proletarian movements in Japan during the early decades of the 20th century, and concerned about the spread of Communism in neighboring Asian states and subversive activities domestically, had no difficulty falling in line with the United States regarding ROC and ROK, both embattled with their revolutionary counterparts, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). ROC had lost its battle on the Chinese mainland and its government had taken refuge in the province of Taiwan, and at time it controlled only the province and a few islands affiliated with a mainland province. And ROK was embroiled in a fight for its life in a civil war with DPRK, which was supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union.

Japan and ROC, though their talks were touch and go, succeeded in negotiating a peace treaty the two states were able to sign on 28 April 1952, the day Japan regained its sovereignty and diplomatic powers. Japan and ROK also began, in the fall of 1951, to work out a normalization treaty and status agreement by the same date. But by early April 1952 negotiations had broken down to the point that they were deferred until after the peace treaty came into effect -- and the two states were unable to agree to terms until 1965.

Sovereignty and state succession

Ordinarily, territorial cessions are effected by treaties in which one state cedes part or all of itself to another state, which then becomes the successor state. And treaties involving territorial cessions usually include transitional provisions regarding the legal statuses, including the nationalities, of the people inhabiting affected territories.

However, Taiwan and Chōsen were not ceded away from Japan to other states. Rather they were separated from Japan by a third party -- namely, the Allied Powers -- and never formally ceded to "China" or "Korea". That ROC was a member of the Allied Powers did not itself matter. What mattered was that ROC, as the successor to the Chinese state which had ceded Taiwan to Japan, was the state which, according to the Cairo Declaration, stood to acquire Taiwan. Hence ROC was designated as the state to which Japan would surrender its control and jurisdiction of Taiwan, which ROC wold occupy and govern, and then incorporate as a province of its state.

Japan surrendered Chōsen, though, to the control and jurisdiction of two third-party Allied States, north and south of the 38th parallel. As in the case of Taiwan, Japan lost all say in the future of Korea (Chōsen) from the moment it signed the Instrument of Surrender. Until Japan and the Allied Powers signed a peace treaty, confirming the territorial provisions of the terms of surrender, Japan would retain de jure sovereignty for the purpose of attributing its nationality, but de facto sovereignty would be in the hands of the Allied Powers or the states which the Allied Powers recognized as the successor states.

Japan's abandonment of sovereignty over Taiwan and Chōsen under the terms of surrender, effective from 2 September 1945, was confirmed by the San Francisco Peace Treaty, effective from 28 April 1952. However, the treaty could not specify successor states, since after World War II the divided Allied occupation of Chōsen had resulted in the emergence in 1948 of two Korean states which claimed the peninsula and its population, and a civil war in China had resulted in the creation in 1949 of second Chinese state which claimed the same territory and population as the first. Never mind that ROC had both control and jurisdiction over Taiwan, and never mind that ROC was itself a major Allied Power, the other Allied Powers, divided over their recognition of ROC and PRC, agreed that ROC was no longer politically qualified to participate in the treaty.

Apart from the fact that the Allied Powers were also divided in their recognition of ROK nor DPRK, neither of these states had the legal capacity to participate, since they had not existed until after the war. In any event, Korea as Chōsen -- while a part of Japan which the Allied Powers had vowed to "liberate" from Japan -- had nonetheless, as part of Japan, not been at war with Japan. And at the time the San Francisco Peace Treaty was drafted and signed, the divided Koreas were at war, and the Allied Powers were divided in their military support of the warring states.

Not only could the San Francisco Peace Treaty not name successor states, it could not dictate which states Japan would have to provisionally recognize in order to negotiate appropriate treaties -- a peace treaty in the case of "China", a normalization treaty in the case of "Korea". However, for many reasons, Japan's logical political choices -- if political choices can be logical -- were to resume recognizing the Republic of China, established in 1912, and to newly recognize the Republic of Korea, founded in 1948.

The point, though, is that in 1945, Japan would be deprived of its de jure control and jurisdiction of Taiwan and Chōsen, and also of its de facto sovereignty over these territories. Then in 1952, when it also lost its de jure sovereignty, it would lose its right to ascribe its nationality to people in Taiwan and Chōsen registers. Everyone affiliated with these territories, meaning people enrolled in their household registers, had become Japanese through Japan's acquisition of sovereignty over them. Their Japanese nationality was linked with the status of these territories as parts of Japan of Japan's sovereign dominion.

From the day the peace treaty came into effect, Taiwan and Chōsen would be formally separated from Japan's dominion, and Japan would no longer have the legal right to recognize people affiliated with their population registers as it nationals. Japan would regard them as nationals of the states which the Cairo Declaration presumed would be the successor states.

Japan had actually lost its legal right to attribute its nationality when surrendering to the Allied Powers in 1945, because Japan had delegated its sovereignty to the Allied Powers. In other words, the Allied Powers had the right to determine whether Taiwanese and Chosenese had been, or would continue to be, Japanese. The Allied Powers, never mind the harsh wording of the Cairo Declaration, never doubted that Taiwanese and Chosenese had been Japanese, and as they foresaw an orderly legal restoration of Taiwan and Chōsen to "China" and "Korea" they deemed that the future nationality of Taiwanese and Chosenese would be determined by treaties.

As Japan would sign a peace treaty with ROC on the same day, ROC's nationality would be recognized, and hence most Taiwanese in Japan, who had already been enrolled in ROC's nationality under SCAP's authority and with Japan's acknowledgement, would be recognized as ROC nationals, while Taiwanese who had chosen not to be ROC nationals would also be classified as Chinese for alien registration and most other purposes. The nationality of Chosenese in Japan, however, would be merely "Chosenese" -- until which time Japan recognized a Korean state and permitted it to enroll Koreans in Japan who aspired to its nationality.

Cairo, Yalta, and Potsdam

On 15 August 1945, the emperor of Japan announced his acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945, and ordered the commanders of Japan's armed forces to cease hostilities. The Potsdam terms, which incorporated the territorial terms of the Cairo Declaration of 27 November 1943, became the terms of the Instrument of Surrender, which Japan signed on 2 September 1975. Some terms of the Yalta Agreement of 11 February 1945, including those concerning "the southern part of Sakhalin" and "the Kuril islands", also became part of the terms of surrender.

As an agreement between Japan and the Allied Powers, the surrender instruments had a number of immediate legal effects, two of which informed definitions of "nations" and "nationality" during the Allied Occupation of Japan.

1. Japan immediately lost all the territories specified (according to the Potsdam Declaration) in the Cairo Declaration, and "Japanese sovereignty [was] limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū, Shikoku" and other minor islands as determined by the Allied Powers.

2. From the moment of surrender, "the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state [became] subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers", and the Allied Powers would continue to occupy Japan "until the purposes set forth in the Potsdam Declaration [were] achieved."

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, otherwise known as SCAP, was corporalized in the body and will of General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) from 1945, and in his successors from April 1951 to the end of the occupation in April 1952. Much of SCAP's authority was delegated to and mediated by the higher officials at SCAP's General Headquarters in Tokyo -- or "GHQ/SCAP".

Process versus posturing

The aggressive language of the Cairo Declaration -- that Japan would be "stripped of" Taiwan and "expelled from" Korea -- expressed the goals of the Allied campaign against Japan. Coming as it did at the height of the war, this was little more than nationalistic posturing. In the event of victory, the process of "stripping" and "expelling" would be according to international law. The effects of the treaties that had caused Taiwan and Korea to become parts of Japan would have to be reversed through new treaties.

On the surface of the wording of the Instrument of Surrender -- reflecting, as in a hall of mirrors, the terms of the Potsdam and Cairo declarations -- it would appear that Japan had immediately lost not only its governmental control and jurisdiction over Taiwan and Chōsen, for example, but also its sovereignty over these territories. Potsdam and the instruments, though, provided only that Japan's sovereignty would "be limited to" the islands that constituted "Japan" as occupied by the Allied Powers.

As a matter of legal process, Japan did not formally "renounce" (abandon) all right, title, and claim to Taiwan and Chōsen, among other territories that were once part of its sovereign dominion, until Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect on 28 April 1952 -- from which date, according to Article 1, the Allied Powers recognized "the full sovereignty of the Japanese people over Japan and its territorial waters."

Under the authority of the Allied Powers Japan was expected to negotiate and sign a peace treaty. However, Japan's renunciation (abandonment) in the treaty of its sovereignty over Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea (Chōsen) would not be effected until it regained its own sovereignty under the same treaty.

The problem was that Formosa was under the control and jurisdiction, and effective sovereignty, of the Republic of China (ROC), while the People's Republic of China (PRC) claimed Taiwan as one of its provinces. And Korea was claimed by two states, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), then at war. The Korean war had divided the Allied Powers in their support over one or the other Korea, and ROC and PRC, still confronting each other over their mutual claims to China, were also on opposite sides in the war.

Recognition politics, and conflicts over rights of succession, were not the only issues that prevented the participation of China or Korea in the peace treaty. ROK wanted to participate, but even if it had been the sole state on the peninsula, it had existed until 1948. Besides, the "Korea" which Japan would be renouncing in the treaty had been Chōsen -- i.e., part of Japan, and as such had not at war with Japan.

Consequently, no China or Korea was able to participate in the peace treaty with Japan, either as a state which had been at war with Japan, or as a state that needed to settle territorial and other issues with Japan. So Japan would have to negotiate separate treaties with one or the other or both of the states that claimed to be "China" and "Korea".

Settlement over Formosa (Taiwan) with ROC

On 28 April 1952, the very day its diplomatic powers were restored, Japan signed a peace treaty in Taipei with the Republic of China (ROC), according to it recognized that Taiwan was "under the control of" the ROC government. The Taipei treaty, in accord with the San Francisco treaty, did not specify ROC as the successor state, but merely recognized that ROC was the state then in control of the territory.

In 1972, Japan recognized the People's Republic China (PRC) as "China" and rescinded the 1952 treaty with ROC. However, Japanese courts continue to recognize the effects of the Taipei treaty until the change of recognition -- when, in the eyes of Japanese law, PRC became a state and ROC ceased being a state.

Settlement over Korea (Chōsen) with ROK

Apart from the fact that the two Korean states did not exist until 1948, there was no need for Japan to sign a peace treaty with any Korean state, since Japan was never at war with "Korea". Japan did, however, have to settle its territorial relationship with "Korea" as Chōsen.

At the time Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, on 8 September 1951, it informally recognized only the Republic of Korea (ROK). The following month, Japan, ROK, and GHQ/SCAP began discussing the legal status of Chosenese (Koreans) in Japan when the Peace Treaty came into effect the following year. At issue was the disposition of the Japanese nationality they still held under Japanese law, and what to do about Chosenese who did not migrate to ROK nationality.

Japan and ROK did not get around to normalizing their relationship until 1965. The normalization treaty is pursuant to "relevant provisions" of the San Francisco Peace treaty and certain United Nations General Assembly resolutions. The "relevant provisions" in the Peace Treaty included Japan's renunciation (abandonment) of all right, title, and claim to "Korea" -- which Japan understood to mean "Chōsen". The United Nationals resolutions provided the authority for Japan's recognition, in the normalization treaty, of ROK as "the only lawful Government in Korea".

The 1965 normalization treaty is the foundation of the 1966 agreement with ROK (promulgated with the treaty in 1965) concerning the status of ROK nationals in Japan who qualified for rights of abode according to Japanese laws that defined such rights pursuant to the Potsdam Declaration and the Instrument of Surrender.

The normalization treaty takes 15 August 1945 -- rather than 2 September 1945 -- as the date of the "initial determination" of the population that qualifies for rights of abode under the status agreement -- in acknowledgement of ROK's position that "Korea" was liberated on 15 August 1945. However, the "Special Permanent Residence" status created in 1991 for all treaty-defined aliens -- 25 years after the 1966 status agreement, which applied only to qualified ROK nationals -- adopts 2 September 1945 as the date of the "initial determination" of the residual population of former former Japanese subjects of Taiwan and Korea and others who lost their Japanese nationality because of the Peace Treaty and descendants born in Japan on or after 3 September 1945.

See Declarations and treaties: From Washington to San Francisco via the USS Missouri for introductions to, and full or partial texts of, all wartime and postwar declarations, agreements, instruments, and treaties from the Cairo Declaration to the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

See Territorial settlements: ROC and PRC, ROK and DPRK, and the USSR and Russia for introductions to, and full or partial texts of, major treaties and agreements between Japan and these entities, after the effectuation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.

Top  

Affiliation

An individual's legal status is always complex. All people have a number of statuses defined by the laws of the country with which they are affiliated as nationals and/or in which they reside. The statuses of people in Occupied Japan were determined not only by applicable Japanese laws, but SCAP directives and legal provisions introduced in compliance with SCAP policy.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, D.C. redefined the borders of "Japan" as an occupation zone to be governed by SCAP. It also redefined "Japanese" in such a way that partly alienated people whose family registers were under the control and jurisdiction of territories or polities outside the zone.

In a 3 November 1945 directive titled "Basic Directive For Post-Surrender Military Government In Japan Proper", JCS instructed SCAP to treat "Formosan-Chinese [sic] and Koreans as liberated peoples in so far as military security permits." They were excluded from the term "Japanese" as used in the directive, but SCAP was to treat them as "enemy nationals" when necessary. They could be repatriated if they wish, but priority was to be given to the repatriation of "United Nations nationals".

A 1 November 1945 GHQ/SCAP memorandum to the Japanese government (SCAPIN-224) concerning repatriation had spoken of "Koreans" and "Chinese" as "non-Japanese nationals" and alluded to people "formerly domiciled" in Formosa and the Ryukyus as though they might be "non-Japanese" by nationality. A 17 February 1946 memorandum (SCAPIN-746) more specifically listed "Koreans, Chinese, Ryukyuans and Formosans resident in Japan" as "nationalities".

By the end of 1946, there was considerable public confusion as to the status of Koreans who had remained in Japan rather than be repatriated by the 15 December 1946 deadline. GHQ/SCAP appears to have regarded them as "Koreans" or "Korean nationals" by "nationality" for classification purposes related to repatriation. Though "non-Japanese" in this regard, formally they would retain their Japanese nationality until treaties or other agreements determined otherwise.

GHQ/SCAP defined all manner of legal statuses that differentiated people in Occupied Japan, including whether one was a United Nations, enemy, or liberated national. Such statuses determined one's qualifications for food rations and other privileges, repatriation priority, and generally how one would be treated under measures introduced by Occupation Authorities.

GHQ/SCAP's directives concerning such statuses caused considerable confusion for the Japanese government, for Japan's laws made no such distinctions. No one was "non-Japanese" under Japanese law. There was territoriality (Interior, Taiwan, Chōsen) but no extraterritoriality. People who possessed Japan's nationality were Japanese, and those who did not were aliens. Chinese were aliens. Formosans (Taiwanese), Koreans (Chosenese), and Ryukyuans (Okinawans) were Japanese.

People, subjects, nationals

The English version of the general Instrument of Surrender signed on 2 September 1945 referred to "the Japanese people". The Japanese version referred to "Nihon-koku shinmin" (日本國臣民) -- or "Japan-country [Japanese] subjects" -- which included Taiwanese and Chosenese.

Subjecthood as such ended with the beginning of the Occupation, though as a legal category the word survived in a number of laws, including the 1890 Constitution, until they could be revised. The 1947 Constitution replaced the term "shinmin" with "kokumin" (國民、国民), meaning "national" but also reflecting the "the People" as used in the English version. This was not a new term, but one which had been used along with "shinmin" (subject) and sometimes "jinmin" (人民) or "people" since the early 1870s.

The term "nationality" (國籍、国籍 kokuseki) had been used to refer to state (national) affiliation since the 1899 Nationality Law. This law spoke of people who possessed Japan's nationality as "Japanese" (日本人 Nihonjin), reflecting conventions in legal terminology that also date to the early 1870s. The 1950 Nationality Law, reflecting usage in the 1947 Constitution, speaks of "nationals" rather than "Japanese".

GHQ/SCAP officials, however, spoke of "nationals" and "nationality" as defined by its own dictionary, which at times conflicted with the meanings of these terms in Japanese law.

Status and applicable law

Another wrinkle in the laws of all states is that nationals may be treated differently according to their affiliations with polities within the state. Most nationals of a country have multiple affiliations which subject them to territorial, including provincial and municipal laws, within the state's overarching jurisdiction.

Even non-nationals residing with a country as aliens are generally subject to the country's control and jurisdiction, unless they are protected by extraterritorial rights or diplomatic immunity. Whether an alien is subject to the laws of the country, or to those of another country, will also depend on the particular matter or incident, and determinations of laws of laws -- rules for determining applicable laws in cases of jurisdictional conflicts.

Nationals as aliens

Just as a state is free to differentiate among aliens, it is free to differentiate among its own nationals. A state may treat some aliens on a par with its nationals under some of its laws, and treat some nationals on a par with aliens under others.

No Japanese law during the Occupation of Japan classified Taiwanese or Koreans in Japan as as aliens. No law could have, for during the Occupation they remained Japanese. The 1947 Alien Register Order, for example, did not include Taiwanese and Koreans in its definition of aliens. It did, however, have a provision which stipulated that Koreans, and some Taiwanese, would be regarded as aliens for the purpose of the law. When the Philippines became a commonwealth protectorate of the United States in 1935, Filipinos remained non-citizen nationals of the United States, but exceptionally they treated as aliens under all US laws related to the immigration, exclusion, or expulsion of aliens.

GHQ/SCAP, as a military government, depended on the ability of Japan's legal system to continue to function. Accordingly, it had to take the established legal system into account when issuing directives that would affect the way the system worked. However, it is clear from its earliest directives on the treatment of what it called "non-Japanese" that it was not using terms like "national" or "nationality" in any way consistent with Japanese law. It was, in effect, imposing a new status system on top of an existing system. Japan was expected to treat so-called "non-Japanese" according to GHQ/SCAP's directives, yet under its own laws -- among Koreans, Chinese, Formosans, and Ryukyuans, which GHQ/SCAP was calling "nationalities" -- Chinese were "non-Japanese nationals" on account of their nationality.

During the Occupation, Japanese legislators had to come up with ways to reflect GHQ/SCAP directives in their revisions of Japan's laws. The laws had to be revised in ways that were consistent with Japanese law, while complying with GHQ/SCAP's rules.

In December 1945, as directed by GHQ/SCAP, revised its election law to include women and lower the age of eligibility to vote or hold office. A supplementary provision stipulated that only those subject to the Family Register Law, an Interior law, would be eligible. This in effect disenfranchised Taiwanese and Chosenese residents, who had previously been eligible.

GHQ/SCAP did direct Japan to exclude Formosans and Koreans from rights of suffrage. However, alienating them as "non-Japanese nationals" did not encourage their inclusion. Moreover, at this stage in the Occupation, when all it would have taken was a direct order on a single sheet of paper, GHQ/SCAP did nothing to reverse the effects of the supplementary provision -- which was, in any case, a well-established legal device for territorially limiting the reach of a national law.

Municipal halls and courts, and of course legislators, had to deal with problems of applicable law that arose because, despite the separation of a number of territories from Japan's legal control and jurisdiction, private matters involving individuals in Occupied Japan whose registers were in these territories would still need to be dealt with according to territorial laws of laws. Under Japanese law, people were in "Naichi" or "Taiwan" or "Chōsen" registers, but all three territories had been part of Japan. And because Japanese nationality was a matter of membership in a register within Japan, and all people in the registers of these three territories had been Japanese.

No treaties had yet made Taiwan and Chōsen foreign entities. They were no longer under Japan's control and jurisdiction, but Taiwanese and Chōsenese in Japan reduced to the Occupied Interior were very much under Japan's control and jurisdiction. Yet they, like everyone else in Japan, was also under the control and jurisdiction of SCAP.

Japan had two laws of laws. One, introduced in 1898, concerned distinctions between Japan and other countries. The other, introduced in 1918, concerned distinctions between territories within Japan -- i.e., between Naichi, Taiwan, Chōsen, and other jurisdictions within the legal empire. Ryukyu, of course, was part of Naichi.

The knots that GHQ/SCAP tied in Japan's legal status ropes created headaches for those who had to handle them. Some indication of the difficulty in dealing with such knots that can be seen in a thick study, published in December 1949 by the Attorney General's Office of Japan, called Nihon ni zaijū suru hi-Nihonjin no hōritsu-jō no chii: Toku ni Kyōtsūhō-jō no Gaichijin ni tsuite or "Legal status of non-Japanese residing in Japan: Especially concerning Exteriorites under Common Law)". Undertaken from 1948 to 1949 by a judge doing research at the Judicial Research Institute, the study focused on the legal implications of SCAP's notion of "non-Japanese" (非日本人 hi-Nihonjin) in the light of Japan's Common Law, referring to the 1918 law of laws concerning applicable law within Japan's various legal jurisdictions.

Such studies were vital to the preparation required to deal with future legislation and litigation, which would have to take into consideration the effects of legacy laws. During the Occupation, though ordinances and regulations made for Taiwan and Chōsen were no longer applicable within these territories, they continued to apply within Japan in private (mainly civil, family) matters involving Taiwanese and Chosenese, whether with others Taiwanese or Chosenese, or with Interiorites, or with aliens regarded as such under Japanese law.

For details about the Attorney General's Office publication, see Legal status of SCAP's "non-Japanese" (Koshikawa 1949).

For details about the Japan's various laws of laws, see Status and applicable law.

Top  

Occupations and separations

Breaking up the Empire of Japan -- downsizing Japan -- separating from Japan the territories it would lose as parts of either its sovereign or legal dominion, and dealing with the territories it had invaded and -- was an extremely difficult undertaking, given the geographical spread of the formal empire, the sheer diversity of local conditions, and the numbers of states that would need to cooperate in the movement of people from where they were to where they were supposed to be or wanted to be.

Territorial separation was one problem. Separating and relocating people from territories (including countries or regions within countries) where they happened to be at the end of the war -- and determining their statuses whether they stayed or moved, and whether they did either by choice or because they had to -- proved to be a huge logistical challenge. When it was all over, several million people had been repatriated -- mostly back to Japan.

Occupied Japan as a dependency

When the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers on 2 September 1945, it delegated its sovereignty to the Allied Powers. In doing so, it became very much like a dependency of another state, and as such it lost the quality of being an independent and sovereign state. In other words, like a dependency, Japan's statehood was suspended. The "state" on which Japan depended was the Allied Powers -- the collective "United Nations" which had declared war on Japan.

Dependencies typically delegate their diplomatic powers, among other matters of state, to another state, which acts as a proxy for the dependency. The Allied Powers, as victors with a mission to reconstruct Japan, agreed that the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, in the person of General MacArthur, would govern Japan for the purpose of carrying out the terms of surrender. As the sovereign authority in Occupied Japan, SCAP -- or officials he delegated, possibly even Japanese officials -- would act on Japan's behalf in all relations with other states and entities, until which time a joint peace treaty was signed and ratified by the Allied Powers, and Japan regained its sovereignty.

Occupations and separations in the Interior

As noted above the sovereign Empire of Japan included three territories -- the Interior, Taiwan, and Chōsen. The Interior consisted of 48 prefectures, including Karafuto, which had formally been integrated into the Interior in 1943. The Kuriles were part of Hokkaidō.

Legally, first the terms of surrender, and then the terms of the peace treaty, determined what parts of Japan were formally separated from Japan -- whether termporarily or permanently. Physically, however, separations were the effects of military actions, including invasions and occupations.

Parts of the Interior occupied by invasion

Before Japan announced its acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration on 15 August 1945, several parts of the Interior had already been invaded, captured, and occupied by American forces -- including Okinawa prefecture, some islands of Kagoshima prefecture, and some islands of Tokyo prefecture. By the end of August, the Soviet Union had occupied Karafuto and the Kuriles, which it began to invade on 9 August.

Practically all of these territories were excluded from the entity of "Japan" that the Allied Powers defined as the object of the Allied Occupation. Some were formally lost as a result of the San Francisco Peace Treaty (Karafuto, the Kuriles). Others continued to be administered by the United States for as long as two decades after the end of the Occupation (Ogasawara until 1968, Okinawa until 1972).

Parts of the Interior occupied peacefully

While "peaceful" may seem an inappropriate characterization of the occupation of most of Japan's Interior -- which had been subjected to horrifying air raids of unpreceded destruction to property and life -- as an occupation it was "peaceful" in two sense of the word -- (1) it took place after a cease fire and promise to surrender, rather than after being captured in a military invasion, and (2) it was a relatively amicable occupation in which victors and vanquished generally cooperated in the reconstruction what was remained of Japan and its government.

The entity of "Japan" as defined by the Allied Powers consisted, by and large, of the parts of the interior that were occupied peacefully after Japan announced its acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. I.e., "Occupied Japan" consisted of the Interior minus the parts which had been captured and occupied following a military invasion.

Many parts of the rest of Japan too would have been bombed, invaded, captured, and occupied. had Japan not surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Interior. American forces, and probably some British Commonwealth forces, would have invaded several parts of Kyōshō, Shikoku, and Honshū. Soviet forces would have invaded Hokkaidō and the northern provinces of Chōsen. Some ports of Chōsen and Taiwan would have bombed. Probably only Taiwan would not have been invaded. Was was left of Japan would eventually have surrendered. But had the war continued for a another few months, the political map of East Asia today might be very different.

Planning the occupation of Japan

As it was, Japan signaled its willingness to surrender on 9 August, in principle ceased fire on 15 August, and generally surrendered on 2 September 1952. Some local surrenders had been effected long before 2 September, and several would take place later in the year. Some individual Japanese soldiers, who had gone into hiding in the jungles of islands where Japanese forces had been defeated, would not surrender until the 1970s.

Procedures for carrying out the terms of Potsdam Declaration, including the occupation of Japan's main islands, were established at the Manila Conference of 19-21 August. Advanced contingents of US forces began arriving in Tokyo and Kanagawa a week later. MacArthur arrived on 30 August.

The Instrument of Surrender -- marking the formal start of the surrender and occupation of the entire Empire of Japan -- was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.

The surrender and disarming of Japanese military forces within the main islands of Japan took a few weeks.

Surrenders in other Japanese territories

On the day the Instrument of Surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and pursuant to their terms, the Imperial General Headquarters of Japan issued orders for the surrender of Japanese forces and agencies everywhere they were known to exist. The order -- which stipulated which commander of which Allied Power was responsible for receiving Japan's surrender in which country or territory -- came from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Washington by way of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Tokyo.

The surrender of Japanese forces beyond the Interior took a few months. The sovereign Empire of Japan included, in addition to the prefectural Interior (内地 Naichi), the legally distinct territories of Taiwan (台湾) and Chōsen (朝鮮). These were informally called "external territories" (外地 gaichi) in that they were outside -- i.e. not yet part of -- the prefectural Interior (内地 Naichi), hence not subject to Interior laws unless the laws were specifically extended to them.

Two other external territories -- the Kwantung Leased Territory, which was formally part of China but under Japan's legal control and jurisdiction -- and the South Sea Islands, which Japan was legally administering under a League of Nations mandate -- were part of Japan's legal empire but not part of its sovereign empire.

In addition to these territories, all legally part of Japan, there were several territories in which Japan had established governmental facilites or military bases, either peacefully (e.g., Vietnam and Thailand) or by invasion (e.g., China and Burma).

Peaceful occupations of other parts of Japan

While the occupations of all parts of Japan were important for people effected by them, the most important occupations were those of the largest -- Chōsen and Taiwan.

The occupation of Chōsen (Korea)

The Soviet military occupation of the northern provices of Chōsen, while not a military invasion, was reported much rougher on Japanese inhabitants, both Chosenese and Interiorites, than in the southern provinces, occupied by the US forces. Both occupying powers set up provisional governments, the north a communist regime, the south a nationalist regime. Both provisional governments were headed by Koreans who had participated in and led resistance movements beyond Japan's reach.

Japan's sovereignty over "Chōsen" was supposed to revert to "Korea" -- but there was no "Korea" in 1945 when the peninsula was occupied in the south by the United States and in the north by the Soviet Union. The failure of the US and the USSR to unify the two occupation zones, and create a single state with effective control over the entire peninsula, resulted in the founding of two Korean states in 1948 -- the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the US occupation zone, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the Soviet zone.

Both Korean states claimed to be the true government of the "Korea" from which the Cairo Declaration promised to "expel" Japan. During the Allied Occupation, however, Japan followed the United States and the largely US-inspired United Nations recognition of ROK -- and subsequently normalized its relationship with ROK while confirming its view that ROK was the only lawful government in or on "Chōsen" (Japanese version), "Korea" (English version), or "the Korean peninsula" (ROK Korean version).

ROK not qualified to join peace treaty

Even if the peninsula had not been divided into occupation zones which resulted in the founding in 1948 of two Korean states that by 1950 were at war -- a united, peaceful Korea would not have been qualified to join the peace treaty signed by Japan and the Allied Powers in San Francisco in 1951. The Allied Powers different in their recognition of ROK and DPRK, and in their view of whether either or both states should be party to the treaty.

The United States, however, refused to accept claims by Korean nationalists that Korea had never belonged to Japan. It also refused to entertain demands by those returning from exile, like Kim Ku, then president of the "Korean Provisional Government" (KPG) founded in Shanghai in 1919, should be immediately recognized as the legitimate government of a "liberated" Korea.

Japan's annexation of Korea as Chōsen had in fact been recognized by all of the Allied powers. Even during the war, and despite the rhetoric of the Cairo Declaration, none of the Allied powers had recognized KPG -- except ROC, but only after it had fled from Nanking (Nanjing) to Chungking (Chongqing) in virtual exile within China.

KPG too, under the leadership of Kim Ku (金九 김 구 1876-1949), had fled from Shanghai to Chungking, where it joined ROC in declaring war on Japan and Germany after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on 8 December 1941 (East Asia time). Kim, KPG's president since 1927, pledged its "Korean Liberation Army" to local resistance against Japan, and was about to take the war to Korea, as the USSR had taken it to Manchuria, when Japan surrendered.

On the advice of Chiang Kai-shek, MacArthur invited Kim Ku, as well as Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), KPG's first president from 1919-1925, to come to Korea and help put together a government. Kim lost to Rhee in ROK's first elections, held a month before the formal founding of the state on 15 August 1948.

ROK, though immediately recognized by the United States, the Republic of China, and a number of other members of the United Nations who were opposed to communism, was generally not regarded as qualified to join the peace treaty with Japan for reasons having little to do with recognition politics. There had been no Korean state in the eyes of the world at large since 1910. No Korean stated existed in January 1942 when the Allied Powers, calling themselves the United Nations (not the later United Nations), declared war against the Axis powers and vowed to sign a common peace treaty with Japan. Throughout the war, what the Allies called "Korea" had not been a belligerant against Japan but an integral part of Japan.

The Allied Powers did not recognize that KPG -- never mind KPG's declaration of war against Japan, and its boasts of having supported resistance operations against Japan -- had represented "Korea" as a state, much less been a member of the Allied Powers.

No retrocession and no successor state

Unlike conventional territorial transfers, which take place between two states, "Chōsen" was separated from Japan by a treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers, which did not -- because it could not -- designate a successor state. Japan was not given an opportunity to retrocede Chōsen to "Korea" or any other successor state. Japan had no say in the disposition of "Korea" -- except to renounce its claims to Korea (Chōsen) to 48 3rd-party states.

For Chosenese north and south, the divided occupation of the peninsula was a nightmare in the making. For Chosenese in Japan, the separation of "Chōsen" from Japan without the agency of a bilateral treaty between Japan and a Korean state meant that -- when losing Japanese nationality on 28 April 1952 -- they were left with no state affiliation -- or, as I would put it, a would-be nationality without a state.

Taiwan and the Pescadores

Taiwan and the Pescadores (澎湖 Penghu), which is what I mean when I say Taiwan, was the diametri opposite of Chōsen when it came to surrender and occupation. Unlike Chōsen, Taiwan had a Chinese state waiting to accept its return to China -- the Republic of China -- an major Allied Power no less.

ROC, representing the Allied Powers, accepted Japan's surrender in Taiwan on 25 October 1945. As the Cairo Declaration, embedded in the Potsdam Declaration, had designated ROC was the suggessor state, ROC, not waiting for a treaty, immediately incororated Taiwan back into China, 50 years after the government of China under the Ching (Qing) Dynasty had ceded the territory to Japan.

ROC expected to participate in the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and would have, if it had not been driven off the mainland in 1949 by the People's Liberation Army after the founding of the People's Republic China that October. The Allied Powers could not agree over ROC's representation, hence the treaty allowed Japan to merely renounce its claims over Taiwan -- without any designation of a successor state. Japan, when signing an independent peace treaty with ROC on 28 April 1952, the day Japan regained its sovereignty and right to conduct its own foreign affairs, was unable to retrocede Taiwan to ROC because it was no longer Japan's territory.

Taiwanese in Occupied Japan were allowed to enroll in ROC nationality, and most had thereby become ROC nationals also in SCAP's and therefore Japan's eyes, long before the revolution on the mainland drove the ROC government into exile in Taiwan. Consequently, they became affiliated with a state with which Japan immediately normalized it relationship.

The separation of Taiwan from Japan de facto in 1945 and de jure in 1952 -- and the separation of Taiwanese from Japanese nationality in 1952 -- does not seem to have caused Taiwanese in Japan a great deal of grief. The occupation of Taiwan by the ROC government in exile in 1949 was arguably more traumatic for Taiwanese in Taiwan than the relatively peaceful conditions which existed in the territory under Japanese rule in the 1920s and 1930s.

When becoming ROC nationals, Taiwanese in Japan acquired the status of United Nations nationals, which means they had three statuses. When the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in 1952, they lost two of their statuses -- as United Nations nationals and as Japanese -- and became simply aliens of ROC nationality.

The loss of Japanese nationality and the recognition of alien status in 1952 were formalities related to the end of the Occupation and Japan's rebirth as a sovereign state. For during the Allied Occupation, Taiwanese in Japan had already become ROC nationals and were essentially treated as such under Occupation law. In the meantime, Japanese law continued to associate Japanese nationality with Taiwanese registers until Taiwan was formally separated from Japan.

Japan's and ROC's relations were such that ROC nationals -- most of them Taiwanese rather than mainland nationalist refugees -- were generally welcome in Japan. Most spoke Japanese, and had recently themselves been Japanese, and even those who had never been to the prefectures would not have felt entirely like fish out of water.

Even after Japan switched its "China" recognition from ROC to PRC in 1972, relations between the two states remained cordial. Though formally Japan could no longer regard ROC as a state, it continued to treat ROC nationals pretty much the same way when it came to issuing permits to enter or stay in Japan. Moreover, ROC nationals who had settled in Japan had no difficulty plying between Japan and ROC.

The switch of recognition in 1972 resulted in a sudden jump per year, in 1972 and 1973, of about 6,000 applications for permission to naturalize -- from ROC nationals who had obtained certificates of renunciation of ROC nationality in advance and become stateless shortly before the recognition change. During the early 1970s, well over 12,000 ROC nationals in Japan were permitted to naturalize in what remains the most dramatic leap in the naturalization rate in Japanese legal history.

See Naturalization under the 1950 Nationality Law for statistics and commentary.

Karafuto and the Kuriles

The Soviet Union, also in lieu of a treaty, similarly treated the Kuriles and Karafuto as part of its sovereign territory. In 1875, Japan and Russia resolved their claims over the southern part of Sakhalin (Karafuto) and the northern Kuriles by agreeing that all of Saghalin would belong to Russia and all the Kuriles to Japan. Then in 1905 Russia had ceded Karafuto (southern part of Sakhalin) to Japan.

While Japan has recognized its loss of Karafuto, it claims that, in signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty, it did not intend to cede its sovereignty over the southern Kuriles, which had not been contested by Russia in 1875. Though Japan and the USSR normalized their relationship in 1956, the two countries -- the USSR as Russia since 1991 -- have yet to sign a peace treaty, on account of their continuing disagreement over what Japan has called its "Northern Territories" since the 1960s.

and had, which the Soviet Union began to invade on 9 August 1945, had been occupied by 28 August which the Soviet Union had invaded before the announcement of surrender, were fully occupied were u to had already invaded, were under and The surrendered, it had lost control of Okinawa and all these territories when it surrendered -- Korea when Japan surrendered Chōsen south of the 38th parallel to the United States and north of the parallel to the Soviet Union -- Taiwan when Japan it was surrendered to and occupied by the Republic of China, and Karafuto and and the Kuriles when they were invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union.

Non-sovereign territories of Japan

In addition to territories that were formally incorporated into Japan's sovereign dominion, a number of territories were under Japan's effective legal control and jurisdiction.

Kwantung Leased Territory and Railway Zone

Japan's sovereignty did not extend to the Kwantung Leased Territory or the Railway Zone. Originally these territories were leased from China, then from the Republic of China. From the mid 1930s, however, Japan took the position that they were part of Manchoukuo, which it considered an independent state, and so Manchoukuo replaced ROC as the lessor state.

These territories -- including "Manchuria" (as the Allies referred the part of China that had become "Manchoukuo") -- were invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union. By mid 1946 the USSR had transferred control of all of Manchuria to ROC -- except what it considered its continuing interests in the Kwantung leased territory, particularly Port Arthur. ROC agreed to a Soviet plan to jointly operated an area about the size of Kwantung called the Port Arthur Naval Base District.

China was then divided by civil war, and by 1948 most of Manchuria was under communist control. In USSR eyes, China became the People's Republic of China in 1949. In 1955, the USSR returned its Port Arthur interests to PRC and withdrew its military forces from the area.

South Sea Islands

The South Sea Islands, formerly German outposts in western Pacific, were administered by Japan under a League of Nations mandate. Japan continued to discharge this mandate after its formal withdrawal from the league.

Many of the mandate islands were invaded, captured, and occupied by the United States during its Pacific operations. Most of the islands were later administered by the United States under UN mandates.

Countries occupied by Japan or under Japanese influence

When the war ended, a number of countries -- though not formally part of the Empire of Japan [double hyphen]were under Japanese control or influence. Japan was involved in the affairs of Manchoukuo, China, and Vietnam before the start of the Pacific War. Other countries, like the Philippines and Burma, had been been invaded and occupied by Japan during the Pacific War

During the war, Japan restructured several of the countries it partly or completely occupied as nominally independent states which joined Japan's declaration of war against the Allied Powers. Examples include the National Government of China under Wang Jing-wei and the Republic of the Philippines under José P. Laurel.

Manchoukuo

Manchoukuo represented a different situation, in which Japan helped create a new state out of territories that had been contested by China and Russia, then by the Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Japan's actions in setting up Manchoukuo seeded the diplomatic hostilities that grew the conflict that began between Japan and ROC in 1937 and exploded in Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War in 1931.

Manchoukuo, despite all the posturing by the Republic of China and its supporters in the League of Nations, actually functioned as state. The considerable influence which Japan had over Manchoukuo could be characterized as "control" but not "jurisdiction" -- as Japan had resorted to all manner of legal ruses to showcase Manchoukuo as an independent country.

The other Allied Powers supported China's claim that "Manchoukuo" did not exist except in Japan's imagination. Like China, called the region "Manchuria" in English and considered it an "occupied" territory that had to be "liberated" from Japanese control.

Because Japan had never claimed Manchoukuo, and since it was never otherwise a part of the Empire of Japan, greater Manchuria was never the object of a treaty of cession with Japan.

China

The object of Japan's expansion in China was to rescue the country from the inability of its territorial and ideological war lords to put aside their differences in order to build a strong, prosperous, peaceful, and friendly China. Japan was particularly plagued by civil unrest along China's border with Manchoukuo, which China claimed Japan had illegally established in territory that rightfully belonged to China.

Aside from whether the establishment of Manchoukuo in Manchuria in 1932 constituted an occupation of China, Japan's actions in China from 1937 undoubtedly constituted a military invasion and occupation of some of China's major provinces, ports, and cities, beginning with its northern and southern capitals.

That Japan signed a peace treaty with the Republic of China in 1952 was a bit ironic. Japan had never declared war on China. ROC had declared war -- but not in 1937 when Japan invaded and occupied parts of China -- and not in 1938, after the ROC government went into exile in Chungking (Chongqing) -- and not even in 1940, when Japan recognized the Chinese government of Wang Jing-wei -- but only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, when it ROC joined the United States in its declaration of war against Japan. And then, of course, ROC became one of the major Allied Powers in their prosecution of the war against Japan.

Article 26 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty imposed the following obligation on Japan.

Japan will be prepared to conclude with any State which signed or adhered to the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942, and which is at war with Japan, or with any State which previously formed a part of the territory of a State named in Article 23, which is not a signatory of the present Treaty, a bilateral Treaty of Peace on the same or substantially the same terms as are provided for in the present Treaty, but this obligation on the part of Japan will expire three years after the first coming into force of the present Treaty. Should Japan make a peace settlement or war claims settlement with any State granting that State greater advantages than those provided by the present Treaty, those same advantages shall be extended to the parties to the present Treaty.

To add to the irony -- by 1952, the ROC government no longer had control over the "China" which Japan had partly invaded and occupied. It had taken refuge in, and controlled only what had legally been part of Japan until ROC received the surrender of Taiwan in 1945 -- plus a couple of islands, which were part of Fukien province, which ROC had fortified to discourage PRC from attacking it across the straits.

Japan's signing of the Taipei Peace Treaty with ROC was almost as though it was signing a peace treaty with itself.

Southeast Asian countries

The object of Japan's military invasions of Southeast Asian countries was to liberate them from the American, British, and Dutch powers that were not only controlling their governments and economies, but were denying their port facilities to Japanese ships if not using their ports as bases for naval blockades of Japanese shipping routes.

All these countries were in turn "liberated" from Japanese control or influence -- some, like the Philippines, in bloody battles, others in peaceful transfers of authority after Japan's unconditional surrender.

Top  

Occupation Authorities

Understanding the legal workings of the Allied Occupation of Japan, and of occupations of other territories that were part of the Empire of Japan, and of all postwar settlements, including the San Francisco Peace treaty, requires recognition of the fact that the Allied Powers constituted a supernational legal body since their joint declaration of war as the "United Nations" against Germany, Italy, and Japan on 1 January 1942.

William Sebald on the Occupation as an "international enterprise"

William Sebald, who arrived in Occupied Japan in January 1946 to begin his assignment to POLAD as an expert on Japanese law, describes the office like this in his autobiography, With MacArthur in Japan: A Personal History of the Occupation (New York; W.W. Norton & Co., 1965, with Russell Brines) (Sebald 1965, page 42).

Although the State Department had participated in preliminary planning [for the Occupation], its role in Tokyo at this period of the Occupation was limited and only vaguely defined. Our office was known as Acting United States Political Adviser to SCAP [Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers = General Douglas MacArthur], shortened to POLAD. Headed by the late George Atcheson, Jr., with the personal rank of minister, it operated in many ways like an embassy accredited to the Occupation. This was consistent with the legal concept of General MacArthur as supernational representative of an Allied occupation. But, in fact, the Occupation never became an international enterprise, despite the involvement of all eleven wartime associates [Great Britain, Republic of China, Soviet Union, et cetera]. Instead, SCAP was predominantly American in operation, as well as in personnel, to the discomfiture of several Allied governments. The position of POLAD, therefore, was in the beginning curiously half in and half outside the mainstream of Occupation affairs.

Sebald had been a Japanese language officer with the U.S. Navy in Japan in the mid 1920s, and had practiced and translated law in Kobe in the 1930s before being suspected of spying on Japanese naval operations and forced to Japan in 1939. He quickly became Atcheson's assistant, and would himself head POLAD after Atcheston died in plane crash in August 1947. He then became the Chief of the SCAP's Diplomatic Section, and would be involved in many of Japan's diplomatic affairs for the duration duration of the Occupation -- including Japan's talks with ROK.

Sebald, bilingual and legally minded, and a quick student of diplomacy, clearly perceived the legal responsibilities of the Allied Powers as an Occupation Authority. There were numerous examples of how victors had treated the vanquished in the past, and many precedents regarding the disposition of the nationality status of inhabitants of transferred territories and of displaced people -- people who ended up in a territory to which they would no longer legally belong.

I have no evidence of the extent to which Sebald was involved in the drafting of POLAD's "Status of Koreans in Japan" report -- but I would guess that he at least read it and approved.

Far Eastern Commission

The Far Eastern Commission (FEC) was established to oversee the multiple occupations of the territories of the Empire of Japan, including the parts of the prefectural Interior that became Occupied Japan. In principle, SCAP was subject to FEC's control and obliged to carry out its directives.

The "eleven wartime associates" Sebald mentions in his statement about how the Allied Powers intended to oversee SCAP in Occupied Japan refer to the following FEC members.

United States of America
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
United Kingdom
[Republic of] China
France
The Netherlands
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
India
The Philippine Commonwealth

The 4 first listed powers -- the "Big 4" -- had veto powers over a majority of the other powers. But the arrangement didn't work, mainly (but not only) because of disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Americanization of history

Some historians call the Occupation of Japan the "American Occupation" and a few even characterize the San Francisco Peace Treaty as a treaty between Japan and the United States. Whatever the extent of America's control of the Occupation, and of American say in the drafting of the Peace Treaty, both were nonetheless legally -- under international conventions of postwar settlements -- "Allied" enterprises.

The Allied Powers constituted the equivalent of what Sebald properly characterized as a "supernational" body. If asked for clarification, he would have said a body with powers equivalent to those of state -- or even dictatorship -- over an occupied entity. The terms of surrender suspended Japan's sovereignty and subject the government of Japan to the absolute authority of the Allied Powers, represented by SCAP -- the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. SCAP, though, was not the supreme authority within the Allied Powers. Whoever sat on SCAP's throne -- initially Douglas MacArthur -- was in principle, if not always in practice, subject to the larger collective authority of the Allied Powers.

The point, though, is that the Allied Powers were a source of law and enforcement unto themselves. Most the members of the Allied Powers were founding members of the United Nations. And it is no co-incidence that the major Allied Powers, following their victories in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II, dominated the United Nations in its earlier years.

Top  

22 March 1952 DS notifies KDMJ that SCAP's jurisdiction will end

On 22 March 1952, the Diplomatic Section of GHQ/SCAP informed the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan -- in what appears to be a form letter that DS probably sent to all diplomatic missions in Occupied Japan -- that SCAP's jurisdiction would soon end pursuant to the imminent effectuation of the Allied Peace Treaty with Japan. Upon the restoration of sovereignty to Japan and its people, KDMJ would be on its own regarding its relationship with Japan. SCAP would no have the authority to mediate.

The following text is my transcription of a scan of a copy of DS's 22 March 1952 communication to KDMJ in ROK archives (KRN 82: 138). See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars.

Top  

San Francisco Peace Treaty

The spring of 1947 was the watershed for the start of the push by the United States for a peace treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan. According to William Sebald, the United States completed a first draft of the peace treaty in March 1947, and he refers to August 1947 and January 1948 revisions. He called the approach taken by the Allied Powers at this time "Draconian", described the earlier drafts as "unworkable", and said the situation was "the Versailles Treaty all over again" -- referring to the harshness of the conditions the Allied Powers had imposed on Germany in 1919 after the Great War of 1914-1918 (Sebald 1965, pages 243-244).

The situation is not much better by late 1949 and early 1950. There are conflicts within the Allied ranks, within the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), and between SCAP and Washington over the terms of the treaty. The prospects for an early treaty worsened after the start of the Korean War in June 1950.

SCAP's position, since early 1947, had been to conclude a treaty as early as possible. Note in this regard that the Allied Powers had signed a peace treaty with Italy in February 1947. The Allied Powers had liberated Italy during the war in Europe, and Italy had joined the Allied Powers in the continuing war with Germany and even Japan.

Political and military conditions in East Asia, however, rapidly deteriorated, first in 1948 with the establishments of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), then in 1949 with the creation in China of the People's Republic of China. ROK and DPRK claimed the same former Japanese territory of Chōsen (Korea) and refused to cooperate for the sake of creating a unified Korean state. And the People's Liberation Army drove the government of the Republic of China (ROC) into exile in the province of Taiwan, which ROC had created out of the former Japanese territory of Taiwan (Formosa).

These developments hugely complicated the process of concluding a peace treaty with Japan. Concerns varied within the United States government, and the Allied Powers were divided by ideological differences or by differences in diplomatic approach to dealing with the territorial conflicts between the two Koreas and the two Chinas.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, worried about the military instability of the region, weeks before the start of the Korean War, sought an indefinite delay in order to find political solutions (Seward 1965, page 250). The State Department wanted to continue negotiations to see if a treaty was possible, while the Defense Department wanted to "halt all peace treaty activity for the time being" -- and JCS's position was that "no treaty negotiations should be undertaken without assurance that Soviet Russia and Communist China would sign" (Sebald 1965, page 255).>

SCAP, meaning MacArthur, was closer to State's position, and Sebald himself, of course, represented State as the chief of GHQ/SCAP's Diplomatic Section. Sebald, as the chief of DS, and an ambassador by rank, was essentially in charge of facilitating Japan's foreign affairs, for Japan, when surrendering to the Allied Powers, had had delegated its sovereignty, and therefore its diplomatic powers, to SCAP. SCAP, attempting to bridge the differences between State and Defense, argued that "it did not follow that no action should be taken until their [USSR and PRC] conditions were met" (Sebald 1965, pages 254-255)

The start of the Korean War changed everything except State's and SCAP's urgency to get on with the peace treaty. John Foster Dulles, a special State Department adviser appointed by President Truman, had already stepped into the negotiation ring with Yoshida Shigeru, who was then both the Prime Minister of the Foreign Ministry of Japan.

Dulles formulated his own policies, and ran his own interference in diplomatic plays with Allied Powers which did not share his opinion as to how to deal with the two Chinas and the two Koreas, and the difficulties their territorial wars had created for a treaty of peace between the Allied Powers and Japan. Dulles, opposed by some Allied Powers, most significantly Great Britain, and over the objections of some other American officials, angled toward a peace conference to which neither China would be invited, though Nationalist China (ROC) had been a major Allied Power.

The Soviet Union, also a major Allied Power, would participate in the conference but decline to join the treaty. The Soviet Union had taken the position that it would "object to any treaty language which cast doubt on the Soviet title to Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands or on Communist China's sovereignty over Formosa." The USSR also "questioned the right of the United States to exercise trusteeship over the Bonin Islands [Ogasawaras] and the Ryukyu Group [mainly Okinawa prefecture]". (Sebald 1965, page 259)

Had the two Koreas not been at war, they might have been invited to observe the peace conference, would given their postwar establishment and the fact that "Korea" (Chōsen) had been part of Japan, neither would have been qualified to join the treaty. The Soviet Union, and of course PRC, were militarily backing DPRK forces, and ROK forces were being supported by United Nations forces, particularly American forces. ROC, a member of the United Nations, was not allowed to send military forces to Korea, but ROC logistically supported UN forces in Korea.

Japan contributed immensely to the support of US military operations in Korea, most of which were mounted from, or through, US military bases in Japan. Many Japanese ships and crews were involved in the Inchon landing on 15 September 1950, which was staged from Japan. Thousands of ROK soldiers had been brought to Japan for training and integration with American invasion forces. (Sebald 1965, pages 198-199)

General MacArthur, relieved by Truman on 11 April 1951, was replaced by General Ridgeway as SCAP, and peace negotiations with Japan continued under Ridgeway's watch. As the treaty was between Japan and the Allied Forces, SCAP was not itself a party to the negotiations, but as the head of the military government in Japan it facilitated treaty negotiations.

The signing of the peace treaty by the Allied Powers and Japan in San Francisco on 8 September 1951 left a number of other peace treaties to be negotiated between Japan and and Allied Powers which, for various reasons, had not signed the San Francisco treaty. These states included, among others, India, Italy, the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China.

India had been invited to the peace conference in San Francisco but declined to participate, owing to its view that some of the terms were unfair to Japan. India would sign a separate peace treaty with Japan on 9 June 1952.

Japan and the Soviet Union did not formally declare an end to their state of hostilities and normalize their diplomatic relations 18 October 1956, but Japan and Russia have yet to sign a formal peace treaty as Japan continues to dispute Russia's claim to and control over several islands in the southern stretch of the Kuriles. In the 1956 joint declaration, the USSR agreed to support Japan's membership in the United Nations, and Japan was formally admitted to the UN on 18 December 1956.

Italy, having been defeated by the Allied Powers, joined the Allied war against Germany on 19 October 1943, and against Japan on 14 July 1945 a month before Japan informed the Allied Powers that it would surrender. Italy, however, was not invited to the peace conference in San Francisco. Sebald writes that his deputy, Niles Bond, "suggested the eventual compromise formula to break a long impasse over formal peace between Japan and Italy (Sebald 1965, page 284).

A peace treaty between Japan and the Republic of China would be "more difficult" and would engage his "close attention for some months", Sebald wrote in his memoirs (Sebald 1965, page 284).

Sebald characterized "the Korean-Japanese conference" -- which also engaged his attention -- as "[a]nother 'peace' effort which caused many difficulties and some embarrassment" (Sebald 1965, page 287). He bracketed "peace" in his reference to the talks he would facilitate, between the Republic of Korea and Japan, though having nothing to do with "peace" since "Korea" had been part of Japan and not at war with Japan, would not be peaceful.

See the following two sections for further commentary on Japan's talks with ROC and ROK, after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, to 28 April 1952 when the treaty came into force.

Top  

ROC and the San Francisco Peace Treaty

Regarding Taiwan and the Pescadores, which China had ceded to Japan in 1895, Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on 8 September 1951, stated only that "Japan renounces all right, title and claim to Formosa and the Pescadores." While Japan and the Republic of China (ROC) favored a normal retrocession provision, ROC was unable to participate in the treaty because of divisions among the other Allied Powers concerning the recognition of the People's Republic of China. And the United States, in the position of dealing with the territorial standoff between the ROC and the People's Republic of China (PRC), while engaged against PRC in the Korean War, proposed as a compromise that the peace treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan could not specify the name of the successor state.

The Soviet Union, also an Allied Power, chose not to join the treaty. And neither of the two Korean states were qualified to participate because they had been created after the war on territory which had been part of Japan and therefore had not been members of the Allied Powers at war with Japan. Hence Japanese territories which had been separated from Japan in 1945, with the understanding that Japan had lost them to the USSR and a future Korean state, were also described in the treaty in terms of Japan simply "renouncing" (放棄する hōki suru) all right, title and claim to the territories, without specifying the successor states.

William J. Sebald

William J. Sebald (1901-1980), as the head of the Diplomatic Section of GHQ/SCAP in Tokyo and an ambassador by rank, was in charge of Japan's diplomatic affairs. As such he was deeply involved in the negotiations between Japan and both the the Republic of China and the Republic Korea, which began soon after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Sebald records some of his recollections of the talks in his 1965 memoirs written with Russell Brines (see "Sources" for particulars).

Regarding Japan's postwar settlement with China, Sebald describes the "fundamental position" held by John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), and comments on Dulles's position, like this (Sebald 1965, page 286, italics Sebald's, underscoring mine).

Dulles, an ambassador-at-large and consultant to the Secretary of State from 1951 to 1952, became Secretary of State under Eisenhower in 1953 and served in this post until the month before his death in 1959. A staunch anti-communist, he is credited with formulating America's position regarding the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, and was one of the authors of the treaty. He seems to have had little difficult persuading -- some would say pushing -- Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshida Shigeru (1878-1967), who at the time was also the Prime Minister, to go along with America's position regarding settlements concerning Taiwan.

Sebald, who often met with Yoshida, his diplomatic counterpart in the Japanese government as well as its political head, gives a dramatic account of his own involvement in facilitating a letter from Yoshida to Dulles, in which Yoshida assures Dulles that Japan has no intentions of recognizing PRC. This drama unfolds in private chambers, and then in the public press, in December 1951 and January 1952.

Still, the Japan-ROC talks encountered all manner of snags that threatened their success, and this continued to worry Sebald's bosses in Washington. About his role, he gives this account (pages 286-287, underscoring mine).

Note that, as of 14 March 1952, the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which had to come into effect before the Taipei Peace Treaty could be signed, awaited the ratification of the United States -- which would not be made until 20 March the following week.

I have underscored remarks that seem significant to me. In his comments on ROK-Japan talks, he did not characterize ROK's delegation as particularly adept at diplomacy, nor did he express much confidence that the talks would succeed -- though of course that was his fervent hope (see below).

Top  

ROK and the San Francisco Peace Treaty

Japan's renunciation of "all right, title and claim" over "Korea" in Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty was also without any specification of the assumed successor state with which Japan would be obliged to negotiate settlements. As with the settlement over Taiwan and the Pescadores, Japan was to follow the guidance -- if not the direction -- of the United States.

As with its choice to negotiate with the Republic of China (ROC) rather than the People's Republic of China (PRC) concerning its making of peace with "China" and the status of Taiwan and the Pescadores -- Japan chose, or rather had little choice but to choose, to negotiate with the Republic of Korea (ROK) rather than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) regarding "Korea".

Unlike its talks with ROC, however, would lead to a peace treaty, since ROC as an Allied Power had declared war on Japan (Japan had not, however, considered itself at war with ROC) -- Japan's talks with ROK would not be about peace, for ROK had been established on territory which had been part of the Empire of Japan in Japan's war against the Allied Powers. Rather Japan and ROK would be negotiating a normalization treaty to clear the way to establishing ordinary diplomatic relations, and a status agreement regarding the treatment of ROK nationals in Japan.

Talks over normalization would break down over mainly territorial and property disputes. Talks over the legal status in Japan of ROK nationals went comparatively much smoother after overcoming some initial hurdles.

The Japan-ROK talks, like the Japan-ROC talks, were facilitated by GHQ/SCAP's Diplomatic Section, especially by its chief, William Sebald, who oversaw Japan's foreign affairs -- at the time of these talks, with his counterpart foreign minister Yoshida Shigeru (who was also Japan's prime minister). And as he did when setting up Japan's talks with ROC, Sebald left Japan and ROK to make their own way, without SCAP interference.

Concerning the 1951-1952 round of Japan's talks with ROK, Sebald says this in memoirs (Sebald 1965, pages 287-288, italics Sebald's, underscoring mine).

Japan and ROK signed a normalization treaty and status agreement on 22 June 1965, by which time Sebald's memoirs had already been published or was on its way to press.

The conference slowly collapsed after futile attempts to agree upon an agenda   Sebald seems to have forgotten that Japan and ROK did agree to an agenda, and established subcommittees to deal with normalization and status issues separately. The nationality and status subcommittee produced a signable agreement on 28 April 1952, which was edited a bit on 1 April 1952, by which time the normalization talks had floundered on territorial and property disputes.

All evidence suggests that Japan was hoping to sign off on matters that the two states could agree to, in order to normalize their relations, which would allow ROK to enroll willing Koreans in Japan into its nationality -- but that ROK insisted on agreement to everything or nothing at all. Sebald's qualified optimism was not to be realized.

Sebald is often seen as being "pro-Japan" and "anti-Korean" in his personal views of the two countries and their people. He many personal reasons to like Japan, and perhaps he also had reasons to be generally critical of Korea and Koreans. At the same time, I get the impression that he was a realist who understood the limits of what could be achieved in a bilateral talk between Japan and ROK, and truly thought it would be in the best interests of both countries to put the past behind them and get on with the future.

Sebald and nationality issue

One of the "outstanding difficulties" and "outstanding problems" between Japan and ROK was the status and treatment of Koreans in Japan (see below). Though Sebald does not mention the nationality issue in his memoirs, it is clear from memoranda between him as chief of the GHQ/SCAP's Diplomatic Section (DS), and Alva C. Carpenter as chief of the Legal Section (LS), that Sebald was pragmatic about Carpenter's attempt, after the San Francisco Peace Treaty had already been signed, to impose a "nationality choice" provision on the Japan and ROK.

Within days after the ROK-Japan talks had begun -- when Japan clarified its position that the Koreans would lose their Japanese nationality when the Peace Treaty came into effect and have to naturalize if they wished to again be Japanese -- Carpenter was advising Sebald that there should be provisions for choice, such as those in the treaty of peace the Allied Powers had signed with Italy in 1947. Sebald, though, had already informed Japan and ROK that SCAP would not interfere in their talks, and that whatever they bilaterally agreed to would be accepted.

Sebald may also have reasoned that SCAP could not possibly have imposed Carpenter's formalism on Japan and ROK, for many political reasons that were obvious to anyone eavesdropping on exchanges between ROK and Japan delegates at the bilateral talks.

1. SCAP didn't have the authority to dictate nationality terms
   Having already signed a treaty of peace with Japan, in which Japan had renounced all right, title, and claim to Korea -- without specifying a successor state or states, or making any stipulations about nationality options -- the moment had passed for the Allied Powers to have any say in negotiations between Japan and ROK. And SCAP itself never had the authority to dictate any treaty terms. Carpenter was expressing a personal opinion, not SCAP policy -- and both ROK and Japan knew this.
2. Japan no longer had any say in the disposition of Chōsen (Korea)
   Having already abandoned all right, title and claim to Korea, Japan could not have agreed to a transfer of Korea (Chōsen) to ROK, which claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula. In other words, Japan had already lost its standing in having a say in the disposition of Korea (Chōsen) as a territory.
3. Japan no longer had "grounds" for attributing its nationality to Chosenese
   The moment Korea was formally separated from Japan's territory, concomitant with the effectuation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan would also have no legal foundation for attributing its nationality to people in registers affiliated with Korea. Hence Koreans would lose their Japanese nationality.
4. ROK held that Koreans had already lost Japanese nationality
   Even if ROK accepted that Koreans had become Japanese de facto, it viewed Japan's first signalling of its intent to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration on 9 August 1945 as the date on which "Chōsen" was liberated as "Korea" and "Chosenese" became "Koreans". If not 9 August then 15 August, when Hirohito ordered his commanders to cease fire. If not 15 August then 2 September, when Japan formally surrendered.
5. ROK held that Koreans in Japan had already become its nationals
   Even if Koreans in Japan could be construed to still be Japanese during the first three years of the Occupation, ROK argued that they became its nationals the moment it became a state on 15 August 1948, under its nationality laws -- its Provisional Nationality Law of 11 May 1948, and its Nationality Law of 20 December 1948.
6. ROK even held that Koreans had never legally been Japanese
   ROK viewed the 1910 annexation treaty as illegal, hence would never have recognized that Japan had legally possessed sovereignty over Korea, and therefore could not have legally attributed its nationality to Koreans. So from ROK's standpoint, Koreans had never become Japanese de jure.
7. ROK had no interest in talking about nationality
   Japan informed ROK that, after losing their Japanese nationality, Koreans could naturalize if they wanted to be Japanese again. ROK replied that every sovereign state had the right to determine who it considered its nationals, and hence what Japan did with its nationality did not qualify as a topic for discussion at their bilateral talks. ROK had its views, and Japan had its views, and they agreed to accept that each state would think as it pleased about nationality.
8. ROK was upset that Japan continued to speak of "Chōsen" and "Chosenese"
   Long before ROK and Japan began to directly negotiate, ROK had appealed to SCAP to pressure Japan to stop speaking of "Korea" and "Koreans" as "Chōsen" (朝鮮) and "Chōsenjin" (朝鮮人) -- not only because it smacked of the period of annexation, but because it suggested that Japan was sympathetic with DPRK, whose name included the Sino-Korean word for Sino-Japanese "Chōsen". However, from Japan's point of view, it could not arbitrarily call "Koreans" in Japan "Kankokujin" (韓国人) or "Kanjin" (韓人), since they were not yet ROK nationals. Legally they were still Chosenese who had Japanese nationality because Chōsen -- though already under the control and jurisdiction of two sovereign Korean states, ROK and DPRK -- was formally still part of Japan.
9. Japan was concerned that most Koreans in Japan politically identified with DPRK
   Apart from the legal statuses of Koreans in Japan, as determined by the Allied Powers in concert with its own laws and Japan's laws, the political reality in Occupied Japan was that, while roughly 95 percent of Koreans in the prefectures had family registers and ancestral roots in the southern provinces under ROK control and jurisdiction, most appeared to support DPRK, which had control and jurisdiction over the northern provinces. Moreover, ROK and DPRK were at war, and Japan did not want to throw oil on the ideological fires burning among Koreans in Japan siding with ROK's view of their nationality.
10. Japan insisted on voluntary enrollment in ROK nationality
    Japan balked at ROK's insistence that Japan recognize all Koreans in Japan as ROK's nationals as a matter of ROK decree. Japan took the position that it lacked the authority to tell Koreans in Japan what country to belong to. Every Korean in Japan would have to decide themself. Once ROK and Japan had normalized their relationship, ROK would have the right to enroll willing Koreans in Japan into its nationality. Until they did so, they would remain simply "Koreans" -- i.e., "Chosenese" -- nationals of neither ROK nor DPRK, but of a legacy territory that had no state -- or rather had two states that vied for their loyalty.

Japan had two choices -- both moral. One moral choice was to make legal provisions for Koreans in Japan to remain Japanese without losing Japan's nationality, or regain its nationality after losing it without having to naturalize. The other moral choice was whether to go along with ROK's initial insistence that it force all Koreans in Japan in to ROK's political mold.

By the end of 1951, ROK had essentially relented to Japan choice to let Koreans in Japan decide for themselves whether to be ROK nationals or remain simply Chosenese -- which did not mean that they were DPRK nationals, but simply "nationals" of the independent "Korea" that "Chōsen" had become when Japan renounced all title, right and claim over the territory.

Regarding its own nationality, Japan chose not to provide a choice -- other than to naturalize. Many people writing in English today insist that Japan's choice was both illegal and immoral, and one writer -- George Hicks -- has alleged that "by depriving the Koreans of their Japanese nationality, Japan acted illegally, immorally, and unwisely" (Hicks 1997, page 51).

I would argue that Japan was acting legally, with the consent of SCAP representing the Allied Powers, and without any objection on the part of ROK. While bilateral choice provisions were impossible, unilateral provisions were feasible -- and I would agree that Japan "should" have made such provisions -- the only question being what kind of provisions, given its domestic laws -- not its Nationality Law (as many people wrongly contend), but its Civil Code, and the Family Register Law which facilitates the undercurrent of family law in the Civil Code (see Separation and choice for a fuller discussion of what Japan could have done).

Note that, even in the 1965 Japan-ROK normalization treaty, Japan recognized that ROK was "the only lawful Government in Korea" -- pursuant to a 1948 resolution by the United Nation's General Assembly. Japan was not admitted to the United Nations until 1956. ROK and DPRK were simultaneously admitted to the UN in 1991, since which time Japan and DPRK have been attempting to normalization their relationship. As of this writing (2011), ROK and DPRK remain in a state of armistice regarding their 1950-1953 war. Neither Japan nor ROK recognize DPRK or its nationality.

Top  

Yang-Rusk exchanges

In the months leading up to the Peace Conference held in San Francisco in September 1951, for the purpose of confirming and signing the Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan, the Republic of Korea attempted to convince anyone who would listen that ROK deserved to participate in the conference and join the treaty as a member of the Allied Powers.

The most interesting exchanges regarding ROK's understanding of its role in the Pacific War took place in late July and early August in 1951 between Yang You Chan (梁裕燦 1897-1975), ROK's ambassador to the United States, who would lead ROK's delegation in the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks which convened in late October after the signing of the Peace Treaty in early September -- and Dean Rusk (1909-1994), Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs -- by way of Dean Acheson (1893-1971), then the Secretary of State.

Three Yang-Rusk documents

Wikisource has posted transcriptions of the following 3 Yang-Rusk documents, which I have slightly reformatted here.

Letter from You Chan Yang to Dean Acheson, 19 July, 1951
Letter from You Chan Yang to Dean Acheson, 2 August, 1951
Rusk note of [August 10,] 1951

Images of the 4-page Rusk note are available are attributed to the following source.

U.S. NARA (National Archives and Records Administration)
RG59, Lot54 D423 JAPANESE PEACE TREATY FILES OF JOHN FOSTER DULLES, Box 8, Korea

Top  

Top  

Top  

[ FE = Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs
  NA = Office of Northeast Asian Affairs
  RFEAREY = Robert Fearey
  SB = Samuel Boggs ? ]

Top  

1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks

Legal status the first and only priority

The principle facilitator of the talks between ROK and Japan was William Sebald, the chief of the Diplomatic Section at GHQ/SCAP. He not only set up the talks but was present at its first meeting, and DS officials were present as observers at subsequent meetings. ROK explicitly requested that SCAP observe the talks, but the presence of SCAP observers was also appropriate as a matter of what I would call "pro forma diplomacy" under the circumstances, since Japan's sovereignty was technically in SCAP's hands, and DS essentially mediated Japan's foreign affairs.

Takasaki describes the talks as actually being "ROK-Japan-US talks" (Takasaki 1996: 24). But the record shows that SCAP stood aside and let Japan deal with ROK directly and without any interference. The Peace Treaty had already been signed. SCAP had no standing in the matter. SCAP had no legal authority to "impose" any conditions on Japan -- much less on ROK, which was a fully competent independent sovereign state.

The United States arguably had more influence on talks subsequent to the failed 1951-1952 talks. Tae-Ryong Yoon makes a convincing argument that the success of the talks between ROK and Japan in the early 1960s, which led to their normalization treaty of 1965, were not so much the result of sudden changes in the political atmosphere, as a crystallization of bilateral efforts since 1951, with some but not definitive influence from the United States (Yoon 2008).

Yoon makes this interesting observation regarding 1st round of talks between ROK and Japan in 1951-1952 (Yang 2008, pages 69-70).

For instance, the first conference was held through the good offices of the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) under the condition that, at Japan's request, the talks focus solely on the legal status of Korean residents in Japan. However, once the talks started, the two sides agreed to extend the agenda at Korea's request.

Top  

Priorities

From GHQ/SCAP's point of view, the number one priority -- the only priority -- in the ROK-Japan talks was the status and treatment of Koreans in Japan after the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect. This was also Japan's principle concern.

From the start, ROK clearly wanted to stress other issues, such as property and claims of Korea and Koreans against Japan and Japanese, and fishing and other economic issues. ROK went along with GHQ/SCAP's priorities, hoping to then focus on the other issues.

This is clear from from all documents exchanged between the Diplomatic Section (DS) of SCAP and the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ), and the government of Japan, shortly before and after the signing of the Peace Treaty on 8 September 1951, and the convening of the talks between Japan and ROK on 20 October 1951. The talks were initiated by GHQ/SCAP's Diplomatic Section (DS), which continued to observe the talks but left the negotiations to the two state parties.

Nationality

Status and treatment meant, first, determining nationality. Within a few meetings, the nationality issues was resolved by leaving it entirely to the domestic laws of the party states. All documents created by ROK prior to the talks, and in the course of the talks, show that this was an essentially foregone conclusion. Which is to say -- ROK had already determined that Koreans in Japan were its nationals, and Japan had no standing in determining who had ROK nationality.

Japan, too, had come to the conclusion -- again before the talks convened -- that Chosenese (Koreans) would naturally lose Japan's nationality when Japan lost Chōsen (Korea). Japan held that nationality losers who wished to be Japanese could naturalize. ROK had no objection to anything Japan did with its own nationality, as every sovereign state had the right to determine who qualified for its nationality.

Choice of nationality

Both parties -- Japan soon after it surrendered, and ROK later -- considered the need to make provisions for nationality choices like those made in many European states following World War I. By the time ROK-Japan talks began, there were also a number of World War II precedents in Europe.

Japan was very familiar with status issues following territorial transfers, in its own territorial history, going back to no later than the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg with Russia. ROK, having only recently become a state, had to do more homework, but its Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials and other legalists had no difficulty understanding the conventions of international law -- keeping in mind that there were no absolute rules, and every war and every treaty differed in various respects.

However, all available documents make it clear that ROK ruled out the applicability of bilateral choice provisions on account of what it considered the special circumstances of its "liberation" by the Allied Powers and the manner in which it became a sovereign state and, as a sovereign state, defined its nationality. ROK's definitions of its nationality essentially ruled out the possibility of bilateral choice provisions, which would have required that ROK recognize Japan's recognition of Koreans (Chosenese) as having become its nationals -- as well as recognize the rights of Japanese with prefectural registers, who had settled in Chō, to choose ROK nationality and remain in (or return to) Korea.

Japan, too, realized that -- under the conditions that prevailed by the late 1940s -- bilateral choice provisions would not be possible. Japanese with prefectural (Interior) registers had already been compelled -- not given a choice -- to withdraw from Occupied Korea to Occupied Japan (which consisted of the Interior minus a couple of prefectures and small islands). But Japanese with Chōsen registers, if residing in the prefectural Interior when Japan surrendered, had been permitted to remain in Occupied Japan. And they remained under international conditions (in particular the Korean War) that were not conducive to conventional choice provisions.

SCAP's Diplomatic Section -- in particular Sebald -- apparently understood the impossibility of attempting to impose choice provisions on ROK and Japan. Its Legal Section -- in particular Carpenter -- attempted, without success, to interest both parties in what he considered more appropriate solutions to the "nationality" problem that they soon declared was a non-issue.

Top  

Personae dramatis

Many people participated in, or witnessed, the 1951-1952 rounds of talks held between Japan and ROK. Here is a short list of the principal representatives who figured in (1) exchanges between ROK and the US concerning the terms of the peace treaty (see above), and (2) talks between ROK and Japan, sometimes under US observation, concerning Japan-ROK normalization and status of ROK nationals in Japan after enforcement of peace treaty.

In this section I will present from brief to long profiles of some of the people who directly or indirectly participated in the general plenary sessions and/or in the meetings of the Legal Status Subcommittee.

First, though, I will present lists of the 13 Korean and 16 Japanese delegates who attended the 1st Formal Session of the Japan-Korea Conference, convened on 15 February 1952 at Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo.

The following table is a reformatted and annotated merger of (1) simplified lists included in the body of an English summary of the proceedings of the meeting (KRN 82: 11-12), and (2) separate, more detailed lists, also dated 15 February 1952, showing each conferee's affiliation and name in Sino-Korean or Sino-Japanese, and name in Latin script (KRN 82: 16-18).

The simple lists show only 11 Korean and 15 Japanese conferees, and show Korean names surname first and Japanese names family name last. The detailed lists show 2 more Koreans and 1 more Japanese, and show the names of both Koreans and Japanese surname or family name first. The simple lists show "Mr." before all names, whereas the detailed lists show no honorific suffixes and uses macrons in the romanized names of Japanese delgates.

In the following table, I have shown the names and affiliations as written on the detailed lists. Names not listed in simple lists are highlighted in red. Spellings on simple lists, if different, are highlighted in purple, and one mispelling is noted in blue. The green numbered notes, the abbreviations and English translations of the affiliations, and the (parenthetic) remarks following some of the English, Sino-Korean, or Sino-Japanese affiliations are mine.

List of conferees in ROK archives

The following list of conferees is found in File 77 in ROK archives, immediately after the Korea-side report on the 1st session, held on 20 October 1951, of the preliminary plenary conference (KRN 77: 53-54, NKBK 77: 14-15). However, the names on list are clearly of the officials who particpated in the 1st session, held on 15 Februray 1952, of the main plenary conference, documents for which are found in File 82. The archivists appear to have confused the two conferences.

Republic of Korea delegation

首席代表 駐米大使 梁祐燦
Yang You Chan, head of delegation
Republic of Korea ambassador to the United States

交替首席代表 駐日韓国代表部公使 金溶植
Kim Yong Shik, alternative chief representative
Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, envoy (minister)

代表 外交委員会委員弁護士 任哲鎬
Yim Chol Ho, representative
Diplomatic Commission, member, attorney

高麗大学総長 兪鎮午
Yu Chin O, Korea University, president

殖産銀行頭取 林松本
Limb Song Bon, Shiksan Bank, president

法務部法務局長 洪璡基
Hong Chin Gi, Ministry of Justice, Legal Affairs Bureau, director

専門委員 駐日韓国代表部参事官 柳泰夏
Yiu Tai Ha, expert member
Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, councilor

外務部政務局長 金東祚
Kim Dong Jo, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Political Affairs Bureau, director

駐日韓国代表部一等書記官 崔圭夏
Choi Kyu Hah, Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, 1st secretary

駐日韓国代表部政務部長 金泰東
Kim Tae Dong, Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, Political Affairs Department, director

韓国銀行調査部長代理 李相徳
Lee Sang Duk, Korea Bank, Investigation Department, director representative
WHANG Boo Kil
CHEE Shoul Keun

交通部海運局長 黄富吉
Whang Boo Kil, Ministry of Transportation, Shipping Bureau, director

商工部水産局漁労課長 池鉄根
Chee Shoul Keun, Department of Commerce, Fisheries Bureau, Fishing Section, director

その他随員員数名
Several other accompanying personnel

Japan delegation

首席代表(全権) 外務省顧問 松本俊一
Matsumoto Shun'ichi, chief delegate (penipoteniary)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs advisor

代表 法務部[sic=法務府]民事局長 村上朝一
Murakami Tomokazu, representative
[ROK] Ministry of Justice[sic = (Japan) Attorney General's Office], Civil Affairs Bureau, director

外務事務次官 井口貞夫
Iguchi Sadao, Foreign affairs, administrative affairs, vice minister

外務省条約局長 西村熊雄
Nishimura Kumao, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Treaty Bureau, director

外務省アジア局長 倭島英二
Wajima Eiji, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Asia Bureau, director

外務省参事官 大野勝巳
<Ōno Katsumi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, councilor

大蔵事務次官 舟山正吉
Funayama Masakichi, Ministry of Finance, vice minister

水産庁長官 塩見友之助
Shiomi Tomonosuke, Fisheries Agency, director

運輸省事務次官 牛島辰彌
Ushijima Tatsuya, Ministry of Transportation, administrative vice minister

随員 法務府民事局主幹 平賀健太
Hiraga Kenta, accompanying personnel
Attorney General's Office, Civil Affairs Bureau, deputy director

法務府賠償庁次長 河崎一郎
Kawasaki Ichirō, Attorney General's Office, Reparations Agency, deputy director

入国管理庁実施部長 田中三男
Tanaka Mitsuo, Exit-entry-country [Immigration] Control Agency, Enforcement Department director

外務省参事官 千葉皓
Chiba Kō, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, councilor

大蔵省理財局長 石田正
Ishida Tadashi, Ministry of Finance, Financial Bureau, director

水産庁次長 永野正二
Nagano Shōni [Shōji, Masaji], Fisheries Agency, deputy director

運輸省海運調整部長 国安誠一
Kuniyasu Seiichi, Ministry of Transportation, Shipping Coordination Department, director

その他随員 数名
Several other accompanying personnel

See 20 October 1951 Talks begin with cautious hope for a list of conferees attending the 1st session of the prelimiary plenary conference.

Top  

ROK

Syngman Rhee (李承晩 이승만 I [Yi] Sŭngman 1875-1965)

President of ROK from 1948-1960, which spanned the first four rounds of talks (1951-1959). Not a direct participant but the most powerful voice in early talks.

1897-1904 Imprisoned for demonstrations against Japanese monarchy. Became Christian in prison.

1904 Sent by Yi government to US to represent its interests. He remained long enough to collect a few college degrees.

1910-1912 Returned to Korea after it had become Chōsen, to evangelize as a Methodist minister.

1912 Migrated to Hawaii as headmaster of a Methodist school.

1919-1925 First president of so-called Korean Provisional Government founded in Shanghai during the March 1st Movement of 1919.

1925-1945 Resident in Hawaii and Washington, D.C. after expulsion from KPG. Married Austrian-born Francisca Donner on 8 October 1934 in New York.

1945 Allowed by MacArthur to return to "liberated" Korea, where eventually he and other nationalists set up a new government.

1948 Elected first president of Republic of Korea.

1960 Fled during election scandal to Honolulu, where he lived in exile with his wife and their adopted son until his death.

Top  

Yang You Chan (梁裕燦 량유찬 Ryang Yu Ch'an 1897-1975)

Chief delegate for ROK at both the preliminary talks (1951) and main talks (1952) of the 1st round of ROK-Japan talks (1951-1952). Then ROK's ambassador to the United States and its chief negotiator with SCAP and Japan.

Yang, born in Pusan in the Empire of Korea in 1897, he migrated to Honolulu with his parents in 1903, graduated from McKinley High School in Honolulu, attended the University of Hawaii for a while before going to Boston University. After finishing medical school, he practiced in Honolulu, where he was instrumental in building the Korean Christian Church in the city. He was living in Honolulu when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Syngman Rhee also lived in Honolulu, and Yang, who was once his personal physician, became a close friend. In 1951, Rhee appointed Yang as ROK ambassador to the United States, and in 1954 Yang also became ROK's chief delegate to the United Nations for the Ninth General Assembly sessions. Rhee also asked Yang, who shared his anti-Japanese views, to head ROK's delegation to the 1951-1952 ROK-Korea talks in Tokyo, where he faithfully defend Rhee's hard line vis-a-vis Japan.

Yang was barely 6 years old when he left the Empire of Korea in 1903, a year before the start of the Russo-Japanese War, during and after which Japan became significantly involved in Korea's domestic and international affairs. He never lived in Chōsen or other parts of Japan during the annexation years, and was all but an alien in his country of nationality.

Yang resigned when Rhee's government fell in 1960, he but stayed in Washington, D.C., where in 1975 he died of cancer at George Washington Hospital. He was buried, however, in the National Cemetery in Seoul.

Top  

Yu Chin O (兪鎮午 유진오 1906-1987)

Yu Chin O was the legal advisor (法律顧問 hōritsu komon) to the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (駐日代表部 Chū-Nichi Daiyō Bu). He was one of the leading ROK delegates in the 1951-1952 round of ROK-Japan talks.

Yu graduated in literature and law from Keijō Imperial University (京城帝国大学) in 1929. He became active as a proletarian writer while in college, and was later a novelist of the "pure literature" school. In the early 1930s, he continued to write while teaching law at Keijō University. He became the head of the law department of Posung College (普成専門学校), also in Keijō (Seoul), from 1939, a post he appears to have held until the end of World War II.

Yu was known as a "Japanophile" (親日派), and during the war, he published articles in Korean and Japanese, supporting the recruitment of Chosenese soldiers and predicting that Japan would win. After the war, he was active in the establishment of the Republic of Korea, participated in the creation of its Constitution and laws, and in 1948 he was the head of its justice department.

Yu Chin O was appointed the legal advisor to the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan in 1951, and in 1952, while still serving in this post, he became the president of Korea University (高麗大学), which had founded in 1946 from Posung College. Yu later became a politician, and supported the 1961 government of Park Chung Hee after Park's coup d'etat in 1960.

Top  

Karl Hongkee (葛弘基 갈홍기 Kal Hong Gi 1906-1989)

Karl Hongkee -- aka Karl Hong Kee -- was usually referred to as "Dr." (博士) in English (Korean, Japanese) documents related to the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks. In 1934, Karl had received a PhD from the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago for a dissertation titled A Critical evaluation of modern social trends in Korea.

Karl taught at a number of schools, and after the Pacific War -- as one of many other Koreans who had known Shygman Rhee in the United States -- he became involved in Rhee's efforts to rebuild Korea.

Karl had taught at number of schools and colleges before becoming an ROK government councilor (参事官) with Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan. As such was valued for his knowledge of America and English in addition to his patriotism.

After the Korean War, President Rhee -- stung by criticism in The Korea Times, an English-language paper launched with state support in November 1950, five months into the Korean War -- decided to start a state-sponsored English paper called The Korean Republic. This paper debuted in August 1953 as a 4-page tabloid, but by 1961 it was a full-size broadsheet, and in 1965 it became The Korea Herald.

Karl was the editor of The Korean Republic during its first year. From February 1955 to July 1956, he served as the first head (長 장 chang) of the newly created Office of Public Information (公報室 공보실 Kongbosil). During this period, he authored a number of books in English on Korea, and on Syngman Rhee, all published by this goovernment office. One of books on Rhee is an account of Rhee's 20-day visit to America in 1954, when Rhee spoke before the joint session of the U.S. Congress and made speeches in a number of cities. For Rhee, who had lived in the United States for about 3 decades, it was more like a homecoming.

Top  

Kim Yong Shik (金溶植 김용식 Kim Yongsik 1913-1995)

Kim was born in Chōsen in 1913, educated through high school on the peninsula, and in 1937 graduated from Chūō University in Tokyo. His Yamato-style name was Kanemoto Yoki (金本溶植).

Kim joined ROK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in January 1949, and after brief stints as a counsul in Hawaii and general consul in Hong Kong, he was posted to the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ).

As KDMJ's chief minister, Kim was a representative of the ROK delegation to preliminary ROK-Japan talks from October to December 1951, and was the alternative chief delegate for ROK at the 1st formal conference from February to April 1952. He then became the chief delegate for ROK at the 2nd (April-July 1953) and 3rd (October 1953) rounds.

Kim twice served as ROK's Minister of Foreign Affairs, first briefy from 16 March to 16 December 1963, then from 4 June 1971 to 2 December 1973. In his second posting, he was succeeded by Kim Dong Jo, whose diplomatic career centered on Japan.

During the 1960s, before and after his first stint as foreign minister, he served as ROK's ambassador to Great Britain, the Philippines, and Canada (and the United Nations). From April 1977 to June 1981, he was ROK's ambassador to the United States.

Top  

Kim Dong Jo (金東祚 김 동 조 Kim Tong Jo 1918-2004)

Participated in 1st round of talks (1951-1952) as director of ROK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, State Policy Bureau (外務部政務局 외무부 정무국 K. Oemubu Chŏmuguk, J. Gaimubu Seimukyoku).

Participated in 4th round of talks (1958-1960) as ROK's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Participated in final 7th round of talks (1964-1965) as head of ROK's delegation while serving as ROK's plenipotentiary representative in Tokyo.

Born, raised, and totally educated in Japan

Kim represents an ROK official who, unlike Yang and of course also Rhee, had been born, raised, and totally educated in Japan inclusive of Chōsen. Born in Pusan in 1918, Kim graduated from Keijō Higher School of Commerce (京城高等商業学校 Keijō Kōtō Shōgyō Gakkō). Then under the control of the Government-General of Chōsen, this school, established in 1922 from an institute founded in 1907, was briefly closed after World War II but soon reopened as a Korean vocational school of economics, and in 1946 it became the school of commerce of the newly created Seoul University.

After graduating from the Keijō high school, Kim entered the law department of Kyūshū Imperial University in Fukuoka, and after graduating, having passed the higher civil service exam while still a student, he joined the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Home affairs. He was working in Kyoto when Japan surrendered, and Chōsen was liberated as Korea, in 1945. Kim then returned to the peninsula and became involved in the foreign affairs of the emerging ROK government, which was formally established in 1948.

In the course of his career as an ROK official, Kim was ROK's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, its ambassador to Japan, its ambassador to the United States, and its Minister of Foreign Affairs (1973-1975) under President Park Chung Hee (Pak Chŏ Hŭi).

Kim participated in the Preliminary (1951), 1st (1952), 4th (1958-1960), and 7th (1964-1965) ROK-Japan normalization conferences. He was ROK's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time of the 4th conference, and its chief negotiator at the 7th (and final) conference from 3 December 1964 to 3 April 1965, during which time he was ROK's ambassador to Japan.

Kim signed the 1965 ROK-Japan normalization treaty, status agreement, and other agreements and protocols as as the second of ROK's two plenipotentiaries, the first being ROK's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Their Japanese counterparts signed for Japan.

Top  

Robert T. Oliver (1909-2000)

The Republic of Korea had a number of officials who were fluent in English as a result of educations and life in the United States, some of them -- like Syngman Rhee himself -- active in the Korean Provisional Government, which considered itself Korea's government in exile.

Rhee and KPG also had a number of publicists for the cause of Korean independence, one of whom was Robert Tarbell Oliver (1909-2000), a professor of speech at Pennsylvania State University who became an adviser to Syngman Rhee and served the Korean government for several while at PSU. Oliver was a passionate advocate and lobbyist for Korea's independence from 1942 to 1960.

Oliver's 1944 book, Korea: Forgotten Nation (Washington, D.C., Public Affairs Press), had an introduction by Syngman Rhee, with whom he had become friends. He urged the United States to recognize the Korean Provisional Government, and after the Pacific War he sharply and prolifically criticized America's failure to insist on a unified Allied occupation of Korea and expedient assumption of control and jurisdiction of the entire peninsula by KPG's successor, namely ROK.

In 1947, Oliver became the manager of the Washington Bureau of the Korean Pacific Press, which was registered with the United States Attorney General as a foreign agent. At the time of his participation in the ROK-Japan talks in 1951, he was also the editor of Korean Survey, a monthly magazine on unification, political, and economic issues in Korea, published by the Korean Affairs Institute and Korean Pacific Press.

Oliver had anticipated the Korean War as the inevitable consequence of the United States giving in to Soviet demands that its military commander be allowed accept Japan's surrender of Korea north of the 38th parallel. A year before the start of the ROK-Japan talks in 1951, he published Why War Came in Korea (New York: Fordham University Press, 1950), in which made the following comments about Koreans in Japan (pages 239-241).

Oliver's book-length publications about Korea include these titles.

1944   Korea: Forgotten Nation, Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press
1950   Why War Came in Korea, New York: Fordham University Press
1951   The Truth About Korea, London: Putman
1952   Verdict in Korea, State College, Pennsylvania: Bald Eagle Press
1954   Syngman Rhee: The Man Behind the Myth, New York: Dodd Mead and Co.
1993   A History of the Korean People in Modern Times: 1800 to the Present, Newark: University of Delaware Press

Oliver also edited Yung Tai Pyun's Korea, My Country (Washington, D.C.: Library of International Speech, Korean Pacific Press, 1953), and wrote extensively on speech and communication in Asia, including India and China.

Top  

Japan

Iguchi Sadao (井口貞夫 1899-1980)

Chief delegate for Japan at preliminary talks (1951), and also participated in main talks (1952), of 1st round of ROK-Japan talks as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs (from 30 January 1950).

As a councilor at the Japanese Embassy, Washington, D.C. on 7 December 1941, Iguchi has been blamed for the delay in Japan's declaration of war on the United States until after the start of its attack on Pearl Harbor.

Iguchi's wife was a daughter of Yoshizawa Kenkichi (芳澤 謙吉 1874-1965), a career diplomat who was serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs when Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi (犬養毅 1855-1932), his father-in-law, was assassinated in 1932. Yoshizawa's grandchildren include a number of diplomats, including Ogata Sadako (緒方貞子 b1927). Yoshizawa held posts all over Asia (particularly China) and in Europe (especially France), but was more of an Asian specialist. During the Pacific War he served as ambassador to French Indochina, most of which Japan had occupied, partly with the permission of the Vichy French government. His last diplomatic post was as ambassador to the Republic of China, on Taiwan, in 1952.

Iguchi's son, Iguchi Takeo (井口武夫), after his own career in the Foreign Ministry, became a professor of international law and politics. He has devoted much of his academic life to defending his father from blame for Japan's failure to inform the United States of its war intentions before it attacked Pearl Harbor.

Top  

Chiba Kō (千葉皓)

Alternative chief delegate for Japan at preliminary talks (1951) of 1st round of ROK-Japan talks. Then Administrative Official of Foreign Affairs.

Chiba was a Councilor at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. on 7 December 1941. He shared the blame for the delay in translating Japan's declaration of war for presentation to the United States before the commencement of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Promoted to Vice Foreign Minister on 30 January 1950. His wife was a daughter of Ishibashi Tanzan (石橋湛山 1884-1973), a journalist and politician, who served as prime minister in 1956-1957 but resigned after only two months in office after suffering a stroke.

Top  

Matsumoto Shun'ichi (松本俊一 1897-1987)

Head of Japan's delegation at main talks (1952) of 1st round of ROK-Japan talks. Matsumoto, the most seasoned and experienced Japanese negotiator in the first rounds, was a career bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he held both political (vice-minister) and diplomatic (ambassador) posts. In the late 1950s, he was elected to the House of Representatives.

Top  

Tanaka Mitsuo (田中光男)

Tanaka Mitsuo (田中三男) was the Director of the Enter-country [Immigration] Control Division of the Control Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外務省管理局入国管理部長) from 19 August 1950 to 1 October 1950. His title was Foreign Affairs Secretary (外務事務官).

From 1 October 1950, the Control Bureau became the Enter-exit-country [Immigration] Agency (出入国管理庁) of the Foreign Ministry. Suzuki Hajime (鈴木一) was appointed its 1st General director (長官). From 1 November 1951, the agency was renamed Enter-country [Immigration] Control Agency, and Suzuki continued to be its director. He remained the head of the agency when it was transfered to the Ministry of Justice (as the Attorney General's Office was renamed) from 1 August 1952, and he continued to serve as its head, with the title of Judicial Affairs Secretary (法務事務官), until 29 June 1954.

When Suzuki replaced Tanaka as the head of the new agency in the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1 October 1950, Tanaka became the director of the agency's 1st Division, which oversaw planning, investigations, policing, illegal entrants, facilities for holding detainees, and deportation. The 2nd Division oversaw border control at ports of entry and exit, alien registration, and related records and statistics.

Tanaka also appears to have been involved in Foreign Ministry protocol related to the visitations of ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials to Japan, including those posted to the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Tokyo during the ROK-Japan talks. Tanaka is named as the addressee of a communication from the 2nd Section of the Asia Bureau of ROK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated 7 January 1952, concerning the arrival in Japan of representatives of ROK's delegation. This would have been right after the 1951-1952 holiday recess, and just before the talks were reconvened from mid January. (国会図書館、日韓国交正常化問題資料、第1期 (1945年〜1953年) 第1巻 [54], page 2ff)

Top  

Hiraga Kenta (平賀健太 1912-2004)

Participated in preliminary talks (1951) of 1st round of ROK-Japan talks as a main liner in the Civil Affairs Bureau of the Attorney General's Office (AGO). Hiraga also participated in the 4th through final 7th round -- in the 4th round from the 5th round as the director of the Civil Affairs Bureau in what by the fall of 1952 had become the Ministry of Justice.

Hiraga was AGO's resident expert on nationality law. His participation in the 1951 preliminary talks, as well as in later talks, is significant because in October 1950, several months before the first drafts of the peace treaty, and in October 1951, when the preliminary talks of the 1st round of ROK-Japan talks began, he published Kokusekihō [Nationality Law], the two-volume study that remained the bible of nationality law in Japan until the 1970s. See Hiraga 1950-1952 for review.

Hiraga's Diet testimony on Koreans in Japan, especially in 1963, during the 6th rounds, is also extremely important in understanding how Japan's legal bureaucrats viewed nationality, especially the status of Koreans in Japan. See 1963 Hiraga and Nakagaki testimony for transcription and partial translation.

Top  

Nishimura Kumao (西村熊雄 1899-1980)

Participated in main talks (1952) of 1st round of ROK-Japan talks as director of treaty bureau.

Nishimura, a career diplomat, was secretary at Japanese Embassy to France, in Treaty Bureau from 1937, General Consul at Hanoi from 1944, then chief of Treaty Bureau from 1947 to 1952. He participated in the Peace Conference in San Francisco as an accompanying member of Japan's plenipotentiary delegation, and from 1952 to 1956 he was posted to France as an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary.

Top  

United States

George Atcheson (1896-1947)

George Atcheson Jr. (1896-1947) -- first Political Adviser (POLAD) from the U.S. State Department to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in Occupied Japan, and wearing the same shoes but a different hat the chief of the Diplomatic Section (DS) of GHQ/SCAP -- figures in the story of the 1951-1952 ROK Japan talks in the perverse sense of having died in on 17 August 1947 -- a full year before ROK was born. His death en route to Washington, D.C. on official business -- in the crash of a B-17 near Hawaii -- made it possible for his legal adviser, William Sebald, who was not a career Department of State (DOS) foreign service officer (FSO), to become the acting and then actual POLAD and DS chief -- positions he would hold until the end of the Occupation in 1952.

Atcheson became DOS's POLAD to SCAP from 7 September 1945, the chief of DS when it was created in 18 April 1946, and from 22 April 1946 he also represented SCAP and Japan on the Allied Council. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, then a journalist, be became a student translator at the U.S. legation in Peiping in 1920. From 1924 to 1939, he served as a diplomat in China. In 1941 he became the assistant chief of DOS's Division of Far Eastern Affairs, and from 1942 he served as the charge d'affaires at the U.S. embassy in Chungking (Chongqing), where the Republic of China had set up its government in exile, after Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and its advance up the Yangtze River in 1938.

(Sources: Sebald, With MacArthur in Japan, 1965, and National Diet Library, 人物紹介 (Jinbutsu shōkai) (Historical Figures) [involved in the birth of the Constitution of Japan].

Top  

Dean G. Acheson (1893-1971)

Dean Gooderham Acheson (1893-1971), and attorney and statesman, was the U.S. Secretary of State from 21 January 1949 to 20 January 1953, during the Truman administration. He was succeeded by John Foster Dulles (see next), who was instrumental in drafting the Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan in 1951.

Top  

John Foster Dulles (1888-1959)

Consultant to the Secretary of State

Assistant Secretary of State

The chief architect, with Japanese prime minister Yoshida Shigeru, of the drafting and completion of the Peace Treaty between the Allied Powers and Japan in 1951.

Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959 under Dwight Eisenhower.

Top  

William J. Sebald (1901-1980)

In 1946, Sebald became the legal adviser to George Atcheson (1896-1947), the State Department's Political Adviser (POLAD) to SCAP and also chief of the Diplomatic Section (DS) of GHQ/SCAP. Sebald became the acting POLAD and DS chief in 1947 when Atcheson died, and the actual POLAD and DS chief, with the title of Ambassador, in 1948.

Sebald arranged for U.S. special envoy John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) to meet Japanese party leaders four times in February 1951.

He appealed to his friend Okazaki Katsuo (岡崎勝男 1897-1965), the chief secretary of the Cabinet, who took a message to Yoshida, who appointed Iguchi Sadao (井口貞夫 1899-1980), a foreign ministry official who participated in the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks, as deputy-minister in charge of treaty negotiations.

Sebald wanted ROK's participation in the peace treaty talks but Japan and UK objected because Korea was not a member of the Allied Powers.

An expert among experts

Sebald, a bilingual attorney, had been a Japanese language officer with the U.S. Navy in Japan in the 1920s, and as a civilian had practiced and translated law in Kobe in the 1930s before being suspected of spying on Japanese naval operations and forced to leave Japan in 1939 with his wife, a former Japanese national who had become stateless. The law office in Kobe was that of his late father-in-law, a former British subject who married a Japanese woman and become a Japanese national.

During the Pacific War, Sebald again served in the U.S. Navy, this time as an intelligence officer. After the war, in January 1946, he arrived in Occupied Japan, as a civilian, to begin his assignment as the legal adviser to George Atcheson, the State Department's Political Adviser (POLAD) to SCAP. He quickly became Atcheson's assistant, and when Atcheson died in a plane crash near Hawaii on 17 August 1947, Sebald, then the deputy chairman of the Allied Council for Japan, became acting POLAD. From October 1948, he was appointed POLAD with the rank of minister, and served in this post for the duration of the Occupation of Japan.

Sebald was arguably the most important figure in the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks in that he brokered the talks, established the basic objectives and ground rules, pronounced the somewhat reluctant couple engaged, and then stood back and let them negotiate a prenuptial agreement that hopefully would enable them to consummate their relationship on or shortly after the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect in 1952.

See J. E. De Becker becomes Kobayashi Beika (1863-1929) for details about Sebald's British-turned-Japanese father-in-law.

See Fully stateless Edith Sebald (1902-1981) for details about De Becker / Kobayashi's daughter, who Sebald married before going to law school,

See Kobayashi Ei under "Couples" in the "People" section of the "Konketsuji" website for fuller details about the Kobayashi/De Beckers and their daughters and sons-in-law.

Top  

Alva C. Carpenter (1902-1979)

Alva C. [Clinton] Carpenter -- a "tall, square-jawed" Fort Wayne, Indiana corporation lawyer -- was the head of the Legal Section (LS) within the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). While leading investigations in Occupied Japan of war crimes, and developing cases against persons tried of war crimes in tribunals convened in Occupied Japan, he and his office also dealt with other legal matters, and advising SCAP and other sections in GHQ, including the Sebald's Diplomatic Section, about all manner of legal matters.

Carpenter, a U.S. Army Colonel, was instrumental in opposing, on legal and humanitarian grounds, plans some SCAP and Japanese Government officials were discussing to deport substantial numbers of "undesirable" (especially subversive) Koreans in Japan to the Republic of Korea (Simon Nantais, Koreans and the Politics of Nationality and Race During the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, Chapter 4: Attempts to Deport Koreans in Japan to the Republic of Korea, 1948-1951, 2011 doctoral dissertation, pages 92-115).

On 22 October 1951, the day of 2nd conferences in the ROK-Japan talks, Carpenter, who attended some of the talks, conveyed to William J. Sebald, chief of the Diplomatic Section, which had set up and then observed the talks, his apprehensions about the apparent intent of ROK and Japan not to make provisions for nationality choice such as those which had been made in the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy between Italy and the Allied Powers in the European theater of World War II, beginning with the Big Four -- France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Kim Taegi, among others, refers Carpenter's memorandum to Sebald (Kim Taegi 1997, page 789, note 45, "Memorandum for Chief, DS from Alva C. Carpenter, Subj.: Japan-Korean Nationality Conference, 22 October 1951, [320. Japan-Korea], RG 84, POLAD (Tokyo) CGR 1950-1952, WNRC").

Carpenter, however, was especially aware of the possibility that "subversive" Koreans in Japan -- who ranked high on some people's lists of deportable "undesirable" Koreans -- might intentionally chose to remain Japanese precisely in order not to be deported to ROK, which held them in even less esteem, according to Simon Nantais, who cites him as having made the following statement in a memorandum (Nantais 2011, page 111, note 79, "NDL-GHQ, TS 327, file 85, 'Deportation of Subversive Aliens,' memo from E.C.E [E.C. Ewert], Chairman, to Chief of Staff, G-2, JA, and LS, 11 August 1951", Nantais's italics and [brackets]).

If the Japanese authorities can render decisions as to the true nationality status of a majority of these persons and if it appears that the worst of the subversives have not deliberately retained their Japanese nationality, which could be the case, thus making it impossible to deport the very ones against whom action should be taken[,] then it appears logical to proceed with the mechanism as recommended originally by the Committee (Note 79).

Sebald, though, had already decided that SCAP had no standing in the talks, other than as an observer. I also get the impression that the realist Sebald, unlike the idealist Carpenter, understood that treaties of the kind the Allied Powers had signed with Italy, in which status and treatment provisions were reciprocal, would not have worked in the case of Japan and ROK, which fundamentally disagreed over whether Koreans in Japan were still, at the time of their talks, Japanese, if ever they had truly become Japanese.

Nantais makes the following observation about Carpenter's 22 October 1951 memo to Sebald (Nantais 2011, page 127, note 46, "NDL-GHQ, LS 24687 [microfiche file], folder 32, 'Japan-Korea Nationality Conference,' memo from Alva C. Carpenter to Diplomatic Section, Chief, 22 October 1951."

Legal Section's Carpenter warned Diplomatic Section that this agreement would constitute the arbitrary deprivation of Japanese nationality and the forced naturalization of the Koreans. Moreover, the extension of Korean nationality to Koreans who were born in Japan or with little connection to Korea other than ancestral ties troubled Carpenter. There were, of course, legal grounds for the deprivation of nationality, but these were usually enacted on a case-by-case basis rather than the wholesale expatriation of an ethnic group, as both sides contemplated. The ROK's proposal to forcibly naturalize all Koreans based solely on their ethnic origin was truly problematic. Carpenter recommended a solution based on the Italian Peace Treaty since this would fall within established legal international norms. Since SCAP was not actively involved in the deliberations of the nationality conference, Carpenter suggested that the State Department be notified of the problem. (Note 46)

Not having seen a copy of Carpenter's memorandum, I don't know if Nantais's remarks accurately reflect Carpenter's metaphors or his own (Nantais's) understanding of the issues. Therms like "arbitrary deprivation" and "forced naturalization" and "expatriation of an ethnic group" would not have found a receptive audience on either side of the ROK-Japan table.

Japan regarded the Japanese nationality of Chosenese (Koreans) and Taiwanese (Formosans) in Japan as linked with the territorial status of Chōsen (Korea) and Taiwan (Formosa). The territorial separations of Chōsen and Taiwan from Japan, that would become effective under the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, meant that Japan would no longer have a legal basis for attributing its nationality to the people affiliated with these territories -- Chosenese and Taiwanese -- who therefore, concomitant with the territorial separations, would separate from -- i.e., lose -- the nationality of Japan.

ROK, for its part, insisted that all Koreans in Japan were already ROK nationals whether they liked it or not -- Japan insisted -- and eventually got its way -- that individual Koreans in Japan should choose whether they wanted to be ROK nationals. In the meantime, having lost Japan's nationality, they would have the choice of living in Japan as aliens or seeking permission to naturalize as Japanese in accordance with established legal procedures.

While ROK officially, according to its Constitution and some of its laws -- and Japan unofficially, according to common ethnonationalist sentiments -- regarded Koreans as a "[racioethnic] nation" or "minzoku" (民族) -- legally, the "Koreans in Japan" who were objects of the bilateral talks constituted a cohort defined by family register status -- a purely civil attribute that made one a "national" or "kokumin" (国民) of the state having control and jurisdiction over one's household register -- an ROK national hence "Korean" if in an ROK registers, a national of Japan hence "Japanese" if in a Japanese register. This is clear from the definitions agreed to by both parties.

SCAP was actively involved to the extent of convening the bilateral talks and continuing to observe them. SCAP's observers appear to have been welcome by both party's, who undoubtedly saw their presence as a stabilizing factor. Many of the conferences were, in fact, convened at SCAP's Diplomatic Section.have written reports of the give and take they witnessed, -- which constituted certain amount of pressure on the parties to comport themselves. Beyond this, SCAP did not have the authority to tell either Japan or ROK what do do regarding the their considerations of status and treatment -- from which the issue of "nationality" was quickly eliminated as a non-issue.

Top  

Richard B. Finn (1917-1998)

Second most important member of Diplomatic Section. Assigned to duties in Japan, mainly in the State Department's office in Tokyo, from 1947-1954. From 1949 he served stints as a consul in Yokohama for a year and in Sapporo for half a year, took a brief home leave, and was back in Tokyo from early 1951, in time to be a "briefcase carrier" ("bag carrier") during the drafting of the peace treaty. The treaty was largely the work of John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson, but the Diplomatic Section, in particular Finn's boss, William Sebald, was deeply involved in liaison between Dulles and Japan's prime Minister, Yoshida Shigeru (1878-1967).

Charles Stuart Kennedy, of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, interviewed Finn on 8 April 1991. The interview has been published since his Finn's death in 1998. See "Oral History Interviews" on ADST website or direct link Richard B. Finn for pdf file. The following information is extracted from the 1991 ADST interview.

Richard Boswell Finn was born 1917 in Niagara Falls, New York, where he also grew up. He studied classics at Harvard College and was in his senior year at Harvard Law School when the Pacific War began. He joined US Navy in 1942 and from the summer of that year he studied Japanese at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School (JLS) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.

After a year at JLS he served in Australia, New Guinea, and the Philippines, and was stationed in Japan for about 3 months immediately after the end of the war. He was then assigned to the Far Eastern Commission (FEC), in Washington, D.C., which he described as "a policy making organization of the Allied Powers for dealing with occupied Japan" (1991 interview, page 3). As a member of FEC, we was "the secretary of the committees of the Far Eastern Commission that dealt with the constitution and legal reform, which was something that a legal background was useful for" (1991 ADST interview, page 4)

He took the FSO (Foreign Service Officer) exam in December 1945. In the summer of 1946, the State Department accepted him as an FSO, after which he left the Navy and the Far Eastern Commission and began training at the Foreign Service Institute. He was hoping he might be sent to Europe, but in September 1947, he was back in Japan, at the Department of State's Tokyo office, by which time "diplomatic relations had solidified into the semi-Cold War relationship between the Russians and the rest of the diplomatic community" (1991 ADST interview, page 8).

The State Department's office in Occupied Japan had two titles, he said. "One was the Political Adviser's Office (POLAD) -- as such we were a State Department Office -- and the State Department representative in Japan to MacArthur's Headquarters. MacArthur would accept the State Department's office only on condition that it be a SCAP military headquarters office under his control and it was called in that capacity the Diplomatic Section. So the office and the man in charge really had two hats -- the State Department hat and the MacArthur Headquarter's hat" (1991 ADST interview, page 5).

MacArthur did not permit "POLAD" alias "Diplomatic Section" to communicate with the State Department through telegraphic messages. Airmail exchanges were possible. But MacArthur's General Headquarters knew practically everything the State Department's office in Japan did -- unlike its counterpart in Germany, which had considerable autonomy.

Finn on "Korean minority" in Japan

Finn considered his work in the Diplomatic Section on the "Korean minority" in Japan his main contribution to the Occupation (1991 ADST interview, pages 6-7).

Finn's appraisal of Sebald

Finn made the following remarks about his boss, William J. Sebald, in a response to how people behaved after 11 April 1951, when President Truman relieved MacArthur of all his commands, including is positions as SCAP and as the Commander of United Nations forces in Korea, for publicly advocating actions in the Korean War that were contrary to U.S. policy (1991 ADST interview, page 14).

Top  

William H. Sullivan (1922-2013)

William Healy Sullivan (1922-2013), after graduating from Brown University in 1943, joined the Navy, and was gunnery officer on the USS Hambleton, a destroyer on which he saw service in the North Atlantic and North Africa, the invasions of Normandy and Okinawa, and was with the Hamilton when it arrived in Tokyo Bay and Yokohama on 28 August 1945 in time to witness Japan's surrender on 2 September.

After studying at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and at Harvard, he entered the foreign service, and briefly served in Thailand and India before being assigned to POLAD alias Diplomatic Section, GHQ/SCAP in Tokyo. He was Sebald's pick to be SCAP's regular observer at the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks, and as such he was probably the most qualified American to write an eye-witness account of talks -- but didn't.

Sullivan then served in several brief European posts before becoming the U.S. ambassador to Laos in 23 December 1964, shortly after the Tonkin Gulf incident that sparked the Vietnam War. He served in Laos until 18 March 1969, then served a stint as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State involved in Southeast Asian affairs. He was the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines from 1973 to 1977, and to Iran from 1977 to 1979 during the final years of the Shah government. His only book is an account of what happened in Iran during his years there (William Sullivan, Mission to Iran, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981).

Top  

Charles A. Willoughby (1892-1972)

Charles A. [Andrew] Willoughby was Adolf Charles Weidenbach when he migrated from Germany to the United States in 1910. Comissioned in the U.S. Army during World War I, he was Douglas MacArthur's chief intelligence officer during the Pacific War. MacArthur, as the Supreme Commander for the Allied Forces in Occupied Japan, made Willoughby -- by then a Major General -- the chief of G-2, the Intelligence arm of SCAP's General Headquarters in Tokyo. He would be MacArthur's intelligence officer during the first few months of the Korean War.

An ardent anti-Communist, Willoughby spent a lot of time during his years in Occupied Japan suppressing groups of Koreans in Japan who supported Kim Il Sung's Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in North Korea, and scheming up ways to deport as many "undesirable" (subversive) Koreans as possible (Simon Nantais, Koreans and the Politics of Nationality and Race During the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, Chapter 4: Attempts to Deport Koreans in Japan to the Republic of Korea, 1948-1951, 2011 doctoral dissertation, pages 92-115)

Top  

John J. Muccio (1900-1989)

John J. [Joseph] Muccio was America's 1st ambassador to the Republic of Korea. He first served in the post as Special Representative of the President, under U.S. President Harry Truman, with the title Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. He became an ambassador by title on 20 April 1949, and held the post until 8 September 1952.

Muccio was in constant touch with the Diplomatic Section of GHQ/SCAP in Tokyo over issues that involved Koreans in the Republic of Korea, and Koreans in Occupied Japan. During his tenure, he witnessed the Korean War from its start in June 1950 through its most critical phases, and twice had to evacuate Seoul and operate out of Pusan.

Muccio was born in Italy, and entered the U.S. Foreign Service as a Consular Assistant after graduating from college in the early 1920s. In the late 1920s he was a U.S. Consul in Hong Kong, and the severed in Shanghai and other parts of China, and in Bolivia and Panama. He was part of the U.S. Mission to Germany from May 1945 until April 1947, and he first met Truman at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. He again met Truman in July 1948, and the following month he arrived in as Truman's Special Representative to the government of the Republic of Korea, which formally became a sovereign state on 15 August 1948.

Muccio made the following observation of his early work in Korea, in the 1st of 3 "oral history" interviews conducted by Jerry N. Hess, this one on 10 February 1971 in Washington, D.C. (Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, underscoring in received text).

Top  

Dean Rusk (1909-1994)

Rusk is supposed to have made the suggestion, in 1945, that Korea be divided into US and USSR spheres at the 38th parallel.

1945 Joined Department of State. Worked in office of United Nations Affairs.

1949 Deputy Under Secretary of State

1950 Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs

John M. Allison (1905-1978)

1937 US consul at the American embassy in Nanking

Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs

1952-1953 Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs

1953-1957 US Ambassador to Japan

Robert A. Fearey (1918-2004)

Office of Northeast Asian Affairs

Special assistant to the Director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs

1941-1942 Private secretary for Ambassador Joseph Grew in Tokyo and Washington, D.C. Interned at embassy until exchanged for Japanese embassy staff, in Africa, in 1942.

1942-1945 Washington, State Department, Far East postwar planning

1945-1946 Tokyo, Special Assistant to Ambassador George Atcheson, US Political Adviser to General MacArthur

1946-1950 Department of State, Japanese Desk Officer

1950 Special Assistant to Director of Office of Northeast Asian Affairs, Peace Treaty planning

1950-1951 Assistant to Ambassador Dulles in negotiation of peace treaty Japanese Peace Treaty in Washington, Tokyo, and London

1951 Technical secretary under John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson at signing of San Francisco Peace Treaty

Samuel W. Boggs (1889-1954)

State Department geographer at the Office of Intelligence and Research

Top  

Chronology

When talking about "ROK-Japan talks" one has to imagine dozens of people involved in several kinds of talks at various stages of the talks. As I am here not interested in fishing and other such issues, the following chronology lists, in addition to the advanced negotiations and background developments, only the 4 series of talks most closely related to status and treatment.

Meetings

The items in the chronology are colored according to the following cateogies.

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Top  

Legal status and treatment

The following documents show how representatives of ROK and Japan viewed the "nationality problem" -- so differently that, in the end, they agreed that nationality was not a suitable topic for discussion at their bilateral talks.

The documents substantiate an argument I have been making for many years -- long before they became available much less came to my attention -- that there was nothing "unilateral" about Japan's treatment of the nationality of Koreans in Japan after World War II in the sense that many others have claimed -- that Japan had somehow violated international conventions. During the 1990s, when I was clearing my head of the cobwebs of my undergraduate and graduate indoctrination in the history of Northeast Asia, I began to perceive that -- given ROK's attitude toward the legality of Japan's annexation of Korea as Chōsen -- ROK, unless forced to do so, would never have accepted a territorial transfer treaty, much less one with provisions for nationality choice.

During the 2000s, as I read reports in Japanese, some of them written by witnesses to the early round of ROK-Japan talks, the rift between ROK and Japan over the nationality issue become clearer. And as I began to understand, for the first time, the territorial implications of Japanese nationality -- its intrinsic association with population registers that represent the "demographic" component sovereign territory -- I began to understand why it made perfect legal sense for Chosenese and Taiwanese to lose Japanese nationality as an effect of the territorial separation of Chōsen and Taiwan from Japan.

Status agreement proposals and drafts

All of the following documents consist of drafts of an agreement between the Republic of Korea and Japan concerning the status and treatment agreement of Koreans in Japan. The drafts include early unilateral proposals as well as bilateral drafts at various stages of the 1951-1952 ROK-Japan talks, down to the final draft dated 1 April 1952.

Translations

Documents which originated in Korean were translated into Japanese by Yi Yangsu. The English translations of Yi's translation, and of documents that originated in Japanese, are mine.

Transcriptions

Transcriptions of the texts of Yi Yangsu's Japanese translations of Korean documents are cuts and pastes from the pdf files created by Nik-Kan Kaidan Bunsho Kai, All transcriptions of the texts of Japanese and English documents are mine, based on images from NKBK's pdf files and the original ROK tif files on which the NHBK files are based. All texts have been from slightly to radically reformated to accommodate presentation on this website. Unless otherwise noted, all markup and commentary are mine.

See ROK and Japan archives for a guide to the document sources, my citation formula, transcription and translation standards, and markup scheme.

Top  

Fall 1950 ROK on status of "Overseas Koreans in Japan"

ROK archives include documents which show that, as early as October 1950, its officials in Japan were studying issues related to the legal status and treatment of what called "Overseas Koreans in Japan" (在日韓僑 K. Chae-Il Hangyo J. Zai-Nichi Kankyō).

File 76 (KRN 76, NKBK 76) includes the following document dated October 1950.

対日講和条約에関한基本態度와그法的根拠
対日講和条約に関する基本態度とその法的根拠
Basic attitudes concerning an amity treaty with Japan and their legal foundations

The document was produced at the "Amity treaty with Japan study committee" (対日講和調査委員会) of the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (駐日代表部案). The address scribbled on the neatly written title page of the document is 東京都中央区京橋三丁目 / 大同ビル / 国際法律事務所 -- meaning that, while the title and text of the document were written in Korean, the address was written in Japanese, probably later. The archival cover sheet, written in a different hand, has 근거 rather than 根拠 at the end of the title, suggesting laziness rather than inability on the part of the archivist to write the graphs.

The contents page lists 13 topics, the 10th of which is as follows (KRN 76: 6, NKBK 76: 1).

在日韓僑의国籍及居住移転問題 (抄)
在日韓僑の国籍及び居住移転問題 (抄)
Problems of nationality and residence change of Overseas Koreans in Japan (Extracts)

The documents in this part (KRN 76: 62-72, NKBK 76: 22-28) review all the reasons why the status problem of "Overseas Koreans in Japan" is not as easy as it might seem.

In the following summary, I will cite and translate Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation of the original Korean text, which I have also consulted.

The status problems of "Overseas Koreans in Japan"

Topic 10 has 4 parts, 3 of which are substantial, and the 4th of which -- a list of treaties and demographic data -- is significant.

Part 1 -- "Legal status of Overseas Koreans in Japan" (在日韓僑の法的地位) -- introduces issues related to their legal status like this (KRN 76: 63, NKBK 76: 22, and Yi Yangsu 1977: 71; English translation mine).

Overseas Koreans in Japan of course are nationals (国民 kokumin) of the Republic of Korea, but it cannot be asserted that they hold the nationality (国籍 kokuseki) of the Republic of Korea. This -- no matter what theories Japanese scholars attempt to attach [to their contentions to the contrary] -- is an immovable fact. Therefore, in the effects of the legal status of Overseas Koreans, various difficult problems are piled [in a mountain].

Part 1 goes on to summarize how SCAP had treated the legal status of such Koreans until then (i.e., circa fall 1950).

Part 2 -- "Problems concerning the independence of conquered and annexed states and residence changes of their nationals who are settled in the former controlling (ruling, governing) country" (被征服被併合国家の独立と旧支配国内に居留していたその国民の居住移転に関する問題) -- briefly reviews status issues related to the independence of the Philippines, a number of South American colonies, and several British colonies as late as 1949 -- before turning to Europe, where the focus turns to the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of states like Poland and Yugoslavia. (KRN 76: 65-67, NKBK 76: 23-24)

Part 3 -- "Nationality problems and residence change problems of Overseas Koreas in Japan" (在日韓僑の国籍問題と居住移転問題)

Part 4 -- "Reference" (参考) -- consists of reference materials, beginning with a list of 12 treaties and articles relevant to territorial change -- both cessioned territory and separation and independence. The list begins with the 1662 "Betoru (?) Treaty" (ベトル Betoru < 베틀 Petŭl) of 1662 between Italy (伊) and Switzerland (端西), and ends with the 1947 Peace Treaty with Italy (対伊平和条約).

The list includes the following 3 treaties in which Japan was a party (KRN 76: 69, NKBK 76: 25).

1. 1875 Karafuto-Chishima Exchange Treaty (樺太・千島交換条約) [between Japan and Russia]
2. 1905 Portsmouth Treaty (ポーツマス条約) [between Japan and Russia]
3. 1909 Agreement Concerning Chientao (間島に関する条約) [between Korea represented by Japan and China]

The "agreement" (協約) concerning Chientao -- generally called a "treaty" in English -- had provisions for the status of Koreans in Chientao (間島 Jiàndăo, K. Kando, J. Kantō), a district in eastern Manchuria along the Tumen river on the border between China, then under the Ching (Qing) Dynasty, and the Empire of Korea. Korea was then a dependency of Japan, which proxied its foreign affairs, hence my characterization of the agreement. Most reference I have seen describe it as a treaty between Japan and China, but formally that was not the case.

Missing from the list of treaties was the 1895 Shimonoseki Treaty (下関条約) between Japan and China, which included provisions for the cessioning of Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan, and changes of status for people residing in these related territories.

The appended sources also include a breakdown of Japan's "alien" (外国人) population as of 30 July 1948, according to which there were a total of 635,142 foreigners defined as other than Occupation Personnel. Their "nationality" and other statuses included China (20,421), Taiwan (14,558), Korea (591,410), White Russians (343), Stateless (579).

There are statistics on the number of Korean in Japan receiving livelihood assistance (no figures) or are unemployed (no figures), and a breakdown of criminal cases involving 9,556 Koreans being detained, as of March 1950, including 2,423 who were awaiting court decisions (2,356 men, 67 women) and 7,133 (7,101 men, 32 women) who had already been convicted. and criminal Koreans by sex who detained pending outcomes of court. And finally there is breakdown of Korean entrepreneurs (55,023) by (apparently) the capital size of their operations.

Other documents in the file also show that, as of the end of 1950, there was no shortage of awareness that treaties and other agreements involving territory typically generally stipulated rules for determining the statuses and status changes of residents of the territories. By 1951, however, the governments of both Korea and Japan -- essentially also the Allied Powers -- understood that the recognition of the "independence" of Korea, and rules for determining the status of Koreans in Japan -- and let us not forget also the status of Japanese in Korea -- would have to be unconventional.

Top  

15 May 1951 DS/SCAP on status of Koreans in Japan

The Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan was chronically concerned about rumors of proposals to deport from some to many, if not all, Koreans in Japan to the peninsula, which would have meant the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south. Mid 1951 marked the peak controversy among SCAP officials like G-2 (Intelligence) chief Charles A. Willoughby (formerly Adolf Charles Weidenbach 1892-1972) and Legal Section chief Alva C. Carpenter. Willoughby, an ardent Charles A. [Anthony] Adolf Charles Weidenbach, Willoughby in anti-Communist who advocated, with support from some Japanese officials, ridding Japan of subversive elements among Koreans in Japan -- and officials such as Alva Carpenter, chief of SCAP's Legal Section, who said it couldn't be done legally.camp and those who, apart from their political views, who anti-communist fervor among SCAP and Japanese officials 1951 was Never mind that (1) there was a war going on between ROK and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north, (2) Koreans in Japan had opted to remain in 1946 when given an opportunity to leave, (3) they could still leave but most had family and livilhood reasons to stay, (4) many, though mostly from southern privinces, were politically aligned DPRK, which had started the war, and (5) mass deportation of the roughly 600,000 Koreans in Japan at the time would have imposed considerable difficulties for SCAP and Japanese authorities, to say nothing of ROK, whose population at the time was roughly 21 million.

Top  

Summer 1951 ROK on nationality of Koreans

During the months and weeks leading up the Peace Conference in San Francisco and the signing of the Peace Treaty with Japan on 8 September 1951, the Republic of Korea was busy preparing for the eventuality of having to normalize its relationship with Japan, which would require that the two countries negotiate settlements to a number of thorny issues. For ROK, the status and treatment of Koreans in Japan was not a high priority issue. Nonetheless, its delegates in Japan put considerable effort into clarifying their position -- which, for the most, determined the outcome of subsequent talks about nationality, rights of residence, personal property rights, deportation, and other issues related to legal status and treatment.

The following transcription is of a 3-page English typescript document found in ROK archives between a memorandum from the Diplomatic Section (DS) of General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) to the Korean Diplomatic Mission to Japan (KDMJ), dated 15 May 1951, and a memorandum from the KDMJ to DS of GHQ/SCAP dated 10 August 1951. The document appears to be written from an ROK point of view.

Summer 1951 ROK contemplates four measures

Top  

6 August 1951 Japan : Chosenese, Taiwanese will lose nationality

Top  

10 August 1951 Japan : Domestic "Chosenese" will become aliens

Top  

10 August 1951 ROK : All Koreans are ROK nationals

Among the many English typescript documents relating to the nationality of Koreans in Japan, in the Republic of Korea (ROK) archives, are the following two documents, the first a 2-page memorandum from from the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ) to the Diplomatic Section (DS) of General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP), the second a 3-page statement on Korean nationality that appears to be attachment to the memorandum. These documents are followed by shorter memoranda dated 12 August and 14 August 1951.

The gist of the two documents is that ROK considered Koreans in Japan to be its nationals -- period. No ifs, ands, or buts. ROK had been formally established on 15 August 1948, quickly became a widely recognized sovereign state, and is Nationality Law had promulgated and in effect since 20 December 1948 -- for nearly 4 years -- and it determined that all Koreans, including those in Occupied Japan, were ROK nationals.

職業 Occupation                1920     1930     1940     1940 %

        農業 Agriculture      1,287   20,058   27,584     5.26 %
      水産業 Marine products    594    1,444    4,115     0.78 %
        鉱業 Mining           5,534   16,304   68,883    13.12 %
        工業 Manufacturing   19,428  138,144  272,495    51.92 %
        商業 Commerce         1,773   26,848   83,075    15.83 %
      文通業 Transportation   4,113   20,986   38,101     7.26 %
  公務自由業 Civil service      372    1,474   12,474     2.38 %
               and free vocations
その他有業者 Others with      2,109   31,372   14,841     2.83 %
               occupations
  家事使用人 Domestic workers     4    3,368    3,310     0.63 %

総数 Total                   35,214  259,998  524,878   100.00 %

                               1948     1948 %

官公吏及び公務員              1,700     0.27 %
Government officials and
  civil servants
会社員及び出版書籍業          9,500     1.53 %
Company staff and
  publishing industry
工業及び繊維業                6,500     1.04 %
Manufacturing and
  textile industries
商業 Commerce                15,000     2.41 %
農業 Agriculture              5,500     0.88 %
漁業及び製塩業                1,238     0.20 %
Fishing and salt making
自由及び土建業              155,000    24.89 %
Free and construction
無業 (老人、主婦、嬰児)     118,282    18.99 %
Workless [Jobless] (elderly,
  housewives, infants)
残余は全部失業者            310,000    49.78 %
The are rest all
  unemployed

           Total            622,720   100.00 %

                                      1950     1950 %

自由生活者                         483,574    89.29 %
(一定な職業のない者、
   浮動生活者)
Free living persons
(Persons with no fixed
   occupation, persons
   with floating life)

小企業者 Small enterprises          53,371     9.85 %
(一万円以上五拾万円程度) 約十％弱
(10,000 to 500,000 yen) < 10 %

中企業者 Middle enterprises          4,473     0.83 %
(五拾万円以上一千万円程度) 約一％弱
(500,000 to 10,000,000 yen) < 1 %

大企業者 Large enterprises             179     0.03 %
(一千万円以上)
(10,000,000 yen and above)

在日韓僑総人口数                   541,597   100.00 %
Overseas Koreans in Japan
Total general population

Top  

24 August 1951 SCAP : Nationality outside SCAP's authority

On 24 August 1951, ROK made a final but unsuccessful attempt to get SCAP to back its claim that Koreans in Japan were its nationals. The peace treaty had been drafted but was being refined in preparation for the upcoming peace conference and signatures. ROK had wanted to, but was not allowed, to participate.

SCAP's Diplomatic Section (DS) had already informed the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ) that ROK and Japan needed to convene direct talks in order to determine the legal status and treatment -- beginning with the nationality -- of Koreans in Japan. SCAP's attitude toward their nationality had long been a sore point with KDMJ, but it had not yet given up its hopes that it could convince SCAP to simply declare that all Koreans in Japan were ROK nationals in accordance with ROK laws.

KDMJ, in a communication dated 21 August 1951, expressed its desire that "a preliminary confab with the authorities of the Diplomatic Section be held at 10 a.m., August 23, 1951, Friday at the Diplomatic Section (KRN 78: 63; image not included in NKBK 78).

ROK's minutes on the meeting date it as having been held at DS/SCAP from 10:00 to 10:55 a.m. on 24 August 1951.

SCAP representives included:

Mr. W.H. Sullivan (DS)
Mr. R.B. Finn (DS)
Mr. J. Bassin (LS)
Maj. E.G. Tobin (G-2)

Second Secretary Sullivan precided over the meeting.

As listed in ROK's August 1951 request and in the 24 August minutes, ROK's representives included:

Dr. Hong Kee Karl, Counselor (葛弘基 参事官)
Mr. Chin O Yu, Legal Advisor (兪鎮午 法律顧問)
Mr. Tai Dong Kim, Head of Political Section (金泰東 一等書記官) [First Secretary]
Mr. Kyu Young Hahn, Third Secretary (韓奎水 三等書記官)

The 21 August 1951 request stated that "Ambassador Shin" might also attend. According to the minutes of the meeting, he was not there.

The copy of the minutes in ROK's archives was one attached to a cover letter from Ambassador Shin Sung Mo (申性模 Sin Sŏ Mo 1891-1960) to his boss, the Minister of Foreign Affairs (外務部長官) [external affairs department chief officer], which was dated, like the minutes, 24 August 1951 (檀紀四二八四年八月二十四日 Dangi 4284-8-24). At the time, the ROK government was in Pusan, where it had taken refuge after the start of the Korean War.

The minutes are the most important evidence of the nature of the running dispute between the Republic of Korea and the Allied Powers over the nationality of Koreans in Japan. They illustrate more than any other document the diametrically opposed views of the two entities -- ROK insisting that Koreans in Japan were its nationals because it was a sovereign state and its Nationality Law made them its nationals -- and the position of the Allied Powers, articulated by the legal and diplomatic sections of SCAP, that they were still Japanese and would remain so until a treaty determined otherwise.

Top  

10 September 1951 ROK on international conventions

They don't apply to ROK"

The Republic of Korea regarded the nationality of Koreans in Japan as a non-issue that did not qualify as a topic for bilateral discussion. SCAP and Japan, following SCAP, might think otherwise, but ROK knew -- or at least its principle legal adviser at the time, Yu Chin O, insisted he knew -- that theretofore international conventions in cases of territorial changes following wars -- such as those that settled nationality issues after World War I -- did not apply to the case of Korea.

On 28 July 1951, Yu Chin O (兪鎮午) flew from Pusan in the Republic of Korea to Tokyo in Occupied Japan to assume his post as legal adviser to the Representative Office of the Republic of Korea in Japan (大韓民国駐日代表部法律顧問兪鎮午), otherwise known as the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ). Among his reports to the ROK government was a long "Japan dispatch report" (日本出張報告書) to the Director of the Political Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外務部政務局長), dated the 10th day of the 9th month of the 4284th year of Dangi (檀紀四二八四年十月八日) or 10 September 1951).

The report, in Korean (KRN 77: 4-30) has been translated by Yi Yangsu into Japanese (NKBK 77: 2-6). The following is an extract of the most important part of Yu's report, which concerns his view of the applicability of international conventions regarding the determination of nationality concomitant with territorial changes following wars. Yu would would lead ROK's delegation in a number of its early negotiations with Japan regarding the status and treatment of Koreans in Japan. ROK's attitude toward the nationality issue was essentially shaped by Yu's views, which were widely shared by ROK's political leaders.

While SCAP and Japan shared a very different understanding of the nationality status of Koreans in Occupied Japan, even their understanding -- by the time the ROK-Japan talks got under way on 20 October 1951 -- was that nationality choice would not be on the table -- unless Japan unilaterally made provisions in its own laws for Koreans to continue to be nationals of Japan without naturalization. Otherwise they would lose their nationality and have to naturalize.

Yu's 10 September report is divided into two parts, the first on "Nationality problems of Overseas Koreans" (在日僑胞の国籍問題)", the second, longer part on 、"Problems of claim rights including property and claims of Korea and Koreans against Japan and Japanese (日本及び日本人に対する韓国及び韓国人の資産及び債権を含む請求権の問題外観). Yu concluded that while the nationality issue was important, the property issues were considerably more difficult. He anticipated that they would involve entanglements with Japan, and would not be easily resolved in a short period of time.

The nationality part covers the following titled but unnumbered topics (numbers and translations mine)

1. 問題の沿革
   Background of the [nationality] problem
2. 国籍と利害関係
   Nationality and interests
3. 国際法上の慣例
   Conventions of international law
4. 在日韓国人の登録問題
   Registration problems of Koreans in Japan
5. 在日韓国人の居住と営業権問題
   Residence and business rights problems of Koreans in Japan
6. 在日韓国人の財産搬出問題
   Property removal [from Japan] problems of Koreans in Japan
7. 在日韓国人に対する日本政府の当面政策
   Present policies of Japanese government toward Koreans in Japan

Yu's remarks under the 3rd topic -- Conventions of international law -- are as follows.

Top  

8 October 1951 ROK's nationality choice contingencies

在日韓僑の国籍に関する協定要綱
Zainichi Kankyō no kokuseki ni kan suru kyōtei yōkō
Outlines of [two possible] agreements concerning nationality of Overseas Koreans in Japan

Months before the signing of the Peace Treaty with Japan in San Francisco on 8 September 1951, the Republic of Korea began preparing for the eventuality of having to normalize its relations with Japan and, in the process, solve a number of thorny problems related to property and other claims, territory and fishing rights, and the status and treatment of Koreans in Japan.

On 8 October 1951 -- a month after the signing of the treaty, and just 12 days before the first meeting between ROK and Japan, ROK's Minister of Justice presented President Syngman Rhee with a choice of two contingency agreements concerning the nationality of Overseas Koreans in Japan.

The following summary of the memorandum, and presentation and translation of the texts of the two contingency agreements, are based on KRN 78: 111-124, NKBK 78: 31-33, also Yi 2007: 27-81. See ROK and Japan archives for details.

8 October 1951 memorandum to Syngman Rhee

The two contingency agreements -- the first for "nationality recovery", the second for "nationality choice" -- were attached with other "reference materials" (参考資料) to a memorandum dated the 8th day of the 10th month of the 4284th year of Dangi (檀紀四二八四年十月八日) or 8 October 1951), from ROK's Minister of Justice (法務部長官) [legal affairs department chief officer] to the State Council Chairman (国務会議議長).

The contingency agreements were not merely attached to the memorandum but very its substance. The "subject" (件) of the memorandum was "the consideration of an outline of the agreement concerning the nationality problem of Overseas Koreans in Japan" (在日韓僑の国籍問題に関する協定の要綱審議).

The memorandum asks the President of the State Council to consider the attached suggestions concerning the "nationality affiliation of about 550,000 Koreans residing in Japan" (日本に居住している約五十五万名の韓国人の国籍帰属). It then summaries each of two alternative proposals as follows (KRN 78: 113-114, NKBK 78: 31, and Yi 2007: 77; my ellipses, structural translations, and highlighting).

1. 在日韓僑全部に韓国の国籍を取得させると同時に、日本で永久に居住できる権利と、 また自由に退去できる権利を付与し・・・
  to let/have/make all Overseas Koreans in Japan acquire the nationality of Korea, and at the same time, impart the right to be able to perpetually reside in Japan, and the right to be able to freely leave [remove] [from Japan] . . .

2. 一九四五年八月九日以前から日本に居住する者で、その後まで続けて日本に居住した韓国人全部を日本国籍を持つものと認定し、彼らに一定の期間内に韓国国籍を選択できる権利、即ち国籍選択権を付与し・・・
  recognize that all Koreans who were persons residing in Japan from on or before 9 August 1945, and who until after that have continuously resided [in Japan], have Japan's nationality, and impart to them the right to be able to choose Korea's nationality within a given period, in other words the right of nationality choice . . .

The memorandum states that while it would be advantageous for all Overseas Koreans in Japan to become ROK nationals, Koreans who might want to naturalize in Japan might have difficulty satisfying some of the conditions for naturalization in Japan's Nationality (promulgated and enforced in 1950), and others might have difficulty staying in Japan under the deportation provisions of the Exit-enter-country (Immigration) Control Order that will come into force from 1 November that year (1951). This means that Japan "could let naturalize , and could let reside, only so-called 'desirable Koreans'" (いわゆる「望ましい韓国人」だけを帰化させることもできるし居住させることもできる), while it "could easily expel to Korea 'undesirable Koreans'" (「望ましくない韓国人」に対しては容易に韓国に追放できる).

The memorandum observes that, because Japan's territory would shrink after the peace treaty, Japan's biggest political problem was the population problem (人口問題). It's policy will continue to be to favor the migration of Japanese overseas, but will also be to get foreigners it is unhappy with -- [such as] Koreans [who break Japan's laws and advocate revolution] -- to return to their home country. So Japan will want to solve both the population problem and the security problem (治安問題) in a single stroke. If Korea asserts itself from this point of view [and proposes that all Overseas Koreans in Japan be made to acquire ROK nationality and be allowed to perpetually reside in Japan], Japan will probably agree -- but . . .

The memorandum says "there is worry that [efforts on our part to limit it's right to expel aliens] will encounter Japan's stubborn opposition" (日本の頑強なる反対に逢着する憂慮があります). Hence the provisional addition to the 1st agreement proposal, that Koreans in Japan -- after Japan acknowledges that they are ROK nationals -- would be able to choose the nationality of Japan within 3 years.

The memorandum regards the 2nd agreement proposal -- to recognize that Koreans in Japan retained Japanese nationality, but give them right to "choose [Korean] nationality" -- is probably "unreasonable (unfair, unjust)" (不当) -- but such an agreement would conform with precedents in international law regarding "nationality affiliation problems" (国籍帰属問題) -- such as in the cases of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and other countries in Europe following World War I and the Versailles Treaty (ヴェルサイユ条約).

But if treaties like those in Europe were adopted in the case of Japan and Korea, Koreans in Japan who did not choose ROK nationality within a specific period would be Japanese, and Japan would have have to accept them without regard to whether they were desirable or undesirable. And only those who with a love of their ancestorland (祖国愛) would desire to become nationals of Korea.

In the closing line, ROK's Minister of Justice asks President Rhee to determine which of the two [plans to solve] the nationality affiliation problem of Overseas Koreans in Japan [he would like ROK's delegates to recommend at the upcoming ROK-Japan talks] (在日韓僑の国籍帰属問題に関して上述した、ふたつの中のどちらを選ぶかということを決定していただくことを願うものであります).

And the record shows that Syngman Rhee chose Plan 1 -- which recognized that all Koreans in Japan were ROK nationals who deserved to rights of permanent and perpetual abode on a par with Japanese nationals, who could not without prior consent of ROK be expelled from Japan.

The outline of the two contingency plans was the first of the following 5 attachments.

別添資料
Attached materials
1. 在日韓僑の国籍に関する協定要綱
   Outlines of agreement concerning nationality of Overseas Koreans in Japan
2. 占領期間中、韓国人に対する法的措置概要
   Summary of legal measures concerning Koreans during period of Occupation [of Japan]
3. 在日韓僑の動態
   Dynamics of [statistics on] Overseas Koreans in Japan
4. 外国人出入国管理令の要点
   Main points of [Japan's] Alien exit-enter-country [immigration] control order
5. 日本国籍法抄
    Japan's Nationality Law (extracts)

Top  

20 October 1951 Talks begin with cautious hope

SCAP'S Sebald: "a spirit of calm and sincere purpose"

Japan's Iguchi: "a start, however small, will have been made"

ROK's Yang: "we must not permit ourselves to fail"

10 sessions of the preliminary plenary conference between ROK and Japan were held between 20 October and 4 December 1951.

Records of proceedings

The preliminay plenary conference, unlike the Legal Status Committee and other subcommittees which it established, was considered "formal", and hence formal records of the proceedings of its meetings were made in English. Japanese and Korean were also official languages.

The conference was set up and facilitated by SCAP's Diplomatic Section, and some of its officials would attend all 10 meetings. Their role was to observe, and nothing they might say would be binding. However, William H. Sullivan was designated the official reporter, and his name appears on the record of proceedings of all meetings except the 5th, which was written by J.E. MacDonald. The Japan-side and the Korea-side generated their own reports for internal use in Japanese and Korean.

Conferees

The following Japan-side and ROK-side delegates and SCAP-side observers attended opening session of the preliminary plenary conference (JPN 3-63: 3-4).

Japan delegation

首席代表 外務次官 井口貞夫
Iguchi Sadao, chief representative, Foreign affairs vice minister

代表 外務事務官 千葉皓
Chiba Kō, representative, Foreign affairs administrative official

代表 入国管理庁実施部長 田中三男
Tanaka Mitsuo, Exit-entry-country [Immigration] Control Agency, Enforcement Department director

代表 法務府民事局主幹 平賀健太
Hiraga Kenta, representative
Attorney General's Office, Civil Affairs Bureau, deputy director

代表 外務省管理局総務課長 後宮虎郎
Ushiroku Toraro, representative, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Control Bureau, General Affairs Section, director

The Control Bureau of the former Ministry of Interior (内務省) was transfered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (外務省) following SCAP's breakup of the Interior Minister. In 1943, the exterior territories, beginning with Chōsen and Taiwan, were from fully to partially placed under the administrative authority the Interior Minister, which until then had jurisdiction over only the prefectural Interior (内地 Naichi). The Foreign Ministry was thus in charge of

代表 外務省条約局法規課長 佐藤日史
Satō Nisshi, representative, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Treaty Bureau, Legal Section, director

Assistant 代表 外務事務官 今井実
Imai Minoru, assistant representative, Foreign affairs administrative official

Assistant 代表 外務事務官 佐治誠
Saji Makoto, assistant representative, Foreign affairs administrative official

Republic of Korea delegation

首席代表 梁祐燦
Yang You Chan, head of delegation

代表 申性模
Shin Sung Mo, representative

代表 金溶植
Kim Yong Shik, representative

代表 兪鎮午
Yu Chin O, representative

代表 林松本
Limb Song Bon, representative

代表 葛弘基
Karl Hong Kee, representative

Assistant 金東祚
Kim Dong Jo, assistant

Assistant 金泰東
Kim Tae Dong, assistant

Legal Advisor Dr. Oliver

SCAP (Diplomatic Section) observers

William J. Sebald
John P. Gardiner
Edward Anderberg
William H. Sullivan
Stanley S. Carpenter
Richard B. Finn

Three statements, three messages

As is clearly seen from the content of the three statements, Sebald's and Iguchi's are characteristic of positively toned impersonal diplomacyese. Yang's, in sharp contrast, is more personal, more colorful, more creative -- and also more honest in its frank admission of the existence of negative nationalistic sentiments.

Sebald's statement

Sebald's says as much as he should and little if any more. He's wants the two parties to hammer out an agreement that will get them started on a normal relationshp. He makes it clear that the most important task before the two delegations is for them to determine "the nationality and legal status of those Koreans who are resident in Japan" -- by themselves. He stresses that SCAP will observe the negotiations, and possibly give advice, but will not interfere.

The two countries will be on their own. The status issue -- and all other issues they are free to raise and discuss -- are theirs, not SCAP's. SCAP, representing the Allied Powers, has no standing -- except to urge that they endeavor to resolve at least the status issue by the time the terms of the Peace Treaty come into effect sometime probably early the following year.

Iguchi's statement

Iguchi's statement shows that he -- possibly with the help of editors -- knew exactly how to chop wordier 4-page drafts down to a perfectly pitched 3-page statement that makes no reference to anything possible negative except "problems of mutual concern". He sees the conversations as a start which, however, small, will lay a foundation for a lasting bilateral relationship.

Iguchi understands that question of "the legal status of Koreans residing in this country" arise out of the Peace Treaty. He also makes it clear that the "the question of nationality" will "eventually" lead to "the quetion of making a basic . . . agreement" to establish a formal relationship between the two countries.

Iguchi knows that the question of nationality is paramount, because states are essentially defined by the nationality they recognize of those they consider their nationals. The first step toward establish a normal diplomatic relationship is usually, therefore, to recognize each other's sovereignty in the form of recognizing each other's nationality. For Japan, this entailed the need to clarify the status of "Koreans in Japan" -- who were still, in Japan's (and SCAP's) view, Japanese nationals.

Iguchi also knows that, in ROK's view, Koreans in Japan had either never been Japanese nationals, or were freed from the "yoke" of Japanese nationality the moment Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaraion. But he also knows it is not his position to say this -- and that this first meeting is not the place to delve into particulars. He very intentionally strives not to be contentious.

Yang's statement

Yang's statement runs a full 5-pages, at least 2 of which consist of emotional opinions on issues which -- if related at all to the purpose of the conference -- are matters to save for later. It would have been diplomatic to briefly allude to the period during which -- until 5 years ago -- had been under Japanese control. But to dwell on the hostility of Koreans, in a manner that must have come across as reflecting his own hostility -- was not something a seasoned diplomat would do.

Yang, by education and experience, is totally unlike most of the other Korean delegates, who are more like most of the Japanese delegates -- people who have spent their entire years in Japan, including for 35 years that "Korea" was a part of Japan called Chōsen. Yang -- in all but nationality -- was an American. He was, moreover, a physician, and was personally an aggressive, no-nonsense, and principled achiever. He also had a way with words. He was speaking English as a virtual native language, and had a gift -- like Syngman Rhee -- for oratory.

Yang's statement is easily twice as powerful as Iguchi's, which is twice as powerful as Sebald's, which is pretty much to just the point.

On the plus side, Yang's statement cleared the air. His medical metaphors was apt. He knew who he was representing other than himself. He didn't want the Japan delegation to have any illusions that the Republic of Korea would be as "generous" as the Allied Powers.

On the negative side, his emotional victimist overview of Japan's rule of Korea as Chōsen must have embarrased some of his fellow delegates -- who, unlike Yang, had lived in the Empire of Japan as Japanese and Chosenese, had studied at Interior universities, worked in imperial agencies, and hoped that Japan would win the war.

Source and markup

The following texts of Sebald's, Iguchi's, and Yang's statements -- all in English -- are reformatted transciptions of scans of copies of the original double-spaced typed texts of the statements by Sebald (JPN 3-63: 16-17), Iguchi (JPN 3-63: 5-7), and Yang (JPN 3-63: 18-22). The same folder in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives includes a 1st and 2nd draft of Iguchi's statement.

The ROK archives include single-spaced copies of Sebald's and Iguchi's statements, but appear to lack a copy of Yang's statement (Sebald KRN 77: 56, NKBK 77: 16; Iguchi KRN 77: 58-59, NKBK 77: 18-19). The texts on the received scans (if not the original copies) are partly obscure and otherwise difficult to read.

See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars and guide to markup.

Top  

Top  

Top  

22 October 1951 Burying hatchets, real and imaginary

ROK's Yang: "said . . . the "hatchet should be buried""

Japan's Chiba: "questioned only "whether there was a hatchet to bury""

Japan's Chiba: "logically . . . Koreans . . . should lose Japanese nationality and gain Korean nationality . . . would [ROK] take on full responsibility for Koreans resident in Japan if they lose their Japanese nationality?"

ROK's Yang: "even including Communists . . . some [Koreans in America] chose India rather than Korea as a destination for their deportation . . . there may be some Korean residents who desired to retain Japanese nationality"

The 2nd preliminary plenary session of 22 October 1951 marked the start of actual talks between Japan and the Republic of Korea. At these talks, we see the sort of give and take that would lead to an agreement over general principles of nationality and status by the end of the year.

Source and markup

The following text is a reformatted transcription of scans of the original English document (JPN 3-63: 33-40). See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars and guide to markup.

A few letters along the left margin of the scans of the received text are missing. I have shown plausible reconstructions in [uncolored square brackets].

Top  

10 September 1951 DS/SCAP memorandum to KDMJ

11 September 1951 SCAPIN-2168 on "Registered Korean Vessels"

The 10 September 1951 DS/SCAP memorandum to the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan, and the 11 September 1951 SCAPIN-2168 to the Government of Japan, concerned the return to Korea of certain Korean vessels then being operated by Japanese companies.

A subcommittee to the ROK-Japan talks was convened from 30 October 1951 to work out an agreement concerning the vessels. The vessels agreement, like the status agreement, was ready to sign in April 1952. But like the status agreement, it would become a victim of the termination of the talks on 25 April 1952. And the return of the vessels would continue to be a bone of contention when the talks resumed in 1953.

Source and markup

The following texts are reformatted and edited cuts and pastes from uncorrected electronic adaptations of copies of the original documents in ROK archives, as posted by 동북아역사재단 -- 東北亜歴史財団 North East Asia History Foundation (NAHF) through its resources on 예비회담 -- 韓日会談 ROK-Japan talks. See ROK and Japan archives for particulars.

Top  

25 October 1951 Japan puts three cards on the table

By 1951, before the beginning of the negotiations between Japan and the Allied Powers that led to the drafting and signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty on 8 August that year, Japan was aware that it would have to negotiate a normalization treaty and status agreement directly with the Republic of Korea (ROK). By the time it signed the Peace Treaty, Japan was also fully aware that a conventional treaty with ROK would not be possible.

ROK had not been qualified to be a party to the Peace Treaty. The treaty confirmed that Japan had abandoned all claims to "Korea" (Chōsen), but it didn't -- because it couldn't -- designate a successor state. ROK could claim that it was the successor state, and that the United Nations had recognized it as the only lawful government on the peninsula. But it could not claim to have control and jurisdiction over the "Korea" that constituted the former Japanese territory of "Chōsen". And this posed a practical as well as a legal problem for Japan, since numerous "Koreans" (Chosenese) in Japan claimed to support the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the provinces north of the 38th parallel of latitude.

Long before the SCAP-brokered talks between Japan and ROK began on 20 October 1951, ROK was aware that Japan would (1) regard Chosenese (and Taiwanese) in Japan as having lost their Japanese nationality on the day the terms of the Peace Treaty came into effect, and (2) from that day, they would become aliens, and (3) as aliens be able to naturalize if they wished to become Japanese again. Japan formally informed ROK of these three basic principles on 25 October, at the 4th conference in the talks (see transcription of proposal below).

SCAP, representing the Allied Powers, had determined, before the conclusion of the Peace Treaty, that Japan and ROK would have to negotiate their own settlements, and after the conclusion of the treaty SCAP had no choice but to leave the determination of the nationality of Koreans in Japan to ROK and Japan. Japan's 3 principles were both uncontested and incontestable -- mainly because they constituted a legal solution, through Japan's domestic laws, to differences in ROK's and Japan's (and SCAP's) legal contentions about the nationality status of Koreans in Japan prior to and after Japan's surrender to the Allied Powers.

Japan (and SCAP) considered Koreans in Japan to still be Japanese at the time ROK and Japan began negotiating the future status of Koreans in Japan on 20 October 1951. ROK considered them to have already lost Japan's nationality -- if ever they could be said to have truly possessed it. ROK had already ruled out the application of conventional nationality choice provisions, and Japan as well understood that conventional provisions would not have worked without ROK's reciprocity.

The first of several conferences were devoted to determining an agenda and procedures for subsequent conferences. The status and treatment of Koreans in Japan would be given first priority, hence a status agreement would be negotiated in a sub-committee dedicated to nationality, permanent residence, deportation, and other related issues. Japan's proposal, as embedded in the following record of the proceedings of the 25 October 1951 meeting, was made before the 1st session of the Legal Status Subcommittee on 30 October 1951.

Top  

29 October 1951 ROK's 7-point "nationality question" draft

This document consists of proposals concerning the nationality, status, and treatment of Koreans in Japan. It appears to have been written about a week after the start of the ROK-Japan talks on 20 October 1952. It is the most remarkable of all the documents attributable to the ROK delegation in the talks. However, I have seen no evidence that the proposals, as written, were actually made. The document has the earmarks of a draft.

ROK views of post-annexation "Korea" and "Koreans"

The proposals were made entirely from the position that (1) "Korean nationals" were never "Japanese"; (2) most "Korean residents in Japan" were brought to Japan by force; and (3) all had been struggling for "national independence".

Quasi "nationality choice" provision

The proposal includes a de facto "nationality choice" option for qualified Koreans in Japan who, according to the proposal, having lost Japan's nationality when the Peace Treaty came into effect, would be permitted to naturalize within one year after the status agreement came into effect without fulfilling the requirements of the provisions for naturalization in Japan's 1950 Nationality Law.

Top  

30 October 1951 MOFA Immigration Control Order press release

The 5th of the 10 sessions of the 1951 preliminary plenary talks convened on the morning of 30 October 1951. At this session, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan essentially agreed to an agenda and subcommittee procedures. The conference began at 10:20 that morning -- 20 minutes late on account of delays in the arrival of the Japanese delegation. The conference adjourned at 11:10, and sub-committee meetings briefly convened from 11:20.

The plenary session agreed to release two press statements. One, from the Japanese government, was intended to dispell rumors that Koreans in Japan were about to be treated as aliens subject to deporation, under the provisions of the Exit-enter-country [Immigration] Control Order, which would come into effect 2 days hence, on 1 November 1951. The other, from Ambassador Yang, concerned progress being made in the discussions on the future status of Koreans in Japan.

MOFA Immigration Control Order press release

As agreed to in the 5th meeting of the preliminary plenary conference on the morning of 30 October 1951, later that day the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the following press statement on the Immigration Control Order that would come into force in 2 days.

Top  

Yang's press statement on bilateral talks

Yang You Chan (梁祐燦), ROK's ambassador to the United States, who had come to Tokyo from Washington, D.C. to head ROK's delegation to the ROK-Japan talks, released the following 2-page statement to the press on the afternoon of 30 October 1951 following the 5th session of the plenary conference and the 1st session of the Legal Status Subcommittee meetings held that morning.

Top  

2 November 1951 Yu vs Tanaka & Hiraga sparring match

This 3rd session of "Subcommittee on the Legal Status of Overseas Koreans in Japan" (在日韓僑法的地位分科委員会) was convened at 2:18 p.m. on Friday, 2 November 1951, at the offices of the SCAP's Diplomatic Section.

The conference began with a statement by ROK chief representative Yu Jin O, who insisted that there was no "nationality problem" but only a "legal status" problem. He asserted that ROK's Nationality Law, promulgated and enforced in December 1948 as a domestic measure -- shortly after the establishing of ROK in August 1984 -- extended "personal sovereignty" to overseas Koreans in Japan.

"SCAP says treat Koreans who don't return the same as Japanese"

It couldn't be plainer. The Allied Powers are a legal entity unto themselves -- and SCAP is their chief law enforcement officer -- their sheriff -- in Occupied Japan.

Top  

14 November 1951 (am) Intermarriage and dual nationality

14 November 1951 was an especially busy day for delegates of the Legal Status Subcommittee, who convened their 7th meeting in the morning and their 8th meeting in the afternoon.

I am here translating and commenting on the entirety of Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation of the Korean summary of the proceedings of the 14 November 1951 meeting. I have also translated the letter under cover of which the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Tokyo sent a copy of the minutes to the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Pusan. I also refer to the Korean text of the minutes, and the Japanese document which, having been the topic of discussion at the meeting, was attached to the minutes.

Top  

14 November 1951 (pm) MOFA's Tanaka leaps before he looks

The Korean minutes for the 8th session of the Legal Status Subcommittee, the 2nd of two meetings held on 14 November 1951, note that Tanaka Mitsuo, who headed the Japanese delegation to the committee, arrived late and explain why.

The minutes read as follows in Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation and in my structural English translation of Yi's translation. As elsewhere, the upper-case English terms are as recevied in the Korean document (KRN 81: 135, NKBK 81: 47

The rest of the meeting was given to itemizing clauses in the draft that the Japan side proceded to qualify.

The 4-page manuscript dated 13 November 1951, sandwiched between the minutes of the 7th meeting held that morning (see above) and the minutes of this 8th afternoon meeting in the ROK archives (KRN 81: 130-133, NKBK 81: 43-46), is related to the 7th meeting (see above).

The minutes of the 8th meeting are followed by a copy of what appears to be a fuller Japanese proposal. The 4-page document is handwritten in Japanese on 2 sheets of Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan folio paper. Written in the upper right corner of the 1st page are the graphs 寫 (utsushi) or "copy" (transcription) in a circle and 秘密 (himitsu) or "Secret" in a box.

The draft has the following general title and 4 section titles (KRN 81-138-141, NKBK 81- 49-51).

Top  

20 November 1951 Legal Status Subcommittee progress report

The origin of this document is unclear. I would guess from the quality of its English that the writer and/or editor had a native command of precise legalese that took into account the preference to refer to "Koreans" and "Japanese" as separate statuses despite the fact that "Koreans" in at least Japan were "Japanese". The typescript is edited in places and the markup includes occasions of bracketing "as Japanese" and "the loss of Japanese nationality" as though to demure on the literalness of these expressions (see comments below).

The tone is very neutral -- 3rd-party, non-lateral. The report may very well have been written by Sullivan.

The first page of the copy transcribed below, from ROK archives, is manually inscribed "Received: / 4:13 pm. / XYZ". The "XZY" initials appear to be J?D?K or F?D?K = perhaps "X Y Kim" if a Korean name. The English editing is spot on.

Top  

22 November 1951 Yang and Chiba debate status issues

Whether Koreans were ever Japanese -- or were still Japanese at the time -- was one of the more contentious issues between ROK and Japan in their 1951-1952 status and treatment talks. Today, over 60 years later, the two states continue to fundamentally disagree over the legality of Japan's annexation of Korea as Chōsen in 1910. Legal or not, its political and social effects were real. Koreans became Chosenese, and Chosenese were subjects and nationals of Japan. And, in legacy law in Japanese courts, they remained Japanese until 1952.

The Republic of Korea (ROK), when negotiating with Japan in 1951-1952, attempted to impose its illegality thesis on the negotiations, but Japan would have nothing of it. The Allied Powers, while not defending Japan's annexation of Korea as Chōsen in 1910, accepted that its effects had been legal -- Korea had become part of Japan, its affiliated inhabitants had become Japanese.

SCAP -- and Japan as well -- could agree with the ROK Mission in Japan that ROK was a sovereign state -- that it had already established its sovereignty over at least the provinces of the Korean peninsula it controlled -- and that it's jurisdiction in that part of Korea had already confirmed that its inhabitants were ROK nationals. Koreans who had remained in Occupied Japan, however, were another matter.

Koreans in Japan, for whatever personal or family reasons, had forfeited an opportunity to leave Japan and claim their nationality on the Korean peninsula. In effect, they had chosen to remain Japanese -- at least until formal deliberations and agreements between Japan and ROK determined otherwise. The apparent leaning of so many Koreans in Japan toward ROK's rival in the northern provinces, though most Koreans in Japan were affiliated with southern provinces, complicated the status issue from Japan's point of view. Japan was not prepared to accept ROK's demands that Japan recognize all Koreans in Japan having ipso facto become ROK nationals on account of provisions in ROK's Nationality Law.

Koreans in Japan were living in Japan. ROK's Nationality Law did not operate in Japan, and could not operate without an agreement between the two states as to how it would operate. ROK eventually accepted this position because its comported with the meaning of sovereignty and the rules that governed relations between sovereign states.

Under its domestic laws, accountable only its its state ideology, ROK could claim that Chōsen that Japan had already entirely relinquished its claims of sovereignty over the peninsula. But under international law, as interpreted and practiced by the Allied Powers in their breakup of the Empire of Japan, the separation of "Korea" (Chōsen) from Japan would not become formal until the Peace Treaty came into effect. And until then, the household registers of Koreans in Japan were still technically causes for Koreans in Japan to be considered Japanese nationals -- pursuant to Japan's territorial attribution of its nationality.

In the meantime, the future status of Koreans in Japan would be at the mercy of an agreement between Japan and ROK. Their legal status was nominally the most important item on the agenda of the bilateral talks. The Japan and ROK delegations included legal bureaucrats who occasionally engaged in the sort of debates that keep university law students up all night with a case of beer to nourish their heated arguments. The delegates at the ROK-Japan talks got high on their own legal ideology.

8th Preliminary Plenary Conference

The most dramatic and interesting exchange of opinion took place on the occasion of the 8th Conference in the ROK-Japan talks on 22 November 1951, a Thursday. The meeting convened at 3:22 in the afternoon and adjourned at 4:45.

The Japan side that day included Chiba, Tanaka, Hiraga, Imai, and Saji. The ROK side included Yang, Kim Yong Shik, Yu, Lim, Karl, Pak, Kim Dong Jo, Hong, Hwang, and Kim Tae Dong. The SCAP DS observer was Sullivan.

The Record of Proceedings of the meeting run 10 pages (KRN 77: 140-149, NKBK 77; 43-53; NKBK pdf file pagination includes 1 blank page; transcription, markup, and commentary mine).

Top  

26-27 November 1951 MOFA-SCAP on nationality and treatment

Hand written in the top margin of English version is "別紙乙" (Attachment A).

Attachment A
26 November 1951

The following text is a transcription of Attachment A (別紙甲) (JPN 4-561: 6) to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs memo related to communications with SCAP's Diplomatic Section officers circa 26-27 November 1951, concerning the nationality and treatment of Chosenese in Japan (JPN 4-561: 1-3). The transcription and markup are mine. See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars and guide to markup.

Hand written in the top margin of the English version is "別紙甲" (Attachment A). The Japanese version is typed on a single page of bordered Ministry of Foreign Affairs stationery.

Hand written in the top margin of the English version is "別紙甲" (Attachment A). The Japanese version is typed on two pages of bordered Ministry of Foreign Affairs stationery.

The following texts are transcriptions of the Japanese (JPN 4-561: 5) and English (JPN 4-561: 4) versions of Attachment B (別紙乙) to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs memo related to communications with SCAP's Diplomatic Section officers circa 26-27 November 1951, concerning nationality and treatment of Chosenese in Japan (JPN 4-561: 1-3). The transcriptions and markup are mine. See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars and guide to markup.

    The Japanese Government will treat Koreans in Japan as alians in all respects as from the date of the coming into force of the peace Treaty.

    However, in regard to bona-fida Korean residents who have been continuously in Japan from before September 2, 1945, the Japanese Government will consider special measures with respect to the following matters:

1. The alleviation of the conditions and procedures relating to the granting of permanent resident status.
2. The authorizing of a definite period of grace during which certain properties the ownership of which is prohibited to aliens may be retained.
3. The granting of special treatment during a definite period with respect to the taking out [of Japan] of personal property in case of repatriation.

    日本政府は在日朝鮮人を平和条約の発効の時以降総ての点において外国人として取扱う。

    但し一九四五年九月二日以前から引続き正当に本邦に在留する朝鮮人につては次の特別装置を考慮する。

Top  

30 November 1951 ROK says Koreans in Japan not immigrants

At the 12th session of the Legal Status Subcommittee, held on the morning of Friday, 30 November 1951, the Korea side pressed the Japan side to clarify Japan's position on Korea's demand for special treatment of "Koreans in Japan" as they would be defined in the agreement.The Japan side stated that it had made its position clear, that upon effectuation of the Peace treaty, Koreans in Japan would be aliens, and in principle they would be treated the same as other aliens.

The Japan side went on to say this, according to minutes of the meeting written by the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Tokyo and transmitted to ROK's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Pusan (KRN 81: 156-157, NKBK 81:59, Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation, my English translation).

The Japan side pointed out that it had said it would study whether it could legally accommodate the needs of the Koreans the agreement would apply to, then said that first the two parties must determine whether they are going to agree to principles, or deliberate only concrete treatment issues.

Tanaka Mitsuo, representing the Japan's delegation, suggested, not for the first time, that "even if both sides reiterated [their different] basic principles, agreeing to a conclusion [coming to an agreement] would be difficult, so from now on, why not talk about concrete treatment issues without debating principles?" (双方が根本的原則論を反覆(反復)しても結論に合意するのが困難なので、今後は原則論を討議せずに具体的取扱問題を話すか).

The Korea side agreed to this, but Hiraga Kenta, a Ministry of Justice bureaucrat who specialized in nationality and related status laws, and rarely lost an opportunity to make a legal point, objected that Japan's Exit-entry-country [Immigration] Order was [tantamount to] Japan's immigrant law (移民法 iminhō). As such it was a domestic statute to address domestic issues, and applied across the board to all aliens. So long as it didn't violate general principles of inernational law, all aliens -- no matter what kind -- had to obey this law. In principle, therefore, Koreans in Japan would also have to be subject to its application.

Invoking the "immigrant" metaphor gave ROK the perfect peg on which to hook a perfect rebuttal. The Korea side -- probably Yu Chin O, its chief delegate on the Legal Status Subcommittee, a legalist in his own right and Hiraga's arch opponent in legal debates -- made the following rebuttal (KRN 81: 158-159, NKBK 81: 60, Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation, my English translation).

The Korea side reiterated its demand that Japan recognize a unconditional special status of aliens for Koreans in Japan. Since Japan had said it would study the possibility, ROK demanded that Japan to make the first concrete proposal.

ROK's plans to issue registration certificates
and Japan's plans to fingerprint aliens in Japan

The following exchange between the Japan side (JS) and Korea side (KS) then took place, according to KDMJ's minutes (KRN 81: 163-165, NKBK 81: 61).

JS -- "We've heard talk of plans for the government of Korea to issue registration certificates to Koreans in Japan, but is that true?" (「韓国政府は在日韓人に登録証のようなものを発給する計画という話を聞いたが事実なのか」)

KS -- "If the Korean Mission (ROK Embassy or a consulate in Japan) were to register [Koreans in Japan] and issue [them] a certificate, wouldn't it be good if [Japan] were to recognize rights of permanent residence based on these [certificates]? (「駐日代表部(駐日大使館又は領事館)で登録をして証明書を発給したら、これに基づいて永住権を認めれば良いではないか」)"

JS -- (a) What measures are [we] to take toward communist-related Koreans who refuse to register [with ROK]? ( a) 登録を拒否する共産系韓人に対する措置はどうすればよいのか )
     (b) The [government of Japan] is revising the [1947] Alien Registration Order, and it appears that it will adopt fingerprinting in Alien Registration by request (demand) of the American side, but how [do you feel about this]? ( b) 外国人登録令を改正し、米国側の要請で外国人登録には指紋を採ることになりそうだが、どうか )

KS -- (a) As for measures toward [ROK] registration refusers, [this] would be something in accordance with a determination concerning right of residence and expulsion, but we agree to the expulsion of heinous communist elements. ( a. 登録拒否者に対する措置は、居住権と追放に関する決定によるものだが、悪質共産分子追放には賛同する。)
     (b) As for fingerprinting, even though you say it is a system enforced by America, because it is something that will stimulate (spur, exite, irritate) [Korean] residents (alien settlers, stayers), we'll reply after we study [the new law]. ( b. 指紋は例え米国では施行されている制度だといっても、居留民を刺激するものなので、研究してみた後に答える。)

Top  

4 December 1951 Sullivan's report on last preliminary session

The Korean community needed assurances there would be no mass deportation

Nationality sub-committee, not Immigration Bureau, should issue a statement

Yang said if there were times he lost his temper he meant well

Chiba said the beginnings, though small, were very significant

At this 10th and final session of the first, preliminary round of plenary talks between Japan and ROK, it was confirmed that everything was on schedule. The delegations to the nationality sub-committee had agreed to general principles regarding nationality and treatment. They should be able to resolve remaining problems by the start of the main plenary talks in February.

Yang would be returning to his duties as ROK ambassador to the United States but planned to be back in Tokyo in time to participate in the main talks. He hoped the two countries would be able to quickly resolve all their problems -- but insinuated that the burden would be on Japan to compromise in ROK's favor. Japan continued to highlight the importance of the small but sigificant steps that had been talken.

Deporting felons and subversive elements

Yang, as he had in his opening statement at the 1st session on 20 October 1951 (above), reiterated that the problems under discussion by the two countries were minor compared to the large problem of communism in Asia. He openly encouraged the government of Japan to identify "elements within the Korean community in Japan which have caused trouble" and said his government would cooperate with Japanese law enforcement agencies in both the apprehension and physical deportation of communist leaders.

Most so-called "communists" not really so

Yang reported said that the majority of Koreans in Japan who were then being classified as communists were "merely uninformed people who had been misled by Communist ideas" -- most of whom had come "from the lower strata of economic life and were susceptible to the propaganda which Communist leaders had inspired" -- in the worlds SCAP Diplomatic Section's 1st secretary William H. Sullivan.

Source and markup

The following text of William H. Sullivan's report is a reformatted transcription of scans of the original English document (JPN 3-63: 147-151). See ROK and Japan archives for source particulars and guide to markup.

Top  

6 December 1951 Nationality loss effects clarified

7 December 1951 Economic rights can be facilitated

The 6 and 7 December 1951 (14th and 15th) sessions of the Legal Status Subcommittee were unique in that, in addition to the regular delgates from the Japan and Korea sides, the Japan side included representatives of the Japanese government organs -- ministries, agencies, and bureaus -- which supervised laws related to occupational and economic activities in Japan, some of which requried Japanese nationality.

The 6 December 1951 meeting was attended by officials from the Ministry of Transportation, the Minister of Trade and Industry, the Foreign Investment Committee [FIC], and the Patent Office. The 7 December 1951 meeting included officials from the Ministry of Fianance Customs Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Fisheries Agency, and the Radio Regulatory Bureau.

The object of these meetings was to clarify the effects that nationality loss would have on the lives of Koreans in Japan -- especially those who, when losing Japanese nationality, stood to lose their jobs, professional licenses or permits, and other qualifications which required possession of Japanese nationality. The Japanese bureaucrats took turns methodically explaining the workings of the relevant laws.

For the most part, the Japan side assured the Korea side that the livelihoods of Koreans in Japan would not be effected that much by nationality loss. In most cases where it seemed that Koreans would be effected, the Japanese bureaucrats indicated that statute and other measures could be taken to allow Koreans to continue to engage in the activities they now engaged in as Japanese.

6 December 1951 meeting

The following topics headings are mind, but the numbers are as received in the Korean Diplomatic Mission in Japan (KDMJ) minutes.

1. Japanese flag ships

The Transport Ministry official was the secretary of the ministry's Documents Section. He explained the significance of a "Japanese ship" (日本船舶 Nihon senpaku) under Japan's "Ship Law" (船舶法 Senpakuhō), as Koreans in Japan -- who as Japanese had the right to operate vessels that were authorized to fly a Japanese flag -- would lose that right when they lost Japan's nationality.

In reply to a question from the Korea side as to whether any Koreans presently operated Japanese flag ships, the ministry official said no.

As for marine pilot licenses, the Pilotage Law (水先法 Mizusakihō)listed a person who is not a Japanese subject (日本臣民でない者) as the first disqualifying criteria, so foreigners were unable to receive licenses. In other marine related work, there was no discrimination between "inside and outside nationals" (内外国人 nai-gai-kokujin).

As for aviation, a Far Eastern Commission directive prohibitted Japanese from owning or flying aircraft, and a Potsdam cabinet order provided that only one Japanese company was permitted to operate an airlines within Japan.

2. Japanese mines

The Ministry of Trade and Industry official, from the ministry's Mining Bureau, explained that, under the Mining Law (鉱業法 Kōgyōhō), only "an imperial subject or a corporate person (法人 hōjin) established in accordance with Japanese law" (帝國臣民又は日本法に依って設立された法人) could operate a mine. But this was in accordance with international convention, and so long as the company was a Japanese corporate person, a foreigner could manage or even own the mine. He said some Koreans (韓人 Kanjin) with Japanese names (日本氏名 Nihon shimei) are probably operating mines, but the number was under investigation.

3. Public notaries

Section 3 in the minutes is titled 法務部関係 (Hōmu-bu kankei) or "Legal affairs deparment related). This title reflects an interesting example of the kind of errors which appear in KDMJ's minutes.

法務部 (Hōmu-bu) was the name of ROK's Ministry of Justice. Hiraga Kenta, the Japan-side delegate who addressed "Ministry of Justice related" laws, was a legalist in Japan's Attorney General's Office, which was then called 法務府 (Hōmu-fu) -- though before that it had been 法務庁 (Hōmu-chō), and before that it had been -- and later again became -- 法務省 (Hōmu-shō) as it is today, the "Ministry of Justice".

In any event, Hiraga Kenta -- representing the Attorney General's Office (AGO) -- said that AGO-related laws had a "shall be a national of Japan and a person of full age" (日本国民ニシテ成年者タルコト Nihon kokumin ni shite seinensha taru koto) provision only in the case of public notories (公証人 kōshōnin). To his knowledge, there were no Korean public notaries in Japan at the time.

4. Foreign investments

The Foreign Investment Committee official's overview of nationality limitations on financial activities in Japan proved to be the most controversial and time-consuming, as loss of Japanese nationality would hamper the vocational activities of Korean entrepreneurs. The Japan side said it was prepared to consider separate treatment for Koreans in Japan through government orders or revisions of laws.

5. Civil servants

KDMJ's minutes gave the least space to public officials, but the entire section is worth translating in full (KRN 81: 189-190, NKBK 81:66-67, Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation, my English translation).

The above account is at variance with statements on a document the Japan side circulated with its own proposal at the 18 December 1951 (18th) session. See 18 and 22 December 1951 Japan's status agreement drafts for details.

6. Patent attorneys

The Patent Law (特許法 Tokkyohō) provided that aliens who did not have domiciles or places of business in Japan did not have patent rights in Japan. So Koreans in Japan would not be effected.

The Patent Attorney Law (弁理士法 Benrishihō) held that, with the permission of the Minister of Trade and industry, aliens of full age could become patent attorneys, but the minister had not yet designated any foreign countries whose mationals might be permitted to practice patent law in Japan. Presently, there was only 1 alien patent attorney in Japan -- and Indian who had been a patent attorney in Japan before the [1921] Patent Law came into force. A transitional provision had permitted him to continue.

The Japan side said that at present, 3 Koreans were registered as patent attorneys, and that statute or other measures could be taken to allow them to continue to practice.

7 December 1951 meeting

At this session, a follow-up the 6 December 1951 session, Japanese officials representing other Japanese government organs reported how the status of Koreans in Japan would be affected by laws under their supervision. Much of the meeting focused on financial, property, and tax matters.

Time to get down to business

From the KDMJ reports on both the 6 and 7 December meetings, I get the impression that the Japan side was attempting to convince the Korea side that the livelihoods of most Koreans in Japan would not be greatly if at all affected by their loss of nationality -- that life would on as usual for the vast majority, who were not engaged in activities that required Japanese nationality. The minites report a number of remarks by the Japan-side to the effect that the most of the restrictions could be eliminated for Koreans in Japan through statute or other measures.

The 7 December 1951 report ends on the note that, in order to speed up the agreement, it was time for "both sides to submit concrete written proposals on based on deliberations up to now." And that is what they did -- beginning with the very next meeting. Within the next two weeks, the two sides had hammered out what would become the foundation for what -- by April the following year -- became a very workable, essentially ready-to-sign agreement.

Top  

12 December 1951 ROK's 1st status agreement proposal

At this 16th session of the Legal Status Subcommittee, Tanaka Mitsuo, who headed Japan's delegation on the committee, explained that the Japan side's final proposal draft (最終案) would be completed in a few days.

Yu Chin 0, the head of Korea's delegation on the committee, reported that the Korea side, broadly considering the Japan side's opinions and endeavoring to approach them as closely as possible, but without deviating from the home country government's basic line, had produced its final proposal draft. And the Korea side distributed its draft with the understanding that it had not yet been cleared with the home country government.

The Japan side asked the Korea side whether it had considered when an agreement of the kind it was proposing should come into effect. The Korea side replied that it could come into effect on the day the Peace Treaty came into effect.

The two sides then began discussing on-going issues related to status and treatment, making reference to the Korea-side draft. I have integrated some of the discussion into the comments following relevant parts of the draft, which is as follows.

Top  

15 December 1951 "Consent" vs "liaison and deliberation"

At this 17th meeting of the Legal Status Subcommittee, Japan-side chief delegate Tanaka Mitsuko led off with a report that the Japanese government was presently spending 660,000,000 yen annually on livelihood assistance (生活扶助 seikatsu fujo). Such assistance was being received by 24 in 1,000 Japanese (日本人 Nihonjin), and by 110 in 1,000 Koreans (韓国人 Kankokujin. Among an estimated 550,000 Koreans in Japan, the number of Koreans receiving [livelihood] protection ([生活] 保護 [seikatsu] hogo) had reached 15,000 households and 60,000 individuals.

Korea-side chief delegate Yu Chin O asked if the amount was just livelihood assistance, and Tanaka replied that it also included medical and other kinds of assistance. It was technically difficult to separate the different kinds of livelihood protection he said, then added that most people who receive livelihood assistance also receive other forms of assistance.

Tanaka then reported that about 30 Koreans had mining rights, but they are using Japanese names (姓名 seimei) and so it isn't clear.

Japan's nationality proposal

Tanaka then explained that "relevant [Japanese] ministries had coordinated their opinions, and while they hadn't yet been able to produce final conclusions, [the Japan side] had made a general draft". The Japan side distrubted the nationality part of the proposal at this meeting, and the full proposal at the 18 December 1951 (18th) meeting (see next).

Hiraga Kenta, the Japan-side representative most family with nationality and related status issues, made this observtion about nationality (KRN 81: 222; NKBK 81: 72).

Note that Japan's proposal concerns neither Japan's nor Korea's "Nationality Law" specifically, but "nationality law" generally. The loss of Japan's nationality by Chosenese and Taiwanese would in fact be in accordance with Japan's customary nationality law, not with its Nationality Law, which has no provisions for aquisition or loss of nationality concomitant with territory changes.

ROK had taken the position that Koreans in Japan (and for that matter everywhere) had already acquired its nationality, pursuant to its Nationality Law. Hence Japan's proposal stops short of linking the loss of Japan's nationality to the acquisition of ROK's nationality. This would not have been case had the two states agreed to a third criterion, such as one involving nationality choice, in the acquisition of one nationality would imply the loss of another.

Later in the session, Yu returned to the nationality problem like this (KRN 81: 224-225; NKBK 81: 73)

Nationality clause in Livelihood Protection Law

Yu Chin O returns to the problem of livelihood assistance for indigent Koreans in Japan. He insists that they such assistance must continue. The Korea side had recognized that the "right of political participation" (参政権 sanseiken) was a "right and duty intrinsic [inherent] to nationals" (国民固有の権利義務) [under Japan's Constitution], but that in its view, the term "national" (国民 kokumin) in Japan's Livelihood Protection Law (生活保護法 Seikatsu hōgo hō) could not be interepreted as a "right and duty intrinsic [inherent] to nationals" -- and hence the law must apply to aliens as well. Yu also asserted that seen from the purport of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in examples in other countries, Japan's Livelhood Protection Law had to apply [to Koreans in Japan even after they lost Japan's nationality].

In response to Yu's statement, Tanaka said this (KRN 81: 223-225, NKBK 81: 72-73).

If Japan wants to promote the return to Korea of all Koreans . . .

The Korea side agreed to hear an explanation about the taxation of people leaving the country from a representative of the Ministry of Finance. Koreans were already paying taxes on personal income, so of course they would pay such taxes when leaving Japan, even if between periods tax payment times. They wouldn't have to pay taxes on the disposal of person property, but proceeds from the sale of business-related property would be taxed as business income, and sales of land and homes would be treated as income from transfer of assets, and the difference in the actual sales price and the assessment value would be taxable.

In response to this, Yu Chin O stated made the following statement (KRN 81: 227-228, NKBK 91: 73-74).

The Finance Ministry official made further comments and left.

Deportation of people receiving livelihood assistance

The discussion then turned to the problem of deportation, especially of indigent Koreans. The Japan side was especially concerned about the request by the Korea side that Japan not deport anyone without ROK's "consent" (同意 dōi), as that could be seen as infringing on Japan's sovereignty. The minutes for the 17th meeting end like this (KRN 81: 230-232, NKBK 81: 74).

Top  

18 December 1951 Japan's 1st status agreement proposal

At this 18 December 1951 (18th) session of the Legal Status Subcommittee, Japan distributed it's 1st proposal of provisions it considered essential in a bilateral status agreement. Japan distributed the first part of this proposal, concerning nationality, at the 15 December (17th) meeting (see above).

The 18 December meeting was dedicated to discussions of differences in ROK's and Japan's views of issues related to their respective proposals. I have integrated parts of their discussions as comments under related sections of the proposal.

Based on discussions and agreements at the 18 December and 19 December meetings, the Japan side partly revised its 18 December proposal in a 2nd proposal, which it distributed at the 21 December 1951 (20th) meeting (see next). The following day, at the 22 December (21st) meeting, which would be the last of the year, the Japan side issued a 3rd proposal (see next).

Top  

21 December 1951 Japan's 2nd status agreement proposal

At this 21 December 1951 (20th) session of the Legal Status Subcommittee, the Japan side distributed its 2nd proposal, in which it integrated changes it and the Korea side had agreed to at the 18 December (18th) and 19 December (19th) meetings.

This 2nd proposal was immediately revised in a 3rd Japan-side proposal distributed the following day at the 22 December (21st) meeting, which would be the last of the year (see next).

                                    Monthly       Weekly
                 CGPI     CPI       salary        magazine

Start of 20th century

 Meiji 34  1901    0.469

End of World War I

Taisho  6  1917    0.951
        7  1918    1.246

Allied Occpuation of Japan, 1945-1952

Showa  20  1945    3.503
       21  1946   16.27
       22  1947   48.15    109.1
       23  1948  127.9     189.0
       24  1949  208.8     236.9
       25  1950  246.8     219.9     13,238 yen     30 yen
       26  1951  342.5     255.5
       27  1952  349.2     266.1

Start of 21st century and today

Heisei  1  2001  658.0    1802.1
       25  2013  711.1    1734.8    500,000 yen    350 yen

CGPI Corporate goods price index (Prewar base index)
     企業物価指数 (戦前基準指数)
     Source: Bank of Japan (日本銀行)

CPI  Consumer price index (excluding imputed rent of owned home)
     消費者物価指数 (持家の帰属家賃を除く)
     Source: Bank of Japan (日本銀行)

Top  

22 December 1951 Japan's 3rd status agreement proposal

The 18 December 1951 Japan-side draft was first revised in Japan's 2nd status agreement proposal on 21 December 1951 (see above), and the 2nd proposal was immediately revised as the following 3rd proposal, which would be the last draft of the year.

Both the 18 December and 21 December 1951 proposals had 5 sections. The 22 December 1951 proposal had 4 sections, reflecting the incorporation of a simplified version of the "Deportation" section in the earlier drafts into the "Residence rights" section. The simplifications reflected Japan's acceptance of many of ROK's demands regarding the application of deportation rules in Japan's Exit-enter-country [Immigration] Control Order to the categorical "Koreans in Japan" to whom the status agreement would apply.

In the following presentation of the 22 December 1951 draft of the legal status proposal, I am showing two versions of the draft -- the Japanese version of the Japan-side draft in the ROK archives, and Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation of the Korean translation of the Japan-side draft, also from the ROK archives.

In ROK's archives, the Korean version comes first, followed by the Japanese version. Here I am showing the Japanese version first.

See Status agreement drafts for descriptions of the copies of the 22 December 1951 proposal and related proposals in ROK archives.

Top  

23 December 1951 Japan's 4th status agreement proposal

23 December 1951 Japan-side status agreement draft

The 18 December 1951 Japan-side draft was first revised in Japan's 2nd status agreement proposal on 21 December 1951 (see above), and the 2nd proposal was immediately revised as the following 3rd proposal, which would be the last draft of the year.

Both the 18 December and 21 December 1951 proposals had 5 sections. The 22 December 1951 proposal had 4 sections, reflecting the incorporation of a simplified version of the "Deportation" section in the earlier drafts into the "Residence rights" section. The simplifications reflected Japan's acceptance of many of ROK's demands regarding the application of deportation rules in Japan's Exit-enter-country [Immigration] Control Order to the categorical "Koreans in Japan" to whom the status agreement would apply.

In the following presentation of the 22 December 1951 draft of the legal status proposal, I am showing two versions of the draft -- the Japanese version of the Japan-side draft in the ROK archives, and Yi Yangsu's Japanese translation of the Korean translation of the Japan-side draft, also from the ROK archives.

In ROK's archives, the Korean version comes first, followed by the Japanese version. Here I am showing the Japanese version first.

See Status agreement drafts for descriptions of the copies of the 22 December 1951 proposal and related proposals in ROK archives.

Top  

24 January 1952 ROK's 2nd status agreement proposal

After ROK submitted its 1st status agreement proposal on 12 December 1951, Japan took the lead in revising ROK's proposal in accordance with agreements the two states made in Legal Status Subcommittee negotiations. In this, its 2nd (24 January 1952) agreement proposal, ROK has kept the 4-section format of Japan's 3rd (22 December 1951) and most recent proposal, but reworded and changed a number of provisions.

Two days later, on 26 January 1952, Japan would again follow ROK, and as it did in December, with its 4th proposal, which is also quickly revised in accordance with the outcomes of negotiations in the continuing talks. By 1 February 1952, Japan had produced its 6th proposal, which would be the last until 18 March 1952, when the first fully fleshed out bilateral working draft was produced.

Here, as before, I have integrated comments with the presentation of the proposal, including comments based on the Korea-side minutes of related meetings.