This paper is on travel management policies of the Empire of Japan in the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century. This is connected to the author’s long-standing interest how the Japanese imperial Space which emerged in modern East Asian regional world was recognized and reconstructed from the perspective of transnational migrants. In this paper, the author aims to put special emphasis on the deviation of travel management between the Government-General of Korea in the Korean Peninsula and the “Government in Tokyo” in the interior of Japan, the relation between Chinese laborers and Japanese imperial space, and the relation between Korean Laborers, which was a different immigrant group, and it.
It can be said that the entry of Chinese laborers into the Korean Peninsula had a different structural conversion from the previous period in the Japanese colonial period in that laborer groups appeared in droves as a main member of overseas Chinese. Most of their homeland were North China (華北) such as Shandong (山東). They moved to the Liaodong Peninsula (遼東半島) and Northeast China (東北) where the labor market had expanded in the process of the entry of world powers such a Russia and Japan. The entry of a large number of laborers into the Korean Peninsula in the Japanese colonial period was understood as an aspect of labor migration within the scope of the labor market created by Japanese capitalism increasing their influence on their regions.
The management of these Chinese laborers by the Empire of Japan was as follows: First, the management discipline of Japan was provided by Imperial Ordinance No. 352 of 1899, which prohibited labor migration in principle. As a matter of course, this discipline was not applied as it was in a situation where the demand for labor market and capital existed. However, the management policy of the Government-General of Korea was obviously different from that in the interior of Japan, and it was relatively loose. The regional differences between the Korean Peninsula and the interior of Japan in Japanese Imperial space were reflected in this, and the mutual interest between the Government-General of Korea and the Japanese government was intervened. Based on this, the entry of Chinese laborers into the Korean Peninsula was made relatively freely, but the flow did not continue to the interior of Japan. Therefore, the Chinese laborers were in the same category as Korean laborers and had a strong tendency to be controlled as the existence mutually synchronized in the Japanese empire space. In this regard, it is clearly necessary to explain the reason why the conflict between Chinese and Korean laborers was intensified by nationalistic conflict between the two sides. However, it is necessary to pay more attention to the fact that the connection with the Japanese capitalism had a substantial impact. The spatial structure of the Empire of Japan was established in order to mutually synchronize with the problem of Chinese and Korean laborers. It is thought that spatial vision including linear vision with a focus on the border of each nation state is more required in monitoring changes in modern East Asian region from this perspective.