전후 한일 양국의 재조일본인 재산처리과정

The Disposal Process of Japanese Property in Colonial Korea by both Korea and Japan after the War－In the Case of Suketada Ikeda－

This study is to examine the liquidation process of Japanese property implemented by both the korean government and the Japanese government. The disposal process of the property owned by Suketada Ikeda, a Japanese entrepreneur who did enterprise activities based in Busan during the Japanese colonial period, conducted by both the korean government and the Japanese government after the war was analyzed. Most of Ikeda’s property in Korea and Japan belonged to both countries through a long liquidation process. Both countries disposed the remained property after liquidation in the name of a dividend according to the shares of existing stockholders. In the case of Korea, as the whole Japanese shares belonged to the state by the Vested Property Disposal Law, the shares distributed to the state, while in the case of Japan the most property to the state because the Oriental Development Company, a close business partner of Ikeda during the Japanese colonial period, was designated as a closed institution. It can be confirmed that in the course of liquidation process, the compensations for the Korean stockholders were not enough or entirely ignored both in Korea and Japan. After the war, Ikeda returned to Japan and attempted to make a comeback. However, the liquidation process of his property frustrated his comeback. From a perspective of Korean history, it provides the legitimacy that those were to be assessed as the end of ‘a Japanese entrepreneur in colonial Korea’, a very typical ‘spearhead of Japanese imperialism’. Nevertheless, from a perspective of East Asian history or the history of Korea-Japan relations, it seems to need a little bit different approach. It was because the disposal process of Japanese property by both countries after the war was the process of bearing both Korea and Japan’s burden of ‘a certain debt’ to the people of each country.