일제 말기 關東軍의 韓人 동원과 피해 실태

Mobilization and Damage of Koreans in the Kwantung Army in the Late Japanese Imperialism

In the late Japanese imperialism, many Koreans were mobilized in the Kwantung Army. These were the people who were involved in the war of aggression under the volunteer and conscription systems imposed to the Korean people by the imperialist Japan. In the closing days of the war, these Korean soldiers suffered severe damage, being forced to make unreasonable sacrifices in the front or being detained in concentration camps in Siberia by the Soviet army. So far, the academia has revealed the information concerning ‘Siberian detention’, but has not reviewed the mobilization of Koreans in the Northeast China, which was the fundamental cause of such damage. The Kwantung Army was the elite troops of the Japanese Imperial Army, prepared for the war against the Soviet Union while leading the invasion of China after the 1930s. The Kwantung Army that boasted as many as 700,000 troops in the so-called Kwantung Army Special Practice continuously lost the military strength after the Asia-Pacific War due to the worsening war situation in the Southeast Asia and the Pacific frontlines. In order to supplement the main body of the Kwantung Army that moved to southern front, Japan mobilized about 10,000 Koreans to the Kwantung Army during the year of 1944 only. It is estimated that at the time of Japanese defeat of the war, at least 15,000 to 20,000 Koreans had been mobilized in the Japanese Kwantung Army. After the Soviet Union entered the war on August 9,1945, Koreans in the Kwantung Army were directly ravaged by the war and not a few people were injured or killed. The Korean victims of death that can be confirmed in the Japanese army register are 65 people. Given that the life and death cases before and after the end of the war cannot be identified precisely, the Korean casualties are likely to considerably increase. However, Japan’s forced mobilization of Koreans caused much more damage than just injury or death in battle. It should not be overlooked that there were more than 3,000 Koreans who were detained as prisoners by the Soviet army in the process of detaining the Japanese soldiers, although they were innocent colonial people. The majority of Koreans interned in Siberia could not return to their home country until the end of 1948, when a new government was established in the liberated homeland.