임진․정유재란기의 조선 피로인 문제

The Problems of Korean Prisoners after the Imjin and Chongyu War with Japan

During and after the Imjin and Chongyu War with Japan toward the end of the fifteenth century, the koreans suffered enormous human and material losses. The greatest among them were human losses; a great number of soldiers and civilians were indiscriminately killed or taken prisoners. Most of the prisoners over 100,000 in number,were distributed in the Kyushyu area, a small portion of whom were repatriated during over sixty years through the efforts of korean diplomatic envoys dispatched five time. At the earlier stage, the repatriation was carried out most smoothly, because both korea and Japan were positive and so, also, were the prisoners themselves. It gradually became difficult, however, since the authorities of Tsushima, cooperative at first, turned out to be negative under the pretext of their domestic difficulties and of rumored maltreatment of the repatriated in korea. The fourth diplomatic envoywas very unsuccessful. It was because, during this period of time, Korea had to face the attack of Ching China and this attack made the Korean government to focus more on the return of the people who were taken prisoners by the Chinese than that of those in Japanese. The last diplomatic envoy dispatched in 1643 due to the Korean government s will of not letting their people as the foreign country s colony. But after staying several years in Japan, Koreans prisoners became used to the Japanese culture, where they no longer felt desperate to go back to their homeland. Also, the government s unspecific plans for these victims, its poor economic situation due to the attack of Ching China, contributed to the prisoners choosing to stay in Japan than to return to Korea.