朝鮮独立運動と国際関係 -一九一八-一九二二年-

両大戦間期の国際関係史

抄録

Korea lost her independence because of the Japanese annexation of her in 1910 and the Japanese Military rule followed. But Korean dissatisfaction to Japanese rule went to the limit when the situational fluctuations of international politics like World War I, Russian Revolution and advocation of New Diplomacy by the United States President, Woodrow Wilson affected colonial Korea. So Korean independence demonstrators in many regions tried to regain her independence and March First Movement broke out in 1919 in Korea at the opening of the Paris Peace Conference. Especially, Korean expectations toward the United States became high because many Koreans thought that as the actual head of international society the United States would apply the Self-Determination Principle advocated by Wilson to Korea. But in spite of several frictions with Japan, the Wilson Administration was negative to the change of the status quo in Korea because they thought that the Korean problem had been solved by the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 and that they had little interest in Korea and they wanted no more friction with Japan. This meant that the severe “reality” was superior to the “ideal” advocated then in international politics.
As the exile government, the Korean Provisional Government was formed and united in Shanghai, China, in 1919. But it began to split into the hard-line faction and the diplomatic faction because of differences of methodology to the independence of Korea. Under the circumstances, the Washington Disarmament Conference was held for stabilization of the Navy problem and the Far Eastern and Pacific problems from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. And again, Korean independence demonstrators, like Syngman Rhee, the President of the Korean Provisional Government and later the First President of the present Republic of Korea, appealed to the Conference, but they were ignored again. But the most numerous fifty-two Koreans, like Kyu-sic Kim, the delegate for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, attended at the First Congress of the Toilers of the Far East held in Moscow by the Communist International from January 21, 1922 to February 2, 1922. Compared with the Washington Conference, the Congress showed sympathy for the situation in Korea, so that socialism strongly penetrated into the Korean independence movement. This gave subtle influences to the Korean situations after World War II.