Korea under Japanese rule in the context of "South Korea"

The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From August 1910 to September 1945, it included the Japanese archipelago, the Kurils, Karafuto, Korea, and Taiwan. The South Seas Mandate and concessions such as the Kwantung Leased Territory were de jure not internal parts of the empire but dependent territories. In the closing stages of World War II, with Japan defeated alongside the rest of the Axis powers, the formalized surrender was issued on September 2, 1945, in compliance with the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies, and the empire's territory subsequently shrunk to cover only the Japanese archipelago resembling modern Japan.

Under the slogans of "Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Armed Forces" and "Promote Industry" which followed the Boshin War and the restoration of power to the emperor from the shogun, Japan underwent a period of large-scale industrialization and militarization, often regarded as the fastest modernization of any country to date. All of these aspects contributed to Japan's emergence as a great power following the First Sino-Japanese War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I. Economic and political turmoil in the 1920s, including the Great Depression, led to the rise of militarism, nationalism, statism and authoritarianism, during which Japan joined the Axis alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, conquering a large part of the Asia–Pacific; during this period, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) committed numerous atrocities and war crimes, including the Nanjing Massacre. There has been a debate over defining the political system of Japan as a dictatorship, which has been disputed due by the absence of a dictator, and over calling it fascist. The other suggested terms were para-fascism, militarism, corporatism, totalitarianism, and police state.

Mutsuhito (睦仁; 3 November 1852 – 29 July 1912), posthumously honored as Emperor Meiji (明治天皇, Meiji Tennō), was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, reigning from 1867 until his death in 1912. His reign is associated with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which ended the Tokugawa shogunate and began rapid changes that transformed Japan from an isolationist, feudal state to an industrialized world power. Emperor Meiji was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan, and presided over the Meiji era.

At the time of Mutsuhito's birth, Japan was a feudal and pre-industrial country dominated by the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and the daimyō subject to it, who ruled over Japan's 270 decentralized domains. The opening of Japan to the West from 1854 fueled domestic demands for modernization, and when Mutsuhito became emperor after the death of his father Emperor Kōmei in 1867, it triggered the Boshin War, in which samurai (mostly from the Chōshū and Satsuma Domains) defeated the shogunate and restored power in his name. Documents issued during his reign include the Charter Oath of 1868, Meiji Constitution of 1889, Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882, and Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890, in which he was advised by a group of oligarchs known as the genrō. Other major events which occurred during his reign include the establishment of the Cabinet in 1885, Privy Council in 1888, Imperial Diet in 1890, and military victories over China in the First Sino-Japanese War and over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. Taiwan and Korea were annexed in 1895 and 1910, respectively. Emperor Meiji died in 1912, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Yoshihito.

The surrender of the Empire of Japan in World War II was announced by Emperor Hirohito on 15 August and formally signed on 2 September 1945, ending the war. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945—the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan's leaders (the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the "Big Six") were privately making entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese. While maintaining a sufficient level of diplomatic engagement with the Japanese to give them the impression they might be willing to mediate, the Soviets were covertly preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea (in addition to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) in fulfillment of promises they had secretly made to the US and the UK at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.

On 6 August 1945, at 8:15 am local time, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, American president Harry S. Truman called again for Japan's surrender, warning them to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." Late on 8 August 1945, in accordance with the Yalta agreements, but in violation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and soon after midnight on 9 August 1945, the Soviet Union invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Hours later, the U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

The civilizing mission (Spanish: misión civilizadora; Portuguese: Missão civilizadora; French: Mission civilisatrice) is a political rationale for military intervention and for colonization purporting to facilitate the cultural assimilation of indigenous peoples, especially in the period from the 15th to the 20th centuries. As a principle of Western culture, the term was most prominently used in justifying French colonialism in the late-15th to mid-20th centuries. The civilizing mission was the cultural justification for the colonization of French Algeria, French West Africa, French Indochina, Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Timor, among other colonies. The civilizing mission also was a popular justification for the British and German colonialism. In the Russian Empire, it was also associated with the Russian conquest of Central Asia and the Russification of that region. The Western colonial powers claimed that, as Christian nations, they were duty bound to disseminate Western civilization to what they perceived as heathen, primitive cultures. It was also applied by the Empire of Japan, which colonized Korea.

Keijō (Japanese: 京城), or Gyeongseong (Korean: 경성), was an administrative district of Korea under Japanese rule that corresponds to the present Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations Command (UNC) led by the United States. The conflict was one of the first major proxy wars of the Cold War.

After the end of World War II in 1945, Korea, which had been a Japanese colony for 35 years, was divided by the Soviet Union and the United States into two occupation zones at the 38th parallel, with plans for a future independent state. Due to political disagreements the zones formed their own governments in 1948. North Korea was led by Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, and South Korea by Syngman Rhee in Seoul; both claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea. On 25 June 1950, the Korean People's Army (KPA), equipped and trained by the Soviets, launched an invasion of the south. In the absence of the Soviet Union's representative, the UN Security Council denounced the attack and recommended member states to repel the invasion. UN forces comprised 21 countries, with the United States providing around 90% of military personnel.

The Korean independence movement was a series of diplomatic and militant efforts to liberate Korea from Japanese rule. The movement began around the late 19th or early 20th century, and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. As independence activism on the peninsula was largely suppressed by Japan, many significant efforts were conducted abroad by the Korean diaspora, as well as by a number of sympathetic non-Koreans.

In the mid-19th century, Japan and China were forced out of their policies of isolationism by the West. Japan then proceeded to rapidly modernize, forcefully open Korea, and establish its own hegemony over the peninsula. Eventually, it formally annexed Korea in 1910. The 1919 March First Movement protests are widely seen as a significant catalyst for the international independence movement, although domestically the protests were violently suppressed. In the aftermath of the protests, thousands of Korean independence activists fled abroad, mostly to China. In April 1919, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (KPG) was founded as a self-proclaimed government in exile.

The colonial expansion of the Empire of Japan in the Western Pacific Ocean and East Asia began in 1895 with Japan's victory over the Chinese Qing dynasty in the First Sino-Japanese War. Subsequent victories over the Russian Empire (Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905) and the German Empire (World War I) expanded Japanese rule. Taiwan came under Japanese control from 1895, Korea in 1905, Micronesia in 1914, Southern Sakhalin in 1905, several concessions in China from 1903 onwards, and the South Manchuria Railway from 1905. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, resulting in the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo the following year; thereafter, Japan adopted a policy of founding and supporting puppet states in conquered regions. These conquered territories became the basis for what became known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from 1940. (The Co-Prosperity Sphere expanded to include much of China, Indo-China, Malaya, the Philippines, the East Indies, Burma and New Guinea by 1942.)

Including Mainland Japan, colonies, occupied territories, and puppet states, the Empire of Japan at its apex was one of the largest empires in history. The total amount of land under Japanese sovereignty reached 8,510,000 km (3,300,000 sq mi) in 1942. By 1943, it accounted for more than 20% of the world's population at the time, with 463 million people in its occupied regions and territories.

The Republic of Korea (commonly known as South Korea) first participated at the Olympic Games in 1948, and has sent athletes to compete in every Summer Olympic Games since then, except for 1980 which they boycotted. South Korea has also participated in every Winter Olympic Games since 1948, except for the 1952 games.

The first ethnic Korean athletes to win medals did so at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, when Sohn Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong won gold and bronze respectively in the men's marathon as members of the Japanese team. As Korea was under Japanese rule at that time, making them both Japanese subjects, the IOC credits both medals to Japan.