Introduction During the end of Edo period, Japan was forced to sign on the unequal treaty, the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, by the United States forces that demanded the opening of five ports for the foreign trade while securing the U.S. diplomatic privilege of extraterritoriality (Tipton, 2002, p.26). This agreement curtailed the Japanese sovereignty for the first time in history, and alerted Japanese politicians to the dangers of further foreign encroachment. After the fierce debates among Japanese intellectuals, they realized ‘Gunboat diplomacy’ is the essence of the international political game. Thus, some of enlightened leaders such as Sakamoto Ryōma (1867) emphasized the necessity of modernize Japan as Western states by strengthening the military and economic power in his writing Eight-Point Program in order to survive in the arena of power politics. This idea was adopted as a center pillar of Meiji Restoration and enabled Japan to build up military power comparable to Western states within a short period of time.
However, Japan needed to show its advanced military strength to be recognized as a growing power and to join ranks of powers in international politics (Ebrey, 2009, p.371). Therefore, the Meiji government planned the way to be a ‘regional hegemon’ through military expansion in Asia. It first defeated Qing Dynasty in Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and representatives of both states signed at the Treaty of Simonoseki that included the Article to cede full sovereignty of Taiwan to Empire of Japan in perpetuity. In other words, Taiwan officially became the first oversea colony of Japan. Nearly a decade later, Japan attained a surprising victory over the Russian forces and successfully received acknowledgement of Russia concerning its takeover of Korean peninsula with the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905. As a result, Japan directly ruled Korean peninsula from 1905 without intervention of Russia and finally annexed Korea in 1910. The Japanese colonial policy toward these two most prominent colonies has been an important academic topic for a large number of scholars since it allows deeper analysis and understanding of Japanese society in various aspects by comparing that of Western states. However, most of them assume the Japanese colonial policy was homogenous and largely overlook differences between the colonial policies of two colonies. In fact, several different forms of colonial administrations existed according to the differing nature and characteristic of each colony. For a more precise analysis of Japanese colonial rule, this essay will thoroughly examine the differences of colonial policies between the two colonies, and figure out why it was different.
Strategic importance and Process Although Taiwan was the first oversea possession for the Empire of Japan, the annexation of Taiwan was not the result of deliberate decision of the Japanese government (Rhee & Lai, 2011, pp.2-5). The colonization of Taiwan was a mere symbol that shows the prestige and pride of Japan as a growing power comparable to Western states. Consequently, there was not a clear direction with regard to specific colonial policies for Taiwan which infers Japan was yet unprepared for ruling over the Taiwanese. Therefore, Gotō Shimpei (1857-1929), Chief Civil Administrator of the Government-General of Taiwan, insisted that the abrupt implementation of Japanese rules should be prevented unless Japan understands the unique social circumstances of Taiwan (Peattie, 1984, p.81). In that context, gradualism was adopted as colonial policy of Taiwan at the initial stage of colonial rule, avoiding introduction of radical changes into Taiwanese society. At the same time, considerable efforts had been made by the Government-General of Taiwan along with the Meiji Government to learn Taiwanese language and customs. The department for Taiwanese language studies was newly created in Kokugo Gakkō (The National Language School) in 1897 to acquire language that local Taiwanese people use as well as Mandarin Chinese (Taiwan Kyōikukai, 1939, pp. 164-165) For the analysis of customs of Taiwan, the official Rinji Taiwan Kyūkanshū Chōsaikai (The Provisional Taiwan Old Customs Investigation Association) was established in 1901 with the initiative of Gotō Shimpei and conducted comprehensive research on Taiwanese customs in regard to law, ethnicity and tradition (Ide Kiwata, 1939, p.417). However, the Korea peninsula was vastly different from Taiwan. Japan had prepared the colonization of Korea for centuries due to its strategic importance as a bridge that links the home islands of Japan with the Asian continent. From the Meiji Restoration period, the plan for exclusive domination of the Korea peninsula became more concrete and the complete annexation of Korea was believed to be a genuine starting point for the military expansion of the Empire of Japan. In other words, the Meiji leaders had a clear purpose of the colonization of Korea, which is to make the Korean peninsula as a military base for the expansion of its Empire in Asia and a buffer zone to protect the home islands from other Western powers (Peattie, 1984, pp.218-219). For these long-term strategic considerations, higher priority was given to Korea rather than Taiwan, and that is reason why the Korean Governor-General generally enjoyed a higher political status than the Taiwan Governor-General throughout the colonial period (Lai, 2001, p.24). More importantly, this kind of well-prepared colonization meant no necessity of adopting a gradual approach to investigate Korean language and customs. The Empire of Japan had already accumulated a vast amount of information and grasped the characteristics of Korean people before the formal colonial domination of Korean peninsula. Hence, Japan implemented Japanese colonial policies from the early stage of colonial rule. Upon the arrival at Korean peninsula, the Government-General in Korea immediately conducted the land reform and implemented aggressive assimilation policy for a rapid process of both physical and psychological annexation. Thus, unlike Taiwanese people, Korean people were not given a period of adaptation to Japanese colonial rule and suffered from radical changes in various aspects.
Levels of Coercion Taiwan was a multicultural society that composed of four main ethnic groups: the Hoklo, the Hakka, mainland Chinese and Taiwanese aborigines. Each ethnic group enjoyed its own distinct language and culture without a deep interaction among other groups. In addition, Taiwan experienced the continuous colonial rules from 17th century under Netherlands, Spain and Qing Dynasty (Borao, 2002, pp.329-333). Accordingly, the national identity of Taiwanese was not fully formulated and remained weak at the time when Taiwan was ceded to the Empire of Japan. Thus, the strong resistance against the Japanese colonial rule was not made in Taiwan, which threatens stability and order of colonial administration. Of course, it does not mean that there was not any resistance movement. There were some grassroots guerilla rebellions at the initial stage of Japanese colonial rule claiming the invalidation of Treaty of Shimoneseki. However, it was not escalated into a national movement, thus easily suppressed by Japanese imperial forces. The resistance movement in later period was also not a serious concern for the Japanese since it was non-violent and moderate request for the equality between Taiwanese and Japanese (Lai, 2001, p.120). In fact, the great number of Taiwanese showed their satisfaction toward Japanese colonial administration for establishing social infrastructure and providing a good quality of education. Therefore, the Empire of Japan was relatively less coercive to the Taiwanese people and implemented the inactive assimilation policy, showing some respects for Taiwanese cultures. Moreover, the colonial rule in Taiwan gradually transformed from militaristic to bureaucratic as the chance of large-scale resistance movement decreased. In contrast, the Korean nation was well-known for its homogeneous society based on common language, history and race (Shin, 2006). Traditionally, the Korean people had a strong sense of national identity according to the belief of purity of the Korean nation in blood and culture. Furthermore, the powerful national pride existed in minds of Korean people for protecting the sovereignty and independence from the continuous foreign encroachments. In the mid-17th century, the idea of sojunghwa(the small central civilization) even prevailed among the scholars of Chōsun Dynasty. In this theory, Chōsun was believed to be “the small central civilization” that inherited rich Confucianism cultures from China which is “the central civilization” and other tributary states including Japan were described as uncivilized area where barbarians live (Lee Jeong-mi, 2008, p.306). This sense of national identity and pride was the reason why armed resistance persisted in Korea from the first day of Japanese colonial rule. For the Korean people, there was no room for the compromise with Japan that brought the first national humiliation with the violation of sovereignty. Thus, the Korean people were united and fought against the Japanese imperial forces to achieve one common goal, the complete independence. Finally, this anti-colonial movement was escalated into a large-scale national independence movement in 1919, namely the March First Independence Movement. Over two millions of Korean people came out to street and proclaimed the independence of Korea and the liberty of the Korean people on the basis of self-determination theory.
Accordingly, the Japanese colonial government was much more coercive to the Korean people carrying out widespread use of torture and sometimes the bloody massacre of innocent civilians. The militaristic nature of the colonial rule in Korea did not change throughout the colonial period in a same context. Moreover, aggressive assimilation policy was introduced from the first phase of colonial administration in Korea. In accordance with Kōminka movement set by the colonial government, Korean people were “forced” to adopt Japanese-style name unlike Taiwanese people and take an oath as subjects of the Imperial nation to show their loyalty toward the Emperor (Lia, 2001, pp.100). In addition, the Government-General in Korea promoted the use of Japanese language instead of Korean language and imposed a heavy censorship on the publication to prevent spread of nationalists’ idea. At the same time, the colonial government in Korea deliberately distorted the history of Korea by establishing the Korean History Compilation Committee in order to eliminate Korean’s national consciousness and distinctiveness of Korean ethnicity.
Opportunity
Last but not least, the Koreans were ironically granted more opportunities than the Taiwanese under the Japanese colonial administration at least in physical terms. A quite large number of Korean people were given a chance to work at the Korean Government-General and some of them were even promoted to senior ranks, whereas very few Taiwanese people were provided with such chance (Kan Ming, 2001, p.162). There were two main purposes behind this seemingly contradictory colonial policy. One was to justify the Japanese presence in the Korean peninsula as a colonial power. From the late 19th century, the Korean peninsula, not Taiwan, became the interest of many Western powers such as Russia, France and United States due to its geographic importance. Thus, the Japanese colonial government especially wanted to demonstrate the Korean peninsula is well administered by the Japanese colonial rules and the Korean people are only better off with the Japanese domination (Duus, 1995, p.33). The seat in the colonial government offered to the Korean was the external evidence that Japan used to validate the Japanese possession of the Korean peninsula against other Western powers, showing the equality between the Japanese and the Korean. In practice, however, there was a great discrimination existed against the Korean people and the power of the Korean civil servants in the Japanese colonial government was highly limited. The other purpose of this outwardly favorable policy was, in fact, to provoke a sharp division within Korean society. The Government-General in Korea believed it could destroy the national unity of Korean people by inducing Korean intellectuals to work for the Imperial Japanese government. Thus, it fostered the pro-Japanese clique by gathering members from Korean officials and ordered them to “act as the eyes, hands and feet of Imperial Japan” to oppress their fellow Koreans as return for given political status and economic benefits (Choe, 2010). Those members were brainwashed with Japanese imperialistic ideas and forced to collaborate with the Japanese colonial government to eradicate the national spirit of the Korean. Furthermore, the pro-collaborators were used to convert leading figures of anti-colonialists such as Yi In-Jik (1862-1916) and Yi Guang-su (1892-1950) to pro-imperialists, hoping to prevent another national independence movement.

Conclusion In conclusion, contrary to common belief, the Japanese colonial policies implemented to Korea and Taiwan were not homogenous. The Japanese colonial government attempted to formulate the fittest colonial policies taking into account the special conditions of each colony. First, due to the strategic importance of the Korean peninsula as a bridgehead that allows Japanese further military expansion, much more extensive preparations were made for the colonization of the Korean peninsula than that of Taiwan. For this reason, radical approach was taken from the initial phase of colonial rule in Korea, whereas relatively moderate colonial administrations took place in Taiwan at the beginning. In addition, the stronger coercion was deliberately exerted to the Korean nation with the aggressive assimilation policy because of the existence of the strong spiritual bond of Korean people under the notion of unitary nation. Thus, the Japanese colonial reign over Korea remained its military nature throughout whole colonial period while the characteristics of colonial rule turned rather bureaucratic in Taiwan where comparatively weak national identity existed. Lastly, despite this strict control of Korean society with coercion, greater opportunities were paradoxically given to the Korean at the colonial government instead of the Taiwanese. It could be explained as the justification of the Japanese colonial domination in Korean peninsula, preventing direct or indirect intervention of other Western power that also had deep interests in Korea. Another reason behind this was to create internal division within Korean society by organizing the pro-Japanese clique that cooperates with the Japanese Imperial government to weaken or eliminate the Korean national identity which had been the greatest threat for the Japanese colonial government.

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[ 1 ]. Article 2&3: China cedes to Japan in perpetuity and full sovereignty of the Penghu group, Taiwan and the eastern portion of the bay of Liaodong Peninsula together with all fortification, arsenals and public property.
[ 2 ]. The Hoklo are from the southern Fujian region of South China. The Hakka are migrants from provincial areas of Guangdong in China. The Hoklo and the Hakka take 70% and 15% of the total population of Taiwan respectively.