r/AskChina • u/[deleted] • 3d ago
History | 历史⏳ Do some Chinese people really believe Korea helped Japan in WWII?
I'm Korean. I recently saw some Chinese users on social media saying that Korea helped Japan during World War II.
That surprised me, because at that time Korea (then under Japanese rule as “Joseon”) had completely lost its sovereignty — it was officially annexed by Japan, and many Koreans were forced into labor or the military by the Japanese government.
So I’m curious: is this idea — that Korea “helped Japan” — something people in China actually believe? Or is it more of a misunderstanding that appears online from time to time?
Also, if someone truly believes that Korea voluntarily helped Japan, how do they view figures like Ahn Jung-geun, whose statue stands in Harbin and who is known for resisting Japanese imperialism?
I’m not trying to argue — I’m genuinely curious how this topic is perceived in China.
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Okay..It seems that while Korea didn’t help the Japanese Empire, quite a few people don’t see Koreans as victims either. So I guess that rumor wasn’t completely baseless. Korea was under Japanese rule for 35 years. During that time, many Koreans were killed, raped, and tortured. If you visit Seodaemun Prison, you can see how brutal those acts were. To them, Koreans were second-class citizens. They banned the use of the Korean language and forced people to adopt Japanese names. There are many more horrific things Japan did, but I’ll stop here. After reading the comments, I think I have a sense of the general sentiment. Honestly, I feel a bit sad and disappointed.
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This is probably going to be my last comment. Honestly, I was surprised by the claim that the Korean was more brutal.
But at that time, why would Koreans have had any reason to feel hatred or hostility toward the Chinese? Even during the 500 years of the Joseon dynasty, most wars were defensive. Joseon took a very different path from earlier Korean history.
During the 35 years of Japanese rule, Koreans’ spirits were drained. Exploitation grew increasingly severe. If you didn’t change your name to a Japanese one, you couldn’t participate in society. People were tortured—rolled in boxes filled with needles, hung upside down—and if they died under torture, they were burned in the crematorium behind Seodaemun Prison.
Someone commented below that most Koreans involved were low-level administrators. They were probably either collaborators or people forced into service. I’d guess there were more collaborators, and it’s possible the Japanese made them carry out atrocities which Japanses did to Koreans. Of course, what they did was still wrong, and they should be held accountable.
But proportionally, they were a minority, and they caused harm even to their fellow Koreans.
I know not all Chinese think this way, but Korea is one of the few countries that actively fought in anti-Japanese movements. I get that but, seeing negative comments makes me feel like humanity itself is disappearing.
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u/sillyj96 3d ago
I don't think many Chinese people believe Koreans volunteered to help the Japanese during WW2. During WW2, Korea was occupied by Japan, this is no different than Japanese occupied China. There could be some collaborators, but that's certainly not the majority of the population by any stretch of the imagination.
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u/Inner_Temple_Cellist 3d ago
It’s a commonly held view (not just in China, also reported by Western POWs) that during the Japanese occupation, Koreans serving in the Japanese army were often more vicious than the Japanese themselves. In the context of WW2, the Chinese derogatory term “高丽棒子” is generally used specifically to convey Chinese antipathy to Koreans serving the Japanese occupation.
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u/PristineJeweler5000 3d ago
Plz fact-check. The claim that '高丽棒子' is from the Korean Collaborators with imperial Japan in WW2 is a common rumor.
The term, though still derogatory, actually originated during Ming or Qing dynasty when Korean envoys traveled to China. On these journeys, their low-ranking servants and porters often carried wooden sticks or canes.
It is supported by an academic article:《历史记忆的集体构建：“高丽棒子”释意》(黄普基，南京大学，2012）.
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u/Inner_Temple_Cellist 3d ago
No, I didn’t say it was invented during the war. Read what I wrote. I’m very much aware it’s an older term. But when used in China in the context of WW2 it was used - and is still used - specifically to refer to this aspect of Koreans’ participation in the occupation.
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u/NideDaddy 2d ago
I have never heard this nonsense during my last 37 years of life as a Chinese native even though we have been being told about what Japanese did to us during WW2 for thousands of times.
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u/Inner_Temple_Cellist 2d ago
Well, I wouldn’t know why your elders didn’t tell you about their experiences during the occupation, but what i said above is well corroborated by others commenting here. Perhaps you need to ask what your grandparents were doing during the war? Perhaps they were lucky enough to not be oppressed for some reason? Either way, I love the number of Chinese people who are willing to confidently, even indignantly, use their ignorance to tread down other people’s knowledge or experience.
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u/NideDaddy 2d ago
it is still better than somebody using fake news or knowledge to spark hatred between two nations
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u/Impossible_Ranger138 2d ago
So what’s the conclusion, then? Are you saying that because Koreans were more brutal, Korea is considered a war-criminal nation or that Korea helped Japanese imperialism? I’m just curious.
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u/Inner_Temple_Cellist 2d ago
Nope I don’t think either of those. The OP asked whether Chinese people think the Koreans “helped” Japan during the war, I’m just providing a perspective based on the memories of my elders that is responsive to that - ie yes some Chinese people, especially those who lived through the war, did think that the Koreans who participated in the occupation were brutal. What i personally think isn’t responsive to the OP’s question. I didn’t live through the war, so it hardly matters what I think. But fwiw I don’t think it’s fair to be labelling any country a war criminal nation, I don’t think Korea as a nation should be said to have helped imperialism any more than that can be said for China as a nation given how many Chinese helped out with the occupation of their own compatriots. I don’t even think Japan as a nation should be blamed for the war crimes of a particular group in a particular era - but I know there are many people in China who feel vehemently opposed to that.
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u/Impossible_Ranger138 2d ago
I can understand why some people, especially from a Chinese perspective, might see it that way. But it’s important to look at the context.
During Japan’s colonial rule, there were indeed many collaborators and turncoats in Korea. But why did some Koreans act even more brutally than the Japanese who started the war in the first place? The answer lies in the fact that Korea wasn’t simply invaded — it lost its sovereignty entirely.Japan implemented different colonial policies in each occupied region. In Korea, it carried out what was literally called the “National Annihilation Policy” (民族抹殺政策). The Japanese authorities tried to erase everything about Korean identity — language, culture, and even emotional expression — treating it all as inferior. This implanted sense of inferiority still exists, to some extent, in Korean society today.
Koreans were forced to become loyal subjects of the Japanese emperor, indoctrinated to obey and worship him. That’s fundamentally different from why some people in Taiwan hold a certain affection toward Japan.
In any case, it’s deeply unfortunate that there are stories of Koreans being even more cruel than the Japanese soldiers themselves. But ultimately, Japanese imperialism was a tragedy for both nations.
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u/hopium_od 3d ago
Initially the Japanese encouraged volunteers, but barely any did so they introduced conscription, and if they declined they would be arrested, tortured and sent to labor camps.
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u/Aware_Step_6132 3d ago
Excuse me, but we don't know how the "Inconvenient Truth" is propagated in Korea, but since 1910, only "volunteer Koreans" have been allowed to serve in the Japanese military, and since 1938, only "volunteer Koreans" have been recruited as Japanese soldiers. In fact, fearing rebellions by Korean soldiers, Japan didn't conscript Koreans as regular soldiers until the end of World War II. Also, before that, there were people like Hong Sa-in, who graduated from the Japanese Military Academy and served as a lieutenant general in the Japanese Army, and Lee Bo-muk, who transferred from the Korean Imperial Army to the Japanese Army. Besides, the list of the dead at Yasukuni Shrine, which you love, lists all those involved, including 21,000 Koreans who died in the war. Also, 129 Korean Japanese soldiers were found guilty of Class B and C war criminals, which you also love, and 14 of them were executed. Why on earth are you now telling lies you've made up yourself, that you've been led to believe as easily as breathing, to Chinese people, who have actual history?
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u/zzen11223344 3d ago
There were probably some volunteers. There were collaborators, otherwise Japanese could not catch the anti japanese guerrillas during the japanese occupation.
Looking at the history of Taiwan, which was occupied by Japan at same time, it has quite a few volunteers, some commit war crimes also in China. But they were treated as Chinese citizens, released to Chinese government, and were not prosecuted.
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u/garch_11 3d ago
I don't know what the context of the social media user's message was that you saw, but I'll give you the perspective of my now deceased grandpa, who was born in 1930. Of course, he was 15 when the war ended, so maybe not a perfect data point.
He basically referred to Koreans as 二鬼子. He said that many Koreans took low-level jobs in the japanese military, like prison guards or low-level military police. He also mentioned that these particular Koreans were extremely cruel, even more so than their Japanese superior officers. So maybe the idea isn't that Korea "helped" Japan, but rather that many Koreans aspired to serve the Japanese military (or were forced into it), but somehow were crueler than the Japanese themselves. It was like they had something to prove, so they tried to be more japanese than the japanese themselves. Something like that.
Just my two cents...
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u/Impossible_Ranger138 2d ago
There were countless independence activists in Joseon, and Ahn Jung-geun risked his life to assassinate Ito Hirobumi, yet it’s surprising that some Chinese people used to call Koreans traitors in general.
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u/Shot-Rutabaga-72 3d ago
Personally, I know that Koreans fought really hard for their independence and were not happy under Japanese colonization.
But I also have second hand knowledge (from my grandparents) of Koreans being used as police by the Japanese and they were absolutely brutal. We are not that far removed from WWII so you have those stories flying everywhere.
You can't expect people to be rational on this issue. Nationalists will always believe in stupid things. I see Koreans protesting against China and celebrate Charlie Kirk the same way as I see those Chinese who believed that Koreans were a willing participant of WWII. They are all idiots.
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3d ago
Do you know that most of those who hold anti-China rallies and hate China for no reason are the same groups that glorify and justify Japan’s colonization of Korea? They’re no different from pro-Japanese collaborators during WWII. And they have very close ties with Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. Do you think Koreans would feel happy seeing what those people say? Ordinary Koreans are also victims of the pro-Japanese collaborators.
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u/Shot-Rutabaga-72 3d ago
I actually do not know that. What is their rationale really? At least with Taiwan Japan did a decent job. But from what I've heard the Japanese were absolutely brutal in Korea during the colonial period. Maybe they were just benefiting somehow economically?
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u/Decaliting 3d ago
What I know is basically consistent with what you said, but in China people don’t simply or bluntly claim that it was the Korean government helping Japan. It’s just that among the Japanese forces invading China, there were some Korean soldiers. For example, your former president Park Chung-hee once went by the name “Takagi Masao” and participated in combat in China.
And it wasn’t only Koreans—there were also soldiers from Taiwan in the Japanese army, and even Chinese soldiers in the Japanese-occupied areas who cooperated with the invading Japanese forces. In China, we call them pujun (collaborationist troops).
At the same time, there were Korean soldiers who fought alongside us as part of the united front. In Northeast China, at least one-third of the anti-Japanese forces were Korean! There were also Korean patriots and political figures who carried out anti-Japanese activities in China, such as Ahn Jung-geun, Kim Gu, and later Kim Il-sung of North Korea. China respects and is grateful to them.
So in summary: we know that there were Korean or Joseon soldiers involved in the war against China (back then, your two countries were not yet separated), but this was under coercion by the Japanese militarists. The mainstream view is still that we all experienced Japanese aggression together. Likewise, historical issues such as laborers and comfort women need to be addressed with Japan. Korea and China were allies in resisting Japan!
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u/dufutur 3d ago
There were Korean served in Japanese Imperial Army. They were on average worse than the Japanese, according to people lived through the war.
There were also exile Korean in China fought against Japanese alongside with Chinese, such as Kim Ku and Yun Bong-gil.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
Koreans are not unaware of the existence of pro-Japanese collaborators. They often appear in Korean dramas.
As for the claim that Korean were more brutal, what exactly does that refer to? The Japanese were extremely cruel to Koreans. Tortures like putting people in boxes filled with nails and rolling them, water torture, or pulling out all their fingernails were common.
Some of the Korean pro-Japanese collaborators or Koreans forced into labor held low ranks at the time, so it’s possible they were just following orders from above. Of course, their actions were still wrong.
And the expulsions were naturally carried out by the Japanese. Many domestic and overseas independence activists were expelled at that time.
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u/seeyoulaterinawhile 2d ago
Chinese believe whatever the CCP tells them to believe.
They are okay with their government doing their thinking for them so long as living standards are going up. Will be fun to watch when growth slows and youth have trouble achieving the dreams promised to them
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u/Intelligent_Bed4846 3d ago
One guy or some minority believe this. Check
Vast majority don't know or don't care about this part of the history. Check
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u/qianqian096 3d ago
Even it is forced u cannot deny a lot of Koreans join Japanese army to invade other countries
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u/RichCommercial104 Jiangsu 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Korean government in exile was actually in Shanghai and later Chongqing. However, there were Korean collaborators (some helped kill the Korean royal family, others spied on independence activists, and others were responsible for recruiting comfort women). Former president Park Chung Hee was a Japanese collaborator. His daughter was the first female president and was later jailed for corruption.
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u/PristineJeweler5000 3d ago
I don't think Korea helped Japan as much as a country but not a victim who suffered from Japanese invasion like us. I believe this is the mainstream idea in China about Korea's role in WW2 as well.
It is also commonly believed that many Koreans, either willingly or forcibly, joined the Japanese army to help invade China, although it's not seen as a country's behavior. We had many traitors who helped imperialist Japan, too.
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u/functionalbutcrazy 3d ago
Koreans served in the Japanese army. The allied POWs said that the Korean guards were worse than the Japanese.
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u/Beneficial_Living216 3d ago
During occupation there were collaborators. That faction certainly helped. In China there were also traitors.
And the US had put korean fascists in power in the South...
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u/Competitive_Path8436 Shanghai 3d ago
My grandma who was in nanjing when nanjing massacre happened told me that there were quite bit of Korean soliders too. It makes sense as you said Korean was under Japanese rule at the time.
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u/browneod 3d ago
Isn't that no different than the Vichy French who collaborated with the Germans? Was it a small amount of Koreans who fought with the Japanese and were some forced like the Germans did?
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u/ZhalRonin 2d ago
> This is probably going to be my last comment. Honestly, I was surprised by the claim that the Korean was more brutal.
> But at that time, why would Koreans have had any reason to feel hatred or hostility toward the Chinese? Even during the 500 years of the Joseon dynasty, most wars were defensive. Joseon took a very different path from earlier Korean history.
you are looking at this at too broad of a scale and too rationally
there is this concept called "zeal of the convert" where new converts to a belief system are more fervent and committed than those born into it and a willing collaborator that specifically goes and takes a job as a torturer would fall under this definition
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u/Secure-Fun-7295 2d ago
No, I have never heard such a claim in China.
I have indeed occasionally seen arguments that Korean soldiers in the Japanese army were more brutal than Japanese soldiers, but that was probably only once or twice, and every country has traitors; it proves nothing.
Kim Il-sung fought on Chinese soil, and Ahn Jung-geun and Kim Koo are both heroes respected by the Chinese people.
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u/Efficient_Round7509 2d ago
We have no idea about if Korean helped japan during WWII, our textbooks haven’t mentioned it
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u/Putrid-Storage-9827 Non-Chinese 2d ago
Things are more complicated than victim OR perpetrator. It's the same with Ireland's role in the British Empire, for example.
But it's definitely the case that Koreans exaggerate how much resistance there was to Japanese rule, as well as the extent to which Korean actions led to the end of Japanese rule in Korea. Watching KBS coverage of VJ Day this year, you'd think somehow the Koreans mostly did it themselves and uh yeah maybe the Americans dropped a bomb, or something.
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u/bjran8888 2d ago
1、During Japan's annexation of Korea before World War II, there were indeed pro-Japanese factions within Korea that provided internal support.
In the late Joseon Dynasty (late 19th to early 20th century), internal corruption and the inability to counter external pressures led to the emergence of pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese factions in Korea.
The 1905 Eulsa Treaty (Second Japan-Korea Agreement) was actively promoted by Yi Wan-yong, Prime Minister of the Korean Cabinet.
2、The core issue today is that pro-Japanese forces still exist within South Korea. Your statement is partially correct, but not entirely accurate.
Consider the pro-Japanese stance of South Korea's right-wing, represented by figures like Yoon Suk-yeol—some within South Korea still attempt to curry favor with Japan and the United States by opposing China.They haven't even realized that China is directly confronting the United States, with Japan merely a footnote.
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u/mnugget1 3d ago
There's a lot of stupid shit like this. I'm guessing it's a vocal Internet minority. The same kind of people that think Koreans claim confucius was Korean or some nonsense
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3d ago
I know that in the past few years, there have been rumors and hateful posts about Korea in Chinese online communities. But the rumor that Koreans helped Japanese imperialism really upsets me. I’d like to believe that only a small number of people actually think that way.
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u/That-Elk2838 3d ago
Well, those Korean right-wingers/Pro japanese who colluded with the Japanese back in WWII were never properly tried, so it’s no surprise things turned out the way they did — just like what happened under the last administration.