Affiliation and status in Korea then Chōsen

1909 People's Register Law and enforcement regulations

By William Wetherall

First posted 20 October 2010
Last updated 13 May 2021

Population control Affiliation and status • 1909 People's Register Law • People's Register Law Enforcement Regulations • Census • Sources
Minsekihō as Chōsen law 1914, 1916, and 1921 revisions
Minsekihō studies Lee 2004 on course of Minsekihō establishment and revisions • Yoshikawa 2009 on significance of Minsekihō and revisions

Related articles
ROK's 1948 and 1998 nationality laws
ROK's Compatriots Abroad Act: "nationals abroad" and "alien nationality compatriots"
Race in ROK's constitutions: Racioethnic solidarity through compatriot love
Manchoukuo's 1940 People's Register Law and enforcement regulations
1872 Family Register Law: Japan's first "law of the land

Population control

In 1909, when Japan's Residency-General of Korea pushed Korea to adopt and enforce a comprehensive People's Register Law, Japan had fully 37 years of experience with the use of family registers to secure the control, of local governments and in turn the state, over the affairs that governments need to attend to as agents of their affiliated populations. What Japan sought to do in Korea was essentially the same as it had already done in Japan -- which by 1909 included Taiwan and Karafuto, where population registration had also been essential to the bureaucratic overseeing of government affairs.

The importance in family registers to Japan's nationalization of its sovereign dominion, and the capability of its national and local governments to oversee all matters that concern governments, cannot be overstressed. That the family registration system was at times vulnerable to abuse by some officials and others is true, but similar abuse of public records can be found in every country, including (if not particularly) countries like the United States, where in some ways there has been more bureaucratic overseeing of private affairs, and less privacy, than in Japan.

Aims of control

Populations are controlled in many ways for a variety of reasons. Local and national authorities are motivated to organize and oversee land distribution and usage, roads and waterways, water and fuel supplies, sewage and waste, irrigation, food production, animal breeding, markets and trade, taxes, and labor and military conscription.

The list of government concerns continues with education, all matter of health and welfare matters, elections, legislation, law enforcement, public safety and national defense, natural disaster relief, sometimes also religious and cultural affairs, and relations with other entities and governments.

The list could on and on, and would differ for every country, at every period in the country's political and social history.

Importance of control

As Japan entered the 20th century, it had unquestioned faith in its achievements. In the span of barely three decades, it had built a state that had proven capable of competing with the Euroamerican powers with which, until 1899, it had been leashed by extraterritorial treaties. Still leashed, it was victorious over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Unleashed, it defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. Both wars began in, and were essentially about, Korea and who would have the most say in its affairs.

All annual reports published by Japan's Residency-General of Korea during its tenure from 1907-1910 when Korea was a protectorate of Japan, and all early reports of the Government-General of Chosen that replaced it when Japan annexed Korea as Chosen in 1910, go into great detail about the failure of registration practices on the Korean peninsula, especially their susceptibility to abuse and corruption.

The governments of Chosŏ (Yi dynasty) and its successor, the Empire of Korea, attempted to improve registration practices. But attitudes of officials and others toward registration served the vested interests of fusty clans and powerful classes, rather than the proper functions of a state that aimed to develop and protect its nation of people.

Korean household registers

Korea had its own population registers and standards for keeping track of who was related to whom, and for knowing who resided where, and what land they owned, and what taxes they owed. However, practices were not uniform. Generally, registers were kept by heads of households and were mostly concerned with documenting male lineage. Wives were not necessarily included, and not everyone had a surname.

Korea's household registration system at the end of the 19th century may have been less developed, as a tool for social organization and control, than the parish registration system Japan replaced in 1871 with a comprehensive, nationwide system under local government control. By the time had become a protectorate of Japan, during and immediately after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Japan had mastered the use of population registers as a tool of social control in its nationalization of older and newer territories.

Japan as protector of Korea

As a result of agreements a 1904 defense agreement and a 1905 diplomacy agreement, the Empire of Korea became a protectorate of the Empire of Japan with respect to its national defense and foreign affairs. In 1907, the Korea and Japan also signed an agreement which gave the Residency-General of Korea, Japan's protectorate government on the peninsula, the authority to oversee some of Korea's domestic administrative affairs and reforms.

The scope of the 1907 agreement gave Japan the authority to approve laws, ordinances, and administrative measures, recommend Japanese for appointments to posts within the Korean government, and approve retainments of foreigners, among other powers that amounted to significant control of Korea's domestic affairs.

Under the direction of the Residency-General, the Empire of Korea promulgated and enforced a population registration law and issued enforcement regulations. The purpose of these measures was to improving the quality of demographic information for the purpose of collecting taxes and administering other laws and policies concerning individuals and families.

This law, initiated and shaped by the Residency-General of Korea, which was overseeing many of Korea's affairs, sought to increase the precision of demographic information for the purpose of collecting taxes and introducing other administrative reforms of the kind Japan had implemented during the early years of Meiji Period.

1909 People's Register Law

On 4 March 1909, a year and a half before before its annexation to Japan, the Empire of Korea adopted, under Japanese guidance, the People's Register Law (民籍法 민적법 Minjŏkpŏp J. Minsekihō). The law, which into effect from 1 April 1909, was administered under enforcement regulations issued on 22 March 1909 by Korea's Interior [Affairs] Department. Provincial police departments, sub-provincial precincts, and local police stations with precincts were responsible for registration matters.

The 1909 People's Register Law was essentially a list of personal and family status matters that were to be reported to local registrars for recording in local population registers, and provisions for who was responsible declaring declarations, where and how declarations were to be made, and punishments for failing to report and for making fraudulent reports. Enforcement regulations stipulated which authorities had jurisdiction and responsibility for registration matters, and procedures.

Police as registrars

Police in Korea were under Korea's Interior Department, just as police in Japan were under Japan's Interior Affairs Ministry. Their involvement in population registration was not inconsistent with the scope of police duties, which embraced a number of functions that are not related to "law enforcement" in the narrower sense of preventing and solving crimes.

All manner of journalistic woodblock prints depicting and narrating true incidents in Japan during the 1870s, for example, show police protecting protecting people not only from others who might harm them or their property, but also from self-harm, as in suicide prevention (see the News Nishikie website for several examples.

Karel van Wolferen, in his chapter on Japan's police in The Enigma of Japanese Power, called them the "nurses of the people" -- by which he meant they were "nannies, monitors and missionaries" -- and he characterized imperial Japan as a "friendly neighbourhood police state" -- (van Wolferen 1992, Chapter 7, pages 181-201, Chapter 7).

Effects of new law

Shortly after the new law came into effect, the police advisory board corrected a 1907 count of households and inhabitants with information current as of 15 June 1909 (see figures below).

Between July 1909 and April 1910, again before the annexation of Korea as Chosen, Korean police, assisted by Japanese gendarmes, established uniform registers throughout the country in accordance with the new law. The new registers included wives, and everyone had a surname. The registers still reflected patriarchal and primogenitural family standards but now, in principle, also recorded the existence and status of all individuals in a household.

Perceptions of family registers

In 1909, when Japan pressured Korea to adopt Japan's highly disciplined approach to building a foundation of government on population registration, Japan was already surpassed most of its rival Euroamerican status in their ability to compile social statistics in order to facilitate their governmental missions. In the United States, which was just then completing its sea-to-shining sea continental Union, and stretching its muscles into Pacific territories like Hawaii and the Philippines, record keeping varied considerably from state to state, and territory to territory, as each was a jurisdiction unto itself, and there were few national standards.

Japan was territorially much smaller and legally less complex than the United States, and arguably it was much more easily managed as a single nation. Only a few European states, such as Sweden and France, were capable of compiling the volumes of nationwide population and other social statistics that were, by second decade of the 20th century, taken for granted in Japan.

There is a tendency, among especially Americans and others not familiar with family register practices in Japan, but also among some Japanese, to associate Japan's registration practices with Draconian social control by the state. Such criticism rarely considers the advantages of family-based registers.

In the United States, say, records of birth, death, marriage, divorce, property transactions, and all manner of other matters are mandatory under state and territorial laws and county ordinances. With its legal jurisdictions and lack of interstate standards (though such standards have been evolving), dealing with matters of inheritance, in which family heirs are scattered across the nation, can be a true challenge for an attorney who has to handle a probate or estate.

But still, in the United States, one needs to register locally in order to vote in federal, state, district, or municipal elections. And one needs a Social Security Number to do this. Historically, Social Security registration was mandated by laws related to employment, taxation, and military service. Today, though, parents are supposed to obtain a SSN for their children when born. And SSNs are increasingly used as master ID keys on all manner of public and private records. The numbers are not usually shown on official documents, but they will be recorded for database and other purposes.

For many decades in the last half of the 20th century, Japanese critics viewed US-style Social Security Numbers as a tool for the state to invade privacy, including privacy in financial affairs. Japanese balked at the adoption of a similar system for Japan.

Today in Japan, local family registers are tied together in a nationwide database. A number of local polities at first refused to participate, but now all holdouts have permitted their registers to be included.

Many national programs, facilitated through municipal or regional offices, including national health and pension insurance schemes, require linking with registers as primary records of legal existence and status. The lack of a common ID number has greatly encumbered the ability of administrative organizations to rationalize their operations, both to save operating costs, but to eliminate problems such as the inability to collate records of individuals who have migrated to another register or change their jobs or name. The National Tax Agency, which also facilitates the collection of local taxes, would also like a common ID number to improve its efficient, and to reduce tax evasion and manipulation of bank accounts and other financial matters involving the use of aliases or forms of false identity.

In other words, there is in Japan today -- as there is in many other countries -- an increasing appreciation of the value of nationwide standards in basic civil records, and the need, in the computer age, for a personal ID number that facilitates not only a host of government services -- but also protection from identity theft.

In Japan, all manner of services -- including public school enrollment, voting, national health and pension, public assistance and other forms of welfare, national and local taxes, passports and driver licences, and a host of other matters that are essential to organized life -- are facilitated by municipal registration -- family and resident registration for Japanese, and alien registration for non-Japanese residents.

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Affiliation and status

Legal existence is a matter of being known in accordance with provisions of law. In Japan, one exists as an artifact of registration. Birth constitutes an event that does not exist until a birth certificate is filed and duly accepted by entry on a birth roll.

A newborn child acquires status as either a Japanese or alien. Children qualified for Japanese nationality will be entered in a Japanese family register. Those not qualified for Japanese nationality will be entered in an alien register.

Under Japanese law, such statuses have always been based on family law, which includes right-of-blood rules involving paternal or maternal lineage, as well as on right-of-relationship rules in which status is derived through marriage or adoption, but also place-of-birth or place-of-discovery rules rules that apply when finding an abandoned child of unknown parentage or nativity.

The same was essentially true for determinations of legal existence in the Empire of Korea at the time Japan annexed Korea as Chosen. There were no provisions for considerations of "race" or "ethnicity" in determining who qualified for entry in a population register. As legal statuses, being Korean and then Chosenese were civil, not racioethnic or ethnonational.

On 17 August 1899, a few months after Japan adopted its first Nationality Law, the Empire of Korea promulgated the "System of Great Korea" (大韓國制 대한국제 Tae Hanguk je). The fourth of the nine articles in this constitution of sorts outlined the duties of "Great Korea subjects" (大韓國臣民 대한국 신민 Tae Hanguk sinmin). But none of the articles defined the Korea's subjects or touched upon the topic of nationality.

Nor did Japan, when it annexed Korea on 22 August 1910, formally extend its nationality law to the peninsula. Since Korean nationality had been customarily defined, and because there were no stipulations about nationality in the annexation treaty, Japan assumed that the people who came with the territory of Korea would be subjects of Japan. In the renaming of Korea as Chosen, Koreans became Chosenese. And as Chosen was part of Japan, Chosenese naturally became Japanese subjects and nationals.

Registers as definitions of nationality

Neither Chosŏ under the Yi dynasty, nor the Empire of Korea, had a nationality law. In earlier treaties in Chinese, and in later treaties in Sino-Korean, Sinific expressions meaning "affiliation" (属) were translated into English as "nationality". Persons considered "affiliated" with Chosŏ or the Empire of Korea were "subjects" of these entities.

In customary practice, then, "nationality" was simply a matter of affiliation, and affiliation was a matter of being considered an inhabitant of the peninsula. Inhabitants were those with family ties to the native population. And as more and more, and finally most if not all inhabitants came to be formally enrolled in local population registers, enrollment in a register -- as someone with a "principle register" (本籍) in a peninsular jurisdiction -- came to be proof of being an affiliated inhabitant, hence subject, hence a national, hence a possessor of nationality.

Nationality in Japan

This was also true in Japan, which did not have a formal nationality law until 1899. China, under the Ching (Qing) dynasty, did not have formal nationality rules until 1909 -- and their main affiliation principles were based on Japan's 1899 law. China even adopted the term coined in Japan to mean "nationality" (國籍).

Not having a nationality law before 1899 did not prevent Japan from determining who was a subject. Subjects were people in Japan's affiliated household registers. And qualifications for entering and removal from such registers were governed by family law.

In fact, Japan had issued passports -- transit permits authorizing travel outside Japan, which served as identification documents when entering a foreign country -- as early as 1866, two years before the transition from the Tokugawa to Meiji governments. By 1878, the imperial government of Japan was issuing formal passport that complied with passport standards in a number of other countries.

In other words, a state does not need formal nationality laws to determine who it wishes to recognize as an affiliate of its demographic nation -- subject, national, or citizen. Japan's 1899 Nationality Law did not, in any event, declare who was considered to already be Japanese. Japanese were already Japanese. Similarly, Taiwanese and Karafutoans were already Japanese when Japan applied its nationality law to these two territories in respectively 1899 and 1924.

Japan's Nationality Law merely codified rules which, for decades and even centuries, had determined who qualified for entry in a family register affiliated with a locality in Japan's jurisdiction. What was new about the law was its provisions for naturalization, and other auxiliary rules for gaining, losing, and recovering status as Japanese other than at time of birth -- and rules which restricted naturalized persons from holding higher political and military posts.

The 1909 People's Register Law continued to operate, in conjunction with statue and customary family law, to determine who qualified for status in a Chosen "principle register" (honseki). And status in such a register continued to determine who was "Chosenese". Since Chosen was part of Japan's sovereign dominion, it stood to reason that Chosenese were subjects of Japan, and as subjects of they Japan they were obviously its nationals, and as its nationals they were obviously Japan. I say "obviously" because that is how such status matters would be customary regarded -- without the need for a specific law to spell out the "obvious" consequences of Korea having become Chosen.

Like registers in the prefectures of the Interior, and in Taiwan and Karafuto, registers in Chosen defined the population that constituted the subnational territory of Chosen within the greater Japanese nation. Anyone in a Chosen register was Japanese by nationality and Chosenese by subnationality.

"Minseki" in Japanese usage

The term "minseki" (民籍) was an older Chinese term for population (affiliate) registration. The term had also been used in Japan long before it was pressed into service in the 1909 Korean law.

"Minseki" (民籍) was used to refer to registers at the time the first national Family Register Law as promulgated in 1871. Moreover, the expression "jinmin koseki" (人民戸籍) appears in the 1871 law. My hunch -- which I am unable to substantiate at this time -- is that "minseki" is a reduction of "jinmin koseki" -- at least in cases when the "people" (jinmin 人民) were enrolled in registers by household (戸籍). A household, very generally spseaking, would be a family residing in a dwelling on a plot of land within the jurisdiction of the polity that controlled the register -- the village, town, or city with which the family was thereby affiliated.

During the 1930s, Japan published national census figures in terms of "minseki kokuseki betsu jinkō" (民籍国籍別人口) meaning "Population by minseki/kokuseki" -- in which the terms "minseki" (民籍) and "kokuseki" (国籍) were conflated. "Minseki" embraced Interiorites (内地人 Naichijin) and Exteriorites (外地人 Gaichijin), and Exteriorites were broken down by Chōsen (朝鮮), Taiwan (台湾), and Karafuto (樺太 (Karafuto). Then came "aliens" (外国人 gaikokujin), broken down by, for example, Republic of China (中華民国 Chūka Minkoku), followed by many other countries.

For an example of territorial population statistics by "minseki" in the Empire of Japan, see Minseki in the article on the 1872 Family Register Law under "Nationality".

Interiorization of Chosen register laws

From 29 August 1910, when Korea was incorporated into Japan as Chosen, the Residency-General of Korea became the Government-General of Chosen. Over the next three decades, GGC introduced Interior registration rules in order to make Chosen's family registers more those the prefectures.

Family law was at the heart of civil status in Japan, and family registers were the principle instruments by which the state and local polities enforced national and local laws and ordinances to carry out their governmental missions. Registers played the name role in the nationalization of Korea as Chosen in 1910 as they had in all territories Japan had previously incorporated into its sovereign empire -- from Ezo (Hokkaido) in 1869, Ryukyu (Okinawa) in 1872, Ogasawara in 1875, the Kuriles (and some extent natives of Karafuto) in 1875, Formosa (Taiwan) in 1895, and Karafuto in 1905.

First Korean nationality Law

The Republic of Korea, founded on 15 August 1948, was the next to last East Asian state to formally adopt a principle of ambilineality in its nationality law. Not until 1998 did ROK revise its 1948 Nationality Act to enable a child to acquire ROK's nationality at time of birth if either of its parents was a national. Until then, the Nationality Act had been, like many of ROK's laws, a bastion of patriarchy. The Republic of China did not adopt ambilineality until 2000.

ROK was not exceptional in its adoption of a patrilineal right-of-blood principle in 1948. The principle had been, and was then still, the most common nationality standard in the world. Only during the second half of the 20th century did most states, having ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), begin to adopt ambiliniality.

By the time ROK was founded in 1948, its provisional government had already reversed many of the changes the Government-General of Chosen had imposed on Korean family law, in particular provisions for use of the same family name in a register as opposed to different surnames, and Japan's more permissive rules about marriage and adoption. However, ROK adopted a Family Register Law that continued to essentially enforce the same concept of population registration as a tool for bureaucratic control.

After considerable pressure for more liberal rules concerning marriage and other family matters, ROK has more recently revised its laws to permit, for example, marriages between people with surnames of the same clan -- though Korean individuals and families are free to follow customary practices of avoiding same-clan surname marriages.

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Click images to enlarge 6 March 1909 issue of Official Gazette of Empire of Korea People's Register Law, promulgated 4 March, effective 1 April Images copped and compressed from dreamtale (Provenance of images unknown) 1909 People's Register Law As early as February 1909, the government of the Empire of Korea, and the Residency-General of Korea representing the government of Japan in Korea, were initiating the the imperial sanctioning and promulgation of the People's Register Law. The law was sanctioned and promulgated by the Emperor of Korea on 4 March 1909 and signed by Korea's Prime Minister of the Cabinet, Minister of Interior, and Minister of Justice. The new law was published in Korea's Official Gazette (官報 Kwanbo) on 6 March 1909 (Kwanbo, Number 4318, pages 17-18, see images to the right). A supplementary provision stipulated that the law would come into effect from 1 April 1909. Another supplementary provision stipulated the Interior [Home] Department would determine enforcement rules. The Interior Department issued People's Register Law Enforcement Regulations in a directive dated 22 March 1909. The Korean and Japanese texts of both the law and regulations are shown below, with my structural translations and commentary.

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First census under People's Register Law

Within three months after the new registration law came into force, a 1907 estimate of Korea's population was revised using information from a mid-June 1909 survey. The first census conducted under the new law was completed by May 1910.

15 June 1909 estimates

Shortly after the People's Register Law was enforced, the Police Advisory Board augmented 1907 household and head counts with records compiled as of 15 June 1909.

Source

The population figures introduced here are from the following source, scans of which are available on the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) (アジア歴史資料センター Ajia Rekishi Shiryō Sentaa) [Asia history materials center] at the National Archives of Japan (NAJ) (国立公文書館 Kokuritsu Kōbunsho Kan) [National public document repository].

元警務顧問部調査
韓国戸口表
四十三年六月十五日記録一部受

Former Police Advisory Department survey
Korea Household and Population tables
Partially subject to 15 June 1910 records

JACAR Reference code B03041515500
Reel No. 1-0464

The above publication is represented as having come by way of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Images include a cover with the titling as shown. Inside the cover is a brief undated preface. The main body of the report consists of 28 numbered pages of tables showing population breakdowns by police stations within police precincts within provincial police department jurisdictions. There is a blank back cover but no colophon.

Preface

According to the preface, the figures in the tables were based on households (戸口) surveyed in 1907 (Kwangmu 11) by the Former Police Advisory Department [Board], corrected with data compiled as of 15 June 1909 by police at stations in precincts in the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police Agency (警視庁) [headquarters department] and in the jurisdictions and 23 provincial (道) police departments. The 1909 survey was conducted by police pursuant to the People's Register Law enforced from 1 April 1909.

Statistics

The figures are broken down by number of households (戸数) [number of doors] and people (人口) [people's mouths] by three statuses -- Korean (韓人 Kanjin), Japanese (日本人 Nihonjin), and Other aliens (其他外国人 Sono hoka no gaikokujin).

The use of "Korean" and "Japanese" reflects the fact that at the time (1907 and 1909), Korea had not joined (been annexed to) Japan as Chosen, and Koreans had not yet become Japanese of Chosenese "minseki" (population register) status. Japanese are therefore "aliens" in Korea -- though of somewhat different status than "Other aliens" since the Empire of Korea had formally become a protectorship of the Empire of Japan in 1905.

Population of the Empire of Korea

15 June 1909 adjustments of 1907 census

Households and inhabitants by nationality
Koreans, and Japanese and other aliens

             Households      People    People /
                [doors]    [mouths]   Household

Koreans       2,330,358  10,222,829        4.39
[Kanjin]

Japanese         43,983     145,219        3.30
[Nihonjin]

Other aliens      2,310      10,312        4.46
[Sonota no
  gaikokujin]

Total         2,376,651  10,378,360        4.37

The figures for Households and People for
the three nationality statuses are as published in
Kankoku kokōhō (see above).
The People/Household ratios and Totals are my mine.

10 May 1910 census

It took the Empire of Korea a few months longer than expected to conduct the first census under the new registration law. The survey planned for completion by the end of 1909 could not be finished until May 1910. The tally of aliens in Korea, however, appears to have been completed on schedule.

There are full accounts of the two surveys in Japanese and Korean versions of the annual reports begun by the Residency-General of Korea and continued by the Government-General of Chosen. Here I have cited the full description of the 1909-1910 census as reported in the English version.

The Third Annual Report on Reforms and Progress in Korea (1909-10)
Compiled by Government-General of Chosen
Seoul, December 1910
xiii, 194 pages, plates and maps
Elibron Classics facsimile, 2005, softcover

See Korea, Chosen, and Tyosen reports for details on this series of reports.

The census of the "Native Population" as of 10 May 1910, and the count of aliens as of the end of 1909, are described as follows (pages 15-17, [bracketed clarifications] and underscoring mine).

                                        On May 10th, 1910

                 No. of            Native Population
Province      dwellings       Male     Female      Totals
_________________________________________________________

               [ Provincial data omitted here ]
_________________________________________________________

Grand totals  2,742,263  8,862,650  6,072,832  12,934,282  

                      (At the end December, 1909.)

                          Number of Population
Nationalities        Male      Female        Total
___________________________________________________

Japanese           79,947      66,200      146,147
Chinese             9,163         405        9,568
American              271         222          493
English                86          73          159

[ Other nationalities omitted here ]

[ Fewer than 100 -- French, German, Russian,
                    Greek, Canadian ]

[ Fewer than 10 --  Norwegian, Italian, Australian,
                    Portuguese, Belgian ]
___________________________________________________

Totals              89,619      66,955      156,574

1908                80,186      56,709      136,895

Because the above report was published after the annexation, it was issued as a compilation of Government-General of Chosen. However, the report concerns mostly matters before the annexation, and hence makes attempts to make clear terminological distinctions between pre- and post- annexation usage.

The Japanese population appears to be sexually fairly well balanced. However, a note in the Japanese edition of this report, published in March 1911, states in an overview of "Korea's population registration affairs [administration]" (韓国の民籍事務 Kankoku no minseki jimu), that "Japanese military personnel stationed in Korea are not included in the numbers of Japanese" (pages 22-23).

The Chinese population is predominantly male. The American, British, and German populations have nearly as many females as males. The French population is largely male, there are more Australian and Canadian women than men.

Nomenclature

The above statistics, concerning population surveys taken before 29 August 1910, when Korea was annexed to Japan as Chosen, reflect the following terms in Japanese reports (romanizations and translations mine).

韓人 Kanjin > Korean
日本人 Nihonjin > Japanese
其他外国人 Sonota no gaikokujin > Other aliens

Statistics published after the annexation reflect the fact that Korea had become Chosen and Koreans had become Chosenese. Since Chosenese were now Japanese, "Japanese" formally embraced all people in population registers affiliated with parts of Japan's sovereign dominion -- Interiorites (prefectural affiliates), Taiwanese (Taiwan affiliates), Karafutoans (Karafuto affiliates), and Chosenese (Chosen affiliates).

内地人 Naichijin > Interiorites
朝鮮人 Chōsenjin > Chosenese
外国人 Gaikokujin > Aliens

Interiorites were generally listed first in demographic and vital statistics related to Chosen.

There is considerable variation in usage in official English reports, some of which speak of "Koreans" and "Japanese" long after Japanese reports were consistently speaking only of "Chosenese" and "Interiorites". In other ways, too, the "Empire of Japan" is apt to be seen differently through English than in Japanese.

Today, many Japanese writers, while referring to affiliates of Chosen as "Chosenese" (朝鮮人 Chōsenjin), refer to affiliates of the Interior as "Japanese" (日本人 Nihonjin). Many Korean writers, especially in the Republic of Korea, prefer "Koreans" (韓国人 Kankokujin) to "Chosenese".

For more about how statistics were reported by the Residency-General of Korea (RGK) and the Government-General of Chosen (GGC) before and after the annexation, in Japanese, see the "Korea and Chosen publications" section of Chosen: The legal integration of Korea.

For more about how statistics were reported in English versions of RGK and GGC reports, and in other English publicity materials, see "Korea, Chosen, and Tyosen reports" in The Empire in English feature of this website.

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People's Register Law sources

The following two sources are useful guides to the Empire of Korea's 1909 People's Register Law and its early enforcement. The particulars shown below are based on my own examination of information and images of scans provided through the website of Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) (アジア歴史資料センター Ajia Rekishi Shiryō Sentaa) [Asia history materials center], which is part of the National Archives of Japan (NAJ) (国立公文書館 Kokuritsu Kōbunsho Kan) [National public document repository].

Imperial Korean laws

朝鮮総督府中枢院
韓国法典
昭和15年3月31日

Government-General of Chosen Central Council
Laws of [Empire of] Korea
Shōwa 15-3-31 [31 March 1940]

JACAR Reference code A06032019300

The above publication is represented as having been among materials from the Government-General of Chosen (朝鮮総督府). The Central Council (中枢院 Chūsūin) was established from 1 October 1910 by an imperial edict promulgated on 30 September (Edict No. 355 of 1910) as GGC's advisory body. As such it was comparable with the Privy Council (枢密院 Sūmitsuin), which advised the emperor and government of the Empire of Japan.

Formally, GGC's authority derived directly from the emperor through the prime minister of the cabinet. GGC decrees, sanctioned by the emperor, had the force of diet-enacted laws. From 1913, while continuing to function as Chosen's government, GGC was also loosely tethered to the overseeing of the Interior [Home] Affairs Ministry.

This source, Volume 10 (第十編) of several volumes, covers police (警察) and hygiene (衛生) in the following eight chapters.

1. Population registration law
2. Security
3. Migration
4. Roads, waterways
5. Slaughter of animals, export cattle quarantine [inspection]
6. Hygiene [health] associations, infectious disease prevention
7. Imperial shrines
8. Customs and mores

Chapter 1 (pages 1961-1975) is divided into two parts, one on the People's Register Law, the other on the People's Register Law Enforcement Regulations. The part on enforcement has a section on Population Registration Records as physical forms, and a section on Population Registration Entry Rules or procedures for completing forms.

The sections on records and rules include examples of register forms.

Note on linguistic characteristics

All of the above materials are in Korean consisting of hanja and hangul. The Korean texts are translated with katakana and kanji on the right and kaeriten on the left. Most of the hanja remain untranslated because the same graphs were used in Japanese. Hangul postpositions and conjugations also have regular and predictable Japanese translations.

The Korean texts and the corresponding Japanese glosses are extremely concise and clear, as was typical of legal writing. Even without the running kana and kanji glosses and the occasional kaeriten, anyone literate in Japanese, even though not knowing Korean, would have been able to make sense of the Korean.

The Japanese texts closely mirror both the words and phrases of the Korean texts, as one would expect of two languages that are structurally almost identical and drink from similar reservoirs of Sinific expression. The most conspicuous differences reflect the preference of Korean legal usage at the time for more Sinific expressions, while Japanese usage preferred briefer but no less precise expressions.

Japan had for centuries heavily Japanized its used of Chinese, and from the Meiji period had abandoned even its Japanized Chinese in favor of Japanese, and Japanese legal usage had continued to be simplified though not to the point of vernacularization. Korea, though, had continued to use Chinese in many of its treaties and laws until the final decade of the 19th century.

Korea police report materials

韓国警察報告資料 巻ノ二
国立公文書館
分類：警察庁、平成13年度

[Empire of] Korea police report materials / Volume 2
National Archives of Japan
National Police Agency, Fiscal 2001

JACAR Reference code A05020350400
External stack call number: つくば 書庫 6 / 6-31 / 22

The above materials, apparently gathered together by NPA in 2001, are represented as having been among materials from the Interior [Home] Affairs Ministry (内務省), which oversaw police in the Interior (prefectures) of the Empire of Japan before the end of World War II. Many police-related documents from the former Interior Ministry are in NPA's archives.

The table of contents lists eight separately paginated items, beginning with statistics on police in the Empire of Korea. Among these eight items, the following three are of interest here.

Explanation of People's Register Law
Population registration survey reference materials
About household registers in [the Empire of] Korea

Between the table of contents, and the beginning of the first item on police statistics, are three genealogical charts defining direct and collateral kinship relationships. The first chart concerns Korea. The second chart compares Korea with Roman civil law, temple (canon) law, and present-day Japanese law. The third chart shows Korean terms with French equivalents. Charts of this kind can be found in all countries, in law books concerning family law. On the wall by the door to his office, my father, for many years, had a large chart showing all the relationships an attorney needed to know when dealing with inheritance issues.

Explanation of People's Register Law

This item consists of a cover and two sections, each with six leaves of twelve numbered pages. The cover sheet attributes the (民籍法ノ説明 Minsekihō no setsumei) to the Police Bureau of the Interior [Home Affairs] Department (内部警察局 Naibu Keisatsu Kyoku) of the Empire of Korea. It also notes that the enforcement regulations are attached.

The item is entirely in Japanese of the style commonly found in official documents at the time, meaning that there are no periods, and a few commas only in a couple of in-line lists. I have vetted the transcriptions of the law and enforcement regulations, as shown on this page (see above), against the versions in this item.

The first section (12 pages) consists of the People's Register Law and point-by-point explanations. Each of the matters that are covered by the law in the items listed in Article 1 are discussed at length in terms of Korean family law.

The second section (12 pages) begins with the enforcement regulations, then shows the Population Registration Record (民籍簿 Minsekibo) form with procedural rules for making entries on the form, and the Oral Declaration (口頭申告書 Kōtō Shinkokusho) form which an official would complete based on details orally provided the declarant. The declaration provides for writing a date in the form 隆煕  年  月  日 -- i.e., the year, month, and day under the then-current reign name "Yunghŭi" (隆煕 J. Ryūki).

Adherence to Korean family law

The forms are printed documents, modeled after forms used for family registers in Japan, but adapted for Korea's family laws.

Of particular interest here is the provision of a space for each person's 姓名 (K. sŏmyŏng, J. seimei) meaning "surname" (姓) and "personal name" (名) -- rather than 氏名 (K. ssimyŏ, J. shimei), the term used in Japanese law for "family name" (氏 shi) and "personal name" (名 J. mei).

There is also a box for the 本 (K. pon, J. hon) or clan affiliation of each person's surname. This information was vital to the customary prohibition of marriage between people with same surname, but especially of the same clan of surname, and the preference for male heirs of the same surname clan.

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1909 People's Register Law in Chōsen Minsekihō and related orders and directives As published in loose-leaf handbook on Family Register Law, Temporary Residence Law, and related laws, proclamations, and orders See Hōrei Kankyūkai 1922 for full particulars and a table of contents. Images copped and cropped from National Diet Library Digital Collections 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション Click images to enlarge

Minsekihō as Chōsen law

Standardizing family law on the peninsula

Laws encode rules that are supposed to control the lives of those they apply to. The problem is that a law may encode standards not shared by everyone in the population the law is supposed to apply to, because of differences in regional, local, or even family customs, that may in turn reflect differences in religious or secular beliefs or practices.

All nationalization projects, such as those undertaken by Japan from the start of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, set out to integrate and govern multiple regional communities, through laws that choose a standard acceptable to the law makers -- who expect that those who may have different standards will simply adapt to the new legal standard. If the law requires that people that people have family names, then those that have gotten by without a family name will have to adopt one. If the law requires that spouses share the same family name, and that biological and adopted children bear the same family name, then they will get used to the idea.

Legal preferences for cremations will pressure families and communities that have been burying bodies, if not practicing double burial customs, to change their ways. People accustomed to wearing swords as symbols of their warrior status, or bearing stigmas of birth into a lower-class caste, may need time to get use to not being allowed to wear a sword, or the freedom that is supposed to (but may not come) with emancipation.

The wholesale nationalization of large, geographically and socially complex and diverse populations like Japan in the late 19th century inevitably had the effect of homogenizing those who, in the process, became Japanese. Today, in the 21st century, the homogenization is continuing through national public school education and national mass media and the Internet, which has the effect of homogenizing the world through shared experiences of music, entertainment, and fashion through borderless technology that offer people everywhere the same menus of products and services.

It should come as no surprise that change driven by nationalization has homogenized the customs of all countries in which, even among people who were racially and culturally similar, dialects and customs widely varied -- to say nothing of places, like California, where practically every major mountain ridge or river basin marked the boundary of a distinct tribe. Korea was more like Japan in that, while the population shared a similar complex political history, travellers and anthropologists noted local variations in kinship practices that lawmakers would reduce to standards they preferred, then enforce through nationwide family laws.

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Early Minsekihō revisions

The Empire of Korea's People's Register Law underwent at least 4 revisions, as Chōsen's household registration law, during the first 11 years after Japan annexed Korea as Chōsen in 1910. The revisions, as shown in the copy of the law published by Hōrei Kenkyūkai in Tokyo in 1922, are as follows.

For a full description of Hōrei Kenkyūkai 1922 in the "Registration laws from 1886 to 1945" article on this website.

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Minsekihō studies

The People's Registration Law of 1909, established by the Empire of Korea under the supervision of Japanese advisors who desired to introduce to the peninsula the degree of civil order that had come to characterize Japan, has not received an overwhelming amount of attention in Japanese academia. The two most important recent works, introduced here, are products of ROK-born scholars working in Japan.

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1st page of Lee Youngmee's article on Minsekihō As established in the Empire of Korea in 1909 then revised as a Chōsen law in 1914, 1916, and 1921 Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū, No. 6, 2004 Captured from Gakushu University Lee Youngmee on course of Minsekihō establishment and revisions 李英美 韓国近代戸籍関連法規の制定及び改正過程： 「民籍法」を中心に (論説) 東洋文化研究 (学習院大学) 6号、2004年3月 頁1-30 (日本語)、i (英語の要約) Lee Youngmee Kankoku kindai koseki kanren hōki oyobi kaisei katei: "Minsekihō" o chūshin ni [ Korea recent era family register related laws and regulations and revision course: Centering on "People's Register Law" (Editorial article) ] < The Process of Legislation and Family Registration Act in MINSEKI-HŌ > Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū Number 6, March 2004 Pages 1-30 (Japanese), i (English abstract) Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū is published by "The Research Institute for Oriental Studies" (Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo 東洋文化研究所) at Gakushu University (Gakushū Daigaku 学習院大学) in Tokyo. Received titles The received Japanese and English titles are at odds with each other, which is typical of how precise Japanese expression is degraded through translation into English whether by native or non-native speakers. "Chosen" versus "Korea" Why "minseki"? Lee writes that the reason the law used "minseki" (民籍) rather than "koseki" (戸籍) is not clear, but she sites an opinion (Lee 2004, page 5, my structural translation). 戸籍ではなく、民籍という語を用いたことについても理由は不明であるが、統監府時代から朝鮮総督府時代にかけて韓国慣習調査に関与した小田幹治郎 (25) は、「朝鮮でも従前は戸籍であつて、民籍といつたことはない。籍民といふ言葉はあつたが（中略）文字からいへば民籍は国民籍。即ち国籍のやうに聞こえるのであるが（中略）現在の所では、民籍は即ち戸籍である」と述べている。 Regarding [why the writers] used the word minseki, and not koseki, also is unclear, but Oda Kanjirō, (25) who contributed to the survey of Korea customs from the [Korea] Residency-General period to the Chōsen Government-General period, reported that "In Chōsen also formerly [they were] koseki, and [they] were not called minseki. The word minseki existed but (omitted), if saying [what it meant] from the script, minseki [meant] kokumin-seki (國民籍). In otherwords it would be heard like kokuseki but (omitted), at the present place (time), minseki is in other words koseki." (25) 小田幹治郎「朝鮮の家族制度」『小田幹治郎遺稿』中外印刷、一九三一年、三頁。 (25) Oda Kanjirō, "Chōsen no kazoku seido" [Family system of Chōsen], Oda Kanjirō ikō [Oda Kanjirō posthumous manuscript], Chūgai Insatsu, 1931, page 3. 小田 幹治郎（おだ みきじろう、1875年（明治8年）4月3日 - 1929年（昭和4年）3月1日）は、日本の裁判官。朝鮮総督府官僚。

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1st page of Yoshikawa Mika's article on Minsekihō As established in the Empire of Korea in 1909 then revised as a Chōsen law in 1914, 1916, and 1921 Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū, No. 11, 2011 Captured from Gakushu University Yoshikawa Mika on significance of Minsekihō and revisions Yoshikawa Mika (吉川美華), born and educated in the Republic of Korea, before coming to Japan for graduate school, has looked at the 1909 People's Register Law from the vantage point of how its creators consciously adopted what were perceived of as generaly "Korean" concepts of kinship and family. This took place (as I have described above) through the urging, and with the complicity and help, of Japanese advisors after the Russo-Japanese War, after the Empire of Korea had become a military and diplomaic dependency of the Empire of Japan, which then also became involved in Korea's postal system and other affairs. Yoshikawa then shows how from 1915, after annexing Korea as Chōsen in 1910, Japanese legalists revised the 1909 Minsekihō in ways that sought to strengthen its "Choseneseness" (my term) -- rather than (at this point) impose Japan's Interior family law standards on the peninsula. In 1914, effective from 1915, Japan had revised its Interior Civil Code and related Family Register Law to faciliate what had emerged during the Meiji period as a "corporate family" with a (usually male) head and the authority (and the responsibility) to decide all family matters. Japanese law endorsed patriarchy, patrilineality, and primogeniture, according to which 1st sons generally succeeded their fathers, and the first born son stood to inherit his father's status and authority as head of household. While generally conscious of blood-line, however, Japanese families were not concerned about marriages between people with the same family name -- unlike Korean families, which were commonly thought to avoid same-name marriages even if the families traced their surnames to different progenitors. Moreover, in Japan, marriages between fairly close cousins were legal -- something which Koreans are commonly thought to have regarded as incest and strictly avoided. Yoshikawa on "minseki" Yoshikawa writes that "minseki" came to be used in 2 ways (my transcription and structural translation (Yoshikawa 2009, page 157). 民籍法とは住民登録のシステムであり「民籍」という名称は明治期の日本において二通りに使用されていた。一つは人民の身分と属籍を総称した用語として、もう一つは警察行政において国籍と戸籍の総称としてである。朝鮮において「民籍」の名称が使用されたのは警察行政の延長線上である。 The Minseki Law is a system of resident registration, and the term "minseki" was used in two ways during the Meiji period. One was as a word that generally referred to the status (mibun 身分) and affiliation (belonging) (属籍) of the people (commoners) (jinmin 人民), and the other was as general reference of (for) national registers (nationality) (kokuseki 国籍) and family (household) registers in police administration. That in Chōsen the term "minseki" was used is (was) an extension of [Korea's and Japan's] police administration. My impression is that Yamakawa is imposing distinctions on the term "minseki" that do not derive from the term itself but characterize whatever (arbitrary) way a "people's register" system is designed and used by a government agency, whether police or non-police. The term was used as a generic term for Japanese household registers, which are all about statuses and both familial and national affiliations. RESUME The 1675 Control Law was a community-regulating law and therefore neither standardized the composition of a household nor concerned itself with private matters such as succession and inheritance. Reinforced by a few later rules, it did, however, strengthen the state’s grip on taxation and military recruitment. Not surprisingly, its enforcement was least successful in areas dominated by strong elite lineages that defended their local prerogatives against any state interference. At the same time, the government reinforced the authority of the local magistrate vis-??-vis localized elites ?? a move that led to heightened tension in the countryside. Munjung’s most impressive public manifestation was the annual joint grave ritual for its target ancestor that called together a large group of kinsmen. Literally meaning “within the door [of a house],” the origin of the term is not clear. From the middle of the mid- sixteenth century, munjung designated an exclusively agnatic group of kinsmen. It was not until the seventeenth century, in the wake of the devastating Hideyoshi invasions in the 1590s, that the state made a second attempt to assert its authority over the countryside by introducing the Five-Household Control Law in 1675. This scheme made a unit of five households18 the basic socioeconomic entity for all official functions such as population registration, taxation, corv??e, and military tax within administrative villages of various sizes. Henceforth taxes were levied collectively on administrative villages with the village heads responsible for their collection. The 1675 Control Law was a community-regulating law and therefore neither standardized the composition of a household nor concerned itself with private matters such as succession and inheritance. Reinforced by a few later rules, it did, however, strengthen the state’s grip on taxation and military recruitment. Not surprisingly, its enforcement was least successful in areas dominated by strong elite lineages that defended their local prerogatives against any state interference. At the same time, the government reinforced the authority of the local magistrate vis-??-vis localized elites ?? a move that led to heightened tension in the countryside. 18 The nature of a “household” (ho) is still being debated. Was it a residential compound or was it the residence of one family, of part of a family, or of several families? The extant household registers (hoj??k) make the latter interpretation more likely. the eldest son, the ritual heir (chongson) primogeniture heir (chongson) ritual heir “established heir” (iphu) 収養子 “adopted son” (suyangja) such as an abandoned child 姦生子 https://ameblo.jp/xiaoke/entry-10968685227.html 吉川美華 朝鮮における民籍法制定と改正： 慣習をめぐるポリティクス (研究ノート) 東洋文化研究 (学習院大学) 11号、2009年3月 頁157-178 (日本語)、ix-x (英語の要約) Yoshikawa Mika Chōsen ni okeru Minsekihō seitei to kaisei: Shūkan o meguru poritikkusu (Kenkyū nooto) [ Establishment and revision of People's register Law in Chōsen   Politics centering on customs (Research note) ] < The Politics of Social Customs:   Enactment and Revision of the Family Registration Law in Korea during the Colonial Period > Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū Number 11, March 2009 Pages 157-178 (Japanese), ix-x (English abstract) Tōyō Bunka Kenkyū is published by "The Research Institute for Oriental Studies" (Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo 東洋文化研究所) at Gakushu University (Gakushū Daigaku 学習院大学) in Tokyo. Received titles The received Japanese and English titles are at odds with each other, and with history. "Chosen" versus "Korea" The name of the state (country) in which the People's register Law (民籍法) was established was the Empire of Korea (Dai Kan Teikoku 大韓帝国) or "Korea" (Kankoku 韓国). In 1910, Japan and Korea agreed to a union (heigō 併合) that resulted in Korea being annexed by (incorporated into) Japan as Chōsen, which immediately became an integral part of Japan's sovereign dominion. Most Korean laws, which with the territory, continued to be applied in Chōsen -- as Chōsen laws -- subject to revision by the Government General of Chosen as empowered by the government of Imperial Japan. While the Minsekihō law (People's register Law) served the social control and family law purposes of Japan's Kosekihō (Family Register Law), it was called a "minseki" (people's register) law, using the term commonly used earlier in Japan as a general reference to Japan's population registers as registries of "people" (min 民). The Minsekihō or "People's Register Law" first related to registries of people affilaited with Korea, then to registries of people affiliated with Chōsen. Note, however, that "koseki" and "minseki" represent different metaphors, which need to differentiated in English for a host of reasons -- one being that, when Japan got around to conducting national censuses in the empire, it differentiated Interior "koseki" registers from the "minseki" registers of non-Interior legal terrritories within its sovereign dominion. While koseki are kinds of minseki, minseki are not limited to koseki. "colonial period" While Japan referred to Chōsen, Taiwan, and Karafuto as "colonies" in its earlier references to these territories, it later characterized them as "exterior territories" as opposed to the prefectural "Interior". Karafuto was eventually integrated into the Interior as a prefecture, and both Chōsen and Taiwan laws were subjected to Interiorization for the purpose of simplifying and integrating the administration of all legal territories including the Interior. The most neutral term for the roughly 35 years that Chōsen was under Japan's legal control and jurisdiction as a part of Japan's sovereign dominion (1910-1945) is "Annexation period" (Heigō jidai 併合時代) as proposed by Tei Taikin. By the end of this period, Chōsen was no longer conceived as a "colony". Chosenese and Taiwanese, as Japanese subjects and nationals, were increasingly treated on a par with Interiorites. Males 25 years and older had full rights of suffrage if they resided in election districts within the Interior, and plans were underway to establish territorial representation in the Imperial Diet in Tokyo.

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