• The Korean Journal of Archival Studies
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• no.39
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• pp.281-318
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• 2014

This article aims to inquire into the decision making system and the sources of the original documents made by means of it in Imperial Japan, the colonial Chosun, GHQ, and the occupied Japan in terms of the post-war treatments of compensation on the Japanese colonial rules. It deals with them from 1910 to 1952 in the perspective of history and archivistics. This article attempts to establish the foundation on which the perception of the documents made in the Imperial Japan, its colony, and the occupied territory would be widened by placing the colonial rules and the compensation on them into a continuous line. The records of Japan's forced occupation of Korea during 1910-1945, and the original records documenting the decision making process of post-war compensation under GHQ, 1945-1952, have been dispersed in Korea, Japan and the United States. This dispersed preservation was mainly due to the complicated decision-making process among Governor-General of Chosun, the Japanese Imperial government, and the GHQ. It was the top-down styled, dual decision making system, in which the critical policies, personnel, and budget had been decided in Imperial homeland, while their implementations were made in the colonies. As a result, the records documenting the whole process of domination have been preserved dispersedly in Japan and its colonies. In particular, the accounts of not yet paid Korean workers that was forced to mobilize in Japan's colonial periods, which is emerging as the diplomatic conflict between Korea and Japan, had been dealt in the decrees of the Japanese government and policy-making of GHQ. It has already been changed to the problem as 'economic cooperation' from the 'debt'. Also, the critical records for post-war compensation were preserved dispersedly in the United States and Japan under the top-down decision making process of GHQ-Japan. Therefore, the dispersed records of 1910-1952 about the colonial rules by the Imperial Japan and the post-war compensation on them must be re-investigated for the adequate documentation in the context of time and space.