일제하 역둔토 불하에 관한 연구

일제강점기 역둔토 등 국유지의 불하와 토지소유권 변화를 연구했다.

Yukdoonto(역둔토) refers to the national lands of Korea which the Korean government was deprived of in the protectorate period by the Japanese Residency-General. Most of these lands belonged to the Japanese Government-General through the Korean Cadastral Survey. Japanese imperialism enacted a plan to dispose of the national lands because a modern state is not generally willing to manage her own lands. But during the Cadastral Survey, the Japanese Government-General could not but to manage the national lands as private landowners. According to the existing argument, the tenant farmers who cultivated the national lands were suffering from a worse condition than in the past.

But I believe that the condition of the national tenant farmers were improved, due to two major causes. First, paying the rent in cash lessened the financial burden because the price of rice increased in the 1910s. Second, the rights of the national tenant farmers were guaranteed for five years by contracts, while they were previously guaranteed only by custom. In 1912, the Japanese Government-General enacted 'The Act on the Disposal of the National Lands'. We may interpret this enactment as the announcement that the main policy on agriculture of Japanese colonialism was intended to be directed towards 'making owner farmers'.

But the disposal was not started until 1920 and it proved that the announcement was nothing but an empty promise. The realization of the disposal in 1920s was caused by the demand of more fiscal revenue and the political intention of appeasing anti-Japanese nationalism. We must remember that the disposal of the national lands by Japanese colonialism was more unfavorable to tenant farmers than the Land Reform by the Korean government after 1950. It reveals the colonial characteristic of the disposal of the national lands in the 1920s.