"Another official report, entitled 'Outline of Economic Policies for the Southern Areas', made it clear that Japanese financial institutions would 'assume the financial hegemony hitherto held by the enemy institutions'. The development of manufacturing industries in Japanese-occupied territory was to be 'discouraged'. Other Asians must learn Japanese. They must adopt the Japanese calendar. They must kowtow to the Japanese. In short, Co-Prosperity simply meant a new imperialism, with the Japanese taking the place of the Europeans as the masters. All that remained to be seen was whether they would be more cruel or less - though the example of Japanese rule in Korea, where nationalist stirrings had been crushed with unrestrained violence in the 1920s and where linguistic and cultural Japanization was intensified in the 1930s, was not encouraging. The Korean language was banned from schools. Koreans were to attend Shinto services and, after 1939, to adopt Japanese names. Nor was this process of cultural subjugation mitigated by economic progress. Living standards were miserably low in Korea. Per capita income was roughly a quarter of what it was in Japan, while the mortality rate from contagious diseases was more than twice as high."

"The present Japanese régime in Korea is doing everything in its power to suppress Korean nationality. The Government not only forbade the study of Korean language and history in schools, but went so far as to make a systematic collection of all works of Korean history and literature in public archives and private homes and burned them."

"They made a new government, which was a lot more Western. They made a new constitution, that was, pretty Western. And a military, that was... pretty Western. And you know what else is Western? That's right: It's conquering stuff. So what can we conquer? Korea! They conquer Korea, taking it from its previous owner, China, and then go a little bit further."