Cheap and Efficient? Chinese Migrant Workers and Japanese Policies in Colonial Korea, 1920s–1930s

This study examines how Japanese colonial policies and the foreign exchange market conditioned unskilled Chinese construction workers to dominate the Korean construction labor market during the 1920s and the 1930s. The dominance of Chinese laborers in construction was the main cause of conflicts between the two ethnic groups in colonial Korea that often erupted as a series of anti-Chinese riots, culminating in the 1931 Pyongyang massacre of Chinese immigrants. Past studies simply attributed the Chinese dominance to high efficiency and low labor costs and as purely a result of the labor market. However, this article concludes that efficiency of the Chinese laborers in Korea was facilitated by Japan’s ethnic division of the labor markets within the Japanese empire. The imperial Japanese authority allowed Koreans, as colonial subjects, to travel and find jobs at the construction sites of mainland Japan, while Chinese laborers could only move to colonial Korea. Strict restrictions were placed on the Chinese who wanted to work in mainland Japan. As a result, massive numbers of Korean laborers, who were considered desirable workers, migrated to Japan hoping to earn higher wages and leaving a less efficient labor pool to compete with the Chinese in Korea. The dominance of Chinese laborers at Korean construction sites was a byproduct of Japanese colonial policy and international economic circumstances

China · Chinese economy · Colonialism · Development economics · Division of labour · Dominance (genetics · Economics · Economy · Empire · Ethnic group · Geography · Immigration · Mainland · Mainland China · Market economy · Political science · Japanese History and Culture · Law

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