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The Forgotten Plague: Opium and Narcotics in Korea under Japanese Rule, 1910–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

John M. Jennings
John M. Jennings
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii at Manoa
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Extract

One of the most neglected aspects of the history of Korea under Japanese colonial rule is the significant role of the drug trade during the colonial period. Korea emerged as a major producer of opium and narcotics in the 1920s, and in the 1930s became an important supplier to the opium monopoly created by the Japanese-sponsored Manchukuo regime. The latter development sparked an international controversy due to Manchukuo's unsavory reputation in connection with the illicit drug trade, and would later lead the International Military Tribunal for the Far East to identify Korea as the ‘principal source of opium and narcotics at the time of the Mukden Incident and for some time thereafter.’

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 795 - 815
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Unless otherwise specified, for the purposes of this study ‘opium’ is defined as the juice of the white poppy (papaverum somniferum), which in its original state is called raw opium and when rendered suitable for smoking by a process of boiling is called prepared opium. ‘Narcotics’ is defined primarily as the opium derivatives heroin and morphine and their various salts, and to a lesser degree cocaine, which is derived from the coca leaf. Throughout this study, the term ‘drugs’ will be used alternately with ‘opium and narcotics’.Google Scholar

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8 A lone exception was the United States, which followed a policy of complete prohibition of opium smoking in the Philippines.

9 Aoyagi, , Chōsen tōchi ron, 775;Google ScholarSenbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:479. The use of the term ‘semi-compulsory’ in connection with the Japanese police in Korea is certainly novel.Google Scholar

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17 Ibid.. Most of the narcotics smuggled into Korea were produced in the Osaka area.

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32 Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:482.Google Scholar

33 Despite an annual average demand of 43,000 kan (161,250 kilograms) of raw opium from 1915 to 1917, only 136 kan (510 kilograms) of opium were produced in Japan in 1918. Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:482–3.Google Scholar

34 Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:483.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 3:481. Although official sources do not provide any data on the amount of opium produced, it is known that the total area of poppy cultivation in 1918 was 350 chōbu (347 hectares).

36 Mantetsu, , Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 3;Google ScholarAoyagi, , Chōsen tōchi ron, 776;Google ScholarSenbaikyoku, ,Chōsen senbai shi, 3:481–2.Google Scholar

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38 The Government-General planned to produce 10,000 kan (37,500 kilograms) of opium annually in order to achieve narcotics self-sufficiency in Korea and to export morphine and heroin to Japan, China (including Manchuria and Mongolia), and Nan'yo. Mantetsu, Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 3–4.Google Scholar For more details on the narcotics self-sufficiency drive, see Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:482–3.Google Scholar

39 The Government-General's opium monopoly plan was subject to the approvalof the Japanese Government. Mantetsu, Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 4.Google Scholar

40 For the complete text of the Opium Law, see Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:485–8.Google Scholar

41 Aoyagi, , Chōsen tōchi ron, 776; Mantetsu, , Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 5–6;Google ScholarSōtokufu, Chōsen, Shisei sanjū-nen shi, 302.Google Scholar

42 Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:526, 531. The postwar slump in opium prices is best reflected in the following statistics: in 1919, the unit price of the opium crop was 20 yen per tan (993 square meters), but in 1920 it dropped to 6.40 yen per tan. The average unit price from 1921–1930 was approximately 8 yen per tan. See appendix, table 3.Google Scholar

43 Because the Opium Law was enacted after the 1919 planting season, the authorities granted a dispensation to poppy farmers for that year. Opium prices in 1919 continued to ride the wartime boom. Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:524, 531.Google Scholar

44 Mantetsu, , Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 11;Google ScholarSenbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:526. For annual statistics on opium production, see appendix, table 1.Google Scholar

45 Mantetsu, , Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 8, 11. The authorities encouraged the practice of poppy planting on barren and rocky soil, increasing the designated cultivation area in the plateau regions of Kankyō Nandō and Kankyō Hokudō provinces.Google ScholarSenbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:526.Google Scholar

46 Makoto, Matsumoto, ‘Chōsen ni okeru senbai jigyō no gaiyō’ [Outline of monopoly enterprises in Korea], in Chōsen sōran, 877;Google ScholarSenbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:515.Google Scholar

47 Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:515.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., 3:495, 515. The transfer of authority to the Police Bureau is probably due to the fact that the drop in production made the participation of the Monopoly Bureau in opium control unnecessary.

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50 For a table listing the division of authority over opium control, see Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen senbai shi, 3:516–18. The opium control system was not revised again until May 1942, when jurisdiction over opium affairs was transferred from the Monopoly Bureau to the Welfare Bureau. The Welfare Bureau was then abolished in November 1942, and jurisdiction was transferred to the Hygiene Department of the Police Bureau. In an ironic conclusion, jurisdiction was finally returned to the Monopoly Bureau in April 1943.Google ScholarSōtokufu, Chōsen, Chōsen jijō: 1944 [Korean affairs, 1944] (Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu, 1943), 171–2.Google Scholar

51 For criticism of opium control at the local level, see Mantetsu, Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 5–6, 11–12. The Mantetsu report also notes that local police were given instructions not to allow poppy cultivation around police stations, in order to avoid the misperception that they were encouraging opium production. As the report wryly notes, those instructions ‘conjure up an image of a policeman standing rigidly at attention in front of a police station, surrounded by poppy flowers in magnificent bloom.’Google Scholar

52 Details of the Taishō scandal and its impact on narcotics production are taken from Senbaikyoku, Chōsen senbai shi, 3:498–9. A similar scandal occurred in Taiwan at about the same time, when employees of the Hoshi Pharmaceutical Company were arrested for smuggling crude morphine to the Kwantung Leased Territory. Kwantung's port city of Dairen was a major source of illicit drugs smuggled into China.Google Scholar

53 The Monopoly Bureau's production of heroin and morphine amounted to a de facto government monopoly, although it was apparently never put into law. Sōtokufu, Chōsen, Shisei sanjū-nen shi, 217;Google ScholarMantetsu, , Chōsen ahen mayaku seido, 17–18. Nishigame mistakenly states that narcotics became a government monopoly in 1929. Nishigame, ‘Mayakurui no ranyō bōshi,‘ 757.Google Scholar

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56 For details on the implementation of the drug addict registration and treatment program, see above.Google Scholar

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59 Ibid. At the end of 1930, the stocks were estimated to total 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilograms). In 1927, Taiwan began to export crude morphine to Japan, where it was also used for morphine production. However, Japan alone was unable to absorb the entire amount of crude morphine in the Taiwan Monopoly Bureau stocks.

60 Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dai-jūichi Ahen Iinkai: Shōwa jūni-nen jū-gatsu jūroku-nichi (Doyōbi) gozen jū-ji sanjū-pun Naimushō dai-ichi kaigishitsu ni okeru kaisai su [The nth Opium Committee: held in conference room number one of the Interior Ministry on October 16, 1937 (Saturday) at 10:30 a.m.], Microfilm WT Series, Reel no. 81, 26, 33. For more on the suspension of narcotics production in Korea, see above.Google Scholar

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62 Ibid. Korean opium was used to adulterate high-grade Turkish and Persian opium in the mixing of smoking paste, but Kwantung smokers apparently found the mixture satisfying. Because the morphine content (the criterion for judging opium quality) of Korean opium was generally just over ten percent, it was not up to the level of vintage opium from India, Turkey, and Persia, but instead rated as a respectable vin ordinaire.

63 League of Nations, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs: Annual Reports By Governments For 1938: Japan, C 13. M11. 1940XI, Geneva, 1940, 7.Google Scholar

64 Merrill, , Japan and the Opium Menace, 109. Manchukuo official publications put the total number of drug addicts at approximately 900,000.Google ScholarFor example, see The Manchoukuo Year Book 1942 (Hsinking: The Manchoukuo Year Book Company, 1942), 966.Google Scholar

65 The request was made to the Opium Committee, a body composed of representatives from the Foreign, Interior, Colonial, and Health Ministries and the Governments- General of Taiwan and Korea, which coordinated opium policy in the Japanese Empire. After deliberating on a particular issue, the Opium Committee would then pass on its recommendations to the Cabinet for final approval.Google Scholar

66 League of Nations, Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs (hereafter, OAC), Minutes of the Twenty-Third Session: Held at Geneva from June yth to 24th, 1938, C. 249. M. 147. 1938. XI, Geneva 1938, 54. The growth of the raw opium export trade had a salutary effect on the unit value of opium in Korea, which would have made it an increasingly attractive crop for farmers. See appendix, table 3.Google Scholar

67 Sōtokufu, Chōsen, Senbaikyoku, , Chōsen Sōtokufu Senbaikyoku dai-nijūu-kai nenpō [The twentieth yearbook of the Korea Government-General Monopoly Bureau] (Seoul: Chōsen Sōtokufu Senbaikyoku, 1941), 115.Google Scholar

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69 OAC, Minutes of the Twenty-Third Session, 54.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., 63.

71 Commander-in-Chief United States Army Forces, Pacific, Summation of United States Military Government Activities in Korea, no. 6 (03 1946), 13.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., 11.

73 For examples of contemporary references to the activities of Korean drug traffickers in China, see Merrill, , Japan and the Opium Menace, 94; ‘Japanese Fostered Morphine and Heroin Trade in the Peiping-Tientsin District,’ The China Weekly Review, 13 April 1935, 207–8;Google ScholarDai, Bingham, ‘The Opium Condition in Manchuria: The Report of an Investigation Conducted in May and June, 1929,’ Opium: A World Problem, 3 (04 1930): 7, 18.Google Scholar

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76 Isao, Sanko, Ahen no hanashi [The story of opium], Mantetsu Panfuretto no. 6 (Dairen: Mantetsu Shomubu Chōsaka, 1924), 16–17.Google Scholar

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78 Ibid., 290–1.

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81 Powell, J. B., ‘Opium and Narcotics in Harbin and Mukden,’ The China Weekly Review, 30 11 1929, 489.Google Scholar