Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Structural Changes in the Workforce of Colonial Korea -- Labor-Management Relations in the Onoda Sŭnghori Factory -- The War and Korean Workers: Disintegration of the Colonial System -- Workers in Liberated Korea: The Onoda Samch'ŏk Factory -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- Index -- Harvard East Asian Monographs.

This book is a study of labor relations and the first generation of skilled workers in colonial Korea, a subject crucial to the understanding of modernization in twentieth-century Korea. Born in rural Korea, these workers confronted both the colonial experience and the modern workplace as they interacted with Japanese managers and workers. Based on the archives of the Onoda Cement Factory and interviews with surviving workers, this work analyzes the complex relationship between colonialism and modernization.

The twelve chapters in this volume seek to overcome the nationalist paradigm of Japanese repression and exploitation versus Korean resistance that has dominated the study of Korea’s colonial period (1910–1945) by adopting a more inclusive, pluralistic approach that stresses the complex relations among colonialism, modernity, and nationalism. By addressing such diverse subjects as the colonial legal system, radio, telecommunications, the rural economy, and industrialization and the formation of industrial labor, one group of essays analyzes how various aspects of modernity emerged in the colonial context and how they were mobilized by the Japanese for colonial domination, with often unexpected results. A second group examines the development of various forms of identity from nation to gender to class, particularly how aspects of colonial modernity facilitated their formation through negotiation, contestation, and redefinition.

Linking economic and social historical research methods with special reference to the evolution of the industrial labor force, To Live to Work offers an account of the popular expansion of gender, labor, and political consciousnesses among working women in colonial Korea. While Korea's rapid industrial development throughout the twentieth century is one focus of this work, equal emphasis is given to interpreting the social and cultural consequences of modernization, such as the growth of cities and the rise of male and female labor forces. Special attention is given to the partitions in the labor market along the lines of gender, age, class, and nationality.

South Korea has been quietly growing into a major economic force, even challenging Japan in some industries. This growth may be seen as an example of "late industrialization" and this book discusses this point.

From the late nineteenth century, Japan sought to incorporate the Korean Peninsula into its expanding empire. Japan took control of Korea in 1910 and ruled it until the end of World War II. During this colonial period, Japan advertised as a national goal the assimilation of Koreans into the Japanese state. It never achieved that goal. Mark Caprio here examines why Japan's assimilation efforts failed. Utilizing government documents, personal travel accounts, diaries, newspapers, and works of fiction, he uncovers plenty of evidence for the potential for assimilation but very few practical initiatives to implement the policy. Japan's early history of colonial rule included tactics used with peoples such as the Ainu and Ryukyuan that tended more toward obliterating those cultures than to incorporating the people as equal Japanese citizens. Following the annexation of Taiwan in 1895, Japanese policymakers turned to European imperialist models, especially those of France and England, in developing strengthening its plan for assimilation policies. But, although Japanese used rhetoric that embraced assimilation, Japanese people themselves, from the top levels of government down, considered Koreans inferior and gave them few political rights. Segregation was built into everyday life. Japanese maintained separate communities in Korea, children were schooled in two separate and unequal systems, there was relatively limited intermarriage, and prejudice was ingrained. Under these circumstances, many Koreans resisted assimilation. By not actively promoting Korean-Japanese integration on the ground, Japan's rhetoric of assimilation remained just that.

Choi examines how global Christian networks facilitated the flow of ideas, people and material culture, shaping gendered modernity in Korea.