In this regard, colonial public works reified Japanese views of the Korean natural environment as a malleable space to be claimed, ordered, and exploited for the benefit of the Japanese metropole and resident settler population. Instead, for Japanese colonizers, public works projects were mechanisms for reshaping Korean landscapes in the name of cultivating Japanese claims to ownership of Korean territory and displacing Korean inhabitants. Yet, for Japanese settlers, public works projects in Korea were not simply about extracting resources, boosting productivity, expediting mobility, or advancing assimilationist policies. Japanese colonial officials publicly justified and touted public works projects in the language of development, measuring the success of Japanese colonial rule in kilometers of rails laid, roads improved, and telegraph wires strung, while boasting indices of increased agricultural output, economic activity, and foreign trade in so-called Annual Reports on Reforms and Progress in Chosen (Korea) published around the English-speaking world starting in 1907 and continuing until WWII. KeyWords: settler colonialism, urban space, public works, street improvement Reconsidering Japanese urban development in colonial Seoul through settler colonialism suggests that Japanese public works projects were intended not only to exploit Korean resources, justify Japanese colonial rule, or promote assimilation, but to perpetuate Japanese control of Korean space. Together, street improvements and legal codes were designed to displace Korean residents by physically dismantling their homes to make way for widened roads, tearing down those structures that did not conform to new building standards, and removing residents who did not abide by settler ways of life.

This article makes a case for reviewing Japanese colonial rule in Korea through the lens of settler colonialism, arguing that Japanese settlers and colonial officials used public works projects to reshape Korean landscapes into settler colonial spaces in the name of cultivating Japanese claims to ownership of Korean territory and displacing Korean inhabitants.

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