MODIFYING THE HAGUE CONVENTION? US MILITARY OCCUPATION OF KOREA AND JAPANESE RELIGIOUS PROPERTY IN KOREA, 1945–1948

After World War II, the United States established the US Army Government in Korea (USAMGIK, 1945–48) in South Korea, and tried to justify its military occupation by international law, particularly the Hague Convention IV (1907). The Convention stipulates an occupant’s right to take all the measures necessary to restore public order and safety and his or her duty to respect the indigenous law. Considering the changed situation during World War II, however, where the military institutions of the Axis Powers drove their aggression into other countries, it was inevitable that the Allied Powers would modify the convention to apply it to the occupied countries. Since Japanese public or private property comprised the most wealth in colonial Korea, one of the key issues that USAMGIK faced in liberated Korea was how to handle former Japanese property, ultimately culminating in the confiscation of all Japanese property into the possession of USAMGIK. Thus, this article expounds this thorny issue by dealing with the rationale of this change of the international law, specifically a religious one, with the cy pres (as near as possible) principle, a category that USAMGIK handled with discretion compared to commercial or government property. Consequently, this article shows that USAMGIK ultimately facilitated a close relationship between Christianity and the state in post-war Korean society.