The Limitation of the Korea-Japan Normalization Talks on the Issue of the Restitution of Cultural Properties

Abstract

My study investigates how Japan nationalized the cultural assets from their colonies and foreign countries when the Cultural Assets Preservation Act was legislated in 1950. It also analyzes how Japan enforced the nationalization and restitution of the cultural properties to Korea during the Korea-Japan Normalization Talks in the 1950s and 1960s. During the fourteen years of Korea-Japan Normalization Talks, the cultural properties, which were excavated out of the Korean Peninsula and redefined as Japanese properties, were only partly restituted to Korea. Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, proceeded with it in secret. The Diet and Japanese people only learned of the event from Korean or Japanese newspapers after the fact. Although Japan restituted the cultural properties to Korea, it still treated them as national properties of Japan. This fact revealed the limitation of the Korea-Japan Normalization Talks and the legacy of the Japanese colonial rule, which resulted in the Korea-Japan agreement that the Korean cultural properties are the private properties of the Japanese people or the belongings of the Japanese people.