>>16766735“I first visited Korea in 1909, to advise some Japanese industrialists on engineering matters. The Korean people at that time were in the most disheartening condition that I had witnessed in any part of Asia. There was little law and order. The masses were underfed, under-clothed, under-housed and under-equipped. There was no sanitation, and filth and squalor enveloped the whole countryside.
The roads were hardly passable, and there were scant communication or educational facilities. Scarcely a tree broke the dismal landscape. Thieves and bandits seemed to be unrestrained.
During the thirty-five years of Japanese control, the life of the Korean people was revolutionized. Beginning with this most unpromising human material, the Japanese established order, built harbors, railways, roads and communications, good public buildings, and greatly improved housing.
They established sanitation and taught better methods of agriculture. They built immense fertilizer factories in North Korea which lifted the people’s food supplies to reasonable levels. They reforested the bleak hills. They established a general system of education and the development of skills. Even dusty, drab and filthy clothing had been replaced with clean bright colors.”
