Generally, the outcomes of the historical study in some domain would be a most fundamental and basic reference for understanding the essential and core component of them. Specially in case of social science, the importance of historical research much more emphasized that would be divided into independent academic field. In Korean history including fisheries business and industry, the most remarkable historic event would be the period of Japanese colonial rule that one of the most obstacle should overcome. Though the fisheries business and industry of Korea have considerable own history, the research and study of that not so much have been performed or investigated including the period of Japanese colonial rule. Most of the existing research of fisheries history have merely focused on partial topics like ‘Fishermen’s Association’,‘Fisheries Industry Despoliation’. And the historical study of fisheries business and industry’s overall status and trend in local area except Pusan also not enough. The aims of this study are exploring the fisheries trends and status during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Tongyeong and finding out the overall major fisheries business issues that would be a better understanding the Korean fisheries industry. Achieving that Objectives, over 800 articles of media, the Japanese government-general of Korea, and other historical data were gathered, refined and analyzed. This paper focused on of major fisheries topics and issues that including overall fisheries status, trends, fisheries catches, local fisheries cooperatives and fisheries exhibition during the period of Japanese colonial rule in Tongyeong. The result of this study shows that the status of fisheries in Korea had been deteriorated for exploitation of Japanese imperialism and Japanese fisheries capitalist during that period. Though the level of Tongyeong in fisheries was very high in terms of catches ratio and population of fisherman, the distribution networks of fishermen’s association was not good enough. And the Tongyeong fisheries exhibition in 1922 has positive aspects for considering both composition of organization and educational activity. Even though the results and findings would be a helpful guidelines for understanding the fisheries business trends and status under the rule of Japanese imperialism, more research and study of that should be accomplished.

• 이동호(경상대학교 수산경영학과) | Dong-Ho Lee Corresponding author