Chōsen Industrial Bank

In 1906, at the initiative of its Japanese financial adviser Megata Tanetarō [ja], the Korean Empire decreed the establishment of agricultural and industrial banks to stimulate the country's economy.

[2]: 118 The Chōsen Industrial Bank has been viewed as one of the two main instruments of economic domination of Korea by Japan during the colonial period, together with the Oriental Development Company,[4] with its symbolic salience enhanced after 1924 by the forced relocation of the Bank of Chōsen's head office from Keijō to Tokyo.

A famed episode was when Na Seok-ju threw a bomb at the bank's Seoul head office in late 1926.

In 1945, the United States Army Military Government in Korea took over the bank's management; its Japanese branch was liquidated by order of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers Douglas MacArthur in October 1945.

[1] The relatively high share of Koreans in the staff and management ensured a smoother postwar transition than in other Japanese colonial enterprises,[2]: 227  even allowing the Joseon Industrial Bank, as it was now transcribed, to lobby (unsuccessfully) for taking over monetary authority from the Bank of Joseon.

[citation needed] The bank's head office was first built on the capital’s major thoroughfare fare now known as Namdaemunno in the 1910s, and expanded in 1920-1922.