Dai-Ichi Bank
To manage it, they hired Shibusawa Eiichi, until then an official at the Ministry of Finance where he had drafter the National Banking Decree of December 1872 under the leadership of minister Ōkubo Toshimichi.
Unlike most of Japan's early joint-stock banks who were fiercely local, Dai-Ichi also managed to attract equity investors from a wide geographical area.
[4]: 14 Dai-Ichi rapidly seized that opportunity and secured a dominant position in the country’s financial sector, thanks to Japanese Finance Ministry protection.
[4]: 50 It opened a first Korean branch in Busan in June 1878, for which the Japanese government lent it half of the 100,000 yen needed for start-up expenses.
That same year, Dai-Ichi Bank received permission from the Japanese government that its bills be used to pay for customs duties in Korea's open ports.
Instead, Dai-Ichi Bank played an increasingly central role in the reform of Korea's monetary system, for which the Korean government became acutely dependent on Japanese actions.[4]: 60 .
In mid-1898, Shibusawa traveled to Korea to negotiate the revocation of an earlier prohibition by the newly proclaimed Korean Empire of using stamped silver yen coins that had become important for the bank's business.
[4]: 45-46 Attempts by the embattled Korean state to resist Dai-Ichi's monetary role in Korea proved futile, and crumbled as the Russo-Japanese War resulted in the elimination of the last check against Japanese dominant influence in the country.
In August 1907, Japan's Resident-General Itō Hirobumi and Shibusawa agreed that Dai-Ichi's operations should be eventually transferred to a dedicated central bank for the territory.
[4]: 76 A debate ensued between Itō and the Japanese finance ministry, with the latter favoring the creation of a Korean branch of the Bank of Japan over that of a stand-alone colonial institution over which Tokyo would have less direct control.
[4]: 81 Eventually Itō's position won the debate, and the finance ministry rationalized the decision as preferable to preserve financial stability.
[4]: 84-85 Dai-Ichi Bank kept branches in Seoul and Busan but later in 1909 transferred all its other Korean branches and offices to the Bank of Korea, totalling 220 regular employees and 121 support staff, in Chinnampo, Gunsan, Incheon, Mokpo and Wonsan (see above) plus those established in the meantime in Daegu, Hamhung, Kaesong, Kyongsong, Masan, Pyongyang, Songjin, and across the Yalu River in Andong.
Overall, Dai-Ichi Bank's actions in the three decades following its first Busan establishment in 1878 have led to its depiction as the "primary agent of Japanese financial imperialism" in Korea.
