In March 1908, the National Diet of Japan passed the bill establishing the Oriental Development Company that the government of Korea was forced to sign.

In 1927 Na Seok-ju, a Korean independence movement activist, bombed the building in Seoul, which resulted in the death of some of the managers.

[7] Despite this incident, the company started to create branches in other Japanese-controlled areas overseas, such as Taiwan, Manchuria, Sakhalin, and the South Seas Mandate.

[10] After Imperial Japan carried out a Cadastral Survey, by the late 1920s the company had bought one third of the arable land in the Korean Peninsula.

[11] They forced tenants to pay over 50% of their production as rent, while the holdings of Japanese migrants rose by 300% to 400% per year across the Korean Peninsula.

[12] The large amounts of land held by Japanese migrants accrued taxes for the authorities, while Korean farmers lost their independence.

[13] Life in Hwanghae province (in modern North Korea) was described thus: Owing to a bad harvest, caused by the flood, drought, and attacks by insects, poor and wretched tenants have been pleading for over a month that they must have exemption from paying their rents, or that the rents must be reduced, for the year.