"Korea turned out to be this nice, laid-back place..."
It's 1918; Korea has been a Japanese colony since 1910; a Japanese settler recalls with amused relief the extravagant fears she had expressed on the eve of her family's migration several years earlier: "We might never see our hometown again if we're killed by resentful, crazy rioters."
No, she'd been wrong and her husband right: Korea was the land of opportunity. Riots there were, but they were sporadic and distant. Although poor at home, a Japanese family could do pretty well for itself in occupied Korea.