Well, it's fun to speculate about "what if" - East Asia would look very different if the US had never entered the war, but I don't think the Korean culture woul

Well, it's fun to speculate about "what if" - East Asia would look very different if the US had never entered the war, but I don't think the Korean culture would have just disappeared (not sure if that's what you mean). Do you know Korean has more speakers than Italian? It's very hard to eliminate the identity of dozens of millions of people, and Japan was definitely not planning to kill off Koreans even at the height of its madness. We enjoyed the dubious honor of being the "secondary citizen", close enough to be "civilized" (= assimilated) into the Japanese culture, unlike those other, savage Asians. "内鮮一体", as the Japanese Empire said: "The inland (Japan) and Chosen (Korea) are one body." I think the "worst case" result would have been something like Brittany or Scotland, having a shared identity but largely becoming a part of a bigger, dominant culture.