"In the golden age of Asia
Korea was one of its lamp bearers.
And that lamp is waiting
To be lighted once again
For the illumination of the East." (1929)

By Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941),
an Indian philosopher and Nobel Prize winner


The day rumbled on March 1st, 1919 as thousands of people poured out of the street. The emperor was dead and to a nation deprived of its sovereignty, there was no better time. The people were going to hail the independence of Korea and touch the international conscience.

Japan's iron-fisted rule was nearly a decade old, having begun with its official annexation of Korea in 1910. Japanese police manned every police station and its army had brigades in Seoul, Pyongyang and every major city. Individual freedom was almost non-existent; people were flogged for reasons as slight as wandering on the street late at night. According to Frederick A. McKenzie (1899-1931) a correspondent with London's Daily Mail, under the Japanese, Korea's prison population doubled from 16,807 in 1911 to 32,836 in 1916. Classrooms were staffed with teachers in military uniforms who made sure only permissible thoughts were allowed.

However, the populace still found means of resistance. Armed groups were formed at home and abroad, the former hiding within the mountains and the latter joining guerrilla units already operating in Manchuria and Russia. Koreans in Western countries formed political organizations to lobby for the freedom of their nation.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin declared freedom for all the colonies of the former Russian Empire. That gave hope to Koreans desperate for a sign that empires could fall. When U.S. President Woodrow Wilson drew up a World War I peace plan calling for "self-determination" of oppressed minorities, Korean independence leaders saw an opportunity and laid plans to petition delegates at the Paris Peace Conference, slated to begin in January 1919.

A Korean delegation, headed by Kim Gyu-sik, managed to reach Paris. To back up Kim's efforts, an idea was formed to organize a massive, nationwide, non-violent rally to further demonstrate Korea's desire to be liberated from Japan's control.

Student members of religious groups -- Christian, Buddhist and Cheondogyo (an indigenous religion) did the actual work of organizing the demonstration, distributing some 20,000 papers all over the country. And so, unbeknownst to Japanese governors, the whole country was whispering about the fateful day.

When the day finally arrived, a big crowd of students, peasants, women and children gathered at Seoul's Pagoda Park (Tapgol Gongwan), eagerly awaiting their 33 national representatives to head the peace march. They intended to show to the world their lofty dreams of becoming free once more.

Unexpectedly, the 33 leaders never came. They had chosen instead to gather at the Taehwagwan Restaurant to write an independence declaration. They worried that the crowd could turn violent and undermine the stance of their representatives in Paris. Peaceful conduct, they believed, was the only way to show Korea's sincerity to the world.


Son Byung-hee, who was heading the March 1st Movement, called on two other leaders -- writer and historian Choe Nam-son and Manhae Han Young-un, a Buddhist poet -- to abide by three principles of peace when drawing up the declaration. First, it should be peaceful, moderate and dispassionate. Second, it should emphasize Korea's independence for the sake of peace in Asia. Third, it should insist on justice and humanitarianism under the tradition of the right to self-determination and national independence.

The leaders signed the completed document, shouted "Daehan Dongnip Mansei" (Long Live an Independent Korea), sent a copy of the declaration to the Japanese Governor General and turned themselves in to the police. They were sentenced to prison for the next few years.



The ramifications for them were slight compared to what befell those waiting at the park. When the leaders did not show up, a student protestor, Jung Jae-yong, read the Proclamation of Korean Independence and urged people to march as planned.

“Daehan Dongnip Mansei!” “Mansei!” “Mansei!”



The crowd started to shout from the top of their lungs and began marching down the main streets of Seoul, raising high long-hidden Taegukki (national flags). An estimated 450 thousand people joined the march. People in Pyongyang, Jinnampo, Anju, Euiju, Seoncheon and Wonsan took up the chant in their streets almost simultaneously. The movement spread like wild fire to Gaeseong and Yesan on the second day, Okgu on the fourth, reached Daegu on the 8th, Gwangju and Cheolwon on the 10th and Busan on the 11th, becoming the biggest nationalist movement in Korean history. It was recorded that more than two million people participated in the movement on 1,500 occasions in 211 of Korea's 220 counties.

An open massacre

At first Koreans were unfazed at Japanese troops peeled some away from the march and hauled them to the police station. As this was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration, no one resisted arrest.

The Japanese authorities were shocked by the mass demonstrations taking place all over the country and opted for the seemingly easiest way out -- by open firing at everyone. Swords, clubs, anything was freely given to be used against the people.



A letter from a missionary in a Presbyterian hospital in Suncheon, dated May 25, 1919, describes one scene:

All the eleven were beaten ninety stripes – thirty each every day for three days, May 16, 17, and 18 and let out May 18th. Nine came here May 22nd and two more May 24th.
Tak Chan-kuk died about noon, May 23rd.
Kim Myungha died this evening.
Kim Hyungsun is very sick.
Kim Chungsun and Song Taksam are able to walk but are badly broken.
Kim Oosik seemed very doubtful but afterwards improved.
Choi Tungwon, Kim Changgok, Kim Sungkil and Ko Pongsu are able to be about, though the two have broken flesh.

Jeam-ri in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do (province), offers another painful example of the terror campaign designed to subdue the population. Jeam-ri residents had been holding mass rallies during the day and candle-lit marches at night. Japanese authority informed them to assemble on April 15, pushed everyone into the neighborhood church, locked all the windows and doors and set fire to the building. Additionally, 317 houses in 15 villages in the vicinity were burned. Another 1,000 people died because of this. British medical missionary Dr. Frank W. Schofield, upon hearing the news, rushed to the scene to take secret photos. The Oriental Relations Committee of the Christian Federation Association published his eyewitness account “The Korea Situation” in July 1919, and the Japanese authorities promptly deported him.

Girls and women were no exception to the horror – many forced to stand trial naked. Many survivors told tales of their bare bodies repeatedly being struck by hard boots and bamboo sticks. One teenage girl, Yu Kwan-soon (1902-1917), was charged with encouraging an army of friends as well as thousands of Cheonan residents to join the movement. In her defense she argued the Japanese had no right to try Korean citizens, chanting “mansei” throughout her trial and throwing chairs. Two days after she died of torture, her Christian missionary school managed to take possession of her body. It had been cut up into pieces and stuffed inside a wooden crate for bottles of petroleum.

Even the innocent onlookers who didn't join the actual demonstration were not free of the killing spree. McKenzie took a photo of one man hacked repeatedly -- his ears and cheek sliced off along with his fingers. The man had simply fallen off the curb and caught the attention of Japanese police as a “mansei” crowd pushed by.

“Agony: Korean History” (韓國痛史) written by Park Eun-sik, the second President of the Provisional Government of Korea summed up the losses: 7,509 dead, 15,961 wounded and 47,948 sentenced to 10-15 years in prison. 47 churches, 2 schools and 715 houses were burned in a three-month period from March 1st to the end of May. Another estimate for the whole yearlong repression put the deaths at 7,645 with 45,582 wounded and 49,811 arrested. Listed as burned were 59 churches, 3 schools and 724 houses.

And what was gained for their effort? In the Paris Conference the Korean delegation headed by Kim Gyu-sik was refused a seat as voting delegates. The Koreans were unaware of a secret pact among the U.S., Japan, and France to bar Korean and Indochina matters from the meeting.

Consequences

McKenzie noted one amazing aspect of the movement: “From opening day to end, the Japanese scattered all over the country were uninjured. The Japanese shops were left alone and when police attacked, elders ordered people to submit and offer no resistance.” Except for a few incidents of people marching up to the station to demand release of prisoners that participated in the Mansei movement, no significant retribution took place.

“And so,” he continued in his 1920 book “Korea's Fight for Freedom,” “Japan lost her last chance of winning the people of Korea and of wiping out the accentuated ill-will of centuries.”

As much as Japan tried to hide these facts, the truth continued to seep out through efforts of missionaries and the foreign press, as well as overseas Koreans. Faced with international criticism, Japan changed its policy of control from one of brutal force to one of mind control; brainwashing generations to believe that Korea and its people were inferior to their imperial masters through school lessons, books and news reports that lasted until liberation in 1945 with Japan's defeat in World War II

Koreans have paid a high price for underestimating Japan's motives and overestimating the goodwill of powerful allies. The movement exposed the futility of any efforts to compromise with Japan. People came to understand that independence must be achieved through their own hands. The first provisional government was set up in Shanghai, China, the same year with Rhee Seung-man as president: “The year 1919 will be the temporary first year of Korea (Daehan), and the name of the country will be Daehan Minguk (Republic of Korea).”

Legacy still remembered

Almost a century passed since then and much has changed. WWII was over, Japan left and the country had to recover yet from another war the ripped the country in half.

However whenever a country was in time of need, the same passion continued to surface anew in modern Korea; the Saemaeul Movement to revive the war-torn nation in the 70s, the gold collecting campaign during the financial crisis of the 90s, and finally the joyous mass viewings and street celebrations for the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup that so amazed foreigners, who – perhaps for the first time – saw the spirit of the people and heard their cry "Daehan Minguk!”

* Pictures from Independence Hall of Korea
http://www.i815.or.kr


By Kim Hee-sung
Korea.net staff reporter