March 1919

The March First Movement of 1919 (samil undong) was the first nationwide political protest in Korea under Japanese colonial rule (1910–45) and was incited by a number of internal and external factors.Footnote ⁶ Korea became Japan's protectorate in 1905 and was “annexed” to Imperial Japan five years later despite much armed resistance. Soon after, Koreans experienced a decade of severe suppression and minimal rights under a brutal military colonial regime. Unlike the British, who allowed each colony to have its own legislature with some local representation and autonomy, the Japanese established a highly centralized and forceful s ō tokufu that “stood above and apart from a society that had not yet reached Japan's level of social, political, and economic development.”Footnote ⁷ It was a “rule with iron fist” policy and not coincidently, all governors-general in colonial Korea were military generals.

The harsh military rule met strong nationwide resistance from Koreans in the spring of 1919. Koreans, who had a long, cherished history of a centralized state and political community, resented Japanese rule (much more so than the Taiwanese under the same Japanese colonial rule). In the aftermath of World War I, and specifically indicated in the Versailles Peace Conference, the international geopolitical climate began to shift, giving Korean leaders a glimmer of hope for independence from Japanese colonization. Also, the Russian revolution of 1917 offered Korean leaders another source of inspiration for national liberation, as in many other nations under colonialism. Thus, encouraged by the changing international political environment, especially Wilsonian ideals of national self-determination—the idea that nations should not interfere in the affairs of other nations—Korean intellectuals and leaders clandestinely collaborated to create a sort of underground movement both inside and abroad. In fact, about a month before the March 1 declaration of independence in Seoul, Korean students in Tokyo proclaimed a similar statement on February 8 at the YMCA, demanding national liberation from Japan. Organizers hoped to spark resistance within the Korean community in Japan while simultaneously appealing for help at an international level. Even the future president of the Republic of Korea, Syngman Rhee, who was residing in the United States at the time, took part in the movement by attempting to attend the Versailles conference in an effort to personally appeal to President Wilson for Korea's independence.

The Tokyo declaration became the trigger for the nationwide March 1 protest movement in colonial Korea. In the face of the harsh colonial regime, religious leaders played an instrumental role in organizing the movement and mobilizing the people. In particular, Christianity and Ch’ŏndogyo (a native religion that led Tonghak peasant rebellions in the late 1890s), with their nationwide networks, took the lead, providing an organizational base for popular mobilization. Thirty-three leaders who signed the declaration of independence on March 1 largely came from these two religious groups. They planned the declaration and demonstrations to be staged precisely two days before the public funeral for former Korean Emperor Kojong of the Great Korean Empire. Not only had the sudden death of the emperor in January marked a tangible end to the former Korean state, rumors that he had been poisoned by Japanese agents instigated popular anger. The movement leaders sought to seize on this event as an opportunity to stage public protests against Japanese rule.Footnote ⁸ However, had demonstrations commenced at the same time as the scheduled public ceremony on March 3, heightened colonial government security measures most likely would have outnumbered and quashed demonstrators as they had feared.

On March 1, 1919, twenty-nine of the thirty-three leaders who signed the statement gathered together at a restaurant in downtown Seoul and read aloud a declaration for Korean independence, stating at its outset that “Korea is an independent state and that Koreans are a self-governing people” as well as the reasoning behind why Korea should be free from colonial suppression: “Independence for Korea today shall not only enable Koreans to lead a normal, prosperous life, as is their due; it will also guide Japan to leave its evil path and perform its great task of supporting the cause of the East, liberating China from a gnawing uneasiness and fear and helping the cause of world peace and happiness for mankind, which depends greatly on peace in the East.”Footnote ⁹ Begun in Seoul and P'yŏngyang, Korea's two largest cities, the movement quickly diffused throughout the country with more than one million people shouting “Longevity of Great Han Independence.” While movement leaders embraced nonviolence in an effort to achieve legitimate recognition of Korean sovereignty internationally, violent clashes with the colonial government did erupt in many parts of the country. In one case, colonial officers locked protesters inside a church and burned it to the ground. While the movement, which lasted several months, failed to recover Korea's sovereignty or even to gain recognition of its sovereignty by other powerful nations around the world, it provided a catalyst for the expansion of the nationalist movement as a whole.

The movement caught the Japanese by complete surprise, provoking brutal suppression of protesters. Estimates vary from the official Japanese account of 533 dead, 1,409 injured, and 12,522 arrested between March and December to a Korean nationalist figure of more than 7,500 deaths, roughly 15,000 injured, and some 45,000 arrests.Footnote ¹⁰ Still, there is no question that the movement was a major violent confrontation between colonial subjects and the foreign regime in Korea. Yu Kwansun, mentioned above, is the most celebrated figure among those who were captured by the Japanese police during the movement and tortured to death in prison. Even with massive protest participation that involved such violent episodes, in the end the movement by no means urged social revolution, unlike what happened in Russia two years earlier.

Impact and Legacy

The March First Movement failed to achieve national independence from Japanese rule but nonetheless left crucial legacies for Korea and even other parts of Asia under foreign dominance. Domestically, it forced Japan to make a rather important shift from the earlier military rule to a colonial policy known as bunka seiji (cultural rule) that partly and selectively accommodated Korean demands in nonpolitical arenas while continuing to deny political rights and repress radical elements. Japanese colonists, wanting to appear “modern” in their colonial rule and hoping to appease the radical political tendencies of their colonial subjects by softening the appearance of repression, began to loosen their grip on such areas as culture, education, and even the press as far as they did not directly challenge the colonial regime. As a result, colonial Korea saw the rise of many cultural, educational, and media organizations and activities such as “local youth groups, religious organizations, educational study groups, academic societies, and social clubs.”Footnote ¹¹ For example, two nationalist newspapers (still major newspapers in Korea today), Tonga Ilbo (East Asia Daily) and Chos ŏ n Ilbo (Korea Daily), emerged in 1920 and served to revitalize the Korean nationalist movement. Robinson refers to these activities as “cultural nationalism” because they focused on nonpolitical, cultural arenas to raise national consciousness, rather than directly oppose colonial power.Footnote ¹²

While bunka seiji offered a somewhat “softer” version of Japanese repression, it actually increased the powers of the colonial state to control and regulate Koreans, for example, by closely monitoring the news media and school curricula as a means to socialize Koreans into good colonial subjects.Footnote ¹³ It was a “divide and conquer” strategy by Japanese colonialists and became quite effective in that regard. In the aftermath of the protests, Korean leaders were indeed divided over what to do next, as the movement had failed to attain its goal of national sovereignty. In particular, two major contending camps emerged, hotly debating future directions and strategies for national independence: nationalist moderates and socialists/communists. The former deemed demands for immediate independence as immature, stressing reform, education, and economic development as a means to prepare for gradual liberation while taking advantage of the new colonial policy. Yi Kwangsu's well-known 1922 article of “minjok kaejoron” (a theory of national reconstruction) that advocated the necessity of creating a “new person” or a new national character was a key example of such cultural nationalist efforts. The moderates were willing to work with the new cultural policy to strengthen the capability of Koreans in preparation for future national independence. On the other hand, the contending socialist radicals were critical of the reformist approach as compromising and defeating, and thus pursued more direct resistance to colonial rule. The Korean Communist Party was established in 1925 in this context, while many others left Korea to engage in armed struggles against Japan in Manchuria. In 1927 nationalist and communist leaders created a collaborative, united front called Sin'ganhoe (New Korea Society), but it was dissolved only four years later due to disagreement among the leaders as well as Japanese suppression. Afterwards, a political and intellectual schism among Korean leaders grew—a bifurcation that scholars cite as the primary origin of the postcolonial national division that would incite a civil war in 1950.Footnote ¹⁴

Seeing the limits of the independence movement inside Korea, some leaders left Korea to focus their activities abroad. One main such outcome was the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai in the fall of 1919. As the first umbrella organization for the exile movement, the Provisional Government attracted major leaders such as Syngman Rhee, An Ch'angho, and Yi Tonghwi as well as younger activists from Japan and Korea. Activities included establishing lines of communication with the colony, fundraising, publishing the newspaper Tongnip Sinmun (Independence News), and diplomacy. As noted above, Korean progressives in the South today trace the founding of the Republic of Korea to the Provisional Government, while conservatives disagree. Although the Provisional Government soon became plagued with factional disputes and cleavages and gained only modest recognition from the Nationalist Government of China and other governments in exile, this entity would subsist to provide leadership for the initial regime in South Korea after 1945, with Rhee as its first president. (He later became the first president of the ROK.) Other Koreans engaged in armed guerrilla struggles against Japanese in Manchuria, including Kim Il-Sung, who became the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea after 1945.

The differentiation and contention in the independence movement left important legacies for postcolonial Korea. The ideological schism continued after independence, as illustrated by the fact that on March 1, 1946, the left and right held different ceremonies to celebrate the March First Movement. The left stressed the historical lineage of social revolution—from the Tonghak peasant rebellions of 1894–95 to the March First Movement to the 1946 peasant uprisings in postcolonial Korea. It stressed the class, rather than the national, character of the movement. When the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was established in the North, however, the March First Movement was downgraded as a failed attempt led by petit bourgeois intellectuals, lacking a vanguard party of the workers. The North also stressed the influence of the Russian revolution, not the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination, as instigating the movement. Later, the movement was even renamed as “3.1 inmin ponggi” (March 1 People's Uprisings) and it was said that it began in P’yŏngyang, not Seoul, and was led by Kim Hyŏngjik, Kim Il-Sung's father. The North also increasingly stressed the importance of internal factors such as “people's resentment and anger” against colonialism, removing the earlier reference to the outside influence of the Russian revolution. The history of the March First Movement was rewritten to fit into the North's juche ideology in which the Kim family led an indigenous, anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, democratic revolution.Footnote ¹⁵

In contrast, in the South, the March First Movement was seen as the catalyst for Korean nationalist resistance against Japanese rule that led to the establishment of the Provisional Government of Korea in Shanghai, China. The first Constitution of the Republic of Korea—promulgated on July 17, 1948—clearly referred to the March First Movement as the basis of the founding of the republic. Also, during the democratic movements of the 1980s, Korean activists often invoked the spirit of the March First Movement in their fight against the US-supported Korean dictatorship. Even the candlelight protests that led to Park's impeachment in 2016 were seen as the latest in South Korea's efforts to obtain “popular sovereignty.”Footnote ¹⁶ In his remarks on the ninety-ninth anniversary of the March First Independence Movement on March 1, 2018, the current president Moon Jae-in made this point clear:

Yet, Korean conservatives objected to the progressive narrative of tracing the candlelight protests to the March First Movement. In addition, conservatives and progressives still disagree regarding the founding date of the Republic of Korea. Conservatives date it to 1948, when the current republic was established, while progressives go back to 1919, when the Provisional Government was established in exile.

Beyond Korea

The March First Movement received a good amount of foreign media coverage and public attention and offered inspiration for those resisting colonialism in other parts of Asia. The New York Times reported on the movement on March 13, 1919, with the headline “Koreans Declare for Independence,” and the Washington Post published an article four days later entitled “Korean Riots Spread.” The March First Movement was also reported in European (e.g., the Morning Post in London) and Asian (e.g., Minguo Ribao in Shanghai) countries. Citing archival evidence, scholars point out the impact, direct and indirect, of Korea's March First Movement on other political movements in Asia, including the May Fourth Movement in China, the Satyagraha resistance in India, and the Philippines independence movement.Footnote ¹⁸ While May Fourth is much better known and more widely discussed than March First in modern Asian history, the Korean movement undoubtedly influenced the rise of a similar movement two months later in China.

At the time, China had just consented to hand over the Shandong Peninsula to Japan. News of Korea's protests against the Japanese prompted Chinese intellectuals and students to use a number of publication outlets—such as the pro-Nationalist Minguo Ribao, the Weekly Review, and the Guomin (Citizens)—to give coverage to the Korean campaign, urging Chinese citizens to likewise resist Japan. Unlike in Korea, where there were no formal media channels, publications played a significant role in advancing popular movements in China.Footnote ¹⁹ Prominent Chinese intellectuals active in these efforts included Peking University professors Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu (who cofounded the Communist Party in 1921) as well as student leaders such as Fu Sinian. For example, Korean social historian Shin Yong-ha documents how the April 1919 edition of the Guomin included the text of the March First Declaration of Independence and five commentaries by Chinese intellectuals on the Korean independence movement.Footnote ²⁰ Even on the day of the May Fourth gathering in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese declaration that was read made explicit references to Koreans risking their lives against Japanese colonization, appealing to the Chinese populace to take control of Shandong, which was being taken over by Japanese.Footnote ²¹

Similar events took place in 1919 in the Philippines and Egypt. College students in Manila and Cairo, respectively, launched independence movements while citing the example of Korea's March First Movement. For example, references to the March First Movement were made in the Philippine journal Revista Filpina in 1919: “We hope the Allied conference will not fail to weigh the Korean contention, as well as other similar contentions, in their true merits, and thus remove all possible stumbling blocks on the road to a true and efficient League of Nations.”Footnote ²² In Egypt, when the British occupation tried to stifle rising nationalist agitation by sending its leaders into exile, street demonstrations erupted in mid-March, mobilizing various sections of the population to become a mass movement bridging differences of class, religion, and gender. The upheaval, as in Korea, lasted throughout the spring, and its memory and influence has reverberated through the national psyche since and shaped the development of Egypt's national identity and mythology.Footnote ²³

The Korean nationalist movement as an impetus can also be seen in the Satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance in India. Nonviolence was a key principle embraced by the Korean religious leaders in the March First Movement, and Indians did the same. Laudatory references to the March First Movement by Indian intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru attest to the deep impression the Korean independence movement made on Indians at the time.Footnote ²⁴ In other countries, such as Vietnam, intellectuals and leaders deemed their situation different from the Korean one, but nevertheless the March First Movement provoked their rethinking of nationalist movement strategy.Footnote ²⁵ Shin notes that “those who were influenced by the March First Movement – individuals, political parties and organizations that led China's May Fourth Movement, Indian National Congress’ independence movement as well as independence movements in the Philippines and the Arab world – all grew up to play vital roles in their country's independence after World War II.”Footnote ²⁶

These examples demonstrate that they were not isolated episodes but were related to each other, directly or indirectly. Given that, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were pan-Asian movements against Western imperialism that developed shared ideas and networks among Asian intellectuals and political leaders, it was no big surprise to see such connectedness in these movements.Footnote ²⁷ While pan-Asian movements weakened with Japan joining the West to become a colonial power, such ties still existed in 1919 and after. Furthermore, similar experiences in anti-Japanese movements as in the March First and May Fourth movements further developed a sense of common fate and solidarity and spurred collaboration among Korean and Chinese activists. As Rhee notes, “a sense of solidarity quickly developed between Koreans and Chinese, with the March 1 Independence Movement of Korea and the May 4 Revolution of China serving as symbols.”Footnote ²⁸ Sympathizing with the Korean situation, Chinese intellectuals and leaders (including Sun Wen) supported Korean political refugees in China in their fight against the Japanese, as well as the Provisional Government in Shanghai.

1919 as Transnational History

The year 2019 is the centennial of the March First Movement, with the South Korean government and NGOs commemorating it inside Korea and abroad. In January 2018, the Moon Jae-in government announced the creation of a planning committee to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the March First Movement and the founding of the Provisional Government. With Moon emphasizing in his 2018 commemorative speech that the spirit of the candlelight protests of 2016–17, which helped him to be elected, had its origins in the March First movement, 1919 will no doubt be considered a significant and important year for both events in Korea's modern history. It will be celebrated as the catalyst for not only the Korean independence movement but also the founding of the Republic of Korea. Leaders of two Koreas also agreed to celebrate together the centennial of the March First Movement in the “Pyongyang Declaration” announced on September 19, 2018. Given the sharply different views of the movement, as noted above, it will be interesting to see how the two Koreas will define and characterize its nature if a joint celebration were to happen. (It did not after all.)

The year 2019 will be celebrated as the centennial of other similar anti-colonial movements that took place in Asia in 1919 as well, and the fact that these movements were not isolated or episodic events, but interrelated, calls for a broader, comparative, transnational perspective of these events. In the post-1945 period, the nationalist paradigm has dominated historical understanding of colonial Korea with the binary view of Japanese oppression and Korean resistance.Footnote ²⁹ The March First Movement was primarily interpreted through the nationalist lens, though in the North socialist and later juche ideology has colored the interpretation of the movement. As a result, the mainstream Korean historiography has stressed the uniqueness of the March First Movement rather than viewing it as part of a larger process occurring in Asia around that year. However, as noted above, the Korean situation was not necessarily unique and the Wilsonian transnational ideology of self-determination provoked nationalist movements against foreign occupation in many parts of Asia in 1919. This calls for the need to reconsider national events in the context of a more global or transnational history. As Manela argues, we need to see the March First Movement beyond “an episode in the timeline of Korean history, or of Japanese imperialism” and examine it “as part of a broader rise of anticolonial nationalism and resistance in the early twentieth century, and specifically as part of the singular anticolonial upsurge of the spring of 1919.”Footnote ³⁰

By considering the March First and other political movements of 1919 in other Asian countries from a comparative, transnational perspective, we can recognize interrelationships and diffusion processes traditionally ignored in historical writings prior to the “historiographic revolution” in the 1990s.Footnote ³¹ That will help us to capture the “big picture” of historical events and their comparative relevance beyond national boundaries. Articles collected in this special forum clearly attest to the merits and significance of seeing these 1919 movements from such a historical approach.