The topic today is Korean Independence, which is celebrated on March 1st. This is often referred to as the March 1st Movement, and like most movements, began with a declaration. A Buddhist monk and writer collaborated to draft the Korean Declaration of Independence, which was then ratified by the leaders of the revolution and a copy sent to the Japanese Governor General.
‘We herewith proclaim the independence of Korea and the liberty of the Korean people. We tell it to the world in witness of the equality of all nations and we pass it on to our posterity as their inherent right.
We make this proclamation, having back of us 5,000 year of history, and 20,000,000 of a united loyal people. We take this step to insure to our children for all time to come, personal liberty in accordance with the awakening consciousness of this new era. This is the clear leading of God, the moving principle of the present age, the whole human race’s just claim. It is something that cannot be stamped out, or stifled, or gagged, or suppressed by any means.’
As far as declarations go, I think we can agree this had some umph to it, and after Chung Jae-yong read this publicly to massive crowds in Seoul, a procession formed. And with any movement with a valid voice, the police attempted to suppress it. The result was 7,000 massacred Koreans.
The March 1st Movement was the catalyst for the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea and influenced the non-violent resistance in India. It changed the way the Japanese dealt with the Korea even though Korean independence wasn’t achieved for another 26 years.
So what was so bad with Japanese rule, you may be asking yourself, and you’d be perfectly normal to wonder that, after all, I thought the same, which is what prompted me to do a bit of research on the subject. That, and the way my students loathe the Japanese. See, they’re mostly a loving group, so it took me aback when I heard the tone and expressions that reminded me of the way I’ve heard old-school Greeks talk about Turks.
The Japanese occupation of Korea lasted from 1910-1945 and has often been described as cultural genocide because of the suppression of Korean national identity and language. One way this was accomplished was by altering public monuments, including temples, palaces, scripts, memorials and statues. Songs and poems originally dedicated to Korean Emperors were re-written to adore the Japanese Emperor. The Chinese characters where modified on carved monuments so the their meaning would change. The Japanese colonial authorities destroyed 85 percent of all the buildings in the Korean Royal Palace, as well as assassinating the Empress, and burned Korean history books. Many cultural artefacts were destroyed to taken to Japan and remain there still.
Before the Japanese rule of Korea, education was a privilege for aristocrats only. The Japanese changed this by introducing universal education, though the classes focused mostly on teaching the history of the Japanese Empire as well as glorifying the Imperial House of Japan. Korean history was not part of the curriculum. As in Japan itself, students were made to worship at the school’s Shinto shrine regardless of their religious beliefs, and bow before portraits of the Japanese Emperor. After 1930 all classes were taught in Japanese and the use of Korean was forbidden in all schools and businesses. Many Koreans adopted Japanese surnames to avoid discrimination and harassment.
Many Korans also became victims of war crimes. Villages found hiding resistance fighters were dealt with harshly, often with summary execution, rape, forced labor, preventable famine and looting.
There is a term called ‘comfort women’ that refers to the forced prostitution of the Korean women for Japanese soldiers during WWII. I’ve heard it’s estimated that 200,000 women were kidnapped and taken to Japan, but it’s hard to get an official number because the Japanese refuse to acknowledge this and the surviving women are dying. My friend Val met a woman who experienced this, she was in her 80’s, and told some intense stories. She said that when she tried to run away she would be beaten severely, and the bottoms of her feet were tortured so she couldn’t walk, let alone run. Val said the thing that stood out the most about this woman was how positive her outlook on life was, and even though her many years of forced prostitution left her barren, she married a man who already had a daughter and was able to be mother. It sounds like although this horrible thing happened to her, it was not the defining event of her life, which is an attitude we can all learn from.
So why had I not heard any of this before? Why do people believe Koreans still eat dogs and are poor and uneducated? History. History has a way of rewriting itself, a fact that has only been more illuminated as I continue to read Howard Zinn’s, “A People’s History of the United States.’
Japan altered history to rationalize the occupation of Korea to the international community. They depicted Koreans as backward and in need of modernization by only showing photos of the impoverished. Japanese history is something I often hear my students criticizing. For example, Koreans were used as test subjects in human experiments with liquid nitrogen and biological weapons. Though vivid and disturbing testimonies have survived, the Japanese government largely denies them.
One way both North and South Korea has boycotted Japan was by banning Japanese products. It wasn’t until 1998 that the boycott was gradually lifted in South Korea. Some Japanese cultural items, including anime and music, have been introduced into South Korea even while they were banned, though Koreans didn’t know they were Japanese in origin.
Twenty years after the end of WWII, South Korea and Japan re-established diplomatic relations with the 1965 signing of the Treaty on Basic Relations. The details of this treaty were kept secret for 40 years. Documents show that Japan provided 500 million dollars in soft loans and 300 million in grants to South Korea as compensation for its occupation. It was also revealed that the South Korean government assumed the responsibility for compensating individuals with lump sum and rejected Japan’s proposal for direct compensation. However, the South Korean government used most of the loans for economic development and have failed to compensation to the victims adequately, paying only about $300 per death to their relatives.
It should also be mentioned that several Japanese Prime Ministers have issued official apologies. Koreans welcomed the apologies at the time, but now view the statements as insincere.
I have a few students who clearly look like they have Japanese ancestors, and I’m often on guard to see if these students are ever mistreated. Luckily I’ve never seen any form of discrimination, which is a comfort.
When March 1st came, I asked my students to explain the holiday to me. I got simple answers from some students, freedom, independence, but all of them spoke of a girl, a hero, named Yu Gwan Soon. She was a young student, who at 19 years old, waved the Korean flag in public and was tortured and executed, along with all of the members of her family. I wasn’t able to find out what year this happened, but the interesting thing about this story is that, in all the articles I read about the March 1st Movement, and the history of Korean independence, there was not one mention of this girl. Not a single citation, yet every single one of my students knew her story. It made me wonder...
And since we’re on the subject, here’s a bit about the S. Korean flag:
The Korean flag is called Taegukki. Its design symbolizes the principles of the yin and yang in Eastern philosophy. The circle in the center of the flag is divided into two equal parts. The upper red section represents the positive cosmic forces of the yang. Conversely, the lower blue section represents the negative cosmic forces of the yin. The two forces together embody the concepts of continual movement and the balance and harmony that characterize the sphere of infinity. The circle is surrounded by four trigrams, one in each corner. Each tripgram symbolizes one of the four universal elements: heaven, earth, sun and moon. I have also read that they represent the four seasons, the four compass points, the four elements, and express the principle of the movement of all objects in the universe and the moment of the universe itself.
The white color of the background stands for the peace and purity of the Korean people who have loved to wear white colored clothes and have been called the white-clad nation.
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