[KS] Official end of WWII in Asia

[Katsiaficas, George]

Gari Ledyard's contribution's seems to minimize the repression after March
1, 1919. Below is an excerpt that provides details of the post-March 1
repression (from my forthcoming book, Uprising! South Korean Social
Movements in the 20th Century--Vol. 1 of Asia's Unknown Uprisings)

Despite the pacific character of protests, Japanese colonial troops killed
hundreds of people and imprisoned many more. According to official Japanese
reports, 533 protesters were killed, 1,409 wounded and 12,522 arrested
between March and December 1919. Koreans counted far more causalities: by
the end of May, Japanese repression is said to have claimed 7,509 lives,
with an additional 15,961 injured, and more than 46,948 people imprisoned,
many with sentences ranging from 10-15 years.[1] <#_ftn1> Not surprisingly,
official Japanese figures are lower, maintaining 19,525 people were arrested
in these protests. 

An official Japanese report claimed at least ³20,000 demonstrators have been
armed with clubs, kitchen knives and similar weapons,² but it is hard to
know if this was a mendacious attempt to justify the severe measures
colonial authorities took against generally peaceful protesters.[2] <#_ftn2>
Japanese newspapers proclaimed that the ³stirring up of the minds of Koreans
is the sin of the American missionaries. This uprising is their work.²[3]
<#_ftn3> Churches were often involved in the protests, but so was every
organization of Korean civil society: Buddhists, Chondogyo, women¹s
associations, and student groups all mobilized. The protests spread to
Manchuria, Russia and other places where Koreans lived.[4] <#_ftn4>
 
Although all the esteemed signers of the declaration were male, women
prominently formed the front of many of the marches on March 1. Their
underground network Songjuk-hoe (Pine and Bamboo Association) had been
formed in Pyongyang in 1913. Female participation in the March 1 Movement
³revealed a potential strength that had been latent in the traditional
society.²[5] <#_ftn5> To consider the astonishing mobilization of a million
Koreans on the same day while keeping it secret from Japanese troops and
officials is to realize the extraordinary strength of Korean civil society.
 
One of the movement¹s teenage martyrs, Yu Kwan-sun, became especially well
known. After the protests began, she returned to her hometown, Chiryong in
South Chuongchong province. On April 2, she handed out Korean flags and
publicly called for independence. A year later, on the uprising¹s first
anniversary, she again called out for the country¹s independence. For her
outspoken efforts, she was arrested and during her trial she refused to
remain quiet, instead throwing chairs at the judges and chanting ³Mansei!²
She was later tortured to death. Yu¹s body was never recovered, although her
missionary school claims to have found her in scattered pieces.
 
One church reported that 2,656 of its members (including 531 women) were
arrested in 1919 for actions related to Korean independence. What for some
was the ³modernization² of police under Japanese colonial rule<their
efficient combination and expansion<was a disaster for most Koreans. Within
a year after the uprising, the number of police stations rose from 151 to
251, that of substations in the same period from 686 to 2,495.[6] <#_ftn6>
The extent of Japanese repression may be debated but not its barbaric
character. There are numerous eyewitness accounts.[7] <#_ftn7>  On April 15,
1919, all the village residents in Jeam-ri (near Suwon in Gyeonggi
province), including at least 29 persons, were rounded up in the church.
With the doors barred, the building was set on fire, killing them all. In 15
other nearby villages, more than 317 houses were burned<bringing the total
number of killed to hundreds<possibly more than 1,000.[8] <#_ftn8> For
nearly a century, Japan denied that any such Jeam-ri incident took place,
but in 2007, proof of a massacre of civilians and its cover-up was found in
the diary of the commander of Japanese military forces, Taro Utsunomiya, and
published by Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun and the Korean paper,
Hankyoreh Sinmun.[9] <#_ftn9>
 
Like most uprisings that do not seize control of the government, the March 1
Movement led to increased state repression, but it also deeply affected many
people and paved the way for the next steps in the movement¹s evolution of
forms of organization and contestation of power. A few weeks after March 1,
a provisional government of Korea was established in Shanghai representing a
wide spectrum of political perspectives; armed groups blossomed in Manchuria
and fought a continuous struggle against Japan; and forms of cultural
resistance intensified inside Korea. Years later, Kim Yong-bock wrote that,
³The event of March First Independence Movement lives in the hearts and
minds of the Korean people, and it has become a permanent historical symbol
for them...It was the first people¹s movement in Korean history, in which an
axial transition occurred in a revolutionary way.²[10] <#_ftn10>
 
In sheer numbers, the proliferation of social movement organizations after
the 1919 uprising is noteworthy.
 
Every uprising simultaneously reveals the essential problems of a social
order and points toward their solution. The problem raised by the March 1
Movement was international in scope, and Korea¹s provisional government in
Shanghai served as a stimulus for Chinese students and intellectuals. The
victorious Allies at the Versailles peace conference refused China¹s demand
for restoration of territories seized by Germany. Instead, in all their
wisdom, the leaders of the world were intent upon ceding those territories
to Japan. As soon as that news reached Beijing, several thousand students
rallied in Tiananmen Square on May 4. Their call to action, distributed
throughout China, included an explicit reference to the Korean uprising of
March 1: ³The Koreans in their struggle for independence also cried, OEGive
us our wish, or give us death.¹²[11] <#_ftn11>  Here is direct evidence of
how China's May 4 Movement drew inspiration from the courageous uprising of
their Korean neighbors. Students began the Chinese movement, which by
mid-May turned into a general strike of students in dozens of cities.[12]
<#_ftn12>  Workers and farmers across the country quickly joined. As the May
4 Movement intensified, people boycotted Japanese goods in major cities and
succeeded in getting some of the worst collaborators removed from positions
of power. From nationalist resistance to Japan, the movement soon changed
into one against feudalism with demands including greater civil
liberties.[13] <#_ftn13>  The pattern is familiar: students spark popular
upheavals for democracy, which, in turn, generate workers and farmers
movements that move beyond the immediate demands of the movement¹s infancy.
 
Although only uncovered at the end of the 20th century, the pattern of the
international diffusion of protest and the escalating demands made from the
grassroots has a long history. One report in 1919 noted: ³It is true that
the longing for freedom and independence now finding expression in many
parts of the world, in Egypt and Ireland in particular, has exercised
powerful influence over the ideas and thoughts of many Korean young men and
women, who are sufficiently educated to be able to read newspapers.²[14]
<#_ftn14> 


[1] <#_ftnref1>  Park Eun-sik, Agony: Korean History. Park was second
president of Korea¹s provisional government. Tabulating the fierce
repression unleashed by the Emperor to punish Koreans, historian Kang
Man-gil counted 7,500 citizens killed, 16,000 injured, and more than 46,000
arrested. Kang Man-gil, A History of Contemporary Korea (Kent, UK: Global
Oriental, 2005) p. 29.

[2] <#_ftnref2> The Korean ³Independence² Agitation (Seoul: Seoul Press
Office, 1919) Part 2, p. 17. This strongly pro-Japanese document is
contained in Harvard University¹s Widener Library Depository.

[3] <#_ftnref3>  Quoted in Shannon McCune, The Mansei Movement, p. 16.

[4] <#_ftnref4>  Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea (Cambridge:
Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1984) p. 344.

[5] <#_ftnref5>  Kim Yung-Chung, ³Women¹s Movement in Modern Korea, ³ in
Challenges for Women: Women¹s Studies in Korea, edited by Chung Sei-wha
(Seoul: Ewha Womans University Press, 1986) p. 90.

[6] <#_ftnref6> Stearns, p. 783.

[7] <#_ftnref7> For one see
http://www.korea.net/News/news/newsView.asp?serial_no=20070228038&part=112&S
earchDay=&source=

[8] <#_ftnref8>  British missionary Dr. Frank W. Schofield, took photos of
the carnage, which were published by the Oriental Relations Committee of the
Christian Federation Association as ³The Korea Situation² in July 1919.

[9] <#_ftnref9>  On March 1, 2007, some called for renewed inquiry into the
massacre and the colonial government¹s cover-up.

[10] <#_ftnref10>  Kim Yong-bock quoted in Christine Lienemann-Perrin, p.
199.

[11] <#_ftnref11>  Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual
Revolution in Modern China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967) p.
107.

[12] <#_ftnref12>  See Chow, pp. 139-144.

[13] <#_ftnref13>  Nishi Masayuki, ³March 1 and May 4, 1919 in Korea, China
and Japan: Toward an International History of East Asian Independence
Movements,² International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shinbun, October 29, 2007.
Posted on Japan Focus website on October 31, 2007.

[14] <#_ftnref14>  The Korean ³Independence² Agitation, Part 2, p. 15.

George Katsiaficas



> From: <gkl1 at columbia.edu>
> Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:48:43 -0400
> To: <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Subject: Re: [KS] Official end of WWII in Asia
> 
> Gari Ledyard

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