Korean March First Movement
On 1 March 1919, inspired by Woodrow Wilson's proclamation of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference, thirty-three Korean independence activists read the Korean Declaration of Independence aloud at Taehwagwan restaurant in Seoul. Peaceful mass demonstrations spread across the peninsula within days, involving an estimated two million people in some 1,500 separate protests — the most widespread popular movement in Korean history to that point. Japanese police and military suppressed the protests with lethal force over the following weeks, killing an estimated 7,500 Koreans, wounding 15,000, and arresting roughly 45,000. Villages were burned and churches destroyed. The movement was overwhelmingly nonviolent and received no international support: the Western powers at Versailles had no intention of applying self-determination to Japan's colonies. The episode delegitimised the harsh 'military rule' phase of Japanese colonialism and forced the Government-General to shift toward a nominally softer 'cultural rule' policy. It seeded the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai and fed both the independence movement and the armed communist resistance that would emerge in Manchuria — forming the lineage from which Kim Il-sung would later claim descent.
- Year: 1919 CE
- Category: Political
