Short review: Korea

Abstract

Korea's Samil Movement is generally regarded as one of the most significant events in modern Korean history. The movement takes its name from an incident on March 1, 1919, when a declaration asking for Korea's independence from Japanese colonial rule was read in a Seoul park. While copies of the declaration were distributed to the gathered crowd, the 33 prominent religious leaders and public figures who had signed the document waited for the arrival of the Japanese police and their certain arrest. Spontaneously, crowds of Koreans began moving through the streets shouting for independence, as Japanese citizens in the capital boarded up their homes and expected the worst. Copies of the declaration which had been mailed to other cities throughout the peninsula also galvanized local populations into public protest against Japanese rule and demands for the independence of Korea. Incidents continued in the days that followed, including some acts of violence by Koreans, but the Japanese response-mass arrests and often brutal treatment of Koreans taken into custody—far surpassed whatever violence Korean nationalists had caused.