With youngsters bungee jumping on the streets of Seoul today to celebrate the Spirit of Independence, some quick thoughts on the context of March 1, 1919.
Historians have noted the impact on Korean nationalists of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and his espousal of national self-determination. This oldie-but-goodie also provides an interesting look at the indigenous forces for change and their roots in the 19th century Tonghak Rebellion. According to this analysis, it was a combination of foreign inspiration and homegrown nationalism that caused the March 1st Movement.
What about consequences? That’s the subject of this fascinating discussion thread on the “Samil Movement as an International Model” (also old, I know, but brand new compared to the Samil Movement itself). Revolutionary forces had of course been brewing across the Yellow Sea for years, forces that would erupt a mere two months later in China’s May 4th Movement. Simple chronology, then, might suggest some causation. This has indeed been argued by Seung-keun Rhee in the Korea Journal, though I don’t have access to the text (see bibliography here, and scroll down to “March 1st Movement and Its Impact on Chinese May 4th Revolution (I), (II)”). The emeritus Columbia professor of Korean studies writing in this thread is open to that possibility, but also observes how influence might have run the opposite way:
In the world in those days, the news from China and Japan commanded a lot more attention than the news from Korea–and sometimes did so even for Koreans in Korea. Add to that the fact that it was a little less risky in the 1920s, in Korea with its ever-alert Japanese thought police, to use rhetoric that sounded like May Fourth than to sound too much like March First. From a Korean subversive point of view, it might even have been more nationalistically effective, since it also could have planted the idea that hundreds of millions of Chinese were on the same track, in solidarity with millions of Koreans. From there it’s not much of a step for Koreans to think that they, from their earlier demonstration, must have started it all.
I suppose there are already enough bones of contention between Korea and China without having to worry about who caused whose uprisings.
8 Comments
marmot, i hope you don’t mind or maybe you could make a special section for this:
amerasian kid with korean mother and white father just about to graduate from harvard found out he has a rare form of leukemia. he will need a bone marrow transplant but because of his race, he’s finding it hard to find a match. many of your readers have Amerasian children and they may want to help.
won’t you guys check it out?
http://www.helpsamiam.com
i registered 6 years ago with a sizable organization. Never been contacted. Just shows how hard it is to match. Everyone should register, though. The decision to donate if you match is entirely up to you.
March 1st and others.
Woodrow Wilson said great things.
Many people around the world took it for a promise.
Some jackass likes to say that Koreans did nothing to resist a 5000 modern army of Japanese troops and gunboats occupying Korea.
I think the TongHak forces learned a lesson, from being mowed down like grass against a lawnmower, trying to fight riflemen from Japan with agriculture tools.
No brave charge against a foot soldier with bullets to take you out from hundreds of feet away.
They started better resistance once they got their hands on ammunition and rifles themselves.
btw:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin.....laves.html
let’s remember, japan has apologized. koreans weren’t forced, they willing allied with the japanese. right, abiola, matt, bevers, and all other korea bashers?
I noticed that, too, Pawi.
Now they want to take back or revise the apology in the 90’s.
douchette.
New York Times.
Celebrating the patriots’s sacrifices with bungee jumping? That doesn’t seem right to me.
Pawi, it’s very gracious of you to post that link for the man with leukemia and I hope he does find suitable donors soon.
As for March 1, you have Roh calling for Japan to have“respect for historical truth”just days after his own government said it would revise textbooks to include Kojoson, a mythical Korean kingdom in the Bronze Age as part of the country’s official history. He should get his own house in order first if he wants to be taken seriously.
“He should get his own house in order first if he wants to be taken seriously.”
I doubt that would suffice.