차압기사

Although it's a short article, its meaning is profound. It seems to be an article from a hundred years ago that, at the time, cast the fate of all Koreans into a world of 'madness akin to death.'

On March 1, 1919 (January 29th by the lunar calendar), the ripple effect of the March 1st Movement led to the birth of three newspaper companies the following year: 朝鮮日報 (Chosun Ilbo, founded March 5, 1920), 東亞日報 (Dong-A Ilbo, founded April 1, 1920), and 時事新聞 (Sisa Sinmun, founded January 1, 1910, just before the Japan-Korea annexation, operated like an Iljinhoe organ, then suspended, and re-founded on the same day as Dong-A Ilbo after serializing articles criticizing the March 1st Movement in Maeil Sinbo).

Although there was a separate Government-General organ, Maeil Sinbo, Dong-A Ilbo also came into the world through Maeil Sinbo's printing presses, so they were all in the same boat. The banner raised by Chosun Ilbo was 'New Civilization Progressivism,' and it was a newspaper created by the 'Taisho Business Friendship Association,' formed by those who experienced a rapid rise in status due to the dismantling of traditional social hierarchies. Therefore, the history of newspapers in Korea is essentially a history of national betrayal. These still-solid newspapers dilute and distort history while occasionally reporting facts, making Korea's future moderately bleak.

It is time for a free interpretation of whether Korea's education, which interprets this history of public opinion as so-called 'cultural rule,' is not also a self-mutilating and self-destructive historical perspective that has undermined the nation's future. The existence and role of newspapers at the time were not a conciliatory gesture from the Government-General, but rather the beginning of consuming the Korean people's self-esteem, which would not be subdued by military force, through modern public opinion warfare. This means that the Korean people's self-help efforts were thereby fundamentally blocked. In other words, the Government-General's cultural rule policy, which changed after the March 1st Movement, superficially provided the error of perception that even under Japanese colonial rule, one could live a humane life through civilized treatment, while internally signaling the advent of a period when the policy of national annihilation was firmly and steadily implemented.

The article was just one line: 'The existence of armed anti-Japanese groups in Gando makes it difficult to eradicate their strongholds without obtaining China's consent to dispatch troops and suppress them.' This was a statement made by Sakai Yosakichi (堺與三吉, 1873~1931), the Consul General of Gando, and published in the Dong-A Ilbo's Gyeongseong branch. The Korean text below also explained content of the same purport. In short, Japan, pretending not to know that there was no firm government in China—at that time, the Republic of China, before the establishment of the People's Republic of China by the Chinese Communist Party after the Qing Dynasty fell due to the Xinhai Revolution—made empty promises to obtain 'China's consent' to wipe out Koreans, a rather contrived attempt to get help from a China that was a masterless land. The China imagined by the public and the actual China were different, and it was Japan that manipulated a part of it and acted as its master.

Perhaps the public who bought this newspaper at the time would have already considered the anti-Japanese armed forces in Gando as 'unruly Koreans.' This is because Japan, which defined Koreans who had lost their homes, wives, and children as 'resentful humans,' began using the word 'unruly' (不逞) in February 1912, after the attempted assassination of Governor-General Terauchi Masatake (the 105-person incident). This incident showcased the power of terror politics and the irresistible system of the Governor-General's office to the public, and it seems that the word 'unruly' (不逞) had already been ingrained as a significant term for quite some time, leading to the treatment of anti-Japanese forces in Gando as vagrants in 1920.

The 105-person incident was an event in 1911 where the Japanese Governor-General of Korea, Terauchi Masatake (寺内正毅, 1852-1919), fabricated an assassination plot against himself while investigating a plan to train independence fighters in the northwestern region, a hotbed of anti-Japanese sentiment, thereby dismantling the Sinminhoe (New People's Association) in the northwestern provinces (Pyeongan-do and Hwanghae-do). It is unclear whether the intellectual society in the northwestern region, where Western learning had been introduced early on and Christian and national education grew simultaneously, was part of the original goal of white missionary activities. How Western powers behind imperial Japan viewed this incident is open to re-examination. The photographs of the 105-person incident are from the collection of the son of Samuel Austin Moffett (馬布三悅, 1864-1939), an American Presbyterian missionary, known by his Korean name Mapo Samyeol. Moffett was appointed as a missionary in 1889 and arrived in Joseon in 1890. He initially worked in Seoul before moving to Pyongyang in 1893 to focus on missionary work in the northern region. Moffett's seminary continued for 17 years and became the predecessor of the current Soongsil University, but not all of this happened on the Korean Peninsula. Can the public realize the reasons why colonialist historical views and colonial media existed? Moffett alone taught people to believe in the Western God, and he was a living witness who saw the 'enlightened ones' of the northwestern region, who had grown into a national movement force, being eliminated by imperial Japan. As long as actual events are diluted and fabricated, treated as fiction, and narratives reshaped to suit their tastes are recognized as real history, national mental illness is an imaginary historical game with no cure.

The Terauchi assassination fabrication case involved 105 people who received heavy sentences, with a total of over 700 arrests. Their confessions to assassinating the governor-general were entirely due to torture. Torture, a common investigative technique used to maintain power in modern Korean history, involved burning, waterboarding, searing, and stabbing, leading 105 individuals to confess their sins. However, colonial historiography obtained absolution by asserting that Joseon was originally a country that emphasized inhumane punishments like torture and assassination. Even if nose rings and earrings were torn off, bleeding, there is not much that can be done now. Many people don't even know what their faces originally looked like. A person's face holds their spirit, and that spirit is history. Having lost everything, what remains as a function of thought?

Instead of the stigma of 'disloyalty' (不逞) gained from the 105-person incident, the public certainly received news of the collapse of anti-Japanese organizations and the effects of terror politics. Since Western missionaries would not have taught the Korean people self-reliance, anti-Japanese sentiment would not have been beneficial to the United States, and the assumption of assassinating the governor-general would have been good news for both the United States and Japan. If we cannot read the past, we cannot understand what the rapidly accelerating dystopia means.

The two arrest photos from the 105-person incident above are from Moffett Korea Collection, the son of Sam-po Sam-yeol.

Let's summon a bit more of the history of such conspiracy theories with this one-line article from Dong-A Ilbo. The meaning is that a 'disloyal' (不逞) Joseon reader is immediately a traitor, a betrayer, a vagrant, and a potential criminal. This implies that Dong-A Ilbo, which published this article, also regarded its own people in that way. As Joseon people, the Dong-A Ilbo reporters themselves, the editor-in-chief, and the president all volunteered to be the priming water for 'Hell Joseon.' A nation that knelt and bowed its head before Japan and the forces hidden behind Japan, who had gradually encroached upon their homes, property, family history, and national history, and conformed to their methods and systems—that is what is expressed and remains in this article from July 24, 1920.

Let's pause here and broaden our perspective. A hundred years ago, Koreans were ignorant of international affairs, but now, with an even narrower view, does the March 1st Independence Movement still hold any value beyond a game story? The catalyst for this movement was the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, held after World War I, based on US President Woodrow Wilson's 'principle of national self-determination.' Korean students in Japan, who learned of this early, were the first to react to this global trend with the February 8th Declaration of Independence, which in turn sparked the March 1st Independence Movement among the people in Korea and Manchuria. However, the Russian Revolution, the March 1st Movement, and even the May Fourth Movement, which can be seen as its aftermath, are actually irrelevant. The point is that Koreans were not considered a 'nation' eligible for self-determination.

The Russian Revolution was the result of prepared forces and British machinations, and the March 1st independence demand in Joseon was a demonstration that, from the outset, blocked any possibility of attracting international attention. In the international community, Joseon was already a travel destination for Western dilettantes seeking materials that treated its demise as a foregone conclusion. This aspect, without hiding the conspiratorial viewpoint, deserves separate treatment, but now is not the time. Parents whose children read '3.1운동' as 'sam-jeom-il undong' (three-point-one movement) might call themselves patriotic conservatives. We should first ask them what Christianity and national suffering mean to them.

How has human civilization maintained its continuity? What appears to be led by grand institutions and administration is merely the fabrication of later generations; in reality, it is a virtual history built upon rape and torture, and the writings of censored scribes. Isn't it cowardice that we often say the world we live in is virtual, yet hope that the ground we stand on is not? Sakai, the Consul General in Gando, excessively consumed alcohol, women, and money as he traveled from Japan to Chongqing, Manchuria, and Beijing. To them, Chinese land was Korean land, Japanese land, a bonanza and a new frontier. That is why Shincheonji still exerts its influence, bringing shame upon the nation.

Armed Anti-Japanese Group in Gando

There is no way to eliminate them before obtaining China's consent for deployment.

Statement by Consul General Sakai of Gando

Sakai, the Japanese Consul General, stated that Koreans in Gando who harbor anti-Japanese sentiments have, since last year, established a base in the northern Gando region. They have recruited tens of thousands of young men, systematically taught them military manufacturing, and imported high-quality weapons from Russian extremists. Their base is quite strong, and the current police force is utterly incapable of controlling them. He added that unless the Chinese government's understanding is secured quickly and military deployment is requested, their roots can never be eradicated. (Gyeongseong Bureau)