Recalling 'manse' rallies that took place within Seodaemun Prison's walls

Statues of independence fighters Lee Hyo-jung and Park Jin-hong from Dongduk Girls' High School are inside a women's cell at Seodaemun Prison History Hall in northwestern Seoul, Friday / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

• Published Feb 27, 2019 6:22 PM KST
• Updated Feb 27, 2019 6:46 PM KST

This is the final in a three-part series on historic sites in Seoul related to the March 1 Independence Movement in 1919 and other activities for Korea's independence during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

By Lee Suh-yoon

With the centennial anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement taking place Friday, Seodaemun Prison in northwestern Seoul is bustling with activity.

“We're getting weekend-volume visitors on weekdays now,” Lee Seung-yun, a curator at Seodaemun Prison History Hall, told The Korea Times during a visit last Friday.

Young children, students, and a group of military servicemen milled about the stark grounds and wandered by the cold brick cells of the former prison, now a walk-through museum symbolizing Japanese brutality during its 1910-45 occupation of Korea.

Three thousand and seventy people were imprisoned here in 1919 for their participation in the March 1 Independence Movement. They were mostly charged with violating security laws and given sentences of up to 12 years imprisonment.

The sudden influx of political prisoners overcrowded cells and taxed prison resources and personnel. Prison guards could not silence the sudden collective outbursts of “manse!” (short for “Long live an independent Korea”) from the activists packed behind the bars, according to records.

“In a new movie on activist Yu Gwan-sun, she organizes a one-year anniversary manse rally inside Seodaemun Prison on March 1, 1920,” Lee said, waving her hand at cell 8, where Yu stayed inside the women's prison building located near the main entrance. “But it wasn't actually the first such rally. Several manse rallies took place inside the prison then ― the Japanese simply could not keep all the jailed activists under control.”

The Korea Times' vernacular sister paper the Hankook Ilbo recently unearthed the lyrics of a song Yu sang with other female prisoners while continuing their struggle behind bars. It goes as follows:

Whenever the seven knelt to pray to the Lord wearing mud-colored uniforms. Whenever they were thrown two plates with a half-bean rice ball through the window. They prayed with tears of blood. They prayed with tears of blood. Korea lives. Korea lives. Mountains are moved. The sea boils. Korea lives. Korea lives.

On April 28, 1920 ― the day of Crown Prince Yi Un's arranged marriage to Japanese Princess Masako Nashimoto ― over 2,150 political prisoners were freed from Seodaemun Prison on a special pardon while others had their jail terms reduced.

“It was a very strategic move by Japan ― painting a symbolic union of the two countries under the Japanese Empire on one hand while easing the unmanageable situation inside the prison on the other,” Lee explained.

But the royal pardons came too late. Records show dozens of March 1 activists perished within the prison walls from torture, the winter cold and infectious diseases.

A multi-purpose prison

Seodaemun Prison housed both convicted and yet-to-be convicted political prisoners. For the latter, police questioning and court hearings all took place within the prison walls. Dispatched police officers carried out interrogations in underground chambers that doubled as torture rooms. Today, mannequins and medieval-looking instruments produce a

vivid rerun

of the suffering that took place there.

A self-sufficient facility, the prison subjected its prisoners to forced labor. Prisoners spent most of their time at one of the 12 textile and clothing factories built alongside the prison buildings. All were taken down ― now used as adjacent parking lots ― except for one building preserved along the northern edge. Female and male prisoners slept and worked in separate quarters.

In the middle of the grounds stands Gyeokbyeokjang, an enclosed fan-shaped “exercise yard” partitioned with rows of brick walls that prevented prisoners in different cells from talking to each other during brief sun-basking sessions.

A grassroots movement

The preserved demographic data of the political prisoners taken into Seodaemun Prison in 1919 provides new historical insight for the March 1 Independence Movement.

On Monday, Seodaemun-gu Office and Seodaemun Prison jointly published surviving records of 1,014 out of the 3,070 political prisoners who passed through its gates in the wake of the 1919 movement.

The three-volume compilation of prisoner registration cards ― carrying mug shots, date of birth, and profession ― strips down the popular belief that the movement was led mostly by students and intellectuals.

Of the recorded prisoners, 54 percent were farmers. Students, religious leaders and teachers together made up 26 percent. The prisoners came from all corners of society, totaling 80 professions including factory workers, nurses, district officials, police officers, money lenders and even carriage drivers.

“Schools and religious circles acted as command centers during the initial planning stages of the March 1 Independence Movement,” Lee said. “But what brought about the movement's dramatic expansion afterward was grassroots activism based on regional and familial ties.”

People in their 20s made up almost 40 percent of these recorded prisoners. Only 33 of the 1,014 prisoners with remaining records were women, as female activists usually supported the rallies from the back rather than the frontlines which were more vulnerable to arrest. Around 230 were arrested for participating in rallies in regions that are now parts of North Korea.

Some of these prisoner registration cards are

on display

at Seodaemun Prison until April 21.