I plan to pick up the New York Times Archives for 1919 – the year of the March 1st Movement against Japanese occupation and annexation of Korea.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 left Japan as the single foreign authority of considerable influence in Korea — which is why I’ve been posting news archive quotes from that conflict here at GI Korea’s.

Japan officially annexed Korea in 1910.

This post will be my first look into the time period of Korea’s historic movement against the colonial authorities of Japan. I started at the beginning of the year, 1919, as a convenient date to see what was going on openly the weeks and months before the Korean opposition movement emerged full blown:

Jan 26 1919 – Headline: Korea Appeals to Wilson for Freedom

Can you think of a nation today appealing to the US for freedom? at least that our media would report… Democracy has planted solid roots in nations around the world over the past decades, but in that time, the notion of America’s role in that history has faded more and more from view…

[Lead paragraph] President Wilson in Paris has received a cablegram of appeal for a consideration of Korea’s claims to autonomy from a committee representing Korea, in which at least one name was familiar to the former President of Princeton University. This name was that of Syngman Rhee, PH.D., who received that degree from “Old Nassau” while Mr. Wilson was its President.

Korea, the Hermit of the Orient, is today crying for recognition by the Peace Conference and for the right to that self-determination by small and subject nationalities which was made one of the most conspicuous of the Fourteen Points of President Wilson.

[The Time magazine cover is from much later in Rhee's life - after he became South Korea's first president.]

Like the United Nations of today, those Fourteen Points and international consensus back in the day meant nothing — with out the will to enforce the points of agreement.

The article — goes on for a number of paragraphs to lay out the claim that Japan’s rapidly growing population created an imperative to expand.

The paragraphs also describe this as the imperative that caused the Russo-Japanese War – whose news I’ve been covering here at GI Korea’s month to month as well…

…for Korea, in order to save herself from Russian aggression, had formed an alliance with Japan for mutual protection. In return for this alliance Japan guaranteed to Korea her independence and territorial rights, but, following the winning of the war by Japan, the Korean Peninsula was formally annexed to the empire of the Mikado, after a protectorate had first been established, the Emperor Li was dethroned and became a ward of Japan and the real menace to China was born.

The article next mentions items that come up for debate on the K-blogs each year:

Throughout Korea the Japanese have built magnificent roads and modern railroads. They have erected, at an expose of millions of yen, mansions for their higher dignitaries and splendid houses for their Government employers, all of these improvements having been made at the expense of the Korean taxpayer. All of which is not particularly gratifying to the Korean.

Then back to the supposed strategic rationale:

…the rapidly increasing population of Japan and a natural diversion of the increment will send it northward into Manchuria and thence southward into China. This is the end toward which he points the warning finger-that Japan is forced by nature to defend herself from annihilation by extending her boundaries along the course of least resistance, and this course runs through Manchuria into China, with its boundless area and unlimited opportunities.

Next comes the mention of the US and th “good offices” clause and the US role in the peace deal in 1905 that ended the Russo-Japanese War.

Next, it deals with Christianity in Korea and the Japanization effort of the colonial government and how it influenced the church.