Korea Under Colonial Rule
Inside Gyeongbokgung Palace’s grounds, brick and scaffolding still surrounded the new Government-General headquarters. Its dedication ceremony was set for October 1 — exactly fourteen days away. But by a strange coincidence, that same October 1 was also the date set for something else entirely: the premiere of a film called “Arirang” at the Dansungsa Theater on Jongno street, written, directed, and starred in by a young filmmaker named Na Woon-gyu. The colonial government’s new palace of stone, and the anguished cry of a fictional young man driven mad after living through the March 1st Movement, were about to open on the very same day under the same Gyeongseong sky — an irony historians would return to again and again.This same month, the September issue (issue No. 30) of the women’s magazine “Sin Yeoseong” (“New Woman”) reached newsstands. Aimed at both schoolgirls and homemakers, the magazine was scheduled to suspend publication the following month — one more voice speaking to Korean women about to fall quiet, at least for a while.The courts, too, were far from idle. The Gyeongseong District Court’s investigation into the Korean Communist Party case — which had swept up figures including Kang Dal-yeong, arrested that July — continued through this period, and students detained after the June 10th Movement were still awaiting their verdicts.
East Asia in Turmoil
South of the capital, in the port city of Mokpo, workers at an oil-pressing factory remained on strike. What had begun in January with demands for higher wages and shorter hours had stretched past eight months, surviving both the company’s attempts at conciliation and pressure from the police. Their persistence would later be remembered as one of the notable labor struggles of the decade.Women’s organizations across the peninsula were quietly growing as well. Young women’s associations in Gyeongseong were preparing to merge into a unified body that winter, while the Korean YWCA — with backing from the Chosun Ilbo — kept building its base of support through public events such as singing contests. The name “Geunuhoe,” the nationwide women’s coalition that would soon become a major force, had not yet been spoken. But its roots were already spreading, quietly, that autumn.
The World Stage
At a hotel in Thoiry, France, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann of Germany sat together for more than three hours. It was a direct continuation of what had begun just eight days earlier, when Stresemann took the podium in Geneva to mark Germany’s admission as a permanent member of the League of Nations. The two men discussed an early return of the Saar region, an early end to the occupation of the Rhineland, and German financial support for stabilizing the French franc. Historians would later describe the Thoiry meeting as both the high point and the effective endpoint of the “spirit of Locarno.”Across the Atlantic, a very different kind of news was breaking. A powerful hurricane made landfall in Miami, Florida that same day, devastating the city. Hundreds were killed and tens of thousands left homeless — a stark counterpoint to the language of diplomacy filling the pages next to it.
Colonial Parallels
Nineteen twenty-six was a year when empires everywhere were being tested from within. In British India, the Indian National Congress continued to press for greater self-government, its leaders using the courts and the press much as Korean activists did. In Ireland, barely four years removed from civil war, the young Free State was still defining what independence actually meant in practice. In the Philippines, under American administration, calls for full independence were growing louder in the legislature even as Washington held firm. Each of these colonial and post-colonial societies shared something with Gyeongseong that September: a government building rising in stone as a statement of permanence, and a population whose own institutions — newspapers, magazines, courts, unions — kept working quietly underneath it, refusing to disappear.
Person of the Day: Na Woon-gyu
At twenty-four, Na Woon-gyu was putting the finishing touches on the boldest project of his young career. He had written the screenplay, taken the director’s chair, and cast himself in the lead role of Choi Yeong-jin, a young man whose mind breaks after enduring the trauma of the March 1st independence movement. In two weeks, “Arirang” would open at Dansungsa — and go on to run for more than two years, drawing an estimated 150,000 viewers and becoming one of the most influential films in Korean cinema history, so charged with anti-colonial feeling that authorities later confiscated ten thousand promotional flyers and forced cuts to its lyrics. On September 17, none of that reception was certain yet. Na Woon-gyu was simply a filmmaker with fourteen days left before his film met its audience.
Understanding Daily Life
Early that morning, women moved through the back alleys near Jongno, shopping for the evening’s side dishes, while bob-haired schoolgirls hurried past them, books tucked under their arms, on their way to class. At schools like Baehwa and Chungshin, the day’s lessons were arithmetic and penmanship, while teachers were already thinking ahead to the autumn term beginning the following month. Homemakers traded copies of the new “Sin Yeoseong” issue and talked over its pages with their neighbors.As dusk fell, churches in Jeong-dong prepared for evening service, and a temple bell somewhere along Jongno rang out low over the rooftops. By nightfall, much of the city’s attention had already turned fourteen days ahead — to whichever grand opening, government or cinema, October 1 would bring first.
Century Mirror
In 1926, a handful of magazines like “Sin Yeoseong” spoke to Korean women — and that particular voice was about to go quiet for a season. Only a small minority of girls attended school at all. Organizations like the YWCA were still finding their footing, and the word “Geunuhoe” belonged to the future. A hundred years later, women’s media exists in the hundreds, schooling is effectively universal, and nationwide women’s organizations operate as a matter of course. The single schoolbook satchel of 1926 became the countless backpacks filling today’s classrooms.
Tomorrow’s Preview
Tomorrow, we record Saturday, September 18, 1926. Thirteen days remain until the Government-General building’s dedication — and Gyeongseong still doesn’t know what name will go up on the Dansungsa marquee first.
<저작권자 ⓒ 코리안투데이(The Korean Today) 무단전재 및 재배포 금지>
