This study analyzed Seodaemun Prison's Inmate Record Cards(6,259 cards) todiscuss the age, social status and occupation, offense and sentence, and relationshipsof 1,013 inmates who were confined at Seodaemun Prison because of the 3.1 Movementbetween 1...
This study analyzed Seodaemun Prison's Inmate Record Cards(6,259 cards) todiscuss the age, social status and occupation, offense and sentence, and relationshipsof 1,013 inmates who were confined at Seodaemun Prison because of the 3.1 Movementbetween 1919 and 1920.
The inmates(收監者) had a wide distribution of age from teens to the 60s. Inparticular, 42% were in their 20s and participated most actively. There were about70 kinds of occupations, from students, religious leaders, and teachers to merchants,business owners, and labor workers. They participated in the 3.1 Movement in theirown ways. Chiefs, secretaries, and assistant police officers of town office, who wereconsidered the pawns of the Japanese Imperial Rule, also participated in the Movement,manifesting that it was a national movement for the people of Joseon.
The inmates were recorded as political criminals who ‘violated the Security Act(保安法 違反), etc.’ and over 99% of them were sentenced to over 6 months in prison,which was longer than the sentences for general crimes. Japan treated them as politicalcriminals because the 3.1 Movement was considered as a reformation movement.
The inmates' mutual relationships were tracked to find that they were mostly relatedby kinship(血緣), regionalism(地緣), school relation(學緣) background. In other words,the 3.1 Movement quickly spread nationwide through kinship, regionalism, schoolrelation as an active movement.
This study concluded that the 3.1 Movement was not a mere ‘movement’, buta political reformation movement to reform the Japanese Imperial Rule.