Abstract

As you are well aware, the March First Movement, which occurred on March 1, 1919, is regarded as the most significant national uprising waged by the Korean people against the Japanese brutal colonial rule after the Japanese imperialist forcefully annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910. The March First Movement spread with great repercussion at home and abroad, to Manchuria, Russia, and even to America. The March First Movement of Hwasung was one of the most phenomenal national resistance movements in Korea. It is because the resistance movement in Hwasung was highly organized and the brutal atrocities committed by the Japanese gendarmes were made pubic throughout the world for the first time. The birthplace of the resistant movement of Hwasung was Sagang, Songsan-myon. The resistance movement in Songsan is characterized as follows: First, the movement led by the intelligentsia and farmers showed violent tendencies. One example was executing a Japanese police superintendent. Second, the movement spread focusing on the coastal area such as Wochung-myon and Changan-myon. Third, every aspects of the general public got involved in the movement. By social status, the rich landlords, middle class farmers, landowning farmers, and tenant farmers all joined the movement. By age, from teenagers to people in their 50s attended the movement. By education, Confucian scholars, the new intelligentsia, and the illiterate on got involved in the movement. By religion, most of the attendants were atheists. Therefore, the March First Movement of Songsan-myon was the first freedom fighting movement carried out in the Hwasung-kun area and served as a catalyst to trigger the March First Movement of Hwasung, which became the most remarkable revolutionary activities in Korea.