Women’s History Month | Korean Freedom Fighter Yu Gwan-sun
March 1st marks the beginning of Women’s History Month, an opportunity to celebrate the contributions women have made to culture and society through the ages.
For Koreans, it’s also the anniversary of the March 1st Movement, or Sam-il (3-1) Undong. On this day in 1919, Koreans across the peninsula took a stand against Japanese colonial occupation. As peaceful protesters called for independence, an unlikely leader and activist emerged in 16 year old Yu Gwan-sun. As we honor her bravery as a symbol of Korea’s collective fight for freedom, we’re reminded of the North Korean women who are still fighting for free and full lives today.
The Korean Independence Movement
The Sam-il movement began with a declaration of independence issued by thirty-three Korean cultural and religious leaders - many of whom were young adults. In the face of great risk, they laid out a Korean vision of equality, internationalism, human happiness and world peace that is still relevant today. These daring words galvanized the nation, and peaceful protests erupted across the country over the coming weeks, with peasants, tradespeople, housewives, and scholars marching alongside one another. An estimated 2 million Koreans participated in these first public displays of resistance, fostering a sense of national unity; an awareness that each individual was not alone in their desire for freedom.
Ordinary Korean women played a crucial role in the grassroots movement. While traditional Confucian culture and Japanese education policy relegated women to the domestic sphere, they emerged as leaders in the demonstrations following March 1st. Along with freedom for their country, they sought social awakening and an improvement in the status of women.
Canadian journalist Frederick Arthur Mckenzie, who was working as a correspondent in Korea at the time, witnessed the historic culture shift. In his book, Korea’s Fight for Freedom, he recalls how “Female students were most active in Seoul. For instance, most of the people arrested in the morning of the 5th of March were girl students.”
Freedom Fighter Yu Gwan-sun
Yu Gwan-sun was one such student, a brilliant 16-year-old girl who attended Ewha Hakdang. There, she witnessed the beginnings of the Sam-il Movement and took part in the initial protests in Seoul. Yu and her classmates were detained by Japanese authorities, but missionaries from their school were able to negotiate their release.
Following March 1st, schools were shut down in an attempt to stop students and activists from coordinating further protests. Yu returned to her hometown of Cheonan, but her conviction for a free Korea did not waver. She smuggled a copy of the declaration of independence and went from village to village, spreading word about the Sam-il Movement. On March 31st, Yu climbed to the top of Mount Maebong and lit a beacon fire, signaling to protestors that the time had come to make their stand.
The next day, 3,000 people gathered at Aunae marketplace in Cheonan shouting “Mansei!” and “Long live Korean independence!” Yu distributed homemade taegukgi, or Korean national flags, while rallying the villagers. When Japanese military police arrived to shut down the protest, they fired into the crowd and killed 19 people, including Yu’s parents.
The Sam-il Movement was eventually suppressed by Japanese authorities in mid-April. According to The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement by Park Eun-sik, there were an estimated 7,500 deaths, 16,000 injuries, and 46,000 arrests.
Yu Gwan-sun was arrested and convicted of sedition. She was sent to Seodaemun Prison but even then, she did not give up the fight for freedom. While incarcerated, she famously wrote:
“Even if my fingernails are torn out, my nose and ears are ripped apart, and my legs and arms are crushed, this physical pain does not compare to the pain of losing my nation. My only remorse is not being able to do more than dedicating my life to my country.”
On the one year anniversary of the Sam-il Movement, Yu organized a large-scale protest with her fellow inmates. They were brutally beaten and tortured for their defiance, and she was
transferred to an isolated underground cell. On September 28th, 1920, at the age of 17, Yu died from the injuries she suffered.
Yu never experienced a free Korea, yet she audaciously fought to see a different future in her lifetime. Twenty-five years after her passing, in August of 1945, Korea finally gained its independence from colonialism, but at the same time was split into North and South Korea. Today, Yu is remembered as Korea’s “Joan of Arc,” and the Sam-il Movement is celebrated annually as a national holiday in South Korea.
North Korea’s Fight For Freedom
As we honor the bravery of Yu Gwan-sun and other women in history, we’re also reminded of the millions of North Koreans still fighting for free and full lives. They’re engaging in everyday acts of resistance and transforming their country from the ground-up.
In North Korea, women are also the ones driving crucial engines of change. Grassroots market activity at the Jangmadang is primarily driven by women, shifting economic power away from the regime and into the hands of the people. Women are smuggling goods across the border, testing the limits of self-expression through fashion and beauty, and becoming breadwinners for their families. From outside of the country, resettled North Korean women are accelerating change as activists and entrepreneurs, sending money and information back home.
While North Korean women still face many obstacles and human rights abuses, they’re challenging the status quo and striving towards freedom.
Liberty in North Korea
LiNK is helping North Korean refugees to reach freedom, begin new lives, and become agents of change on this issue. We’re so excited and grateful to announce that 8 North Korean women have recently reached freedom through LiNK’s rescue routes!
During the three years of heightened surveillance and lockdowns in China, our field team has worked tirelessly to establish new routes and expand our network. We’re excited to finally gain momentum in this area of our rescue work!
Like Yu Gwan-sun, these North Korean women never gave up in their pursuit of freedom. Many of them had crossed the North Korean border into China years ago, but were unable to complete the journey during the pandemic. Now they’ll be able to take full authorship of their lives.
“I tried multiple times to escape China but ended up getting caught and spending time in a Chinese prison. When I left home this time, I knew it would be my last attempt to reach freedom. If I failed, I had planned to drink pesticide and kill myself - if I were caught it would do so much harm to my family in China and even in North Korea. This time with the help of LiNK, I successfully made it to safety. I threw away the pesticide after the journey. I risked my life to come here, and I will live in freedom to the fullest.”
- Yi Hyun, reached freedom through LiNK’s networks in 2023
Thank you for making this possible with your steadfast support, especially through a tumultuous past few years. North Koreans have not given up, and they will not until they achieve their freedom. We can stand with them as they change history.
Fundraise or donate to help rescue more North Korean refugees today!
North Korea 101: The History of North Korea
Watch The History of North Korea in Under 3 Minutes
If you want to go even further back, here's how North Korea came to be!
668 A.D: Ancient Korea
People have been living on the Korean peninsula since prehistoric times, slowly developing their own distinct culture and civilization. The Korean people were first united by the Silla Dynasty in 668 A.D. Since then, Korea has had to contend with the expansionist ambitions of its neighbors.
1910: Japan Colonizes Korea
In 1910, the Chosun Dynasty ended with Japan’s annexation and colonization of Korea. Koreans remember the Japanese colonial rule as a brutal experience. Resistance groups formed in Korea and China, mostly adopting leftist politics in reaction to the right-wing Japanese administration. Memories of the Japanese Imperial Administration’s oppression continue to haunt relations between the people of both Koreas and Japan today. Korea also began to modernize during this period, and the city of Pyongyang in particular became a vibrant center for Christianity and western culture.
1945: The Division of the Korean People
Following Japan’s defeat in 1945 the Soviet Union and United States agreed to split the post-war control of the Korean peninsula between themselves. On August 10, 1945 two young U.S. military officers drew up a line demarcating the U.S. and Soviet occupation zones at the 38th parallel. The divide should have been temporary, a mere footnote in Korea’s long history, but the emergence of the Cold War made this a seminal event. Seeking to ensure the maintenance of their respective influences in Korea, the U.S. and USSR installed leaders sympathetic to their own cause, while mistrust on both sides prevented cooperation on elections that were supposed to choose a leader for the entire peninsula. The United States handed control over the southern half of the peninsula to Syngman Rhee, while the Soviet Union gave Kim Il-sung power over the north. In 1948, both sides claimed to be the legitimate government and representative of the entire Korean people.
August 15, 1948
Syngman Rhee declares the formation of the Republic of Korea in Seoul, claiming jurisdiction over all of Korea..
September 8, 1948
Kim Il-sung declares the formation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Pyongyang, also claiming jurisdiction over all of Korea.
1950: The Korean War Begins
June 25, 1950
In 1950, Kim Il-sung attempted to unify Korea under his rule through military force, starting the Korean War. By far the most destructive and divisive event in Korean history, the war altered the life of almost every Korean person. Some historians claim that the U.S. military dropped more napalm on urban centers in Korea than Vietnam. The bombing campaigns reduced Pyongyang to rubble, and North Korea’s population was reduced by 10%.
July 27, 1953
Both sides eventually signed the armistice ending major hostilities in 1953. The DMZ (demilitarized zone) was established at almost the same position as the border before war broke out, separating millions of families caught on opposite sides of the border.
1953-1970s: Building a Stalinist State
From 1953 to the 1970s North Korea was considered by some outside observers to be a successful state. During this period, many North Koreans were actually better off than their southern brethren.
Kim Il-sung remodeled North Korean society along the lines of Juche—North Korea’s radically nationalistic ideology promoting Korean autonomy. The state-seized control of all private property and organizations. Officially, everything in the country, from businesses to the clothes on one’s back, belonged to the North Korean state. The regime rebuilt Pyongyang as a socialist capital and erected numerous monuments to Kim Il-sung, part of nationwide efforts to build a cult of personality to secure obedience by the people. The state took control of all media and restricted international travel. Kim Il-sung also worked constantly to centralize power under the Workers’ Party of Korea under his rule, and implemented a perpetual purge to rid the country of potential internal opponents to his rule.
Songbun
Massive inequalities began to emerge in North Korean society. The regime introduced the songbun system, which is still in place today. Under this system the entire population were sorted into different social classes according to one’s perceived loyalty to socialism and the regime. This classification determined the course of people’s lives. One’s songbun dictates the schools one can attend, the occupations one can be placed in, and even where one can live.At the time, the regime expelled around a quarter of the population of Pyongyang to the outer provinces for being of low songbun. For more on songbun, see this blog post.
The regime silenced anyone who opposed the system with extreme prejudice. Free speech became an offense punishable by imprisonment or even death. Worse, when one was arrested, up to three generations of their family would be sent to political prison camps. The regime instructed children to inform on their parents, and neighbors to inform on each other. Under these conditions, the North Korean people became fearful and distrusting of each other.
Stagnation
By the 1970s, the initial gains of postwar reconstruction and modernization had dissipated, and Kim Il-sung’s ideologically driven governance failed to produce prosperity. North Korea was also highly dependent on trade and aid from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, so when the economies of those countries began to decline it greatly affected North Korea’s economy. The people’s quality of life stagnated in the 1980s and began to decline until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, at which point the North Korean socialist command economy stopped functioning. Poor agricultural policies and environmental mismanagement increased vulnerability to extreme weather conditions and brought increasingly meager crop yields. To make matters worse, the regime had lost allies to fall back on when the economy failed. North Korea’s reserves were quickly running out. These were the circumstances the country found itself in when Kim Il-sung died in 1994.
Economic Collapse
Kim Jong-il took power in the post-Cold War era when North Korea was on the brink of disaster. Realizing the need to handle both external and internal threats, Kim Jong-il instituted a “military first” policy that prioritized the military and elites over the general population to an even greater extent than before. This policy made the coming crisis even worse for the average North Korean. Many North Koreans blame Kim Jong-il’s leadership for the famine. In reality, Kim Jong-il’s policies exacerbated a crisis that was long in the making.
The economic collapse and subsequent famine in North Korea had its peak in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is estimated that up to one million people died—roughly 5% of the population. Even many of those that survived suffered immensely. Starvation in childhood has stunted the growth of an entire generation of North Koreans. The North Korean government had to lower the minimum required height for soldiers because 145 cm (4 feet 9 inches) was too tall for most 16-17 year olds.
In Barbara Demick’s book “Nothing to Envy”, a North Korean doctor tells of how even she became desperately hungry. After fleeing to China, she discovered a bowl of food left out for a dog. Upon examining the white rice and generous chunks of meat, she concluded that “dogs in China ate better than doctors in North Korea.”
July 8, 1994
Kim Il-sung dies and his son Kim Jong-il takes over as leader.
Social Changes
The collapse of the command economy led to widespread social changes. The need for food drove the North Korean people away from the regime’s control, as when the government stopped providing food, the survivors found other ways to feed themselves. People foraged and sold anything they could to buy food at small, illegal markets that began to spring up, creating a process of bottom-up marketization. Some fled to China, leading to a wave of refugees from North Korea, while information about the outside world slowly began to flow back into the country. Some resorted to prostitution or crime. What was once a highly ordered and controlled society gave way to a disorganized and fluid society, with new independent paths to wealth and power for those who defied the regime and pursued the markets. These social effects would continue even after the worst of the famine had passed.
2000s: The People & Markets Prove Their Resilience
By the early 2000s, the people began to recover. The markets, which initially emerged as a survival mechanism, gradually grew to encompass a broader range of goods and services and became better established. The markets today are the major source of food for ordinary North Koreans. South Korea also adopted the “Sunshine Policy”, in which it gave unconditional aid to North Korea, and increased economic cooperation between the Koreas. Established in 2003, the Kaesong Industrial Complex just north of the DMZ was part of this policy and now allows South Korean companies to hire over 50,000 North Korean workers. China also gradually strengthened its economic relationship with North Korea, and today is by far North Korea’s most important economic and political partner. Nevertheless, ordinary North Koreans continue to face the severe challenges of chronic food shortages and grinding poverty, while their basic freedoms are curtailed by a repressive regime whose number one concern is staying in power.
Always uneasy about the growth of the markets, in late 2009 the regime made their most drastic attempt to restrain the markets to date: a currency reform aimed at wiping out private wealth. The resultant market disruption and rapid inflation reversed the people’s hard-won progress, and even regime projects were derailed. North Korean refugees have described this as a watershed moment in their diminishing belief in the regime, with anti-regime sentiment so strong that it even rose to the surface in some communities. It is now absolutely clear to the regime that the markets are a fact of life they must learn to live with.
December, 2011
Kim Jong-il dies and his son Kim Jong-un takes over as leader.
Now: The Third Kim Era
In December 2011, Kim Jong-il died and his son Kim Jong-un inherited control of the nation. Thought to be just 27 or 28 years old at the time of his succession, Kim Jong-un was largely unknown to the North Korean people as well as to the outside world. North Koreans that escaped the country in 2011 told us that there had not been a lot of propaganda about Kim Jong-un during that year. By contrast, Kim Jong-il was much better known to the North Korean people when he came to power in 1994.
In his first years in power, Kim Jong-un has implemented a new PR style that has portrayed him as a modern version of his grandfather, while purging, demoting and promoting regime officials to secure his power base. The new leadership also moved to crack down on illegal cross-border movement and the inflow of foreign media, increasing repression in the border regions and reducing the number of defectors who managed to make it to South Korea by almost half. Meanwhile, there have been signs of cautious experimentation with economic liberalization in order to adapt to the reality of the entrenched de facto market economy inside the country.
North Korea’s history is far from over. In fact, it may be entering its most interesting phase. The people are becoming increasingly empowered and the grassroots changes spreading across North Korean society are steadily increasing the people’s physical and psychological independence from the regime, making the system as it is currently structured unsustainable. We cannot know the pathway that North Korea’s change and opening will take, but change and opening will happen, and the future of North Korea will be increasingly driven by the North Korean people themselves.
