Long Live Korean Independence! 1

Long Live Korean Independence!

It was freezing cold on the day when Father left home. I waited and waited for his safe return home all

during the Spring months. Our family did not have enough food to eat, not enough clothing to wear and

not enough heat to keep warm. Winter was a cruel enemy to my shivering family.

Grandma worried that, with the spring thaw, my birthday would come upon her. On my birthday in the

spring, flowers broke out everywhere and Father would be less cold in the north somewhere, but

celebrating my birthday without Father and at a time when our food stock would be at the rock bottom.

Even though my family's food supply ran out late in the Spring, Grandma managed to come out with

bowls of white rice and a cooked chicken egg on my birthday - until that year. Even a single egg was a

major food item in our household, as our daily menu was mainly bowls of thin gruel at best. Celebrating

my birthday was the farthest thing on my mind in that Spring. I was still in shock from my father's arrest

and I was worried sick about my father's being away for so long.

Not long after my father's departure, the March First Movement erupted on March 1, 1919. All the pent

up angers and sorrows of living under the Japanese imperialists for ten long years exploded on that day.

In ten years after the annexation, Korea had become a gigantic dungeon, no better than those of the

Middle Ages. The Japanese colonists used naked military power to suppress the Korean people's

aspiration to become free again. The Japanese took way our freedom of press, freedom to hold meetings,

freedom to form organizations, and freedom to march. They took away our human rights and properties.

The Korean people formed secret organizations, independence fights, mass enlightenment activities, and

had built up considerable potential energy against the decade of plunder and exploitation by the Japanese.

Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists and other religious leaders, patriotic teachers and students had planned

and executed the March First Movement. The Kapsin Reform, Kaboh Peasants War, Patriotic Mass

Enlightenment and Righteous Army ensued one after another, and our nationalistic feelings were

sublimated and ripe for kinetic explosion, like a volcano letting out the pressure built up over the

years. Thus, at noon, March 1st in Pyongyang, church bells rang out in unison to signal the start of the

march. Several thousands students and citizens gathered at the front yard of Sung-duk Girls School

located at Jang-dae-jae. Declaration of Independence was read aloud and it was solemnly proclaimed that

Korea was a free nation. The crowd began the march shouting "Long Live Korean Independence", "Out

with the Japanese and their army". They were joined by tens of thousands of citizens.

The villagers of Mangyong-dae lined up in a file and marched into Pyongyang and joined the crowd of

marchers already there. We got up early on that day and ate our breakfast; all of us joined the march.

When we left the village, there were only a few hundred of us, but by the time we reached Pyongyang,

our rank swelled to several thousands. We beat on drums and gongs and marched toward Botong Gate,

shouting "Long Live Korean Independence!" at the top of our lungs.