Who Was Yu Gwan-sun? The Teenage Student Who Became a Symbol of Korea's March 1st Movement

Yu Gwan-sun was a Korean schoolgirl who took part in the March 1st Movement of 1919, a nationwide wave of mostly peaceful protests against Japanese colonial rule, and who died in Seoul's Seodaemun Prison in 1920 while still a teenager. After joining demonstrations in Seoul as a student, she went back to her home village and helped lead a large rally at the Aunae marketplace, where her parents were among those killed. Her refusal to stop protesting, even in prison, has made her one of the best-known figures of the Korean independence movement, often called "Korea's Joan of Arc".

Korea in 1919: the background

To understand her story, it helps to know the context. Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910, ending the short-lived Korean Empire, and governed it as a colony with strict assimilation policies. By 1919 several things had come together. After the First World War, US President Woodrow Wilson's talk of "self-determination" gave hope to people under colonial rule. Then, on 21 January 1919, the former Korean emperor Gojong died; officially the cause was natural, but many Koreans suspected he had been poisoned, and anger spread.

On 1 March 1919, a Declaration of Independence signed by 33 representatives of religious and civic groups was read publicly, and protests began in Seoul before spreading across the peninsula and to Korean communities abroad.

A girl from near Cheonan

Yu Gwan-sun was born on 16 December 1902 near Cheonan, in South Chungcheong Province, the second of three children. Her family were Protestant Christians, influenced by her grandfather and an uncle, and that church connection shaped her education.

She went to Seoul to study at Ewha Haktang, a mission school for girls that later became Ewha Womans University. She attended on a scholarship that required graduates to work as teachers. In 1919 she joined a student group, the Ewha Literary Society, encouraged by one of her teachers.

Marching in Seoul

When the protests broke out, students were among the most active participants. On 5 March 1919 Yu marched to Namdaemun, the great south gate of Seoul, and was detained by police until missionaries from her school secured her release.

On 10 March the colonial government ordered schools to close. Three days later Yu left Seoul and returned to her village, Jiryeong-ri. Instead of keeping her head down, she brought the movement home with her.

The Aunae marketplace, 1 April 1919

Market days were natural gathering points in rural Korea, and on 1 April 1919, which was the first day of the third month in the lunar calendar, about 3,000 people gathered at the Aunae marketplace to call for independence. By around one o'clock in the afternoon, Japanese military police opened fire. Nineteen people were killed, including Yu's father and mother, and Yu herself was arrested.

Her brother was arrested too; she met him while being held at police stations in Cheonan and Gongju. According to the account, she was offered a lighter sentence if she confessed and cooperated, but she refused and remained silent despite harsh treatment.

Trial and prison

On 9 May 1919 she was sentenced to five years in prison for sedition and violating security laws. On 30 June the appeal court in Gyeongseong, as Seoul was then called, set her sentence at three years. She was held in Seodaemun Prison in Seoul. In April 1920 her term was reduced to one and a half years as part of a reduction linked to a royal wedding.

Even in prison she did not stop. On 1 March 1920, the first anniversary of the movement, she and fellow inmates planned a protest inside the prison. Afterwards she was tortured and held in isolation.

Death in Seodaemun Prison

Yu Gwan-sun died in prison on 28 September 1920. Sources give her age as 17 or 18 depending on how it is counted. The authorities at first refused to release her body. The American missionary principals of her school, Lulu Frey and Jeannette Walter, pressed for its return, and her funeral was held quietly on 14 October 1920 at Jeongdong Church in Seoul.

She was buried in a public cemetery in Itaewon, but the grave later disappeared when a Japanese military base was built on the site, so her grave near Cheonan today is empty. Rumours about the condition of her body circulated after her death; Walter stated in a 1959 interview that it had not been mutilated.

What the movement achieved

The March 1st Movement did not bring independence, and no foreign government officially supported it. The number of victims is still debated: Japanese officials reported 553 people killed by mid-April 1919, while the Korean historian Park Eun-sik estimated over 7,500 deaths, and modern databases give figures in between. But the movement energised the independence cause, led to the creation of a Korean Provisional Government in exile, and pushed the colonial government to allow limited cultural freedoms. Today 1 March is a national holiday in South Korea.

How Korea remembers her

South Korea named her a martyr in 1951 and awarded her the Order of Merit for National Foundation posthumously in 1962. A shrine to her was built in 1972 near Cheonan, and in 2018 The New York Times included her in its "Overlooked" series of obituaries for remarkable people it had not covered at the time of their deaths. Her name is spelled 유관순 or 류관순 in Korean, and you may see "Ryu" or "Yu" in English.

For many Koreans she represents something simple and powerful: a young student who believed her voice mattered.

Learn with Yu Gwan-sun

Five English phrases for talking about protest and history:

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to take part in	to join an activity or event	She took part in the March 1st Movement.
to stand up for	to defend a belief or right	Yu stood up for Korean independence.
to refuse to back down	to keep going despite pressure	Even in prison, she refused to back down.
to be sentenced to	to receive an official punishment from a court	She was sentenced to three years.
to pay tribute to	to show respect and admiration	Every year Koreans pay tribute to her.

Some Korean words from the story: 독립 (dok-rip, independence), 만세 (man-se, "long live!", the cry of 1919), 학생 (hak-saeng, student).

Try this: Write three sentences about someone who stood up for something they believed in, using "take part in", "stand up for" and "refuse to back down".