March 1st Movement Walk: Religion and the 1919 Uprising

On the afternoon of 1 March 1919, a group of men sat down to lunch in a private room of a restaurant in Insadong, read a document aloud, and then telephoned the Japanese police to tell them where they were.

The document was Korea’s Declaration of Independence. The men who signed it were not politicians, soldiers or aristocrats. They were a Cheondogyo patriarch, Protestant pastors and elders, and two Buddhist monks. The largest protest movement in Korea’s colonial history was organised, printed and distributed through religious networks, because under Japanese rule those were almost the only networks Koreans were allowed to have.

This walk follows that story through a few square kilometres of Jongno. This is Part 5 of our Faith in Korea series.

Why were religious leaders behind the March 1st Movement?

Because religion was the one form of Korean organisation the colonial government still tolerated. After 1910, Korean political groups had been dissolved and almost all Korean-language newspapers closed. Churches, Cheondogyo congregations and temples had buildings, members across the country, printing presses and money.

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes how it came together. From late 1918, Cheondogyo leaders around Son Byeong-hui agreed on three principles for a movement: it should be popular, unified and non-violent. They wanted to include all the religious communities. Christian leaders came in through Lee Seung-hun, an elder from the northwest; Choe Rin brought in the Buddhist monk Han Yong-un. Han tried to bring in the Confucian scholars as well, but failed. The declaration itself was drafted by the writer Choe Nam-seon.

✍️ The 33 national representatives, by faith

Source: Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, entry on the March 1st Declaration of Independence.

천도교 (Cheondogyo), “the religion of the Heavenly Way”, is the successor of Donghak, the 19th-century Korean faith behind the peasant uprising of 1894. It is covered in our guide to the religions born in Korea. In 1919 it was the richest and best-organised of the three, and it paid for much of the movement.

The walking route

The route runs from north to south: from the school room where the plan began, through the religious buildings that carried it, to the two places where the declaration was read. Distances are our walking estimates.

🚶 March 1st Movement walk, Jongno (about 3–3.5 km core route, 2–3 hours)

Start at Anguk Station (Line 3) and walk north up Gyedong-gil to the Jungang High School gate, about 1 km and 15 minutes, mostly uphill. If you only have an hour, start at stop 2.

1. Jungang High School: the 3·1 Memorial Hall

In January 1919 a Korean student from Tokyo, Song Gye-baek, came to the night-duty room of Jungang School to see the teacher Hyeon Sang-yun and the principal Song Jin-u. He brought news of the Korean students’ independence declaration planned in Tokyo, and a draft of it. The meetings that followed in that room, and at nearby houses in Gye-dong, started the chain of contacts between Cheondogyo, the Christians and the Buddhists.

The duty room has been restored as the 삼일기념관 (3·1 Memorial Hall), and a monument erected in 1973 stands beside it. Jongno-gu lists it as open 09:00–18:00 and free. It is inside a working school, so be discreet, and expect access to be limited during school hours.

📍 Open in Naver Map

2. Cheondogyo Central Temple

The red-brick hall on Samil-daero, with its green-capped towers, is the headquarters of Cheondogyo. Work began in 1918 under Son Byeong-hui, paid for by donations from members, and according to the Korea Heritage Service the money left over from the building fund went to the March 1st Movement. Construction stopped during the uprising and the building was finished in 1921; it was one of the three largest buildings in Seoul at the time. It is a Seoul-designated Tangible Heritage. After liberation, Kim Gu reportedly said in this hall that without Cheondogyo there would have been no Provisional Government.

📍 Open in Naver Map

3. The Boseongsa site, Susong Park

The little park across from Jogyesa’s back gate is where the declaration was printed. 보성사 (Boseongsa) was a Cheondogyo-owned printing house run by Lee Jong-il, one of the signatories. In the last days of February 1919 it ran off the declaration, 21,000 copies by the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture’s count (other accounts give 35,000), and they were carried across the country from 28 February. The colonial authorities burned the press down on 28 June 1919, according to Metro Seoul. A 6.35 m sculpture of three figures marks the spot.

📍 Open in Naver Map

4. Jogyesa

The Buddhist contribution to 1919 was small in numbers and large in character. Han Yong-un, a monk, poet and reformer, is the signatory Koreans remember most warmly; the other Buddhist signatory, Baek Yong-seong, was a Seon master from Haeinsa. The modern temple here began in 1910 as Gakhwangsa, a central Buddhist temple for Seoul at a time when Buddhism was trying to rebuild itself, and it became the head temple of the Jogye Order. Step into the courtyard and the main hall; it is free and open daily.

📍 Open in Naver Map

5. Seungdong Church

Down a lane off Insadong-gil is a modest brick Presbyterian church where student leaders, led by Kim Won-byeok, met in February 1919 to plan how students would join the movement, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The early brick church building is a Seoul-designated Tangible Heritage. For the wider story of Korean Protestantism, and why Seoul now has the world’s biggest church, see our guide to Korean Protestantism.

📍 Open in Naver Map

6. Taehwagwan site: the 3·1 Independence Declaration Square

Taehwagwan was a restaurant. The signatories had been expected at Tapgol Park, but gathered here instead, reportedly to keep the reading from turning into a violent clash in the crowd. The site is now the Taehwa Building, and in front of it the Seoul city government opened the 3·1독립선언광장 (3·1 Independence Declaration Square) on 15 August 2019, in the centenary year.

📍 Open in Naver Map

7. Tapgol Park

The crowd was waiting at Tapgol Park, often called Seoul’s first modern public park, built on the site of the Buddhist temple Wongaksa. When the signatories did not appear, students read the declaration themselves from the octagonal pavilion and led the crowd into the streets shouting “Manse!”. Within weeks the protests had spread to the whole country.

The park is a Historic Site. Inside are the pavilion, bronze reliefs of the protests, a statue of Son Byeong-hui, a memorial to Han Yong-un, and the marble ten-storey pagoda of Wongaksa, a National Treasure, under a glass shelter. Today it is also a favourite spot of Seoul’s elderly men, which gives it a lived-in feel that no museum could.

📍 Open in Naver Map

8. Optional: Jeongdong First Methodist Church

Korea’s first Methodist church, founded in 1885, sits in Jeongdong near Deoksugung, about 2 km southwest of Tapgol Park (or two stops on Line 1 to City Hall). Its Bethel Chapel of 1897 is a Historic Site. Its pastor Lee Pil-ju was among the 33, and the student activist Yu Gwan-sun, from Ewha school next door, worshipped here. According to church tradition, she and her classmates secretly printed flags and declarations in the tiny bellows room behind the pipe organ. Her funeral was held here in 1920. Our Jeongdong walk covers the rest of the neighbourhood.

📍 Open in Naver Map

When is the best time to do this walk?

Any weekday morning, when the churches and the temple are quiet and the school is easier to approach. On 1 March itself, Independence Movement Day (삼일절 Samiljeol) is a national holiday, and Tapgol Park and the square hold commemorations; the atmosphere is special, but expect crowds and closed roads.

It is worth pausing, at the end, on how strange the coalition was. Cheondogyo had grown out of Donghak, “Eastern Learning”, founded in opposition to the Western Learning of the Catholic missions. Protestant missions had taught their converts to reject shamanic rites and the worship of images. Buddhist monks had been barred from entering the capital for much of the Joseon dynasty. In the winter of 1919 their leaders put their names on the same page and went to prison together.