Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 72

Document C
Source: The Korean Overseas Information Service. Handbook of Korea. JungMoonSa Printing.
Seoul, Korea, 2003.
“Expansion of Japanese colonial capital during the 1920s resulted in increased poverty and
depression for Koreans, and it caused the strengthening of the resistance struggle….The exiled
Provisional Government of Korea made efforts to appear before the great powers at the League of
Nations Conference in Geneva in 1932 , but leading countries with colonies of their own refused to
discuss the Korean problem.”
Document D
Source: Association of Korean History Teachers. Korea through the Ages, Volume II. Center for
Information on Korean Culture. Academy of Korean Studies, South Korea, 2005.
Yu Gwansun (1904-1920) staged demonstrations in Seoul on March 1, 1919 and organized follow-up
movements. She was arrested by the Japanese police during a demonstration. Yu faced her trial in a
dignified way after being brutally tortured. Even when she was imprisoned, she shouted the slogan
of the movement, “Long live an independent Korea” to encourage her fellow compatriots. She later
died in prison at age sixteen.
Document E
Source: Park, Linda Sue. When My Name was Keoko. Random House, New York, 2002.
“All our lessons were in Japanese. We studied Japanese language, culture and history. Schools
weren’t allowed to teach Korean history or language. Hardly any books or newspapers were
published in Korean. People weren’t even supposed to tell old Korean folktales….We still spoke
Korean at home, but on the streets we always had to speak Japanese. You never knew who might
be listening, and the military guards could punish anyone they heard speaking Korean.”
Document F
Source: Kim, Richard E. Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood. University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1988.
“Then, we moved on along the line of people standing in the snow. Some shake hands with my
father; most of them merely bow, without words. We are outside the gate. There, too, a long line
has formed and is still forming, all the way down the hill, past the gray stucco Methodist church,
and I am thinking. ‘We lost our names; I lost my name; and these people are all going to lose their
names too, when they walk into the police station….”
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