Yu Gwan-sun: The Cell Is Named After Her, and the Gate Is Where She Started

At a glance

• 🏫A scholarship student at Ewha

  She transferred into Ewha Haktang in 1916 on a missionary's recommendation and entered the higher course on 1 April 1918.

• 🕯️She began at Daehanmun

  On 1 March 1919 five students left the dormitory in white mourning, performed the mourning cry before Daehanmun and joined the march toward Namdaemun.

• ⚖️She refused to appeal

  Given three years on appeal, she alone among those tried did not go to the high court, because she did not recognise Japanese judicial authority.

• ❓The cause of death was never established

  One view estimates hypothyroidism after severe beating and malnutrition, read from the photograph on her prison record.

The path runs through a church and a road.

She was born at Jiryeong-ri in Mokcheon-gun, South Chungcheong — today Yongdu-ri in Byeongcheon-myeon, Cheonan — the second daughter among five children of Yu Jung-gwon and Yi So-je. The family had become Protestant early, through her grandfather Yu Yun-gi and her uncle Yu Jung-mu.

Her home district had been, before the railway was laid, the road connecting Seoul with Gongju, and missionaries had concentrated their preaching there, so many churches had grown up.

In 1916 she transferred into the ordinary course at Ewha Haktang as a fee-paid scholarship student on the recommendation of the missionary Alice Hammond Sharp, who often called at the Jiryeong-ri church, and lived in the dormitory with Seo Myeong-hak, Yi Jeong-su and her cousin Yu Ye-do. She graduated the ordinary course on 18 March 1918 and entered the first year of the higher course on 1 April.

The school was already political. Since the treaty of 1905, Ewha's Imunhoe had stopped lessons at three o'clock every afternoon to hold prayer meetings for national independence, discussion meetings on the situation, and lectures by invited outside speakers — and Yu, a student there, was an active member.

When Gojong died on 21 January 1919, the students put on mourning of their own accord and the school went into recess. On 28 February a regular meeting resolved that the whole school would actively join the shouting.

Then the detail that changes how you look at Deoksugung. Ewha students Sin Teuk-sil and No Ye-dal took part directly in the March 1st demonstration at Pagoda Park. Yu, then in the first year of the higher course, formed a "five-person death squad" with Seo Myeong-hak, Kim Bok-sun, Kim Hui-ja and Guk Hyeon-suk; they put on white mourning dress, slipped out of the dormitory, performed the mourning cry in front of Daehanmun, and then joined the procession heading for Namdaemun.

Daehanmun is the main gate of Deoksugung, where the changing of the guard is re-enacted for tourists several times a day. The mourning cry there was for the dead emperor; the march began immediately after.

She was caught and soon released. When a nationwide school-closure order came, she went home. The movement itself is told separately.

Back home she told her father Yu Jung-gwon, Jo In-won and other village elders the news of the demonstrations in Seoul, produced the declaration of independence she had hidden and brought with her, and discussed a plan for an independence demonstration at Byeongcheon market. She and her cousin Yu Ye-do made every preparation, including the Taegukgi for the residents to carry.

On 1 April 1919, together with Jo In-won, Yu Jung-gwon and Yu Jung-mu, she led a demonstration at Byeongcheon market in which several thousand people took part. This was the Aunae independence demonstration. On that day nineteen people including Yu's parents were killed at the scene, and more than thirty were badly injured.

She was sixteen, and both her parents died in front of her.

Arrested as a leader, she was held at Gongju prison, where she met her elder brother Yu U-seok, imprisoned for leading a demonstration at the Gongju Yeongmyeong School. On 9 May the Gongju district court sentenced her to five years; she was transferred with the others who received heavy sentences to the Gyeongseong appellate court, which on 30 June gave her three years. Everyone tried with her appealed to the high court. Yu, who did not recognise the judicial authority of imperial Japan, did not appeal.

Refusing to appeal is not a legal tactic. It is a statement that the court has no standing, made by a schoolgirl who thereby kept her sentence.

This is the part that happened where visitors now stand.

At Seodaemun Prison, together with Yi Sin-ae and Eo Yun-hui, she held a ceremony for the first anniversary of the March 1st Movement at two o'clock in the afternoon on 1 March 1920 and began a demonstration inside the prison. Some three thousand prisoners responded strongly, and the shouting carried outside; crowds gathered around the prison until tram traffic was paralysed, and mounted police were sent out. For this Yu and many other patriots were severely tortured.

Three thousand voices inside a wall, and a tram line stopped outside it. That is the size of the event the basement is named for.

On 28 April 1920 a special amnesty for the wedding of Prince Yeong reduced her term to one year and six months. But from the long-continued torture and from malnutrition, at twenty past eight in the morning on 28 September 1920, Yu Gwan-sun died, aged 18.

🔴 The record is careful here, and so is this article. The direct cause of her death was never established. There is a view that estimates the main cause as hypothyroidism arising from the after-effects of severe beating and malnutrition, read from the photograph on her prison record card.

Ewha Haktang demanded that the prison authorities hand over her body, and the Japanese refused. The principal of Ewha, Miss Jeanette Walter, protested strongly, saying she would report the fact to American newspapers and appeal to world opinion. In the end the Japanese released the body on condition that foreign media were not informed and that the funeral be conducted extremely quietly.

On 12 October 1920 her body came back to Ewha and the students met it weeping. It was laid in the school gatehouse and a Severance doctor was called to prepare it. On 14 October the school held a small funeral at the Itaewon common cemetery, officiated by the Reverend Kim Jong-u of Jeongdong Church. Afterwards, when the Japanese developed the Itaewon cemetery as a military site, her grave was moved to the Miari common cemetery — and then lost.

There is no grave to visit. That absence is a fact about the colonial period, not an oversight.

A memorial society was formed in 1947; she was selected as a martyr in 1951; the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Independence Medal, was conferred in 1962 and the Republic of Korea Medal in 2019. A memorial shrine was built in 1972 at Tapwon-ri in Byeongcheon-myeon, Cheonan, where she had lived; the Yu Gwan-sun Memorial Hall was completed at Ewha Girls' High School in Seoul in 1974; her birthplace at Yongdu-ri was restored in 1991; and in 1996 Ewha Girls' High School conferred an honorary diploma.

The honorary diploma is dated 1996. She had entered the higher course in 1918 and never finished the year.

Places connected to Yu Gwan-sun

• 

  Seodaemun Prison History Hall

  Where she led the in-prison demonstration of 1 March 1920 and where she died. The basement cell still carries her name.

• 

  Deoksugung Palace

  Daehanmun, its main gate, is where the five students performed the mourning cry before joining the march.

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