Seodaemun Prison: Eighty Years, and Two Different Histories

At a glance

• 🗓️1908 to 1987

  It operated as a prison for some eighty years before the museum existed.

• 🧱Mostly built after 1919

  The surviving facilities were mainly newly built in red brick after the March 1st Movement, as the number of imprisoned independence activists rose.

• 🏷️Three names under colonial rule

  Gyeongseong Prison from 1908, Seodaemun Prison Camp from 1912, Seodaemun Prison from 1923.

• 🏛️Museum since 1998

  Some cell blocks and the execution site were designated a national historic site in 1988; the History Hall opened on 5 November 1998.

The prison predates the formal annexation of Korea, which matters for reading the site.

It was established at Hyeonjeo-dong in Seoul by the Japanese Residency-General during the Korean Empire period — that is, while Korea was nominally still a sovereign empire under Gojong, but already under Japanese control of its administration. What the Korean Empire was, and how it ended, is covered in the Korean Empire and the end of Joseon.

It opened in 1908 as Gyeongseong Prison. The name changed to Seodaemun Prison Camp in 1912 and to Seodaemun Prison in 1923, and Seodaemun Prison is the name it is generally known by.

Through the colonial period it was principally the place where independence activists were imprisoned, and it functioned as a facility of mass control by the colonial power. The wider colonial administration is in Korea under Japanese rule.

Here is the single most useful fact for walking the site, and it is easy to get backwards.

The facilities that survive today were mainly newly built, in red brick, after the March 1st independence movement of 1919, because the number of imprisoned independence activists rose sharply. The encyclopedia puts the same point another way: as the independence movement intensified, the prison's scale and facilities were expanded on a large scale in the early 1920s.

So the red brick is not the backdrop to the March 1st Movement. It is the colonial state's answer to it. What happened in 1919 is in the March 1st Movement; this site is where a large part of the consequence was administered.

That reframing is what makes the architecture readable. The repetition of the cell blocks, the regularity of the windows, the scale of the compound — all of it is a capacity problem being solved.

Liberation did not close the prison. This is the half of the site most first-time visitors do not expect.

After liberation the names changed again — Seoul Prison in 1945, Seoul Correctional Institution in 1961, Seoul Detention Centre in 1967 — and it was a place where a great many figures of the democracy movement, who had resisted the dictatorial and military governments, were imprisoned and suffered.

The same walls, a different state, a partly overlapping purpose. Liberation and what followed it are in liberation and modern Korea.

The prison closed for an ordinary reason. With the expansion of central Seoul in the 1980s, the Seoul Detention Centre moved to Uiwang in Gyeonggi Province in 1987.

The site survives because people argued for it.

A preservation campaign was led by the descendants of independence activists and by Seodaemun District to keep the historical value of Seodaemun Prison, and in 1988 part of the cell blocks and the execution site were designated a national historic site. Then Seodaemun District led a museum project to make the prison a living site for experiencing modern and contemporary Korean history, and it reopened as the Seodaemun Prison History Hall on 5 November 1998.

The specific structures designated in 1988 were cell blocks 10, 11 and 12 and the execution site.

The encyclopedia lists the buildings that remain: the Security Department office building, the central hall, cell blocks 9, 10, 11 and 12, the workshop, the leprosy ward, the execution site, the underground cell associated with Yu Gwan-sun, and the watchtower and wall — all remaining in their original form.

Three layers are worth keeping separate as you walk:

• Colonial-era fabric. Most of the standing red-brick buildings, built or expanded after 1919.
• Preserved and designated. Cell blocks 10, 11 and 12 and the execution site, protected from 1988.
• Modern interpretation. The exhibitions, panels and reconstructions added from 1998 to explain the site. These are the museum's reading of the place, not the 1920s building itself.

Keeping the third layer distinct from the first two is the difference between visiting a historical site and visiting a display about one.

Worth pairing with

• 

  National Museum of Korean Contemporary History

  The National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which sets the same period out as a continuous narrative.

• 

  Hanyangdoseong

  Hanyangdoseong. The old city wall ran near here, and the district's name comes from the great west gate.

• 

  Seoul Museum of History

  The Seoul Museum of History, for how the city itself changed across the same decades.

• 

  Deoksugung Palace

  Deoksugung, where the Korean Empire that this prison outlived had its palace.

Frequently asked questions