Good evening. It’s 10:10 PM KST, and under a grey autumn sky a century ago, colonial Seoul — then called Gyeongseong — opened an ordinary Wednesday. Students walked to school through the alleys off Jongno, merchants set out their stalls, and the city carried on as if nothing were two days away from changing its skyline forever. Behind the routine, though, two unresolved cases still sat in the district court, refusing to close.

Korea Under Colonial Rule

Around the Gyeongseong District Court, two cases lingered. The first was a press-censorship case against the Chosun Ilbo. A column titled “Hoengseol-Suseol,” published August 22, had drawn official wrath: its writer, Choi Won-sun, was indicted for violating the Security Law, and the paper’s editor and publisher, Kim Cheol-jung, for violating the Newspaper Law. At the September 8 hearing, prosecutors demanded eight months’ imprisonment for Choi and six months for Kim. No record confirms that a verdict was handed down by September 29 — the case simply had not left the court’s docket.

The second case concerned political ideology. Earlier that month, word had spread that Kim Cheol-su had met with Oh Hee-seon and Won Woo-gwan to reorganize the party’s central executive committee — likely tied to the reconstitution of the Korean Communist Party. Colonial police continued quietly digging into the aftermath. Two days before a ceremony meant to project imperial confidence, Gyeongseong’s undercurrents told a different story.

East Asia in Turmoil

South of the capital, in the port city of Mokpo, dockworkers had now been on strike for more than eight months — an unusually long standoff over wages and treatment that showed no sign of resolving. Seoul’s papers kept running brief updates on it, week after week, a quiet counter-narrative to official optimism.

Meanwhile, the capital itself was busy preparing for the completion ceremony of the new Government-General building, scheduled for October 1 — timed to coincide with the anniversary of the start of colonial administration. The entire staff of the Government-General was to gather in the building’s central hall, followed by a celebratory banquet at Gyeonghoeru Pavilion inside Gyeongbokgung Palace. The building itself had taken ten years and roughly 6.75 million yen to complete.

The World Stage

In China, Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army had encircled the walled city of Wuchang. After crushing Wu Peifu’s forces at the Battle of Tingsiqiao in late August, the Northern Expedition had pushed into the Wuhan region, and Wuchang was now under siege — a siege that would not end for another ten days or so.

In Europe, Germany had formally entered the League of Nations earlier that month, securing a permanent seat on its Council — a defeated power’s first real step back onto the world stage since the Treaty of Versailles. And in America, the sporting world was still buzzing: six days earlier in Philadelphia, Gene Tunney had upset Jack Dempsey to become heavyweight champion of the world.

Colonial Parallels

A journalist facing prison for a newspaper column was not a uniquely Korean story in 1926. Under British rule in India, the press faced similar restrictions through sedition laws; in Ireland, newspapers sympathetic to independence had weathered decades of censorship before the 1921 treaty; in the American-administered Philippines, colonial authorities likewise policed what local papers could print. What made the Chosun Ilbo case distinct was less the mechanism of control than its target — a paper that had become, by 1926, one of the few remaining vehicles for Korean-language public opinion.

Person of the Day

Choi Won-sun, the writer facing eight months in prison over a single column, represents a type more than an individual we can fully reconstruct from available records: the working Korean journalist who wrote under the daily threat of prosecution. His column had run under the “Hoengseol-Suseol” — a satirical commentary format still associated with the Chosun Ilbo a century later. What exactly his August 22 column said, and how the appeal ultimately resolved, is not confirmed in the sources available for this piece; what is confirmed is that, as of late September, his case remained open.

Understanding Daily Life

On an ordinary Wednesday morning, students at Gyeongseong’s common schools and higher common schools walked to class in uniform. Korean and Japanese students attended separate institutions from the start, with unequal access built into the system itself. By lunchtime, street vendors selling rice cakes and taffy gathered outside school gates to catch the midday crowd.

By evening, young people who had spent the day at work drifted into youth halls and night schools. The hunger to learn did not stop at the schoolhouse wall. As dusk settled over Jongno, the low murmur of merchants closing up shop for the day rolled through the street.

Century Mirror

Set school and supper side by side across a hundred years, and the distance is still considerable.

Tomorrow’s Preview

Tomorrow, September 30, is the last day before the new Government-General building’s completion ceremony. The court cases in Seoul, the strike in Mokpo, and the siege of Wuchang all remain unresolved. Good night — we’ll meet again tomorrow evening at 10:10.