[100 Years Ago Today] September 28, 1926 – Three Days Before the Government-General

Korea Under Colonial Rule

At the Gyeongseong District Court that day, the preliminary hearing into June’s Korean Communist Party roundup continued without resolution. Ahead of the June Tenth Movement — the mass protest staged during the funeral procession of the last Korean emperor, Sunjong — colonial police had uncovered the plan in advance and arrested more than one hundred people, including party leader Kang Dal-yeong. Three months later, on this Tuesday, the case known as the “Second Korean Communist Party Incident” still had not moved from preliminary hearing to formal trial. Newspapers reported on the case’s progress in brief whenever new developments surfaced, but no trial date had yet been set.

A second case sat on the same docket. A column titled “Hoengseolsuseol” (Rambling Talk), published in the Dong-a Ilbo on August 22, had drawn prosecution: its writer, Choi Won-sun, was charged under the Peace Preservation Law, while the paper’s editor and publisher, Kim Cheol-jung, was charged under the Newspaper Law. At a September 8 hearing, prosecutors sought an eight-month prison term for Choi and a six-month term for Kim. For Kim, this was a second brush with the law that year — the Dong-a Ilbo had already been suspended indefinitely in March, its legal fallout still unresolved when this new charge arrived. No record confirms that a verdict had been handed down by September 28.

Neither case advanced that day, but newspaper court columns kept both squarely in view, a reminder that the machinery of colonial justice moved slowly and deliberately.

East Asia in Turmoil

The shadow of the Communist Party case reached well beyond Gyeongseong. In the months after the June Tenth Movement, student strikes had spread through schools in Sunchang, Gunsan, Ulsan, Pyongyang, and Hongseong, and that unrest had not fully subsided by late September. Youth groups and students in the provinces followed news of the Gyeongseong hearings closely, watching for any sign of when the preliminary hearing might finally conclude.

Meanwhile, preparations for the new Government-General building’s dedication, now three days away, moved steadily forward. Built over nearly a decade on the grounds of Gyeongbokgung Palace, the new headquarters was set to open on October 1, the anniversary of the start of Japanese colonial administration. Notices about the ceremony and its accompanying celebrations circulated through the city. In the same city, in the same week, the completion of a building that symbolized colonial rule stood alongside the ongoing prosecution of those who had resisted it.

The World Stage

In China, the Northern Expedition’s revolutionary armies continued pressing toward Wuhan. The siege of Wuchang, underway since late August, had still not been broken, and Wu Peifu’s forces had been pushed back into Hubei province. Wuhan’s actual fall was still more than ten days away.

In Japan, Emperor Taisho’s health had again taken a turn for the worse. Following a collapse in May, his condition had seemed to stabilize for a time, but by September it had deteriorated once more, and the emperor remained in convalescence (the exact date of this September relapse is not confirmed in available records). Crown Prince Hirohito had by then served as regent for five years, and the machinery of Japanese state affairs continued to run under that regency.

Colonial Parallels

The pairing of a colonial monument’s completion with the prosecution of dissent was not unique to Korea in 1926. In British India, the Rowlatt-era framework of preventive detention and press restriction still shadowed nationalist politics even as Lucknow and Calcutta saw new municipal buildings and infrastructure celebrated as marks of imperial progress. In Ireland, the aftermath of the Civil War had left the Free State government managing its own tensions between consolidating new institutions and prosecuting former combatants. And in the American-administered Philippines, the colonial press likewise operated under sedition statutes that could criminalize commentary seen as undermining public order — a legal architecture with clear echoes of Korea’s Peace Preservation Law and Newspaper Law. Across each of these colonial and post-colonial settings, the same tension recurred: a governing power showcasing its permanence through architecture and ceremony, while the courts quietly processed those who questioned that permanence.

Person of the Day

Choi Won-sun, the journalist facing prosecution that week, was a working newspaperman at the Dong-a Ilbo whose brief column had become a legal liability under the Peace Preservation Law. Column writing at a colonial-era Korean newspaper was rarely a safe occupation: papers like the Dong-a Ilbo had already weathered multiple suspensions by the Government-General, and individual writers bore direct criminal exposure for what appeared under their names. Choi’s case, still pending as September closed, illustrates a daily reality for Korean journalists of the period — that reporting or commenting on colonial affairs could carry the same legal risk as organized political dissent.

Understanding Daily Life

On a Tuesday morning in Gyeongseong, a line of people gathered outside the Gyeongseong District Court, hoping for seats in the gallery — family members of the Communist Party defendants mixed with reporters waiting for the session to open. By midday, Jongno street looked much like any other Tuesday: students browsed newly arrived magazines at the bookstalls, and cafes and teahouses already held their regular afternoon crowd. As dusk fell, crowds began gathering outside the theaters. Even amid the city’s excitement over the approaching dedication ceremony, those carrying newspaper extras with court updates wore heavier expressions.