North Koreans know little about Yu Kwan-sun, a young Korean girl student who sacrificed herself in the 1919 March 1 movement for independence from Japanese colonial rule. She is not referred to in the North's textbooks and no entry is made in its encyclopedia published in 1983. However, a brief reference to her is made in the Great Korea Encyclopedia published in 1999.
The role of the 33 representatives of the Korean people who led the March 1 movement is devalued miserably in the North. They are portrayed as feeble-minded bourgeoisie who begged for the nation's independence from Japanese imperialists.
It was Pyongyang's young patriotic students that led the March 1 independence movement, North Koreans are taught. Students of Sungsil School in Pyongyang, which the father of the late North Korean founder and president Kim Il Sung, Kim Hyong Jik, made a base for the anti-Japanese movement by planting the seeds of revolution there, are claimed to have taken the lead in waging the anti-Japanese demonstrations. Though he left Sungsil School halfway, no evidence exists linking Kim Hyong Jik with the March 1 movement. Nonetheless, the North portrays him as a national leader who played a decisive role in the independence movement.
It's not Pagoda Park in Seoul, but Pyongyang that touched off the March 1 demonstrations demanding the nation's independence claims the North. Signalled by the sounding of bells at noon on March 1, 1919, Pyongyang says, thousands of students and crowds from various walks of life swarmed to the Sungsil School ground on the Changdae Hill, where the Pyongyang Youth Palace now stands. At 1:00pm a young student representative ascended the platform under the watchful eyes of the crowds, to read the "Declaration of Independence" and proclaim solemnly that Korea is an independent country, according to the North Korean version of history.
In time frame, the North claims that the demonstrations were kicked off earlier in Pyongyang than in Seoul wit young students launching anti-Japanese struggles, "rebuffing their bourgeois seniors' defeatist actions." The 33 representatives of the people leading the movement are disparaged as "good-for-nothing fellows," who, claiming themselves as "national representatives," discarded the national dignity, pleaded for independence and lectured the people on non-resistance and non-violence.
The North Korean version of the March 1 movement published in the "History of the War of Korea" stresses the existence of and the role played by president Kim Il Sung. One passages reads;
"Under the leadership of ardent anti-Japanese revolutionary fighter Kang Jin Sok, residents in and around Mangyongdae, young and old, came out to the streets and marched vigorously to Pyongyang, loudly shouting 'Hurrah, Korea's Independence.' Aged eight at that time, Comrade Kim Il Sung joined the ranks of the national anti-Japanese people's uprising and marched to the Potong Gate."
The North's evaluation of the March 1 movement is invariably cold, that is, it was a failure. Conspicuous are what North Korea ascribes as causes of the failure and lessons to be drawn from it. Drawing particular attention is the reasoning that the movement lacked the leadership of the outstanding supreme leader as well as the revolutionary leadership of the party, and the assertion that Korea should have confronted the armed enemy with a systematic armed struggle. Needless to say, the outstanding supreme leader referred to here means Kim Il Sung and the revolutionary party the Workers' Party he led.
