Other artwork of mine. It is to show the lack of awareness of all the independence activists who risked their lives to give their future generation independence.
Even though I said I will be focusing on concurrent events that are happening in Korea, I tend to slip into past event for some reason… Anyway, as I started to write about the past event, I will continue with past events that are related to GRSJ issues in Asia- South Korea.
When it comes to modern Korea, most intriguing yet well known event is regarding to Japanese colonization in the peninsula of Korea. There are various factors that Korea became one of colonized country in the world. First of all, it was given the chance for Japan to start flowing in. Korea at the past is like current North Korea. We didn’t have big exchanges happening since the one of the “governor” disagreed with accepting western culture or products into Korea itself. Probably due to fear that our traditional culture will disappear due to fusion made with other culture. Secondly, there was inner breakdown. Some of the governors believed that Korea wouldn’t have a chance toward Japan so they betrayed and “sold” the country to Japanese government. “Selling” the country includes giving the top secret about country such as the military information and weakness that they could possibly use to seize Korea. In result of those, on 1905 the forceful contract was made between Japanese government and Korean government which disadvantaged Korea government so much. Because contract that was made took over the control of Korean government’s right of diplomacy. From here onward, as many people are aware of this, Japanese government took over the whole country and they ruled it very very cruelly.
As diplomacy was held by Japanese government, they did whatever they like with the country. Japanese citizens came over to Korea to live since they were treated better in the country. Police or even Japanese citizens treated the citizens with cruelty. Women were always receiving sexual harassment; citizens were to be used violence with no reason. However, police let it be unless Korean citizens used violence against Japanese students. If caused harm toward Japanese, then they were punished severely. Due to this unfair treatment, some of the citizens started to revolt against the Japanese government.
They are called “Independence Activist” – they work to gain the freedom of Korea back from the hand of Japanese government. They literally gave up on their life to help the life of citizens better in sense of less violation and others. They tried so heard to throw the government out of the country. But since the activists are minority member of the whole country (the ones who are actually leading the movement and planning the movement) so they were working in really tough environment. They were chased after by Japanese government, sometime if they were captured they will tortured inhumane way until their death. They had their families, friends and lovers but just because they wanted to see the freedom of the country, they worked with their life to go against the government.
Back to the point, with their numerous lives and efforts throughout the whole year, Korea finally gained the independence against Japanese government. People celebrated but did not remember much who were sacrificed behind the scene. Currently, a lot of students are not aware of the people who gladly died to gain the independence. Obviously, they do not remember female activists more than male activists. There is only proof of a photo who helped to gain independence but it is still lacking to verify every individual people who worked for the independence.
