3.1운동기 총독부기관지 『서울프레스』의 국제사회 대응 양상―The Korean “Independence” Agitation - Articles Reprinted from the “Seoul Press” (1919.5)를 중심으로―

Abstract

The Seoul Press, which was an organ of the Governor-General’s office, took its place within the international public opinion and developed a counter-discourse against the anti-Japanese sentiments pouring out of the East-Asian English-language press networks. In the wake of the March First ‘Mansei’ Movement in 1919, the Seoul Press printed and distributed in emergency a series of articles gathered in a pamphlet titled The Korean “Independence” Agitation - Articles Reprinted from the ‘Seoul Press’. The March First Movement went beyond what colonial authorities could anticipate to become a prolonged, nationalized phenomenon. It also became more than a domestic affair as criticisms on the ‘violence of repression’ escalated in foreign public opinion. It even became a pretext for religious repression that targeted missionaries. In such circumstances, the mobilization of emergency pamphlets appeared as a strategical strike in the war of public opinion. Information related to the colonization of Korea, as published by such pamphlets, was systematically disseminated not only to East-Asian English-language press networks, but also to the hub of international public sentiment in the United States. New York, where the Oriental Information Bureau (1909) and the East and West News Bureau (1913) operated, was Japan’s base for public opinion maneuvers in the United States. The founders and main writers of these two organs were indeed affiliated to the Seoul Press. The Seoul Press first undermined the influence of the March First Movement and suppressed any ideological legitimacy by segregating the Western missionaries from the movement. In addition, it claimed that the violent repression as described abroad was in fact a unilateral exaggeration; furthermore, it had not taken place with the approbation of the Japanese government, but rather accidentally somewhat and as a result of fear of the confrontation with rioters. Finally, it argued that March First was not a movement based on the Koreans’ autonomous self-consciousness, but only a disturbance stemming from the misconception about the ‘principle of national self-determination’; therefore, it was only a movement manipulated by a handful of agitators rather than a national movement. Japan’s goal was to change the way the international opinion should look on the March First Movement, which could then be qualified as a halfway report on the empire’s ability to rule and the necessity to prove its own worth in order to be considered by the international opinion as a victorious nation. Following the Movement, the antagonism between the “extrinsic factor approach” and the “intrinsic factor approach” paved the way for the “Cultural policies” as a façade to mask a more aggressive strategy to win the war of international public opinion.