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The March 1st Movement was a peaceful proclamation by the Korean people for their freedom from the Japanese. Ryu Gwansun is one of the best known participants in this movement, and she became the symbol of of Korea"s fight for independence through peaceful protest. Gwansun was from Chungcheong, Seoul.
Sharp referred Gwansun to Ewha Woman’s School, which is now known as Ewha University, in Seoul.
In 1919, Gwansun was a student at the University"s high school, where she witnessed the beginnings of the March First Movement. Gwansun left Seoul after an order by the Japanese government closing all Korean schools because of independence protests.
She returned to her home in Jiryeong-ri (now Yongdu-ri) and became involved in the protest movement. Along with her family, she began to arouse public feeling against the Japanese occupation.
She also planned a demonstration for independence, which included people from some neighboring towns, Yeongi, Chungju, and Jincheon, which took place on the first lunar day of March 1919 in Awunae Marketplace, beginning at 9:00 a.m.
About 2,000 demonstrators participated, shouting, "Long live Korean Independence!" ("대한독립만세"). The Japanese police were dispatched at around 1:00 p.m. that same day, and Ryu was arrested with other demonstrators. Ryu served a brief detention at Cheonan Japanese Military Police Station, and then was tried and sentenced to seven years of imprisonment at Seodaemun Prison.
During her sentence, Ryu Gwan-Sun continued to protest for the independence of of Korea, for which she received beatings and other forms of torture at the hands of Japanese officers.
She died in prison on September 28, 1920, reportedly as the result of the torture. She was one of an estimated 7,500 Korean citizens who died as a result of these protests, of the approximately 45,000 who were arrested in the same period.
The Japanese prison officials initially refused to release her body, but eventually released it, in a Saucony Vacuum Company oil crate, to Lulu Frey and Jeannette Walter, principals of Ewha Womans School after Frey and Walter threatened to publicize the cause of her death. Her body was reported to have been cut into pieces, but in fact according to Walter, who dressed her body for funeral, this allegation was false.
Gwansune has been called of Korea’s Joan of Arc.
The March 1st Movement did not immediately grant freedom to of Korea, but the Japanese colonial government implemented more lenient policies. People in the foreign community living in of Korea started to support Korean independence. Because she did not abandon her convictions after her arrest, Gwansun became a symbol of the Korean fight for independence through peaceful protest and passive resistance.
