The Enlightenment Societies were the socio-cultural bodies which had developed the national salvation movement from Japanese Invasion through building up Korean people’s resources by means of several educational and cultural activities from 1906 to ...
The Enlightenment Societies were the socio-cultural bodies which had developed the national salvation movement from Japanese Invasion through building up Korean people’s resources by means of several educational and cultural activities from 1906 to 1910. Their energetic activities made a great contribution to awaken the national consciousness which would become the firm foundation of the later independent movement to aim at the recovery of national rights plundered by Japanese Imperialism within the country and abroad.
This study endeavors to examine the character of the Enlightenment Societies, especially their two distinctive features exposed according to the phases of their development, and their historical position in a broader context of the Korean Nationalist Movement, making clear their actual conditions positively.
At first, in Chapter Two, the social ground of the Enlightenment Societies, which compelled them to bring into existence, is considered. Japanese Imperialism maneuvered the elementary works for colonization, having forced Korean Government to conclude the Korean-Japanese Arrangement(韓日議定書)in 1904. Afterwards Korea became rapidly, de facto, a colony of Japanese Empire by means of its various coercive designs against Korean Government.
The formation of colonial structure by Japanese Imperialism attached the character of semi-colony to Korean Society which had not yet sloughed its feudality off, though it had been weakened gradually. This dual opression provoked the feeling of crisis in every walk of life. At this critical moment, the intellectuals, who had directed their attention towards the acceptance of Western Civilization, organized the several institutes, searching after the ways of the self-intensification for the recovery of national rights almost lost.
Among them, the Suh-ou Hak Hoe(西友學會)and the Han-buk Hung Hak Hoe(漢北興學會), which we will deal with in Chapter Three, were the first Enlightenment Societies depend on local base, purporting to contact directly with people. As their leaders, who had taken part in the earlier Enlightenment Movement through the Dae-Han Ja-Gang Hoe, etc., recognized its rootlessness not based on people, it is natural that they began to change their attitude laying stress on the unfounded Seoul. But their ability to establish such a society was confined to the North of Korean Peninsular relatively modernized.
The local bases of the Suh-ou Hak Hoe and the Han-buk Hung Hak Hoe, established at the same time, on October in 1906, were different each other, while the former was based on the Kyuan-suh region, the latter based on the Kyuan-buk. But the contents of their works were very similar.
They executed the various works which made them approach the mass. They emphasized the educational activities among these works which they thought might be most apt to cultivate the national consciousness and promote the people’s resources. They established a private school and taught there the new national education rest on their doctrine as a model for other schools. Especially, the Suh-ou Hak Hoe published a journal, the Suh-ou, periodically with the view to deepening the local intellectual’s knowledge about the New Science.
Besides, they made use of the place like the festival of school and market, etc., where many people got together, in order to disseminate their practical platform, for example, self-intensification and the destruction of bad customs, the inspiration of patriotism and national unity, etc.. in addition, they stressed the physical training and the martial spirit for the war against Japanese Imperialism, someday. In this respect, these Enlightenment Societies might be regarded as a source of the later armed independent movement.
As their efforts to mobilize the mass had bore fruit, to a certain extent, in the region concerned, it is natural that the argument to expand the scope of their organizations into a nation-wide society, became vigorous slowly. First of all, these two societies were united under the name of Suh-buk Hak Hoe(西北學會), according to this need, on January in 1908. But their final object would be the completion of a National Enlightenment Society.
But the aggravation of external situation, that is the weighted oppression by Japanese Imperialism, became a direct moment which combined them. Japanese Imperialism restricted the freedom of press, assembly and association by means of the Safety Law and the Press Law enacted on September iin 1907. In another respect, the fact would rater show that the success of those societies had considerably threatened Japanese Imperialism. In any case, they coped with the conditions through the unification of their capacities. But it is clear that the unification was essentially the result of their inner growth. In Chapter Four, we will analyze the activities of the just unified society, the Suh-buk Hak Hoe and the newly born society, the Ki-ho Hung Hak Hoe.
Whereas both of them were established in the same context of the growth of the Enlightenment Movement, they were very different in several aspects. While the former was consisted of the modernization-oriented intellectuals mainly from the Kae-Hwa Ja-Gang Pa(開化自强派) and some radial military officers, etc., the latter mainly consited of the enlightened bureaucrats. And the quantity and the quality of their activities were very different.
The Suh-buk Hak Hoe sought to keep up the concrete works of its forerunners and, further more, to organize a nation-wide Enlightenment Movement. Regardless of its efforts, the reinforced coercion by Japanese Imperialism, for instance, the Institute Order(學會令) and the Private School Order(私立學校令) enforced in October, 1908, made its activities shrinked. In front of those conditions, it could not but dualize their works to the levels of the external and the internal. Although, on the surface, it carried out the moderate activities, to a certain degree, that is the promotion of the national industry and the national education with less political meaning, it rejected all in its ability the appeasement of Japanese Imperialism which induced it to take part in the Pro-Japanese Party.
When Ito-hirobumi, a ringleader of Japanese Aggression on Korea was assassinated by An Jung-Keun in 1909, Japanese Imperialism compulsorily implicated the leaders of the Suh-buk Hak Hoe, including Rhee Tong-Hui, to the event to arrest them. This event became a decisive moment which caused its radical leaders earnestly to begin a sort of secret activity. They proposed a republican form of government which they though might be a shorter way to move the mass and designed the strategy of an armed independent movement. Their efforts directly contributed to form the Korean Independent Army in Manchuria, a few years later.
These dual activities within the society might differentiate its members into a radical group and moderate one, and there might be any serious trouble between them, though we can not investigate the detail due to the short of the evidence concerned. But the moderate, mainly engaged in the external activity, did not compromise Japanese Imperialism, but broaden the ground for independent movement through their educational and cultural movement, their purity was partly proved by the Event of One hundred-Five Men(105人사건)in 1911 Japanese Imperialism fabricated in order to weaken the power of the Enlightenment Movement centered on educational activity, etc..
Meanwhile, the Ki-ho Hung Hak Hoe, created in the process of the expansion of the Enlightenment Movement, carried out the educational and cultural works for building up the national resources in the Ki-ho region. But the ways of its action were too cautious for the sake of avoiding the trouble with the Japanese authorities to convey its intention to people effectively. As the suppression of Japanese Imperialism was intensified, its leaders yielded to the pressure to reduce its works to the “pure” educational movement wanting the nationality. Their compromising attitude was rewarded in the form of the granted peerage to some of them by the Great Japanese Empire, later on. After all, the Ki-ho Hung Hak Hoe as a indirect by-product of the unification of the early two societies, carried out the limited role only.
Now, to conclude, the Enlightenment Societies considered here, relatively succeeded in awakening the mass by virtue of getting nearer them, though their success was confined to a certain region. This proximity to the people is, above all, their most distinctive feature. That is one step toward the development of intellectual’s movement as well as of nationalist’s. The strategy of armed independent movement proposed by them, which is their another feature, could be regarded as such.