Jeam-ri Incident

Background

Jeam-ri is a village in Hyangnam-myeon, Suwon County, Gyeonggi Province (present-day Hyangnam-eup, Hwaseong City). It was home to a Methodist church (today's Jeam Church), which had begun in 1905 in the home of exhorter An Jong-ok. On March 31, 1919, as the March First Movement was spreading, more than a thousand people shouted manse ("long live [Korean independence]") on market day in neighboring Baran, and several residents of Jeam-ri took part. According to reports, when Japanese military police opened fire on the demonstrators, the enraged crowd killed a Japanese police sergeant, although accounts of the circumstances differ somewhat from source to source. As demonstrations in the Suwon and Hwaseong area intensified in April, Japanese military and police forces launched large-scale arrests and reprisals.

Course of Events

• April 15, 1919: Lieutenant Arita Toshio (有田俊夫) of the Japanese Army's 79th Infantry Regiment entered Jeam-ri with eleven infantrymen and a number of police officers. They blocked the approaches to the village, gathered more than twenty residents in the church building, and then opened fire and set the building ablaze. Those who tried to escape were killed outside, and more than thirty houses were burned. On the same day, in neighboring Goju-ri, six people, including the Cheondoist Kim Heung-ryeol, were also killed.
• Number of victims: Records differ. Urihistory.net states that 23 people died in the church alone, while the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture states that 28 people were killed inside and outside the church building. The Jeam-ri March First Movement Martyrs Memorial Hall commemorates 29 victims from Jeam-ri and Goju-ri. The victims included both Christians and Cheondoists.
• Immediate aftermath: The missionary Frank Schofield evaded the police and reached the site by bicycle, where he took photographs and wrote "The Massacre of Chai-amm-ni," a report on the massacre. Other missionaries and diplomats also inspected the site, and the incident became known to the foreign press.
• August 21, 1919: Arita was tried before a Japanese Army court-martial (a military tribunal) in Yongsan but was acquitted. The court acknowledged that killings and arson had taken place. Nevertheless, it declined to punish him on the grounds that he had misunderstood his superior's orders and had been engaged in suppressing a riot.

Aftermath and Legacy

The burned church was rebuilt at a different location three months later. In the 1960s, Japanese Christians, including the Rev. Oyama Reiji, raised funds as an expression of apology. The villagers at first declined the gift but later accepted it, and in 1970 the money was used to build a new sanctuary and a community hall. In 2019, the centennial of the March First Movement, the Rev. Oyama and his group again visited Jeam-ri Church and held a prayer service of repentance and apology.

In 1959 a memorial monument to the martyrs was erected at the site. In 1982, based on the testimony of the eyewitness Jeon Dong-rye, the victims' remains were exhumed and a cemetery for 23 victims was established. In the same year, the site was designated Historic Site No. 299, "Martyrdom Site of the March First Movement in Jeam-ri, Hwaseong." On March 1, 2001, the Jeam-ri March First Movement Martyrs Memorial Hall opened, and the present Jeam Church building was constructed at the same time.

Assessment

The incident is regarded as one of the most brutal acts of repression committed during the suppression of the March First Movement. Through the testimony of missionaries and diplomats, it became a symbol of Japanese colonial rule. Scholars of Korean church history hold that the act of locking people inside a church and burning it cemented in the West an image of Japan as a persecutor of the church and provoked intense outrage in Christian nations. The Korean Methodist Church understands the incident as national resistance grounded in the Christian spirit, met by a premeditated atrocity on the part of imperial Japan.

Some accounts, on the other hand, emphasize the death of the Japanese police officer during the March 31 demonstration as background to the incident. Even the Japanese court-martial of the time, however, acknowledged that villagers had been gathered in the church and killed and that the building had been set on fire. The story of the Japanese Christians' apology and the Jeam-ri villagers' acceptance of it is frequently cited as an example of reconciliation between the Korean and Japanese churches.