Bi-weekly post #3

[Jenna Lee]

For our fifth meeting, we learned about 삼일절, which is the March 1st movement that took place in 1919. We got to learn that March 1st is the day of resistance of Japanese imperialism rule, and our country would not be what it is today if it weren’t for the Korean patriots that sacrificed their lives for the nation. One of the most important individuals was Kwan-Sun Yu, who was was a Seventeen-year old girl that lost her parents to the Japanese soldiers during the revolution. She planned and led the demonstration, which led to her arrest. The Japanese threatened and tortured her to give up the resistance, but she stubbornly refused to do so. She passed away in her cell on September 28th, 1920, which was a few days before her release. We remember her and other on March 1st, which is now a national holiday, to give our thanks. For our sixth meeting, we watched a movie called “Swing Kids”, which was about the Korean war, and focused on a North Korean soldier and an American soldier who became through tap-dancing. With a help of a few prisoners and a South-Korean woman, they put on a tap-dance team within the military secretly. Their goal is to impress the higher-ups of the American military so they would be released, and this movie showed the manipulative side of the American military, and how they took advantage of Koreans during the war. Overall, it was a very enjoyable movie.