[100 Years Ago Today] November 16, 1926 – Seoul Six Months After Sunjong’s Death: “Arirang” on Screen, Censors at the Door

As You Wind Down Your Day

It is Tuesday, November 16, 1926, and Seoul, then called Gyeongseong, is settling into a late-autumn night. A note on sources before we begin: we could not locate the Korean newspaper pages for this exact day, and we found no weather record for it. We will therefore tell you only what can be confirmed from the days around it, and we will mark what we could not confirm.

This is a quiet day in the record, not a dramatic one. Quiet days are worth reading, because they show how people lived between the headlines.

Korea Under Colonial Rule

Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910. Only months earlier, on April 25, 1926, Sunjong, the last monarch of the Korean Empire, had died at Changdeok Palace. On June 10, the day of his funeral procession, students along the route shouted for independence in what is remembered as the June 10th Movement. Six months later, the memory was still fresh.

Tuesday is our day for law and culture, and in 1926 the two pulled against each other. The Peace Preservation Law, which Japan had extended to Korea in 1925, made it a crime to advocate changing the political order. Korean newspapers and magazines worked under censorship. Yet Koreans kept making culture. On October 1, 1926, Na Un-gyu’s silent film “Arirang” opened at the Danseongsa theater in Seoul, and it is remembered as a landmark of Korean cinema that drew unusual attention. We could not confirm what was playing in Seoul theaters on November 16 itself.

Seoul was also changing physically. The new Government-General building, a huge stone structure in front of Gyeongbok Palace, held its opening ceremony that autumn, and Keijo Imperial University opened in May 1926. A modern capital was rising beside a people whose voices were being pressed down.

East Asia in Turmoil

In Japan, Emperor Taisho’s health was failing. He would die on December 25, 1926, just over a month after this date, and the Showa era would begin.

In China, Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition was sweeping north against the warlords. A Tokyo dispatch dated November 12 reported that Japan was watching the movements of the new Soviet ambassador to China, who was staying at Harbin instead of going straight to Peking. Manchuria, next door to Korea, was the place where Japanese and Soviet interests brushed against each other.

The World Stage

In London, the Imperial Conference was in session. Its work that month produced the report, associated with Lord Balfour, describing Britain and its dominions as equal in status. It was a quiet constitutional revolution within the British Empire, even as other empires, Japan’s among them, held their colonies tight.

In the United States, the Michigan Daily of November 16 led with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s proposal to give income taxpayers a 15 percent credit, tied to a projected surplus. Records also list Italy’s Mario de Bernardi setting a seaplane speed record of 258.874 mph on this date.

Colonial Parallels

Korea’s story was not unique. Colonized peoples in the 1920s often met the same two tools, censorship and security laws. In British India, nationalists faced press controls and sedition charges. In Ireland, a hard-won settlement in 1921 had left the island partitioned. We have not tied a specific event in these places to November 16, 1926, so we offer this only as general context, not as a record of the day.

Understanding Daily Life

We have no record of how ordinary Seoul residents spent this particular day. The general picture of the era is documented, though. Trams ran on the main streets, rickshaw pullers waited for fares, and newspapers were read in the morning. By evening, theaters drew crowds. Please read this as the usual texture of the period, not as a report from November 16.

Century Mirror

The song “Arirang” is now on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. A tune that people sang together under pressure became part of the world’s shared culture.

Tomorrow’s Preview

Tomorrow is Wednesday, November 17, our day for education and young people. Until then, good night, and see you at 10:10.

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THE KOREAN TODAY · 100 Years Ago Today