• Korean Educational Research Journal
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.61-77
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• 2017

This study intends to capture the characteristics of the students and farmers who participated in the March $1^{st}$ Movement, by focusing on their statements in the interrogatories retrieved from the Source Book on the History of the Korean Liberation Movements, published by the National Institute of Korean History. First, this study examines the interrogatories in order to identify the people subject to the investigation. Through this research, this study confirms that the majority of those who were investigated were students in Seoul and farmers in Gyeonggi-do. Then, this study traces why they participated in the March $1^{st}$ Movement. This study compiles their complaints and checked how their "discontent" could be connected to "liberation." While students were mostly interested in "education," and clearly expressed their discontent, the farmers were discontent with their livelihoods and tax under the rule of the Governor-general of Joseon and were not as clear at expressing their discontent. The interrogatories also confirms that some Koreans had no complaints but thought that liberation was needed. It is difficult to classify such people, but some people cried out for liberation without knowing the meaning of the term, only to understand its meaning later in prison. The significance of the March $1^{st}$ movement was at times imparted after the movement ex post facto.