• CONCEPT AND COMMUNICATION
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• no.23
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• pp.5-37
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• 2019

The March 1st Movement in Korea and the May 4th Movement in China, which both occurred in 1919, have often been thought to reflect each other like two mirrors. This paper is an attempt to reexamine the relationship between these two events in terms of simultaneity, and thus to articulate their world-historical significance. Their distinctive historical character is also understood through the perspective of an interlocking East Asia, by which is meant that although imperial Japan, semi-colonial China, and colonial Korea were all connected to the modern world-system, these three states each occupied different positions within the hierarchy of interstate relations. The differences between the anti-Japanese national movements of colonial Korea and those of semi-colonial China deserve particular attention, since they help to reveal the complexities of (semi-)colonial modernity, and may provide some clues for overcoming modernity. In this context the theory of the Double Project of Modernity is useful, which describes the process of simultaneously adapting to and overcoming modernity. The (re)remembrance of the March 1st Movement and the May 4th Movement is more than a historical issue: it is also an existential issue. The historical significance of these two events should be beyond doubt, and to make this clear it is proposed to rename them respectively as the March 1st Revolution and the May 4th Revolution. This renaming is surely justified by the way that people gathered at these events.