100 Years Ago Today

🕙 Evening Edition · 10:10 PM KST (1:10 PM UTC)

Monday, October 25, 1926 · Gyeongseong (Seoul)

10:10 – As the clock smiles, reflect on a century of history

1. Hook Opening

As you wind down your day, picture a city with two stories running through it at once. On one side stands a vast new stone building, the seat of the colonial government. On the other, in a theater on Jongno street, audiences are weeping and singing along to a silent film.

It is Monday, October 25, 1926. I should be honest with you at the start: I could not locate the text of that day’s newspapers. What follows is built from records that are confirmed for the weeks around it, and where the day itself is unknown, I say so. Mondays in this series belong to people, so tonight we follow one man, Na Un-gyu (1902-1937), who wrote, directed, and starred in the film that Seoul could not stop watching.

2. Korea Under Colonial Rule

On October 1, the Government-General of Korea held a grand completion ceremony for its new headquarters. According to Korea’s National Archives, the building was finished in December 1925 after more than a decade of construction, staff moved in during January 1926, and the formal ceremony followed on October 1. To make room, Gwanghwamun, the main gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace, was moved eastward, and the Heungnyemun gate, its corridors, and the Yeongjegyo bridge were torn down. Sources disagree on the cost: roughly 7 million yen in one, about 6.7 million in another.

On that same day, Danseongsa theater premiered Arirang. Multiple sources call it the first major box-office success in Korean film history, and report that audiences wept openly and sang the folk song along with the film. By mid-October the theater was still packed.

The courts were busy too. After the June 10 demonstrations at the funeral procession of Emperor Sunjong, about 150 suspected communists were arrested nationwide in what became known as the Second Korean Communist Party Incident. Trials continued through September and into mid-October. What happened in a courtroom on October 25 itself is not confirmed.

3. East Asia in Turmoil

Across the Yellow Sea, China was in the middle of the Northern Expedition, in which the southern Nationalist army was marching north against regional warlords. A U.S. diplomatic telegram dated November 8, 1926, reported Hankow quiet and fully occupied by southern troops. That is two weeks after our date, but it shows the direction of the war in these weeks.

For Koreans, the Chinese revolution mattered. Shanghai hosted the Provisional Government in exile, and Manchuria held large Korean communities. Whether Seoul’s papers carried this news on October 25, and how they described it under censorship, is not confirmed.

4. The World Stage

Two days earlier, on October 23, a joint plenum of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee and Central Control Commission relieved Leon Trotsky and Lev Kamenev of their posts. The two had joined Grigory Zinoviev in May 1926 to form the “United Opposition” against Stalin’s growing control. Their removal was a milestone on Stalin’s road to supremacy.

Elsewhere, the British Empire’s leaders were meeting in London for an Imperial Conference, where the dominions pressed for equal status with Britain. That detail comes from general historical knowledge and was not verified in this session’s searches, so treat it as background rather than as a sourced fact.

5. Colonial Parallels

The dominions of the British Empire were bargaining for equality, while Korea, a colony, was not even allowed to name its own demands in print. That contrast is the heart of 1926. Ireland had won a Free State in 1922 after years of struggle, and India’s nationalists kept pressing against British rule. These comparisons are general background and are not tied to a confirmed event on October 25.

What was shared across colonies was the pattern: a ruling power that built monumental buildings, policed the press, and tried colonial subjects in its own courts. Korea’s version of that pattern was written in stone at Gwanghwamun.

6. Person of the Day

Na Un-gyu was born in 1902 and died in 1937, aged 35. In October 1926 he wrote, directed, and starred in Arirang. A Kyunghyang Shinmun article notes the release is said to have been timed to the date of the Government-General’s ceremony, though it presents this as an anecdote. His film turned a folk song everyone knew into a shared cry. Details of his own life on October 25 are not confirmed.

7. Understanding Daily Life

We would love to give you the price of rice or a tram fare for this Monday. We cannot: no confirmed price or wage figure for the day turned up, and inventing one would break the rule of this series. What we can say is that the city had a clear geography of power and of feeling. Officials worked in the new building by the moved gate, while crowds queued at Danseongsa, a theater founded in 1907 that is today a film history museum.

8. Century Mirror

A century on, the world speaks of K-drama and K-pop as global stories. Their ancestor is a silent film in which a crowd cried and sang one folk song together. The giant building that overshadowed it is gone, and the song remains.

9. Tomorrow’s Preview

Tomorrow is Tuesday, October 26, 1926, when we look at law and culture. Until then, goodnight.

Sources: Korea National Archives (Government-General building), articles on Arirang and Danseongsa, The Korean Today’s 1926 series, Soviet Politburo chronologies, U.S. Foreign Relations (Nov. 8, 1926 telegram). The October 25 newspaper text itself was not located.