1. Hook Opening

As you wind down your day, picture a Friday evening in Seoul a century ago. Our research found no article from a Korean newspaper dated this exact day, so we will not invent one. What we can reconstruct is the world around that evening: a city under a brand-new colonial headquarters, a film that had just begun to move Korean audiences, and a former emperor’s fortune being divided half a world away. Weather and prices for the day are unconfirmed, so we leave them out.

2. Korea Under Colonial Rule

In 1926 Korea was in its sixteenth year of Japanese rule, and the Japanese calendar called the year Taisho 15. The capital, Keijo, as the Japanese called it, or Gyeongseong in Korean, had two kinds of newspapers: Korean-language papers such as the Dong-A Ilbo and the Chosun Ilbo, and papers run by the colonial government or Japanese settlers, such as the Maeil Sinbo and the Keijo Nippo. The two Korean papers would be shut down together in August 1940.

It had been a heavy year. Sunjong, Korea’s last monarch, died on April 26. On June 10, the day of his funeral, students took to the streets in what became the June Tenth Movement, mostly in Seoul. Then on October 1 the government held a completion ceremony for its new Government-General building inside Gyeongbokgung. On that same day, Na Un-gyu’s silent film “Arirang” premiered at the Danseongsa theater. Our sources conflict on when the building was occupied: the structure was completed in January and the ceremony was held in October.

3. East Asia in Turmoil

On October 28 in Rome, Pope Pius XI consecrated six Chinese bishops, the first Chinese Catholic bishops since the seventeenth century. It was a sign that the Church was beginning to place local leaders in Asia. We found no confirmed Korea-specific police or protest reports for October 29 itself.

4. The World Stage

On October 29 Prussia and the deposed House of Hohenzollern signed a contract settling the estates of Wilhelm II. Twenty of the 60 former royal castles were classed as family property, and the family received 32 million marks and 24,000 Dutch guilders. A New Zealand newspaper that month reported that republicans and socialists objected to the terms. The dispute reached into the 21st century and was settled only in 2025.

On American front pages that day, a Detroit bank robbery ended with one robber killed by a guard, and Los Angeles prosecutors pursued evidence in the Aimee Semple McPherson kidnapping case.

5. Colonial Parallels

Rule by an outside power was not unique to Korea in the 1920s. India remained under British rule, and the Philippines under American control, while Ireland had won a form of self-government only four years earlier. Britain’s Imperial Conference was meeting in London that autumn, and it would produce the Balfour Declaration in November, redefining the dominions as equals. Korea was not part of such talks. That contrast, between empires reshaping their relationships with some peoples while tightening control over others, is the thread that links these parallels. We note these as context, not as reports from this date.

6. Person of the Day

Because it is Friday, we turn to women’s lives. The Dong-A Ilbo reported in July 1926 that Park In-deok, who taught at Baewha Girls’ School, was leaving to study in the United States, and that Choi Yeong-suk had gone to Sweden. These are summer reports, not October 29 stories. They show Korean women appearing in the press as students crossing oceans.

7. Understanding Daily Life

Seoul had electric trams, bookshops, theaters and shopping streets around Jongno. Churches, Buddhist temples and Japanese Shinto shrines all stood in the city. We could not confirm what played at any theater, or what services were held, on this particular evening, so we leave that space honestly blank.

8. Century Mirror

2026 is the hundredth anniversary of “Arirang.” The film’s title song became one of the best-known folk songs in Korea, and Korean cinema, music and television now travel the world. A century ago a Korean-made film opening in Seoul was an act of cultural confidence under censorship. Today’s global audiences for K-culture are descended from evenings like that one.

9. Tomorrow’s Preview

Tomorrow is Saturday, October 30, 1926. Join us tomorrow at 10:10 PM KST as we continue this long journey toward 1945. Good night.

Sources: Wikipedia “October 1926”; Century Dispatch, October 29, 1926; reports on Danseongsa and the Government-General building; secondary accounts of 1926 Dong-A Ilbo coverage; a New Zealand Herald report on the Hohenzollern settlement. No Korean newspaper text dated October 29, 1926 was found.