The incident was triggered on October 30, 1929 when a Japanese student molested and insulted a Korean girl student on a Kwangju-Raju train.

On November 1, hundreds of teachers and students at a Japanese middle school in Korea again attacked Korean day students at Kwangju Railway Station, but Japanese policemen committed an outrage on the Korean students.

Enraged at such rude action, all the Korean students in the city of Kwangju stayed away from classes all at once on Nov. 3 to protest against the Japanese imperialists' racial discrimination and unjust suppression and staged an anti-Japanese demonstration.

The astonished Japanese imperialists imposed a martial law on Kwangju area to arrest and detain the demonstrators at random. Their fascist outrage lasted until November 11.

But the struggle rapidly spilled over into all parts of Korea including Pyongyang, Sinuiju, Hamhung, Kaesong, Seoul, Taegu and Pusan.

The Japanese imperialists mobilized all the police force to block the entrances of schools in different parts of Korea and suppress the struggle of Korean students. Moreover, they launched a hideous repression operation to arrest and kill those students.

Thus, all the country was turned into a theater of blood.

The repression of Kwangju students was the biggest holocaust case after the March First Popular Uprising in Korea, and it showed the deceitfulness and criminal nature of the Japanese imperialists' "civil rule".

Though the old generation and century are replaced by the new ones, the Kwangju Student Incident is still giving rise to a strong wave of hostility toward Japan among the Korean people.