The uprising was an eruption of the pent-up grudge of the Korean people who had undergone severe humiliation and maltreatment under the barbarous military rule of the Japanese imperialists.

Early in the last century, the Japanese imperialists cooked up treaties with military threat and blackmail to occupy Korea. Then they turned it into a huge prison with their medieval terror-ridden politics.

The Korean people's bitter grudge and anger at the Japanese imperialists' heinous colonial rule exploded as a nationwide anti-Japanese resistance on March 1, 1919.

With the bell at 12:00 as a signal, people of all strata gathered at the playground on Jangdaejae in Pyongyang and staged a fierce street demonstration, shouting slogans "Long live the independence of Korea!" and "Japanese and Japan troops, go home!" The struggle swept the whole country at once and spread to the Korean community abroad, developing into an all-Korean resistance.

Much upset by such developments, the Japanese imperialists mobilized all their repressive forces in Korea and even huge armed forces from the Japan proper to put down the uprising.

They employed all sorts of means to suppress the uprisers. The Japanese imperialist murderers tore up the limbs of Koreans, cut their necks, arms and legs with fodder-choppers and hung them on trees, saying that shooting to death is not "interesting" and to use knives is too lenient for Koreans.

They tied the two hands of arrested Koreans with wire and hung them in the air, beating them with whips and triangular sticks and thrusting them with sharp bamboo needles, and scorching them with red-heated rakes. They also placed arrested persons in a lower box with sharp iron nails on all its sides four to five hours, making them unable to sit or stand, and pulled out their fingernails and toenails with pincers and even twisted their fingers between a nail to break them.

No one in the world slaughtered the empty-handed participants in peaceful demonstration in such cruel means as the Japanese imperialists did.

The Korean people will not let pass the Japanese imperialists' unethical crimes but surely give vent to the pent-up grudge.