History Calendar
From the Eulsa pact of 1905 to the present, the dates of modern Korean history laid on a calendar. When the day comes, the record of that day goes up.
All dates are Gregorian. A ★ marks a national holiday or statutory day of remembrance established for that event.
Categories
Days sovereignty and lives were taken — colonial rule and post-liberation state violence together
Days of defiance, and of dying. Independence and democracy are one lineage
Days power was seized by coup or rigged ballot
Days the reckoning was attempted — and failed. From 1949 to the May 18 Special Act
January
5The scholar who raised a righteous army against the Eulsa pact died on Tsushima after a hunger strike.
He threw a bomb at the emperor's procession at Sakuradamon — the Korean Patriotic Corps' first action.
The Uiyeoldan member bombed the station, then fought a three-day gun battle against over a thousand police.
He died under water torture at Namyeong-dong. The police claim that he 'just died of shock' ignited the June Uprising.
Rumours of poisoning inflamed public feeling; the March First Movement was timed to his state funeral.
February
5Some 600 Korean students in Tokyo declared independence — the fuse of the March First Movement.
The army massacred some 700 villagers as suspected guerrilla collaborators; over half were the elderly and children.
Koreans were forced to take Japanese names; the date was set to Japan's national foundation day.
The repeal act passed, erasing the legal basis for prosecuting collaboration.
Begun in Daegu: quit tobacco, sell your rings, pay off the nation's 13 million won debt.
March
4Two million people took part in the largest independence movement, leading to the Provisional Government.
The Rhee government rigged the election wholesale; protests in Masan grew into the April Revolution.
The act giving the state a mandate to investigate collaboration was promulgated.
Executed at Lüshun Prison, leaving his unfinished treatise 'On Peace in East Asia'.
April
7Tens of thousands of islanders died over seven years of suppression. A state apology took 55 years.
Eight men were hanged 18 hours after the final verdict. All were acquitted in a 2007 retrial.
The provisional charter was proclaimed in Shanghai, fixing the name 'Republic of Korea' and a republican form.
Japanese troops herded villagers into a church and set it alight in reprisal for the March First Movement.
Students and citizens brought down the regime; Rhee resigned a week later.
He stepped down saying he would resign if the people wished it, and went into exile in Hawaii.
He bombed the emperor's birthday ceremony in Shanghai, killing the Japanese high command.
May
5The acting minister to Britain took his own life in London in protest at Korea's collapsing position.
Officers led by Park Chung-hee seized power, beginning eighteen years of rule.
Gwangju rose against the new junta's expanded martial law; paratroopers crushed the ten-day uprising.
Martial law troops stormed the hall at dawn. Those who stayed knew they would die.
The presidential committee began work; four years later it certified 1,006 collaborators.
June
10Students protested the humiliating terms of normalisation talks with Japan; martial law was declared.
Police stormed the committee's headquarters and disarmed its investigators — the reckoning collapsed here.
Hong Beom-do's army won the first large-scale victory over regular Japanese troops.
Hit by a canister outside Yonsei University; the photograph lit the fuse of the June Uprising the next day.
A student-led demonstration on the day of Sunjong's funeral, foreshadowing the Gwangju uprising.
A million people took to the streets nationwide, winning direct presidential elections in nineteen days.
Normalisation came with $300 million in claims funds — and the sealing of individual claims that haunts Korea still.
Three years of war killed millions — and buried the reckoning with collaboration entirely.
Twenty days after the raid, the former Provisional Government president was shot by an army lieutenant.
Roh Tae-woo accepted direct elections — a day the citizens won, and the junta extended its rule.
July
6Just after the war began, the government massacred Bodo League members — tens of thousands at minimum.
Date to be re-verified before publishing — Dates varied by region; describe as late June–July 1950 rather than a single day.
Launched under the president, it returned 2,359 parcels of land — worth 237.3 billion won — held by 168 collaborators, then closed in 2010 as the four-year mandate it was designed with expired.
Sent to expose the Eulsa pact at the Hague, the envoys were refused even entry.
The politician pursuing a left-right coalition was shot at Hyehwa-dong, collapsing the moderate path.
Japan used the Hague mission as a pretext to force the emperor from the throne.
Administrative power passed to Japan, with Japanese vice-ministers in every department.
August
11Disbanded soldiers joined the righteous armies, escalating resistance into nationwide warfare.
A television remark surfaced the record of Ahn Sang-ho, a 1916 councillor of a pro-Japanese association. His name is not among the dictionary's 4,389 — the list is not complete, and even his descendants did not know.
Date to be re-verified before publishing — Ongoing matter. The subject is Ahn Sang-ho and the incompleteness of the record, not his descendants.
The KCIA abducted the opposition leader from a Tokyo hotel and prepared to drown him at sea.
The Korean-language private press was forcibly closed.
Kim Kyung-sook died as police stormed the opposition party HQ to clear protesting women workers.
The first survivor of Japanese military sexual slavery to testify publicly under her own name.
Liberation after 35 years — and the start of a reckoning that ran aground within four years.
Yi Wan-yong signed as prime minister — five years after the Eulsa pact.
The Dong-A Ilbo published a photo of marathon champion Sohn Kee-chung with the flag erased from his chest.
The treaty was proclaimed and the Korean Empire ceased to exist — one week after signing.
By this date: 688 cases handled, 293 indicted, and just 10 prison sentences.
September
4Amid the rumour that Koreans had poisoned the wells, thousands were murdered.
A sixty-five-year-old threw a bomb at the incoming governor-general at Namdaemun Station.
The Provisional Government's regular army was established in Chongqing.
The founding National Assembly wrote the reckoning into law. It was repealed two years and five months later.
October
8Scholars compiling a Korean dictionary were arrested as independence activists; 33 were seized.
Busan and Masan rose against the Yushin system; ten days later it ended in gunfire.
The assembly was dissolved and the constitution rewritten for lifetime rule; presidents were now chosen in a gymnasium.
Soldiers refused deployment to crush the Jeju uprising; the suppression that followed killed many civilians.
The combined forces of Kim Jwa-jin and Hong Beom-do routed Japanese troops over six days.
He shot Ito Hirobumi at Harbin Station — the very man who had forced the Eulsa pact.
KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu shot the president — on the same calendar date as An Jung-geun's act.
The Supreme Court held Japanese firms liable, ruling individual claims survived the 1965 agreement.
November
7Beginning in Gwangju, it drew some 54,000 students from 194 schools nationwide.
The institute published three volumes listing 4,389 people, funded by citizens after the Assembly cut the budget.
Founded by Kim Won-bong in Jilin, it waged two decades of assassinations and bombings.
A twenty-two-year-old cutter set himself alight shouting 'Observe the Labour Standards Act.'
Korea lost its diplomatic sovereignty. The five ministers who assented became the Five Eulsa Traitors.
Jang Ji-yeon's editorial ran in the Hwangseong Sinmun; the paper was suspended and he was jailed.
He died leaving a final address to the twenty million people of Korea; Jo Byeong-se followed the same day.
December
10A commission was launched to investigate everything from anti-Japanese resistance to post-liberation state violence.
The man responsible for 12·12 and Gwangju was jailed; sentenced to life in 1997, he was pardoned that December.
The amended act takes effect and the committee dissolved in 2010 returns after sixteen years. Proceeds from property already sold on by descendants are now recoverable, and informants can be rewarded. The justice ministry expects at least 32.5 billion won.
Date to be re-verified before publishing — Reports differ on whether the effective date is 2 or 3 December; confirm against the official gazette.
Three days after Pearl Harbor, the Provisional Government formally declared war on Japan.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo's Hanahoe seized military power by arresting the martial law commander.
By suspending the statute of limitations it put the junta on trial — a reckoning that succeeded 46 years after the anti-collaboration committee failed.
He stabbed Yi Wan-yong outside Myeongdong Cathedral. Yi survived to sign the annexation treaty a year later.
He bombed the Oriental Development Company and the Industrial Bank, symbols of colonial extraction.
The act returning property acquired through collaboration to the state. The committee it created recovered 237.3 billion won in four years; a 2026 amendment revives it after sixteen years.
After his appeals to annul the pact failed, the scholar took poison.