Qualla: Seodaemun Prison

Seodaemun Prison: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 元諜報員, CC BY-SA 3.0. Yu Gwan-sun was seventeen years old when she was arrested for leading independence demonstrations in 1919. She was eighteen when she died in Seodaemun Prison, her body broken by torture. Decades later, Kim Dae-jung would sit in a cell in the same complex, a dissident who would one day become president of South Korea and win the Nobel Peace Prize. The walls of Seodaemun held both of them, along with thousands of others whose only crime was refusing to accept the political order of their time.

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Image: 元諜報員 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Seodaemun Prison: The Colonial Machine

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USS ANTIETAM (CV-36), Public domain. Construction began in 1907, one year before Japan formally annexed Korea. The prison opened on October 21, 1908, as Gyeongseong Gamok, designed to hold roughly 500 inmates. Its purpose was straightforward: to contain those who opposed Japanese imperial authority. By 1919, the Mar...

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Image: USS ANTIETAM (CV-36) | Public domain

Seodaemun Prison: Freedom and Its Reversals

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Helenakfronczak, CC BY-SA 4.0. Liberation from Japan in August 1945 did not empty the cells. The South Korean government continued using Seodaemun as a prison, and between 1945 and 1950, the population tripled. When North Korean forces captured Seoul in late June 1950 during the Korean War, they released over ...

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Image: Helenakfronczak | CC BY-SA 4.0

Seodaemun Prison: Walls That Remember Selectively

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Exj, CC BY-SA 4.0. The prison was converted into the Seodaemun Prison History Hall in 1998, set within Seodaemun Independence Park near the Independence Gate. Today, visitors walk through preserved cellblocks, interrogation rooms, and execution chambers. Statues of friends Lee Hyo-jeong and Park Ji...

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Image: Exj | CC BY-SA 4.0

Seodaemun Prison: The Names on the Walls

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kyklyj, CC BY-SA 4.0. The roster of Seodaemun's inmates reads like an index of modern Korean history. Ahn Chang-ho, the independence activist and educator. Cho Bong-am, a political prisoner executed in 1959. Shin Joong-hyun, the godfather of Korean rock music, imprisoned for refusing to write a song p...

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Image: Kyklyj | CC BY-SA 4.0