Korean independence movement

The Korean independence movement, also known as the Korean Revolution was a series of diplomatic and militant efforts that liberated the Korean peninsula from Japanese rule. The movement began around the late 19th or early 20th century, and ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945. As independence activism on the peninsula was largely suppressed by the Empire of Japan, many significant efforts were conducted abroad by the Korean diaspora, as well as by a number of sympathetic non-Koreans.

In the mid-19th century, Joseon Korea, Tokugawa Japan and Qing China were forced out of their policies of isolationism by the West. Japan then proceeded to rapidly modernize to become a great power in the region, forcefully open Korea, and establish its own hegemony over the peninsula after defeating Qing China in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russian Empire in the Russo-Japanese War. Eventually, it formally annexed Korea in 1910. The 1919 March First Movement protests are widely seen as a significant catalyst for the international independence movement, although domestically, the protests were violently suppressed. In the aftermath of the protests, thousands of Korean independence activists fled abroad, mostly to Republican China. In April 1919, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (KPG) was founded as a self-proclaimed government in exile in Shanghai.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, China became one of the Big Four Allies of World War II. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, China attempted to use this influence to assert Allied recognition of the KPG. However, the United States was skeptical of Korean unity and readiness for independence, preferring an international trusteeship-like solution for the Korean Peninsula. Although China achieved agreement by the Allies on eventual Korean independence in the Cairo Declaration of 1943, continued disagreement and ambiguity about the postwar Korean government lasted until the Soviet–Japanese War of 1945 created a de factodivision of Korea into Soviet and American zones, which eventually became North Korea and South Korea respectively.

August 15, the day Japan surrendered in 1945, is celebrated as a holiday in both South Korea and North Korea.