Gyeongseong Bumin Hall Bomb Resistance Site경성 부민관 폭탄 의거지

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This is the site where a bomb was set off at Gyeongseong Bumin Hall to disrupt a rally led by pro-Japanese collaborators on July 24, 1945. Built in December 1935 at 60 Taepyeong-dong, Gyeongseong Bumin Hall was the municipal theater of Gyeongseong (Seoul), the equivalent of a city theater today. With one basement level and three floors above ground, it was a multipurpose hall with large, medium, and small auditoriums and a lounge, and it had heating, cooling, lighting, and sound systems that were rare at the time. It hosted performances by theater companies and was widely used for government-sponsored rallies under the wartime total mobilization system. The bombing was led by Jo Mun-gi, Yu Man-su, U Dong-hak, Gang Yun-guk, and other passionate young men around 20 years old. In May 1945, at Yu Man-su's home at 13 Gwansu-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul, they formed the Korean Patriotic Youth Party and waited for a chance to fight Japanese rule. When it was reported that the Rally of Righteous Indignation of the Asian Peoples, hosted by Park Chun-geum and his faction of the pro-Japanese Daeuidang party, would be held at the hall on the evening of July 24, 1945, Jo Mun-gi and his comrades met in secret and planned to bomb the venue. Yu Man-su infiltrated the construction site of the Susaek Substation as a blasting worker and took dynamite, which they used to make two homemade bombs, planting them near the restroom at the back of the hall the night before the rally. The bombs went off around 9 p.m. on July 24, shortly after Park Chun-geum took the stage to give a speech on current affairs, and the rally was called off. Coming less than a month before liberation, the bombing showed at home and abroad that the nation's will for independence remained unbroken. The site is now the grounds of the Seoul Metropolitan Council, where a marker stone notes the location of the bombing.