Boseongsa Site보성사터

About

Boseongsa was a Cheondogyo-affiliated printing house created in late 1910 by merging Changsinsa with the Boseongsa print shop belonging to Boseong Academy. It is also where 20,000 copies of the Declaration of Independence were printed at the time of the March 1st Movement. Yi Jong-il, then president of Boseongsa, together with factory supervisor Kim Hong-gyu and general manager Jang Hyo-geun, printed the Declaration here on February 27, 1919, carried the copies to his home, and distributed them across the country the next day, laying the groundwork for the independence movement. Boseongsa was a 30-pyeong, two-story tiled brick building on the grounds of Boseong School in Jeon-dong. On the special order of Uiam Son Byeong-hui, leader of Cheondogyo and also the owner of Boseongsa, president Yi Jong-il, factory supervisor Kim Heung-gyu and general manager Jang Hyo-geun received the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Yukdang Choe Nam-seon and signed by the 33 national representatives, and printed 35,000 copies on the night of February 27, 1919. They were nearly discovered by a Japanese detective, but got through the crisis by claiming the pages were a family genealogy book. On March 1, Yun Ik-seon, Yi Jong-rin, Yi Jong-il, Kim Hong-gyu and others went on to publish 10,000 copies of the underground newspaper Joseon Independence Newspaper. The Japanese police immediately shut down Boseongsa, and on the night of June 28, 1919, they set it on fire. Only the site remains today. The site of Boseongsa is within the grounds of Jogyesa Temple in present-day Jongno-gu, and its memorial stone and statue stand in the neighborhood park across from the temple's rear gate.