"Red Cross pamphlet on March 1st Movement" (Rev. Soon Hyun Collected Works), p. 24: photograph captioned "merciless Japanese soldiers"

A page of the English-language 1919 pamphlet prints a single photograph of a mutilated body with a three-line caption: after the 'first surprise' the Japanese authorities 'turned loose the soldiers on the Koreans', and the man was 'slashed and cut up all over the body by merciless Japanese soldiers'. The tell is the evaluative label 'merciless' and the collective attribution ('the Japanese authorities') in the caption, which carries the accusation that the photograph itself does not state.

Date

1919

Period

Interwar

Made by

Korean independence movement (pamphlet catalogued as a 'Red Cross pamphlet'; issuer not named on the page; held in the Rev. Soon Hyun Collected Works, USC Korean American Digital Archive)

Region

East Asia

Country

Provisional Government of Korea

Medium

Document

Issuer type

Movement

Regime

Provisional Government of Korea

Leader

Syngman Rhee

Audience

Foreign public

Purpose

Demonize

Themes

Empire and colonialism, War and the military

Event

Korean Independence Movement 1919

Techniques

Name-calling

Source

Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are

Source

Wikimedia Commons (scan from USC Digital Library, Korean American Digital Archive, Rev. Soon Hyun Collected Works, item KADA-shyun15-012, page 24), retrieved October 2, 2026

Rights

Public domain (pamphlet dated 1919, before 1931; Commons tag PD-US)
Unknown author, 1919; University of Southern California Digital Library, Korean American Digital Archive; via Wikimedia Commons. USC item page (digitallibrary.usc.edu, collection p15799coll126, id 5245) not reachable from the collection environment; basis is the 1919 date and the Commons tag

After the first surprise the Japanese authorities turned loose the soldiers
on the Koreans.  This picture shows how one of them was slashed and
cut up all over the body by merciless Japanese soldiers.