National Debt Repayment Movement Memorial & Records Exhibition Hall

Character

The National Debt Repayment Movement began with arithmetic: a 1907 proposal to repay a 13 million won national debt by giving up smoking for three months

The current Records Exhibition Hall turns that fundraising campaign back into documents. Donation lists, newspaper material, appeals and organizational records show how an idea formed in Daegu spread through civic groups, merchants, women’s associations and communities across the Korean Empire

The exhibition occupies the first two floors of the National Debt Repayment Movement Memorial Library, a public institution whose own history reaches back to 1919. The 2023 renovation joined records exhibition and library functions in one central-city building, giving a documentary collection recognized by UNESCO a daily civic setting

The experience

The exhibition is organized around written evidence. The first floor includes the UNESCO Memory of the World hall and a gallery for rotating displays, while the second floor carries deeper historical and thematic exhibition space

Visitors encounter the proposed three-month smoking boycott, donor names, newspaper campaigns and the records created as local committees formed across the country. Women’s fundraising, jewelry donations and other forms of voluntary contribution widen the movement beyond the businessmen who initiated it

The upper library floors change the character of the building. The records remain part of an active public library complex rather than a stand-alone commemorative monument. Nearby National Debt Repayment Movement Memorial Park adds the outdoor civic-memory layer within the same downtown area

History

By 1907, the Korean Empire had accumulated 13 million won in government debt to Japan. On January 29, Seo Sang-don raised the idea of a public repayment campaign at a meeting of Daegu’s Gwangmunsa-associated civic group. Kim Gwang-je and other members helped develop the proposal

The organizers argued that if 20 million Koreans stopped smoking for three months and donated 20 jeon per month, collective contributions could approach the amount needed. Newspapers circulated the appeal, and repayment associations formed across the country. Participants gave cash, jewelry and personal possessions, while women established their own fundraising groups

The campaign eventually weakened under pressure, organizational problems and colonial intervention, but its surviving documentary record became a major source for studying mass civic mobilization in the late Korean Empire

The National Debt Repayment Movement records were inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2017. In July 2023, the former central public library reopened after renovation as the National Debt Repayment Movement Memorial Library, with the Records Exhibition Hall occupying the first and second floors

Before you go

The current Records Exhibition Hall is inside the Memorial Library at 25 Gongpyeong-ro 10-gil. The nearby memorial park and older commemorative facilities belong to the same Daegu memory landscape, but the documentary exhibition described here is the one inside the library building