Student YMCA Movement is the typical Christian student movement under Japanese colonial rule, which originally started with the Student YMCA of Bae-Jae School established in 1901. It played an important role in the history of Korean national movement ...
Student YMCA Movement is the typical Christian student movement under Japanese colonial rule, which originally started with the Student YMCA of Bae-Jae School established in 1901. It played an important role in the history of Korean national movement by helping the founding of the Student Independence Group at the time of March 1st Movement and Chosun Haksaeng Daehoe(Korean Student Assembly) in 1920. And it took part in a variety of activities as a leading group to spread the new culture beyond the previous activities of the religious movement, especially focusing on the ideological activities in terms of New Culture Movement, Social Reconstruction, Christian Socialism and the Popularization.
During the late 1920s, Student YMCA Movement campaigned for its Social Gospel in the rural area and tried positively to figure out the actual problems by joining with Student YWCAs. However, with the anti-religious movement of socialists and the demoralized aspects of the students in general, Student YMCA Movement had to be faced with the identity crisis in the early 1930s. Furthermore, it came to lose its actual power after 1935, due to the more intensified suppression of the Chosun Government-General after the break of the 1931 Manchurian Incident and the internal trouble between Ahn Changho line and Rhee Syngman line of Christian nationalist camps.
The organization of Student YMCA Movement had a triangular system - Student YMCA of each branch school and Student Bureau at the National Council of Korean YMCAs, with the Student Summer Conference on its top. The major activities ranged within the four-fold purpose to improve the spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of students. They were intended to practice the Basis of the YMCA, which was the extension of Kingdom of God among young men through gospel preaching & moral training, intellectual training, physical training and social intercourse. And as Student YMCA participated in the Rural Work and the Temperance Movement in the late 1920s, its campaign focused on the solution for the actual problems of life by creating the sections such as those of rural reconstruction, anti-alcohol & anti-tobacco, and consumers' cooperative.
Finally, to sum up the meaning of Student YMCA Movement in the historical context of Korean national movement, it can be argued that Student YMCA Movement was the student movement of bourgeoisie-nationalism strategy in line with the nationalist movements at that time such as the New Culture Movement, Korean Products Promoting Campaign, Temperance Movement and Rural Work. It also played an important role as the outlet for leaders of Christian national movement in corporation with the domestic network of the student movement and the Christian movement as well as the international network of World Student Christian Federation. Student YMCA Movement was the nation-wide movement that continuously went on from the time of the Daehan Empire up to the Liberation and even after it. In this sense, it is a good example to survey diachronically the various aspects of the modern student movement in line with the bourgeoisie-nationalist movement.