A Grand Public Hall Opened in Colonial Seoul - Gyeongseong Bumingwan or Keijō Fuminkan As a Way of Urban Life of the 1930s

Abstract

This paper examines a public hall opened by the municipal government in colonial Seoul. Sited at one of the hub areas of downtown Seoul and currently used as the main building of the Seoul Metropolitan Council, Gyeongseong bumingwan or Keij? fuminkan (literally, a hall for Gyeongseong municipal people) remains one of only a few colonial edifices in the city. In particular, this study inquires into the questions of what the government has sought for through the building of a public hall and in what way the hall has become a way of urban life as a grand hall. By the early 1930s, dwellers of Seoul, especially the Japanese, have strongly aspired for the construction of a ‘grand hall,’ which would be capable of accommodating congregations and lectures, performances and movie screenings, and rite gatherings and other social-work meetings. Especially many of the urban Japanese yearned for performances of first-class Kabuki troupes of imperial Japan. On December 10, 1935, the opening day of the hall, the municipal government has tried to deliver the message of uniting officials and common populace and Koreans and the Japanese into municipal people or ‘bumin’ through a series of ceremonies; at the same time, it has proclaimed the completion of the hall to be a sacred project of the colonialist through a Shinto rite. Although rental fees of the hall were quite expensive, it has been utilized for many purposes. Not only those events of lectures, conventions, plays, films, and music concerts were held in the hall, but such social rites as weddings and memorial services could also be arranged in the hall. To be sure, the grand public hall has contributed to gather together the urban masses in the name of ‘municipal people.’ This collective mood was accelerated when the news of the Sino-Japanese War(1937) reached the colonial city, and the hall was swiftly transformed into a theatre for boosting war fever among the people. It was during the war period that Gyeongseong bumingwan could be best used as a grand public hall for unity.