Yi Jong-il Birthplace Site

This is the birthplace of Yi Jong-il (1858–1925), an independence activist of the Japanese colonial period. He was one of the thirty-three national representatives who signed the 1919 Declaration of Independence (the Gimi Independence Declaration); earlier he had travelled to Japan as a member of a goodwill mission together with Pak Yeong-hyo, founded Korea's first Hangeul-language newspaper in 1898, the second year of the Gwangmu era, and in 1908 became president of the Daehan Hwangseong Sinmun (Korea Hwangseong Newspaper), through which he sought to enlighten the people and attacked Japan's policy of aggression. He died in March 1925 at the age of sixty-eight, and on 1 March 1962 was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Bokjang grade. The birth house is a thatched-roof building with an L-shaped floor plan, restored in 1986. From south to north it comprises, one bay each, a side room, a wooden-floored hall, an upper room and a main room, with a two-bay kitchen, and a wooden floor laid at the front. In the wing projecting forward there is a door facing north, and to its east a two-bay room. The house is enclosed by a low stone wall, and behind it stands a shrine of three bays across the front and two bays deep, completed in 1990.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Taean, Chungnam

Designation

Provincial Monument · 시도기념물