First Korean Congress

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Formatting and grammar. Please help improve this article if you can. (July 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "First Korean Congress" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The First Korean Congress was convened by Philip Jaisohn in Philadelphia from April 12 to 14, 1919 in the Little Theater at 17th and Delancey Streets.

He convened the Congress as a reaction to the March 1st Movement, one of the earliest public displays of Korean resistance during the rule of Korea by Japan from 1910 into 1919. It was inspired by the "Fourteen Points" outlining the right of national "self-determination", which was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference in January 1919.

Approximately 2,000,000 Koreans had participated in the more than 1,500 demonstrations. Several thousand were massacred by the Japanese police force and army.

The aim was to gain United States support at the Paris Peace Conference in favor of the independence of Korea from Japan.

The result was not attained because Wilson was not interested in challenging global power relations. Since Japan was one of the victors and Korea was its colony, a discussion of the status of Korea was not undertaken.^[1]