서대문형무소역사관

Seodaemun Prison was an organization under the control of the Governor-General of Imperial Japan. The prison warden received orders from the governor-general, and the installation and abolition of the prison was under control. Central Prison Building is constructed as a space to give an overview of the overall prison life there, including organizations of the prison, monitoring tools, and daily schedule of inmates.

Independence activists and pro-democracy activists were imprisoned in this place in reality. Visitors can watch the structure of the prison building and how guards worked, and they can experience being imprisoned by personally entering a cell. Also, it exhibits a tap code, which was the way of communication among the independence activists.

It is a two-floor building built in the 1920s. It is the only independent prison building not connected to the central guards' office, and locked up "political offenders" who were caught while opposing colonization of the Japanese Empire and engaging in resistance activities. This place was used to monitor and control them in a special way. There are bullet marks made by the attack of the North Korean army in the Korean war here and there on the building's exterior walls.

Each prison of the Japanese Empire had a factory that manufactured and supplied goods needed in prisons, troops, public offices, etc. with the labor from inmates. The inmates were subjected to force labor and violation of human rights here. This place was used to manufacture and supply ammunition for the Second World War in the late 1930s.