Wanpaoshan Incident
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wanpaoshan Incident that occurred prior to the Mukden Incident at Wanpaoshan, a small village located some 18 miles north of Changchun, in Manchuria. The village is located in a low marshy area alongside the Itung River. A group of Koreans leased a large tract of land near Wanpaoshan and prepared to irrigate the land by digging a ditch several miles long, extending from the Itung River across a tract of land, not included in their lease, and occupied by Chinese farmers. After a considerable length of the ditch had been constructed, the Chinese farmers arose en masse and protested to the Wanpaoshan authorities, who dispatched police and ordered the Koreans to cease construction at once and leave the area occupied by the Chinese. The Japanese Consul at Changchun also sent police to protect the Koreans.
On 1 July 1931, after negotiations had produced no results, the Chinese farmers took matters into their own hands and drove the Koreans from their lands and filled the ditch. During this operation, Japanese Consular Police opened fire on the Chinese farmers and drove them away, while the Koreans returned and completed their irrigation project under the protection of the Japanese police. No casualties resulted from this "Incident", but the sensational accounts of it printed in the Japanese and Korean Press caused a series of anti-Chinese riots in Korea in which Chinese were massacred and their property destroyed, which in turn caused a revival of the anti-Japanese boycott in China.
Source
