Independence activist and journalist who proposed the name 'Daehan Minguk' and ran the Chosun Ilbo (pen name Uchang)
| Life | 1895 ~ 1953 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 고령 신씨 |
Sin Seok-u (申錫雨, 1895-1953) was an independence activist and journalist of the Japanese colonial period whose pen name was Uchang. His clan seat was Goryeong, and he was the son of Sin Tae-hyu, a military official of the late Korean Empire. Born in Hanseong, he graduated from the professional school of Waseda University in Japan. Some studies give his birth year as 1894.
After graduating he went to Shanghai, where with Lyuh Woon-hyung and others he organized a Korean residents' friendship association and published a mimeographed newspaper. He is known as the person who, at the first session of the Provisional Assembly in Shanghai in April 1919, proposed that the new state be named Daehan Minguk (Republic of Korea). When others objected that the country had been lost under the name Daehan, he is said to have answered, "We fell as Daehan, so let us rise again as Daehan," and the name was adopted. He served the Provisional Government as Minister of Transportation.
Returning to Korea in 1924, he bought the financially troubled Chosun Ilbo from Song Byeong-jun for 85,000 won. He installed Wollam Yi Sang-jae as president and served as vice president himself, becoming president on Yi's death in 1927 and serving until 1931. During that time he built a new headquarters in Gyeonji-dong, Seoul, and from 1929 the paper ran a literacy campaign by students returning home for vacation, regarded as one of the most successful popular movements organized by a newspaper under Japanese rule. He persuaded his father to spend heavily to build up a national newspaper, and when the Singanhoe was founded in 1927 he chaired its inaugural meeting and served as an executive. In 1931 he handed the presidency to An Jae-hong and returned to Shanghai.
After liberation he served from 1949 into 1950 as the Republic of Korea's ambassador to the Republic of China, and he died in Busan in 1953. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Independence Medal, in 1995. His first wife, Yi Beom-suk, was an elder sister of the independence fighter Yi Beom-seok; after her death he married Kang Ik-ju and is said to have had three sons and two daughters. He was a Protestant of the Baptist church.