Chōsen Shrine (Site of)

The Chōsen Shrine (朝鮮神宮, Chōsen Jingū) was the premier Shinto shrine of colonial Korea, situated on the slopes of Namsan Mountain in Keijō (present-day Seoul). Planning began in the early 1910s, shortly after Japan's annexation of Korea in 1910, and construction commenced in 1920 on a site of about 200,000 tsubo, with shrine precincts of some 7,000 tsubo. The shrine was completed and formally dedicated in October 1925, with total construction costs of approximately 1.5 million yen.

The shrine enshrined Amaterasu Ōmikami, the mythical sun goddess and ancestress of the Japanese imperial line, and Emperor Meiji, under whose reign Korea was colonized. The famous architect and architectural historian Itō Chūta, who also designed Meiji Jingū in Tokyo, contributed to its planning. Built in the Shinmei-zukuri style modelled after Ise Jingū, the complex featured a straight ceremonial axis leading through stone stairways and multiple torii gates to the main shrine at the summit. Structures included the main hall (honden), worship hall (haiden), treasure storehouse, sacred fence gate, imperial messenger's hall, ablution hall, and administrative offices.

Before the shrine's establishment, considerable debate arose over which deities should be enshrined. Influential Shinto figures including Ogasawara Shōzō argued that the shrine should honour Korean national deities such as Dangun, the legendary founder of Korea, in keeping with Shinto tradition of enshrining local deities. The government rejected this approach, choosing instead to enshrine exclusively Japanese imperial deities — a decision that underscored the shrine's role as an instrument of cultural domination rather than religious accommodation.

During the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945), visits to the shrine were increasingly made compulsory for residents of Keijō as part of Japan's kōminka (imperialization) campaign to transform colonized Koreans into loyal subjects of the emperor. The shrine became a focal point of the forced Shinto worship that pervaded colonial Korea, where over 1,000 shrines of various ranks were established by 1945.

Following Emperor Hirohito's surrender announcement on 15 August 1945, a ceremony was held to ritually remove the enshrined deities — on 16 August according to Japanese records, though some accounts place it on the afternoon of the 15th. The shrine was demolished in October 1945 and formally abolished on 17 November. The site subsequently became part of Namsan Park, and in 1970 the Patriot An Jung-geun Memorial Hall was constructed there, honouring the Korean independence activist who assassinated Itō Hirobumi, Japan's first Resident-General of Korea, in 1909. A statue of independence leader Kim Ku was also erected on the grounds, transforming a symbol of colonial subjugation into a space celebrating Korean national liberation.