From WCH: On 12 January 1932, thousands of local fisherwomen on Korea’s Jeju Island, known as haenyeo, marched towards Sehwa Five-day Market, wielding hoes and abalone knives, in what became known as the Jeju Female Divers’ Uprising. The haenyeo were angered by their loss of control over the Jeju Haenyeo Association (established in 1920 to protect haenyeo rights and interests but turned into a docile group controlled by the Imperial Japanese authorities) and the underpricing of seaweed and other seafoods harvested by the haenyeo. At Sehwa Market, haenyeo leaders from local villages around Jeju Island made speeches to reinforce the resolve of the protesters. Coincidentally, the Japanese provincial governor of Jeju Island, Taguchi Teiki, was touring Sehwa village when he stumbled upon the protest. The angry haenyeo surrounded his car, shouting “If you respond to our demands with force, we will respond with death”. The governor agreed to talk, and the haenyeo presented him with demands, including a reassessment of the price of the harvests, exemption of the haenyeo from Haenyeo Association union dues and the governor’s withdrawal from his concurrent role as head of the association. The governor promised to meet their demands but reneged several days later and dispatched armed police to arrest 34 haenyeo leaders, putting an end to the protests. For centuries, the sea diving and harvesting skills of the haenyeo sustained Jeju families, and thus the haenyeo were symbols and heads of Jeju Island’s local semi-matriarchal society. Subject to extortion and exploitation by officials of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty and later Imperial Japan, the haenyeo are now in decline in modern South Korea, due to competition from other industries and the dwindling attractiveness of haenyeo labour.

Abe Okpik was an Inuk community leader and advocate for the Inuktitut language. He is best remembered for his work on Project Surname, in which he sought to replace the identification numbers assigned to the Inuit in Northern Canada with surnames. Although some Inuit are critical of his work on assigning surnames to Inuit peoples, his intentions were to create a more humanizing process than the Inuit Disc Numbers in practice at the time. In the 1970's he moved to the eastern Arctic where he became the administrator of a school, the Ukiivik Residence. He also began teaching Inuktitut at the high-school level. Focusing on promoting the Inuit language, Okpik worked with the Inuit Cultural Institute (ICI) to create a new and simplified Inuktitut writing system with 45 letters. This form of the syllabary was officially adopted in 1974 and is still used today. Okpik worked extensively as a translator, both in person for important legal issues such as for Judge Thomas Berger during the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, and in writing as he translated books from English to Inuktitut, which became some of the first publications in the Inuit language. He was also the first Inuk to sit on what is now the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

The initial attacks in the revolt began on this day in 1904 and were successful, involving the killings of 123 persons, mostly German landowners. Samuel Maharero was a leader in the uprising, famously writing in a letter to Hendrik Witbooi, seeking alliance with the Nama chief, "Let us die fighting!" Two days later they captured the Waterberg military station. Although troops were immediately sent from Germany to put down the resistance, they fought using guerilla tactics successfully for almost a year. Although defeated in late 1904 it took the Germans until 1908 to fully re-establish authority over the territory. This war, and the extermination order issued by General Lothar von Trotha that followed its end, is considered by most historians to be the first genocide of the 20th century.