With the Century

1

 

Part I

THE ANTI-JAPANESE REVOLUTION

1

 

 

Translation from the preceding page:

Revolutionaries, believe in the people and rely on them at all times and you shall always emerge victorious; if you are forsaken by them, you will always fail. Let this be your maxim in your life and struggle.

Kim Il Sung

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3

In Jilin

 

1. The Pursuit of Progressive Thoughts

 

I remained at home for about a month to celebrate New Year’s Day. Then in mid-January I left Fusong. When I arrived in Jilin it was noon and the streets were full of people. I thought it would be awkward to take out my pocketbook and turn over the pages with numbed fingers to look up the addresses of my acquaintances each time I was going to ask my way. So I had committed to memory the names of the streets and house numbers I was looking for. From the first moment the bustling scenes in the large city with its long history seemed to press down upon me who had been living only in the quiet and lonely countryside.

After leaving the station I could hardly move because of my great excitement. I stood looking for a long time at this lively new scene which represented a new life for me. The most memorable thing I saw in the streets of the city that day was that there were many water vendors. I heard some passers-by grumble that there was not enough drinking water so that only the number of water vendors was increasing in a place once known as a city of water, even called a quay, and that life in the city of Jilin might well grow harder in time. The city life in which even a glass of water had to be reckoned in terms of money weighed down heavily upon me from the first moment, but defying this weight, I threw out my chest and marched down the street into the city.

Having walked some distance along Chelou Street towards Beishan from the station I came to a wall which separated the inner city from the outer part and saw a gate in the wall with a sign reading Zhaoyang Gate above it. Near the Zhaoyang Gate there was another gate called Xinkai Gate. Besides these two gates, there were Bohu, Linjiang, Fuxiu, Desh-eng, Beiji Gates and others, ten in all. All of these gates were guarded by soldiers of Zhang Zuo-xiang’s army. The ancient-looking wall of Jilin marred here and there by weathering showed that this was an old walled city.

Although I was a stranger to the place, the city did not seem so unfamiliar to me. This was probably because I had long wished to see it and there were many friends of my late father in the city. In my pocket-book I had the addresses of more than ten friends and acquaintances of my father to whom I would have to pay courtesy calls. Old friends of my late father 0 Tong Jin, Jang Chol Ho, Son Jong Do, Kim Sa Hon, Hyon Muk Kwan (Hyon Ik Chol), Ko Won Am, Pak Ki Baek, and Hwang Paek Ha were all living in Jilin. I had to call on all of them.

0 Tong Jin was the first person I decided to visit. I called at his house which was located between Chelou Street and Xiangfu Street. To tell the truth, I was feeling rather nervous at the time. I was afraid that Commander 0 might have been displeased to hear that I had left Hwa-song Uisuk School to which I had been admitted through the kind offices of my father’s friends. But he was as kind as ever and delighted to see me. When I told him why I had left Hwasong Uisuk School and come to Jilin, he sat nodding his head in silence for a while, looking serious. Then he said: “Seeing you in Jilin all of a sudden, I am reminded of your late father. Your father, too, unexpectedly left Sungsil Middle School. I heard that with many regrets at the time. But much later I realized that your father had been right in making the decision. Anyhow, I marvel at your resolve to leave the school after only six months and come to Jilin, If Jilin is what you want, then, dig your well here.” This was all 0 Tong Jin said after hearing my account of how I had come to Jilin. I felt grateful to him for his broad-minded way of think­ing which was fully worthy of him. He remarked with regret that now that I had decided to come to Jilin for schooling, I should have had my whole family, my mother and younger brothers, move there to settle. When he had come to my father’s funeral he had asked my mother many times to move to Jilin where there were many friends of her late husband. Mother was grateful for his kind suggestion, but she would not leave Fusong. With the grave of her husband in Yangdicun village, she thought, how could she move out to Jilin? That day 0 Tong Jin introduced his secretary Choe Il Chon to me. Since he had previously boasted a great deal about his secretary, I already knew something about this Choe Il Chon. He was well-known in the Jongui-bu organization as a good writer. Our meeting that day marked the beginning of the special comradely ties between Choe Il Chon and me.

That afternoon, 0 Tong Jin took me to the Sanfeng Hotel and pre­sented me to some independence fighters. Among them were Kim Sa Hon to whom Kim Si U had written a letter of introduction for me and Jang Chol Ho who commanded the Jongui-bu guards. Besides these two men there were many independence fighters staying at the hotel whose names I did not know. Along with the Taifenghe Rice Mill, this hotel was one of the two nests for independence fighters in Jilin that they used for lodging and liaison. This hotel also provided accommodation for many emigrants from Korea. The manager was from the same province as the Rev. Son Jong Do. He had lived in Jungsan County, South Phyongan Province, before moving to Jilin on the advice of the Rev. Son and opening the hotel. Though it was a hotel in name, it looked more like a dormitory or public hall. It was within only 100 metres of the Japanese consulate. So it was virtually on the threshold of the consulate, which might just as well have been called the headquar­ters of the Japanese detective service in the Jilin area. It seemed risky, therefore, for the followers of the anti-Japanese independence move­ment to visit the hotel day and night with secret agents and policemen so close at hand. But they came there all the same, saying, “The darkest place is below the candlestick.” Strangely enough, there was never any instance of a Korean patriot being walked off from the Sanfeng Hotel. So, after we formed our organizations later, we often used this hotel.

After reading the letter of introduction from Kim Si U, Kim Sa Hon asked me if I would like to go to Yuwen Middle School in Jilin where a Korean by the name of Kim Kang who was a good friend of his was teaching. He said that it was a private school founded by the newly-emerging public circles in the city and that it was the most progressive school in Jilin. It was widely known that this school was progressive by nature. The newspaper Jizhang Ribao had written about it many times. As early as 1921 the paper had said that it was a school in financial dif­ficulties but making a very good showing, so it was aided by various social organizations. Owing to the disputes over funds and the head­master’s abuse of his authority, there had been many headmasters. When I arrived, Li Guang-han had recently taken over, replacing Zhang Yin-xian, a graduate of Jinling University in Nanjing. The fact that the headmaster had been changed four times sufficed to show how highly justice and lawfulness were esteemed at the school. This reformist tradi­tion of the school captured my fancy.

The next day Kim Sa Hon introduced me to teacher Kim Kang of Yuwen Middle School. Kim Kang was a good English scholar. He pre­sented me to the headmaster, Li Guang-han. Li Guang-han was a Left-wing nationalist from China and he had been a classmate of future Prime Minister Zhou En-lai at secondary school. He was an intellectual of conscience who had largely been subject to the future prime minis­ter’s influence even in his younger days. It was several decades later that I came to learn of the relationship between Prime Minister Zhou and Li Guang-han. Once, when I met Prime Minister Zhou En-lai when he was on a visit to our country and talked about my youth and those Chinese people who had helped me, I happened to mention the name of Li Guang-han. The prime minister was delighted to hear his name and told me that they had been classmates at the middle school affiliated to Nankai University in Tianjin.

Li Guang-han asked me what I was going to do after finishing at school. When I answered without hesitation that I would like to devote myself to the cause of winning back my motherland, he said approving­ly that my intention was highly praiseworthy. It seemed that because I had opened my heart to him, he readily granted my request that I join the second year without going through the first year.

Later, when I was engaged in the youth and student movement and underground activities, I was given assistance on many occasions by Mr. Li. Even when he learned that I missed classes frequently on account of my revolutionary work, he ignored the fact and shielded me so that the reactionary teachers bribed by the warlord authorities should not touch me. When the warlords or consulate police came to arrest me, he informed me of their attempt before I escaped out of the fence. Because the headmaster was a conscientious intellectual, many people with progressive ideas were able to conduct their activities under his wing.

When I returned after registering at Yuwen Middle School, Mr. 0 Tong Jin and his wife told me that I should live with them instead of boarding at the hostel. This was an offer for which I was truly grateful in view of my situation at the time. I needed the support of my mother to attend the school, but she was infirm. She worked day and night all the year round, doing washing or needlework for money, and sent me about three yuan every month. After paying my school fees and the cost of notebooks and textbooks, I could scarcely afford to buy a pair of shoes. Such being my situation, I was obliged to accept the kindness and advice of the old friends of my late father. In Jilin I lived with 0 Tong Jin at first. Then, after his arrest, I stayed with Jang Chol Ho for a year, with Hyon Muk Kwan for several months and then with Ri Ung who replaced 0 Tong Jin as the leader of Jongui-bu.

Most of the prominent figures in Jilin in those days had been on intimate terms with my father, so they cared for me and looked after me in many ways. While frequenting the houses of my father’s old friends, I became acquainted with many cadres of the Independence Army and leaders of the independence movement, and met a large number of vari­ous people on their way in and out of Jilin. Almost all the cadres of the Jongui-bu organization were living in Jilin at the time. This organiza­tion had a splendid central and local setup comprising administration, finance, judiciary, military affairs, education, foreign affairs, prosecu­tion, and inspection and supervision, and it exercised as much power as that of an independent state, collecting taxes from the Korean inhabi­tants of the areas under its control. In order to protect this huge machin­ery it maintained a permanent central guard consisting of more than 150 soldiers.

As a provincial capital in China, Jilin was, along with Fengtian (Mukden), Changchun and Harbin, one of the political, economic and cultural centres of Manchuria. The Jilin military control station was headed by Zhang Zuo-xiang, a cousin of Zhang Zuo-lin. He would not listen readily to what the Japanese said. When the Japanese told him that someone was a communist and another a bad man, he would reject it, telling them that it was none of their business. He did so more from his ignorance and self-conceit than from any political conviction. This characteristic of the man was of benefit to the revolutionaries and peo­ple engaged in the social movement.

The greater part of the Koreans resident in Manchuria lived in Jilin Province. So Jilin was the haunt of many Korean independence fighters and communists who were fleeing from the Japanese army and police. This made the city a theatre and a centre of political activities for Kore­ans. The Japanese had good reason for stating, “Jilin is the operational base for anti-Japanese activities in the three eastern provinces.”

In the latter half of the 1920s Jilin was an assembly point for the leaders of the Jongui-bu, Chamui-bu and Sinmin-bu organizations which constituted the main forces of the Korean nationalist movement in Manchuria. Huadian, Xingjing and Longjing were the principal cen­tres where the supporters of the independence movement published newspapers and opened schools, but it was Jilin where their leaders assembled and conducted their activities.

It was also Jilin where the factionalists belonging to the M-L group, the Tuesday group and the Seoul-Shanghai group made reckless efforts to expand their respective forces. Nearly all the major figures of the communist movement conceited enough to think themselves impor­tant haunted this city. All sorts of people flocked here—nationalists, communists, factionalists, political refugees and so on. Young people and students seeking eagerly for new things and for the truth also came to this city. In short, it could be said that Jilin was a scene where ideo­logical trends of every description were breathing together.

It was here that I unfolded my revolutionary activities under the banner of communism. When I came to Jilin I found that some mem­bers of the Down-with-Imperialism Union had come to the city as they had promised in Huadian and were on the register of such a school as Wenguang Middle School or were working at the locomotive depot and the wharf. As soon as they heard of my arrival in Jilin, they hurried to the house of Commander 0 Tong Jin. “Money, drinking water and fire­wood are scarce here, but this is a good place because there are plenty of books,” they said in telling me of their impressions of Jilin. I jokingly said I could stand even the pain of hunger if I had many books. I said it for fun, but at the same time I meant what I said. They had a favourable opinion of Yuwen Middle School. Some of the teachers were Right-wingers from the Kuomintang, but most of them were affili­ated to the Communist Party or followed the Three Principles of the People, they said. Their words eased my mind. As it became known later, both teacher Shang Yue and teacher Ma Jun at the school were communists. We resolved to learn the revolutionary truth as we wished and fight for all we were worth to attain the goal of the Down-with-Imperialism Union in this new place.

Those members of the Down-with-Imperialism Union who had remained in Huadian had left for areas in Manchuria inhabited by Kore­ans such as Fusong, Panshi, Xingjing, Liuhe, Antu, Changchun and Yitong Counties in search of new theatres of activity. Some of them had returned to their old Independence Army companies.

In a confusing city like Jilin it was not easy with only a small num­ber of hardcore members to make all the people listen to what we had to say and struggle for the realization of the Down-with-Imperialism Union’s ideal. But we were filled with a firm determination that each of us should become a spark to rouse a hundred people and ensure that the hundred people in their turn would set the hearts of ten thousand people around them on fire to reform the world.

I began my activities in Jilin by conducting a deeper study of Marxism-Leninism. When I was coming to Jilin, I had made up my mind to pursue in earnest and more profoundly the study of Marxism-Leninism which I had begun in Huadian. The social and political atmo­sphere in Jilin stimulated my resolve to inquire deeply into new ideas. I was more keen on reading the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin than studying the school subjects.

In those days China was going through a period of great revolution and therefore many good books published in the Soviet Union and Japan were available in translation. A magazine with the title Transla­tion Monthly was issued in Beijing and it often carried progressive liter­ary works which the young people and students found interesting. In Jilin we could have any number of books which were difficult to obtain in Fusong or Huadian. But I had no money to buy them. People will find it hard to believe me when I say now that I put on my canvas shoes only when going to school and would walk about barefoot almost all the time after school.

The admission fee for the library on Niumaxiang Street was ten fen a month. I bought an admission ticket every month and would stop at the library on my way home from school every day and spend hours reading books and newspapers. This enabled me to read various publi­cations at little cost. When I could not afford to buy the good books on sale in bookshops, I would persuade some rich students to buy them, and would borrow them from the sons of families who bought books not for reading but for the sake of displaying them in bookcases.

At Yuwen Middle School the administration of school affairs was democratic. The chief librarian was elected every six months at a gener­al meeting of the students. The elected chief librarian was supposed to draw up a plan of management for the library and had the right to acquire books. I was elected chief librarian twice at the school. Availing myself of the opportunities, I laid in a large stock of Marxist-Leninist books. But with plenty of books available, the trouble was that I did not have enough time to read them all. I tried hard to find a minute for read­ing and to read even one more book within the given time and under­stand its substance in full.

In my childhood my father would give me books to read and then make me put down in writing the gist of the books and what lessons I had learned from them. This habit of mine cultivated by my father proved of great value. If you read a book carefully without losing sight of its essential point, you can seize its substance clearly no matter how complicated it may be and you can read many books in a short time.

It was not simply out of academic interest or from a spirit of inquiry that I spent night after night reading in my secondary school days. I did not delve into the books with the object of becoming a schol­ar or for the purposes of a career. How could we expel the Japanese imperialists and win back our country? How could we do away with social inequality and make the working people prosperous? These were the questions the answers to which I wanted to discover in the books. No matter what book I was reading and where, I was always seeking the answers to these questions. I am sure it was in the course of this that my position was established of approaching Marxism-Leninism not as a dogma but as a practical weapon and of searching for the truth not in an abstract theory but always in the practice of the Korean revolution. In those days I read The Communist Manifesto, The Capital, The State and Revolution, Wage Labour and Capital and other Marxist-Leninist clas­sics and books expounding them which I came across.

In addition to political books, I read many works of revolutionary literature. I found the works of Gorky and Lu Xun the most interesting. When I was in Fusong and Badaogou I used to read many old tales such as The Tale of Chun Hyang, The Tale of Sim Chong, The Tale of Ri Sun Sin, and Monkey, but after coming to Jilin I read many revolutionary novels and stories and progressive books which described the real life of the time, including Mother, The Iron Flood, Blessing, An Authorized Life of Ah-Q, On the River Amnok, and A Boy Wanderer. Later, when we ran up against severe trials like the “arduous march” during the anti-Japanese armed struggle, I recalled the revolutionary stories such as The Iron Flood I had read when I was in Jilin and drew strength and courage from them. Literary works play a great role in the formation of the world view of people, so every time I meet writers, I tell them to pro­duce many revolutionary stories and novels. Our writers are now writ­ing many revolutionary masterpieces.

We became politically aware also through seeing at first hand the absurd social phenomena and the miserable living conditions of the people at the time. Many of the Koreans coming from Korea to Manchuria passed through Jilin on their way to other places. We often heard from them about the pitiful conditions of the people at home. Some of the travellers crossing the River Amnok would pass through Dandong and come to Changchun on the south Manchurian railway, from where they would either proceed to north Manchuria by the Dongzhi railway or go by the Ji-Chang line to Jilin and then into the backlands nearby. Others would pass through Fengtian to go to the Dunhua, Emu or Ningan regions by the Feng-Hai and Jilin-Hoeryong lines. In the cold winter and early spring many Koreans could be seen at Jilin station and at the hotels in the city. Among them were people with truly sad and pathetic stories.

One day I went to the theatre with my friends to see a Chinese opera. After the performance the actress who had recited the poem came to us and asked us if a man with the name of Choe so-and-so was living in the city. He was her fiance. We were all surprised to hear her speak Korean. In Korea Chinese opera was not known.

The actress, whose name was Ok Pun, hailed from Kyongsang Province, Korea. Her father had one day been drinking with his friend who lived behind his house, and the two men had promised that if their wives gave birth to a boy and a girl, they would match them as man and wife, and that if the babies were only boys or only girls, they would make them sworn brothers or sisters. After a while a boy and a girl were born to the two houses. Their parents cut a silk kerchief into two and kept one half each in token of the marriage of their children. Later the two families had to leave their home village in search of a living. The boy’s family went to live in Jilin. The boy grew up and was now a stu­dent at Wenguang Middle School. After coming to Jilin his parents had managed somehow to obtain a house and made a reasonable living by running a small rice mill. On the other hand, the girl’s family had found themselves with no money when they arrived in Dandong and were compelled to sell their little daughter to a Chinese family. Ok Pun had been trained with a whip in Chinese opera and become an actress. As she grew older, she began to think of the boy she had been betrothed to back in their home village. Whenever she came to a new place, she would secretly meet any Koreans there and ask them if they knew where her betrothed was.

That day the actress Ok Pun had a dramatic reunion with her intended husband from Wenguang Middle School. When Ok Pun said she would stop her part in the play and join her husband, the owner of the theatre company who had been travelling with her demanded a huge sum of money. So, Ok Pun said to her fiance that she would return to Jilin after paying off the sum within a few years with money she would save from her pay. Witnessing all this, we felt indignant and angry in our hearts. We students denounced the mercenary and heartless manag­er of the theatre company as a “viper-like woman.”

Life in the large city where hundreds of thousands of humans were locked desperately in a struggle for existence gave off the stink of a class society. One summer day when the sun was beating down, I was returning from Beishan with my friends. On our way we witnessed a roadside scene in which a rickshaw driver was bickering with a rich man. It appeared that the rich man who had ridden in the rickshaw had not paid enough. Insisting that, since the Three Principles of the People was in force the gentry should duly pay heed to the matter of the “peo­ple’s livelihood,” the rickshaw driver asked for a little more money. But the rich man, far from giving him more money, countered the Three Principles of the People with the Five-Right Constitution and hit the poor man with his cane. Scandalized at this scene, we students swooped down on the rich fellow and made him pay some more money.

Such experiences made us skeptical and disaffected; we asked our­selves how it was that there were people who rode in a rickshaw while there were others who had to pull it, and, why it was that certain people were living in luxury in palatial mansions while others had to wander the streets begging.

A man can be said to have established his revolutionary world view when he becomes aware of his class position and interests, hates the exploiting classes, is prepared to safeguard the interests of his class and then embarks on the path of revolution with a determination to build a new society. I began to realize my class position through reading the Marxist-Leninist classics and other revolutionary books, became aware of many inequalities by observing social phenomena, conceived a grow­ing hatred for the exploiting classes and exploiter society and, in the end, embarked on the road of struggle with a resolve to reform and rebuild the world.

The more I read the works of Marx and Lenin and the deeper I became absorbed in them, the greater the urge I felt to disseminate their revolutionary theories among the young people and students as soon as possible.

The first student I made friends with at Yuwen Middle School was a Korean named Kwon Thae Sok. There were four Korean students in all at the school; Kwon Thae Sok and I were the only ones who were interested in the young communist movement. The other two had no interest in the political movement. They were only concerned about money and were thinking of going into business after graduation. Kwon Thae Sok and I shared similar aspirations and similar views on society and so we were friends from the first. Of the Chinese students a young man called Zhang Xin-min was a friend of mine. He would always be in my company and discuss politics with me a great deal. We talked about various topics ranging from social inequality to the reactionary charac­ter of imperialism, the Japanese imperialists’ scheme to invade Manchuria and the Kuomintang’s traitorous acts.

Marxism-Leninism was still no more than an object of admiration among the young people and students of Jilin. Because Marx was said to be a prodigy, they would at most leaf through his classics just to see what sort of a man he was, or they would think they were behind the times if they did not know what Marxism was.

Drawing on my experience in Huadian, I organized a secret reading circle at Yuwen Middle School with several like-minded students. Its mission and aim were to arm the progressive young people and students closely with Marxist-Leninist thoughts and theory. This organization quickly grew and had soon expanded to many schools in the city, including Wenguang Middle School, Middle Schools No. 1 and No. 5, the Girls’ Middle School and the Normal School. With the increase in the number of members of the reading circle we got a room at the rice mill run by supporters of the independence movement and opened a library there, with members of the Ryugil Association of Korean Stu­dents running it.

Today libraries can be found everywhere, and if we choose to, we can build large palatial libraries like the Grand People’s Study House. But it was not an easy task furnishing a library in those days when we had nothing but our bare hands. We needed to lay in a stock of books, set up bookshelves, and install desks and chairs, but we had no money. Every Sunday, therefore, we worked to earn money, carrying sleepers on our shoulders at the railway construction site or gravel on our backs at the riverside. The girl students went and sorted rice at the rice mills. We purchased books with the money we earned penny by penny with so much pain. We installed a secret bookshelf to keep revolutionary books. After we had finished equipping the library we put up notices with brief yet interesting book reviews throughout the city. Then a great many stu­dents hastened to call at our library.

We even had love stories prepared to attract students. Young peo­ple often came to the library to read the love stories. After we had thus given them a taste of reading, we started offering them books on social science. When the students were awakened gradually through reading social science literature, we offered them the Marxist-Leninist classics and revolutionary stories and novels from our secret stock. We provided the young people and students with novels by Ri Kwang Su such as Resurrection, Heartlessness and Trailblazer. Ri Kwang Su drafted the “February 8th Declaration of Independence” in Tokyo on the eve of the March First Popular Uprising and wrote many progressive works while he was involved in the independence movement. Therefore, young peo­ple read his novels with keen interest. But later he deserted his princi­ples and failed to write works with any instructive value. In the end, he went so far as to write reactionary novels like the Wife of a Revolution­ary. After founding the anti-Japanese guerrilla army, I made for south Manchuria with the guerrilla force. On my way I stopped at Fusong for a brief visit, and there I read the novel. Its story is about a communist lying in his sickbed whose wife forms a liaison with the medical college student who comes to her home to treat her husband. Thus the work was about her scandalous life. It was an insult to the communists and defiled the communist movement from start to finish.

Of a Saturday or a Sunday we gathered at Jilin Church or Beishan Park to discuss our impressions of the books we had read. At first there were some who talked about the love stories. But they were snubbed by the other students who said that their observations were quite worthless. Once humiliated in this way, the students who had been infatuated with love stories would turn to revolutionary stories of their own accord.

“Story-telling” was another method we used in widely propagating the revolutionary thought among the young people and students and the masses. One day I had a sore throat, and because a poultice had been applied, I could not attend a class. On my way home from school, I dropped in at Beishan, where I saw a large crowd of people sitting around a blind man who was telling an old tale. As I approached, I found that the blind man was reciting a passage from the Three Warring Kingdoms, in the manner of a shaman narrating a spiritual message. When he came to the scene in which Zhu-ge Liang takes an enemy position through trickery, he even beat a drum to add to the fun. Then, when the narration reached a climax in an interesting scene, he abruptly stopped and held out his hands to the listeners for money. In those days this was called “story-telling” by the Chinese, and it was a good way of drawing the masses.

After that we adopted this method in popularizing revolutionary thoughts. Among our companions there was a man who was a real jester and quick of tongue. He had been given the assignment of work­ing with men of religion, and he was more clever and accurate than the pastors in offering up a prayer and reciting from the Bible. I told him to take up “story-telling” and found him to be better at this than at reciting from the Bible. He would go to a guest room in a village or a park where people flocked and narrate good stories in an interesting manner; he enjoyed great popularity. The blind man did his “story-telling” for money, but our friend did not ask for a penny. Instead, he would stop his narration at an interesting point and make an inflammatory speech for a while before telling his audience to come at a certain hour the next day when he would resume the story. So the next day the people would come to the appointed place to listen to the rest of the story.

 Of the people I got to know through books in those days, Pak So Sim impressed me deeply. In the busy quarters of Jilin there was a large bookshop by the name of Xinwen Shushe. I would go to the shop sever­al times a week. Pak So Sim was also a regular customer there. He would always linger before the social science counter to find out which books had arrived. We often bumped into each other there. He was tall and thin and had an intelligent air. When I went to the shop with some other students and bought armloads of books for our library, he would be as pleased as if he were choosing books for himself and tell us about the content of certain books and advise us as to which books we should read and therefore buy. This was how I came to form a close friendship with Pak So Sim through books. When I was going to school from Dongdatan, he came to my quarters and stayed with me for a while.

He had lived in Seoul before going there. He was in such poor health that he gave no thought to joining the communist movement, but wrote short articles for newspapers and magazines. His articles were carried in the newspaper Haejo Sinmun and the magazine Joson Ji-gwang. Although he had nothing to do with the communist movement, he was contemptuous of the factionalists. As he was upright and had great insight, those involved in various movements who frequented Jilin tried to win him over to their camps.

He would sit up until late reading The Capital in Japanese. He was an enthusiastic reader; when he ran out of money, he would pawn his clothes to buy books. He was not a pedant who would pretend to be a Marxist-Leninist theoretician after reading a few primers, yet he was someone with a thorough knowledge of the major works of Marx and Lenin. He was a memorable teacher who initiated me into The Capital and explained it to me. As was the case with Marx’s works in general, The Capital had many points that were difficult to understand. So, Pak So Sim gave me explanatory lectures on The Capital. To grasp the substance of the classics, one needs a primer or a guide. Pak So Sim acted as a faithful guide for me. He was extremely well-read.

Once I asked him about the Marxist-Leninist propositions on the dictatorship of the proletariat. He explained to me the propositions of the Marxist-Leninist classics which interpreted the proletarian dictator­ship from different angles at different stages of historical development. For his theoretical attainments and learning, he could be called a master of Marxism. But there was something that was beyond the reach of his knowledge, something he found it hard to answer. I asked him the ques­tion: Although the Marxist-Leninist classics say that the class emanci­pation of the working class comes before national liberation, is it not true that in our country the yoke of Japanese imperialism should be thrown off first before the class emancipation of the workers and peas­ants? This question was argued about a great deal among our comrades. We found that the Marxist-Leninist classics fell short of providing a theoretical explanation of the interrelations between the emancipation of the working class and national liberation. As for the national libera­tion struggle in colonial countries, there were many problems which required scientific elucidation. Pak So Sim answered my question only vaguely.

I asked him another question: The Marxist-Leninist classics gener­ally say that the revolution in the suzerain state and that in a colonial country are organically linked with each other and stress the importance of the victory of the revolution in the suzerain state. That means that our country will be able to attain its independence only after the working class of Japan have won their revolution, doesn’t it? So should we wait until they win their victory?

Pak So Sim was at a loss what to say in reply to this. He gazed at me in surprise. He said it was an internationally-accepted line of the international communist movement that, as was pointed out in the clas­sics, the emancipation of the working class came before national libera­tion and that the struggle of the working class in the suzerain state was considered more important than the national liberation struggle in a colonial country. When I tilted my head in doubt, he became annoyed and said frankly that he had only studied Marxism-Leninism as a sci­ence and that he had not viewed it in the light of concrete revolutionary practice related to the independence of Korea and the building of com­munism in Korea. His words somehow saddened me. It was useless to Study communist theory only as a science detached from practice, as he said he did.

The greatest anguish my friends and I felt in studying the progres­sive thoughts of Marxism-Leninism was that while we were anxious to reform society by means of a revolution as the Russians had done and thus liberate our country, the situation in Korea was different from the situation prevailing in Russia when the October Revolution had taken place. We were confronted with such complex problems as how to carry out the proletarian revolution in a colonial country like Korea, a back­ward semi-feudal state, how to establish contact with the revolutions in neighbouring countries, particularly China, when we had to wage the struggle on Chinese territory away from our homeland due to the harsh repression of Japanese imperialism, and how to fulfil our national duty to the Korean revolution and our international obligations to the world revolution. It took us a long time and cost us dear before we found cor­rect answers to these questions.

Pak So Sim became intimate with me and was drawn deeply into my revolutionary aspiration in the days of my pursuit of Marxist-Lenin­ist studies. He joined the Anti-Imperialist Youth League and then the Young Communist League and worked selflessly with us to educate and enlighten the young people and children. Although he had been a book­worm, he displayed an amazing passion for work once he had made up his mind and jumped into the arena of practical activity. We sent him to the Kalun area to receive treatment for his tuberculosis. He built a hut on the banks of the River Wukai some two kilometres from Jiajiatun and lived a lonely life there cooking for himself. Once when I was working in the areas of Kalun and Wujiazi, I found time to pay him a visit. He was delighted to see me. We had a hearty talk and discussed many things. He showed me a picture of his wife. I was surprised because I had thought his wife was dead, or they were divorced. Her picture showed her to be beautiful and intelligent, a modern woman. Pak told me that a letter had come from his wife in Seoul a short time before. When I asked him why he did not summon her, he explained that she was a daughter of a rich family. I asked him if he had not known that when he married her. Pak heaved a sigh and said that after their marriage his world view had undergone a change. His words struck me as very odd, so I asked him if he had forgotten her. He had thought so, he admitted frankly, but after receiving a letter from her, he thought of her often. So I told him that if he loved her, he should write and send for her. How can a man who is incapable of re-educating his wife overthrow the old society and build a new one? If his wife were by his side, it would also prove good for the treatment of his illness, I advised him. Pak sighed and said that he would do as I advised.

“I’ll do so because it’s your advice. But my life is already on the decline. I lead a frustrated life, I mean.” He had no children, and no estate or mental legacy to be left behind should he have any. He wanted to devote his whole life to the study of Marxism-Leninism and write books which could help the working class. But, he said, he could not attain his objective. He said that when he had been fit and strong, he could not write because he was ignorant, and that now that he was awakened to the truth, his health would not allow him to do so.

 His remark grieved me. He was a devoted scholar, tireless and inquiring. If he had not buried himself in books but plunged into practi­cal activities a little earlier, he might have hit upon some valuable theo­ries helpful to the revolutionary cause of the working class and made some practical achievements. A theory is born of practice and its accu­racy is verified through practice. The practice we are not allowed to lose sight of even for a moment consists of the independence of Korea and the welfare of our people. To our regret, Pak So Sim had no sooner awoken to this truth than he departed from our side. His wife came from Seoul and nursed her sick husband, and he kept writing short essays and occasional notes before dying at Kalun.

The ancients said that if a man learns the way in the morning, he may die in the evening without regret. It was a pity that a man like Pak So Sim who could have accomplished many useful things should have died as soon as he awoke to the truth.

I spent a little more than three years in Jilin. Jilin is a place dear to me, with vivid memories from one period of my life. In this city I came to understand Marxism-Leninism as a scientific theory, and with the help of this theory came to a deeper realization of the practical truth for the independence of Korea and the people’s well-being. My quick com­prehension of the essence of the new ideology was due to my sorrow and indignation as a son of a stateless people. The intolerable misery and distress of our nation led me to early maturity. I accepted the fate of my suffering country and compatriots as my own. This brought me a great sense of duty to the nation.

In the days I spent in Jilin my world view was established and strengthened, and it provided me with a lifelong ideological and moral foundation. My accumulation of knowledge and experience in Jilin enabled me to build the framework of an independent revolutionary thought in the future.

Study is a basic process for the self-culture of revolutionaries and represents an essential mental endeavour that must never be suspended even for a single day in laying the groundwork for achieving social progress and reform. Proceeding from the lesson learned in the process of pursuing progressive ideologies in Jilin, I emphasize even now that study is the first duty of a revolutionary.

 

 

2. Mentor Shang Yue

 

While Pak So Sim was my teacher and introduced The Capital to me, Shang Yue was my teacher and introduced Mother by Gorky and the Dream at the Red Mansion to me. Shang Yue taught philology and literature at Yuwen Middle School.

Shortly after his appointment to the school, we heard that a new teacher of philology and literature, a graduate of the English faculty at Beijing University, had arrived at the school, and we all looked forward to his lecture.

However, we were somewhat anxious about the new teacher. We wondered if he had been appointed by the Office of Education as its agent. There were several undesirable elements bribed by the warlord authorities among the teachers at Yuwen Middle School, and they had been appointed by the Office of Education. It was not long since Zhang Xue-liang, on the orders of Jiang Jie-shi, had hoisted the flag of the Kuomintang in Manchuria. The intelligence machinery of Jiang Jie-shi was already stretching its tentacles from Shenyang to Jilin. The agents of the Kuomintang had not yet got their hands on Yuwen Middle School, but the progressive teachers and students at the school were placed under constant surveillance by the warlords and their agents. This being the situation, the appointment of a new teacher could not but make us feel nervous as we awaited his lesson.

The teacher dispelled the students’ suspicion and won their popu­larity after only one lesson. He explained the long story of the 120-part Dream at the Red Mansion in an hour. He was so proficient in explaining the essentials, weaving the plot with important details of life, that we were able to digest instantly all the messages carried in the novel and the process of the decline of a noble family in which the patriarchal tradition held sway.

As he left the classroom after the lecture, the students exclaimed joyfully that the new teacher at Yuwen Middle School was a talented man.

He had spoken a great deal about the content of the novel, but only a little about its author. So the next day I stopped him as he strolled around the playground and asked him to tell me about Cao Xue-qin, the writer of the novel. He said that he had omitted a biography of the writ­er because of a lack of time, and that it was natural for me to ask about him. He went into the details of the writer’s life and his family back­ground.

After his explanation I asked him some questions about the corelations between the class origin of a writer and the class character of his works.

He gave me clear answers to those questions, too. Saying that he was giving me his own opinion, he explained that while it was true that the class origin of a writer might influence the character of his works, the dominating factor defining the character was not the author’s class origin but his outlook on the world. He took Cao Xue-qin as an exam­ple. He said: Cao was born to a noble family that received the favour of the Emperor Kangxi and grew up in comfortable circumstances but, because he had a progressive outlook on the world, he was able to give an artistic description of feudal China in her disintegration and of the inevitability of her collapse.

He went on to tell me: “You were right to come to see me today, Song Ju. If a student has a question, something he wants made clear, he should immediately receive help from his teacher. That is the attitude a student in pursuit of science should adopt. Ask me many questions at any place and at any time. I am fond of students who ask me many questions.” I was pleased that he told me to ask many questions. I had been known as a pupil who asked many questions from my days at primary school. Even at Yuwen Middle School I bothered the teachers with many questions. He said that he had me Dream at the Red Mansion and a short biography of Cao, and told me I could read them at any time if I wanted to. So I was lucky enough to be the first visitor to his boarding house.

My grandfather would always say that it was not advisable for a pupil to visit his teacher’s house. Not only those from the older gener­ation who had grown up by learning Tongmongsonsub (the first text­book for a boy—Tr.) at village schools, but also many other elders who claimed that they had become civilized thanks to modern educ­tion were of the same opinion as my grandfather. My grandfather’s opinion was this: If pupils peep into their teacher’s private life fre­quently, they lose their awe of him; the teacher must give his pupils the firm belief that their teacher neither eats nor urinates; only then can he maintain his authority at school; so a teacher should set up a screen and live behind it.

Grandfather had this opinion at the time when my father was attending the village school. There was a teacher named Kim Ji Song at Sunhwa Village School which my father was attending. He was help­lessly fond of drinking. He would often send my father, who was the class monitor, on errands to buy wine for him. At first my father obeyed him meekly, but after seeing the drunken teacher fall flat on his face in a ditch on his way home, father changed his mind.

One day the teacher gave him a large bottle and sent him on the same errand. But outside the school gate he threw the bottle at a rock and smashed it to pieces. He told the teacher that, chased by a tiger, he had tripped over a stone and broken the bottle. In blank dismay the teacher said, “Oh! Has a tiger from Mt. Paektu come as far as Mangyongdae? How shameful it is for me that you must lie to me! It was wrong of me to send you boys for wine.” Thus he stopped drinking. Even though his teacher had stopped drinking, the image of the teacher flat on his face in the ditch smelling of wine was engraved on my father’s memory. My grandfather’s opinion of a teacher’s code of con­duct was based on this anecdote.

But before my teacher Shang Yue could set up a screen, I had plunged into his private life.

There were hundreds of books in his bookcase. It was the richest and most impressive of all the bookcases I had ever seen. His room was a library. The bookcase contained many English novels and biogra­phies. I was fascinated by his books. If I were to digest all the knowl­edge in these books, wouldn’t that be better than a university education? It Is fortunate for me that this teacher has come to Yuwen Middle School, I thought.

After a cursory inspection of the books I asked:

“Excuse me, sir. How many years did it take you to fill this book­case?”

He came up to the bookcase and, looking into my face, said with a smile:

“Almost 10 years.”

“How many years do you think it would take me to read all these books?”

“If you are diligent, three years, and if not, 100 years.”

“Sir, will you open this bookcase to me if I promise to read all these books in three years?”

“Why not? But there is one condition,”

 “If you will lend the books to me, I will accept any condition.”

“The condition is that you become a writer in the future, and that’s all. I have always wanted to train a few writers from among young peo­ple who will work for the proletarian revolution. You will be one of them, won’t you?”

‘T am extremely grateful for that. Frankly, I feel a particular attach­ment to literature and I admire writers. After the liberation of the coun­try I might take up literature; however, sir, we are the sons of a ruined nation. My father fought to liberate the country, braving difficulties all his life, before passing away. I am determined to devote myself to the struggle for national independence in accordance with my father’s will, and that is my highest ideal and ambition. I am set on fighting to liber­ate my nation.”

The teacher, leaning against the bookcase, nodded continually, a serious look on his face. Then he came to me and placed his hand on my shoulder, saying, “That’s wonderful. Song Ju! If the struggle for independence is your ideal, I will open this bookcase to you on that condition.”

That day I returned home with the Dream at the Red Mansion. The next books I borrowed were the novels by Jiang Guang-ci, On the River Amnok and A Boy Wanderer. I found these two novels very interesting. The first novel, On the River Amnok, in which Ri Maeng Han and Un Go, a Korean young man and girl, were the principal characters made a special, unforgettable impression on me. Later I borrowed from him Gorky’s Mother.

In this way we got on exceptionally well through books and litera­ture. He would lend me any book I wanted to read. If I asked for books he didn’t have in his bookcase, he would go to the trouble of obtaining them for me from other sources. In return for his helping me with my reading, I had to tell him about my impressions of each book I had read.

We swopped our opinions on The Enemy by Gorky and Blessing by Lu Xun.

Thus we frequently exchanged our views on literature. The topic of our conversations always focussed on the mission of literature. We talked a great deal about how literature should reflect the reality and promote social progress.

The teacher said that literature was a light that gave men intellect. He said that while machines promoted the development of production, literature perfected the qualities of the men who operated machines.

He would talk about Lu Xun and his works with particular fervour. He was a literary friend of Lu Xun and a member of the literary circle that was led by him. The short story The Axe-head he wrote during his circle activities was highly thought of by Lu Xun. The novel depicted the people in the Luoshan area who were fighting against feudal cus­toms. According to Shang Xiao-yuan, Shang Yue’s daughter, Lu Xun also expressed his dissatisfaction with the story, saying that it lacked lit­erary sharpness.

By overcoming the immaturity revealed in his early works, in the 1930s he produced a work with perfect ideological and artistic qualities, A Plot, which was favourably spoken of by readers. This novel was car­ried serially in a magazine published in Yunnan Province. In the 1980s the People’s Literature Publishing House of China published this novel in paperback.

In addition to The Axe-head and A Plot he produced the novels, Spear and The Dog Problem and published them. While working as a teacher he never abandoned his creative endeavours as a writer. So it was only natural that he tried to lead me into literary pursuits in those days.

I even borrowed from him the Selected Works of Chen Du-xiu. Chen was one of the founders of the Communist Party of China; he had been at the helm of the Chinese party. At first, he was reluctant to lend the books to me because he was afraid that I might be corrupted by Chen’s Rightist capitulationist line. He added that Chen had been the Dean of School of Letters at Beijing University before he had gone to the university and that many teachers and students were proud that Chen had been one of them at the university.

He confessed:

“To be frank, I once worshipped Chen. I became fascinated by him while reading the magazine New Youth he published and his early trea­tises. But now my opinion of Chen has changed.”

According to him, the great popularity Chen had enjoyed at the time of the May 4 Movement and in the early days of the Communist Party had fallen because he had adopted the line of Rightist oppor­tunism.

Chen’s opportunist error was particularly evident in his attitude towards the peasant question. As early as 1926 Stalin had pointed out that the peasantry was the main force of the anti-imperialist front in China and the most reliable ally of the Chinese working class. Never­theless, Chen ignored the peasantry. Out of his fear of a conflict between the peasants and the landed proprietors, he opposed the peas­ants’ interference in the administration and their active self-defence. In short, he tried to restrain the peasants’ struggle. Chen’s mistake was that, on the pretext of opposing imperialism, he was against the revolu­tion in the rural communities because he feared that the bourgeoisie might break away from the revolutionary front. His capitulationist line resulted instead in encouraging the bourgeoisie to betray the revolution. This was Shang Yue’s view of Chen Du-xiu.

As he rightly pointed out, the works of Chen contained capitula­tionist elements which could do great harm to the revolution. After reading the Selected Works of Chen Du-xiu I had a long conversation with him on our views on the peasant question. This talk centred on the following points: What similarities and differences are there concerning the peasant question in the Korean revolution and the Chinese revolution; what are the points we should refer to in Lenin’s strategy on the peasant question; and what should be done to enable the peasantry to play their role as the main force of the revolution?

I said that it must be right to regard the peasantry as the great force of a country since agriculture was the major foundation of a country.

He affirmed my view and went on to say that neglecting the peas­antry meant neglecting farming and the land, so the revolution, however noble its ideal, would inevitably fail if the peasantry was neglected. He added that Chen was mistaken because he had forgotten this principle.

This conversation convinced me that the teacher was a communist. He discovered that I had been working for the Young Communist League. He had marvellous sensibility and judgement. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1926. He had been arrested by the reac­tionary warlords of the Kuomintang while guiding the peasant move­ment in his home town and experienced many hardships for over a year in military prison in Zhejiang Province. Later he was released on bail with the help of a Korean army surgeon and came to Manchuria under an assumed name of Xie Zhong-wu. He had got employment at Yuwen Middle School in Jilin through the good offices of a man named Chu Tu-nan.

After exchanging our views on the peasant question, we frequently discussed political questions. The young people and students in Jilin in those days used to discuss politics widely. Since China was then in the throes of a great revolution and Korea was at the height of a mass movement, we had a host of questions to discuss. It was around this time that there were vehement arguments among Korean young people about which was right, Ri Jun’s method or An Jung Gun’s method. Many young people and students were definitely in favour of An Jung Gun’s fighting method.

I asked the teacher about his view on An Jung Gun’s method. He commented that what he had done was certainly patriotic at the time but his method was unsure. His opinion coincided with mine. I thought that the struggle against imperialist Japan’s aggression could not succeed by using the terrorist method of killing a few stooges of the warlords, and that it would achieve its aim only by educating and awakening the pop­ular masses to political consciousness and encouraging all the people to join the struggle.

We also swapped opinions on the history of imperialist Japan’s aggression in Korea, her colonial policy in Korea, her scheme to invade Manchuria and the warlords’ support for it, and the necessity for soli­darity and cooperation between the peoples of Korea and China in the anti-imperialist, anti-aggression struggle.

In those days the students of Yuwen Middle School frequently dis­cussed the attitude of the League of Nations towards disarmament. There were many students who harboured illusions about the League of Nations. So I wrote an article exposing the league’s trickery in dealing with the question of disarmament. Many students spoke in support of my article. My teacher, Shang Yue, read it and commented that my opinion was correct.

In his days in Jilin he lost contact with his Communist Party orga­nization but he gave several lectures on the works of such progressive writers as Gorky and Lu Xun for the purpose of enlightenment. Once at the request of the members of the secret reading circle he gave a one-week special course in the school library on the subject of “Let us oppose imperialism.” The students’ reaction to his lectures was very good. I let him know this to encourage him. He was loved by his stu­dents for his progressive ideas, high sense of responsibility in education and profound and wide knowledge of the cultures and history of all ages and countries.

The reactionary teachers who were bribed by the warlord authori­ties were unhappy with him and tried to sully his reputation as a teach­er. The students who were loved and supported by him were also sub­ject to their jealousy and slander. A certain Fang tried to force the head­master, Li Guang-han, to expel the Korean students, and Ma, the physi­cal-training teacher, schemed to stir up opinion against me, saying that the Korean students were hostile to the Chinese teachers. Shang Yue always shielded me from their attack.

The English teacher, too, was hostile to the students who aspired to the new trend of thought. He was steeped in flunkeyism. He was so contemptuous of Oriental people that he said it was uncivilized of the Chinese people to smack their lips while eating; Westerners did not, he said. He, a Chinese, behaved like a Westerner.

His frequent show of contempt for Oriental backwardness was seri­ously offensive to us. So when we were on kitchen duty we prepared noodles and invited the teachers to dinner. As they ate their hot noodles, the hall was loud with sucking sounds. The English teacher, too, was sucking his noodles down. The students roared with laughter at him. Sensing that he was being made fun of he flushed and left. After that he never again spoke ill of Oriental people. As he worshipped the West so much, the students were not interested in his lessons.

The reactionary teachers’ pressure on Shang Yue grew towards the beginning of 1929.

On one occasion he said that it was desirable to encourage as many people as possible, rather than only sportsmen, to take part in physical training. He said that it was undesirable that only basketball players should use the court in the school playground. Some rowdy players who were unhappy with his remark tried to attack him after school when he was returning to his boarding house from school. I saw to it that the members of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League prevented them from such misconduct and scolded them severely.

The literature teacher, as he looked at the fleeing attackers, sighed. saying, “Ma has trained some wonderful stooges.”

I said to him with a laugh, “Don’t be afraid, sir. This, too, is a sort of class struggle. We should prepare for a possible clash that may be worse than this one.” To this he replied, “You are right. We are fighting now with the warlords.”

While trying to reinstate the students who had been expelled without due cause by the Office of Education, he was dismissed and left Yuwen Middle School. When I returned to school after guiding the mass organizations in the Changchun and Kalun areas in their work, Kwon Thae Sok hurried up to me and gave me a letter the teacher had left for me. The letter said: I have been defeated in the fight with the warlords and am leaving you, but we will defeat them in the future. Wherever I go I will send you, Song Ju, my wholehearted blessing on your ideal to live your whole life as a true son of your motherland and your people. Those were the last words of encourage­ment from him to me.

I have not seen him since. I discovered that he was still alive when I received from him in 1955 his essay, The Historical Relationship between Marshal Kim Il Sung and I in His Boyhood and in 1980 his book The Outline of Chinese History. Reading them, I recalled the days at Yuwen Middle School when we would discuss the situations in Korea and Manchuria, the aggressive policy of the Japanese imperialists and the joint struggle of the Korean and Chinese peoples, and I sent my heartfelt gratitude to my old teacher.

Whenever Chinese leaders have visited our country I have inquired after him. To my regret, I have not met him again. I must say that I have not fulfilled my obligation as one of his pupils. The border between countries is something strange. He passed away in 1982 while a profes­sor at Chinese People’s University in Beijing.

His eldest daughter Shang Jia-lan, a researcher at the Dynamics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, visited our country in 1989 and his third daughter Shang Xiao-yuan came to our country to see me in 1990. The latter is teaching at Chinese People’s University. I could not suppress my joy when I saw his image in his daughters’ faces after 60 years of separation. Can a difference in nationalities change people’s feelings? Friendship knows no barrier of skin colour, language and religion. If Yuwen Middle School had been nearby, I would have picked a handful of the lilac petals that blossomed in the school garden and given them to his daughters, saying, “This is the flower your father loved. Your father and I met frequently by a lilac bush.”

Leaving Jilin, he devoted himself to party work, education, culture and writing in Harbin, Shanghai, Beijing, Hankou, Chongqing, Ningxia and Yanan. He once worked as the chief secretary of the provincial party committee of Manchuria, I was told.

He never forgot me throughout his life and always maintained friendly feelings for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a close neighbour of China.

He was buried in the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Babaoshan in Beijing.

A man who has a mentor he can recollect throughout his life is truly a happy man. In this sense, I am a happy man. Whenever I miss this man who left a lasting impression on me in my youthful days, I take a stroll in my heart in the garden of Yuwen Middle School.

 

 

 

 

 

3. The Young Communist League of Korea

 

With the rapid dissemination of Marxist-Leninist ideas through the activities of the members of the DIU and secret reading circles a qualita­tive change began to take place in the thinking of the young people and students. The progressive ideas gradually made them understand the tasks set before them by history and the nation. We united the young people and students into various organiza­tions, while continuing to awaken them ideologically. Only through organizations was it possible to disseminate Marxist-Leninist ideas wider and train hardcore forces more rapidly.

I started my revolutionary activities in the youth and student move­ment. I attached great importance to this movement partly because I was a student and particularly because it played an important role in and had an important influence on awakening and organizing workers, farmers and other broad sections of the masses.

In Marxist-Leninist theory the youth and student movement is likened to a bridge. In other words, the youth and student movement is a bridge for the dissemination of progressive ideas, the enlightening and awakening of the masses and the encouragement of them to join the rev­olutionary movement. We supported this theory.

With the revolution progressing and getting into its stride our view on and attitude towards the role of the young people and students changed radically. We defined the young people and students as consti­tuting the fully-fledged main force of the revolution, thus breaking away from the old viewpoint according to which the motive force of the revolution had been defined with the main emphasis on the workers and peasants. This is proved to be correct by the course of the youth and student movement.

Young people and students fought bravely in the van of the March First Popular Uprising, the June 10th Independence Movement, the stu­dent incident in Kwangju¹⁷ and other historic events which constituted the peaks of the anti-Japanese patriotic struggle in our country before liberation. We opened a new history of the communist movement on the strength of the youth and waged the 15-year-long anti-Japanese armed struggle with young people and students as the backbone. Today, too, young people and students are fulfilling the role of the shock brigade in our revolution.

Young people and students are the main force of the revolution in south Korea, too. Young people and students played an important role in triggering off the April 19 Uprising¹⁸, the leading role in the peo­ple’s resistance in Kwangju (1980)¹⁹ and were standard-bearers in the June Resistance which overthrew the political regime of the “Fifth Republic.”

As is well known, young people and students were the vanguard of the May 4 Movement which the Chinese people regard as the starting-point of their new democratic movement.

The long and rich history of the struggle of the Korean people in which they constantly accumulated new experience, clearing an untrod­den path for mankind, has proved that the old theory which did not regard students even as a social stratum does not conform with the actu­al situation in our country.

The problem with our youth and student movement up to the first half of the 1920s was that it did not stand firmly by the class and anti-imperialist view and was not rooted deep in the masses. Most of the top level of the movement were intellectuals, and the main force of the movement attached too much importance to the enlightenment move­ment.

We made every possible effort to take a resolute first step while strictly guarding against any repetition of the shortcomings revealed in the youth and student movement previously.

But the formation of the organization and the enlisting of young people and students in it came up against complex problems. Our great­est difficulty in organizing the young people and students was deciding what method and form to adopt in founding an organization, in view of the fact that youth organizations formed by the nationalists and factionalists already existed. In Jilin there were already the Jilin Youth Associ­ation, the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin, the Children’s Association and other organizations.

If these organizations had not existed, new organizations could have been formed without hindrance, like building houses on an empty site. But various organizations had already been formed and were work­ing among the young people and students, and they could not be ignored.

After serious discussion we decided to ignore or renovate the orga­nizations which existed only in name and were not active and leave the organizations which were active, though uninspiring, as they were, and use and reform them in the future.

The Association of Korean Children in Jilin was the first organiza­tion we formed there. At that time there was the Children’s Association that had been formed by the nationalists in Jilin but it was an organiza­tion in name only and the Korean children in Jilin knew nothing of its existence. We formed the Association of Korean Children in Jilin, a legal organization, in April 1927 at Son Jong Do’s chapel.

I, together with Kim Won U and Pak Il Pha (Pak U Chon), presided over the meeting. At the meeting it was decided to set up organizational, propaganda, and sports and leisure sections within the association and to establish branches in schools and regions.

Hwang Kwi Hon, who attended Jilin Girls’ Normal School and was then in charge of the propaganda section of the Children’s Association, remembers this well.

The Children’s Association embraced all the Korean children in Jilin, including the children of workers, peasants and small and medium manufacturers and merchants, as well as of nationalists. The aim of the Association of Korean Children in Jilin was to educate children in the anti-Japanese idea and bring them up to be reliable reserves for the rev­olution.

In its programme the Children’s Association made one important task for its members to be to study the new progressive ideas and explain and propagate them to the broad sections of the people.

In May that year we reformed the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin into the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin.

The Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin had no small number of members and a certain influence.

Originally it had been formed to promote friendship among Korean students in Jilin and had been aided by the nationalists. Son Jong Do was one of its advisers.

When we proposed to reform the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin into the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin, some people suggested that it be disbanded, criticizing it as a fraternity organization directed mainly by the nationalists. They alleged that, as the organization was based on nationalism and heterogeneity, whatever might be done to it, it would still remain nationalist. The essence of their argument was that nationalism was an outdated trend and should be done away with.

In those days there was intense rivalry in winning over the masses. The communists and the nationalists, being in opposition to each other, vied to draw the masses to their side, while even within the same com­munist movement factions tried hard to attract the masses. If one day the Seoul group seized the leadership of the Young Communist League of Korea, the next day the Tuesday group would form the Hanyang Youth Association in opposition to it, and if the following day the Tues­day group formed the General Association of Workers and Peasants in Korea, the Seoul group in its turn would form the Kyongsong Associa­tion of Workers and Peasants to counter it, and this became the fashion. Factionalists even vied with one another in forming terrorist bands so as to contain other groups.

But we, the communists of the new generation, could not follow in their steps. If we had ignored the Ryogil Association of Korean Stu­dents in Jilin the way the factionalists did and formed another youth organization, it would have complicated our relations with the national­ists and disrupted the ranks of young people and students. The result would have been unwelcome and harmful in every respect.

We proposed to join the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin and gradually reform it from a pure fraternity organization into a revolutionary one, while continuing to preserve its status. I, a commu­nist, became its honorary chairman, but as I acted under the patronage of the nationalists, I drew little attention from the Chinese warlord authorities. While leading the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin, I reformed it into the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin.

The Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin, on the surface, professed itself to be an organization for promoting friendship among Korean young people and students but, in fact, it acted as a revolution­ary youth and student organization for implementing the ideas of the DIU. The change in the name of the Ryogil Association of Korean Stu- dents in Jilin and the reformation of it from a fraternity organization into a revolutionary one were a great experience for us in the youth and student movement.

Influenced by the activities of the organizations we formed the tide in Jilin began to turn.

The daily routine of the young people and students changed beyond recognition. The young people and children within the Children’s Asso­ciation and the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin met by districts every morning. On Sundays all members used to go to Beishan Park in a column, march through the streets singing or hold an athletics meeting in the playground at the foot of Beishan Park.

In working among the young people and children, we applied dif­ferent forms and methods to suit their tastes and ideological levels.

There were many children of Christians among the pupils in the Children’s Association. They believed that God existed under the reli­gious influence of their parents. However hard we explained to them that there was no God and that it was absurd to believe in one, it was useless because they were under such strong influence of their parents.

One day I asked a woman teacher at a Korean primary school under our influence to take the pupils who believed in God to church for a service.

She took them to church and made them pray all day as I had said; “Almighty God, we are hungry, please send some rice-cakes and bread for us.” But they received no rice-cakes or bread and still felt hungry. Then I asked the teacher to take them to the wheat field after the harvest and glean the grain. She did as I had said and they gleaned many ears of wheat. She threshed them and made some bread which she shared out among the pupils. While eating it, the pupils learned that it was better to earn bread by working than by praying to God for it.

This simple instance demonstrated how the thinking of the young people and children was remoulded and old conventions were aban­doned.

In dissuading the children from going to church and constantly educating them so that they would not fall a prey to superstition, our aim was not to do away with religion itself. We wanted to prevent them from becoming weak-minded and enervated and so useless to the revo­lution if they were to fall a prey to religion and hold the Christian creed supreme. There is no law preventing religious believers from making the revolution, but young people and schoolchildren who lacked a sci­entific understanding of the world could be adversely affected by non-resistance advocated by religion.

In Jilin I saw members of the Children’s Association singing psalms in the street. That was how great was the influence exerted by religion on the children. But singing psalms would not block the enemy’s gun muzzle. We needed fighters who sang of decisive battles more than religious believers who sang psalms.

So we disseminated many revolutionary songs among the children. Soon the members of the Children’s Association who had been singing psalms in the street marched through the streets singing the Song of a Young Patriot and the Song of the Association a/Korean Children in Jilin.

I still remember the short course in Korean arranged in that sum­mer holiday from among our activities after the birth of the Association of Korean Children in Jilin and the Ryugil Association of Korean Stu­dents in Jilin. We saw to it that the short course was attended by all the Korean children at Chinese primary schools and other Korean children who did not know their mother tongue. Most of them were born in Manchuria. They spoke Chinese better than Korean.

We proclaimed, “Koreans must know about Korea!” Kye Yong Chun, Kim Won U and Pak So Sim each gave lectures. Until then we had no qualified teacher. All the hardcore members of the organization were teachers and lecturers. The children who attended the 20-day course could all read children’s magazines after finishing the course.

The Children’s Association and the Association of Korean Students arranged an excursion to Mt. Lungtan, a picnic in Jiangnan Park, visits to sites of historical interest, public lectures, discussions, study sessions, debating contests, readers’ meetings, singing lessons, art performances and other extracurricular activities.

In most cases we used Jiangnan Park and Beishan Park for our secret rendezvous. Jiangnan Park was situated on a beautiful islet in the River Songhua, reminiscent of Rungna Islet. Some capitalists in Jilin had created a beautiful landscape there, like a botanical garden, by planting many trees; they earned money by charging for admission. They even grew peanuts in one empty place. In this park we often held secret meetings, in the guise of picnics.

Beishan Park was a more ideal rendezvous point than Jiangnan Park. Beishan Park could be used in all seasons, whereas Jiangnan Park was mainly used in summer when it was covered with greenery. Bei­shan Park was usually full of the people of Jilin, so there were many public service facilities in and around Beishan Park. The street running up to Beishan Park was lined on either side with restaurants, sweet shops, toyshops, tobacconists, general stores, tea houses and places of amusement. There was also a big shop which specialized in Western goods.

People used to swarm to Beishan Park, attracted not only by the fine scenery there but also by the many sites of historical interest such as Yaowang Shrine (a place for worship to the God of Medicine) where sacrificial rites were performed.

In Jilin the three days of June 4 to 6 were fixed as a time for a festi­val at the shrine and every year during the festival under the auspices of the provincial government an official function was held in Beishan Park in honour of the birthday of the God of Medicine. The function was attended not only by ordinary people but also by local officials. The three days of the festival were a holiday.

When the festival was being celebrated the police authorities set up a temporary branch station on the east side of the road up to Beishan Park where they installed a telephone, and they stationed police squads on the hill to maintain public order and keep a constant watch and supervision so that sparks given off by the sticks of incense burning at the shrines of Yaowang, Guandi and Niangnian would not cause a fire. During the three days of the festival cabmen and rickshaw-men earned ten times more money than at ordinary times.

While the merchants were concerned only with making money, taking over the three days of the festival, the influential figures and far-sighted people of the town conducted social education designed to enlighten people, advertising popular short courses sponsored by the province.

Enlightenment champions from different professions coming from various places, brandishing their fists, delivered fervent speeches on patriotism, morals, the defence of law, aesthetics, unemployment, phys­ical culture, hygiene and other subjects. This was a splendid spectacle, the like of which could not be seen elsewhere.

Taking advantage of the crowd we, too, sought out the masses and implanted progressive ideas in their minds; at times we held secret meetings. The basement of the Yaowang Shrine was a marvellous meet­ing place used exclusively by us. The priest of the temple had been won over to our side.

While attending school in Jilin, I gave lectures on many occasions. At times I delivered speeches at discussion meetings arranged by the nationalists. O Tong Jin, Ri Thak and other leaders of Jongui-bu often gathered together their fellow countrymen and the young people and students of the town and held lecture and discussion meetings for them on National Humiliation Day (August 29), March first and Tangun’s birthday (October 3).

Members of the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin often argued whether Ri Jun’s method was right or An Jung Gun’s method was right. However much they argued, they could not reach a decision. So, in the summer of the year when the Ryogil Association of Korean Students in Jilin was reformed into the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin we submitted the question to debate, gathering together all the Korean students of the town at Son Jong Do’s chapel. The discussion served to awaken the younger people of Jilin ideologi­cally. Firstly they realized that the terrorist method did not serve the proper purpose and that a petition, even less so. They learned that it was a daydream to expect help from great powers and unanimously deemed it necessary to explore a new path for the independence of Korea.

At the symposiums and readers’ meetings held in Jilin in those days questions relating to practical aspects of the Korean revolution were often discussed.

We fixed the first Sunday of May for Children’s Association Day and created an atmosphere of unity by holding an athletics meeting attended by the Korean young people and students, their parents, influ­ential figures and independence champions in Jilin on that day every year.

By uniting the children in this way we ensured that they took part in the work of educating and enlightening the people. Even the mem­bers of the Children’s Association who were only ten years old went out to Jiangdong, Liudamen, Xinantun, Dahuanggou and other rural vil­lages nearby in their holidays and enlightened the peasants there, while helping them in their work. It was a valuable achievement and a great experience for us to have made the children who had been breathing one hundred kinds of breath share the same breath, and this in Jilin where the factional strife was rife.

With the activities of the Association of Korean Children in Jilin, the Ryugil Association of Korean Students in Jilin and Marxist-Leninist reading circles proceeding briskly, a revolutionary force from the new generation grew rapidly in the Jilin area with the members of the DIU as its backbone.

Recognizing this, the Japanese consul general resident in Jilin turned his attention to our activities. Alarmed at the appearance of a new revolutionary force in the Jilin area and its rapid expansion, the consul general warned in his official report to the foreign minister of Japan that it was deserving of special attention since it was well orga­nized and was likely to grow stronger in the future.

More than the factions of the Korean Communist Party which was disunited and disrupted and the nationalist force whose practical ability and ability to penetrate the masses were weak, the Japanese imperialists feared us who had broken with factional strife and were clearing an original revolutionary path, penetrating the masses deeply.

The news that a new movement had been launched in Jilin spread not only to different parts of Manchuria but also to the homeland and to China proper. The news was spread mainly by the students studying at schools in Jilin and their parents.

Many young people flocked to Jilin from the homeland, Japan, the Maritime Province of Siberia and Manchuria to join our movement. We were visited by all sorts of young people from different backgrounds with different political opinions coming from different groups such as young people from the Independence Army, those who had been study­ing under adversity in Japan, those who had fought the white party, those who had taken part in the revolt in Guangzhou after graduating from the Huangpu Military Academy, those who had been evading pur­suit by the Kuomintang reactionaries, and followers of Lenin, Sun Yatsen and Rousseau. In this period Kim Hyok, Cha Kwang Su, Kim Jun, Chae Su Hang, An Pung and others joined us.

We admitted them to the DIU after educating them and extended our organization to the various schools in the town.

In the course of this we came to believe that it was necessary to create an organization which was bigger than the DIU and capable of embracing more people. Out of this necessity we reformed the DIU into the Anti-Imperialist Youth League (AIYL) on August 27, 1927 and the next day formed the Young Communist League of Korea (YCLK) from the core elements of the DIU. The AIYL was a mass illegal youth orga­nization which was anti-imperialist and took over the aims and pro­gramme of the DIU. It was basically composed of young Korean people but we also allowed young Chinese people with a strong anti-imperialist stand to join.

The AIYL made a great contribution to rallying the anti-imperialist young people into the revolutionary ranks and to strengthening the mass foundation of the anti-Japanese struggle.

The organization spread to all the schools attended by Koreans in the town including Wenguang Middle School, Jilin Middle School No. 1, Jilin Middle School No. 5, Jilin Normal School, Jilin Girls’ Middle School and Jilin Law College and struck root in Jiangdong, Xinantun and other rural areas around Jilin and in Liuhe County, Huadian County and Xingjing County. It spread to every place where there were Korean young people.

Soon the AIYL began to issue propaganda with the help of a mimeograph.

On Saturdays we used to go out to the rural villages nearby imme­diately after school to rally more young people. Leaving after school on Saturday, we returned home on Sunday afternoon after doing our work.

We reorganized the DIU into the AIYL and, following it, founded the YCLK because, since various organizations embracing young peo­ple and students in the Jilin and Fusong areas had been formed in a little over six months, an organization capable of leading these organizations in a unified manner was badly needed.

The formation of a new vanguard organization for the young peo­ple was a necessity for the development of the youth movement in those days.

As I had connections with all of these organizations, connections among them used to be established through my activities. In the case of Choe Chang Gol, Kim Won U and Kye Yong Chun, they had a hand in youth and student organizations as individual young communists.

The formation of a new vanguard organization was also an urgent need in the light of the prevailing situation.

At that time the Japanese imperialists were hastening their invasion of Manchuria. They ran wild to suppress the anti-Japanese feelings of the Korean and Chinese peoples, in collusion with the reactionary war­lords in Manchuria, while intensifying their oppression of the Korean people.

The Korean youth rose in a widespread struggle against the Japanese imperialists and the reactionary Chinese warlords. This required a powerful vanguard organization to rally the young people and students organizationally, to control them in a unified manner and to lead their struggle.

Because the youth movement was on the road to disruption due to the strife for hegemony among the bigoted nationalists and factionalists the communists of the new generation were faced with the urgent task of forming a vanguard organization to save the young people from the danger of becoming disunited and guide them to unity and cohesion.

In northeast China at the time the Korean Young Communist Asso­ciation of Manchuria was formed as an underground youth organization and such overt youth organizations were founded as the General Feder­ation of Korean Youth in South Manchuria, the General Federation of Korean Youth in North Manchuria, the General Federation of Korean Youth in East Manchuria, the Jilin Youth League, the Kilhoe Youth League and the Samgakju Youth League.

The factionalists of different hues tried to draw these youth orga­nizations to their side, and the nationalists of different factions vied with one another to stretch their hand out to these organizations with the result that the members of these organizations were not clear whether their organization was a communist one or a nationalist one. So the young people and students were divided into different groups. Some students were under the influence of the M-L group and others, under the influence of the Tuesday group. As for the sons and daugh­ters of the nationalists they sided with Jongui-bu, Chamui-bu or Sin-min-bu according to which organization their fathers belonged to and, further, were divided into a conservative group and a progressive one. As the young people and students had different opinions and belonged to different organizations, they were always at loggerheads with one another.

There was a need for a new vanguard organization to put the dis­rupted youth movement on the right track, remove young people from under the influence of the nationalist forces and factionalists and lead them along the true path of the communist revolution.

Frankly speaking, if the Korean Communist Party had played its part reasonably well, we would have been spared the trouble. There existed a party with communist ideas and many youth organizations, but they were of no benefit to us at all. This was a matter of regret and annoyance.

 The Korean revolution was faced by many complex problems due to its specific character. It was beset with manifold difficulties and bot­tlenecks.

Complex problems constantly arose in our relations with the fac­tionalists, nationalists, the Chinese people and the Comintern. On top of that, the Korean communists active in Manchuria were threatened by both the Japanese imperialists and the Chinese reactionary warlords.

In the light of this situation, the effective leadership of the revolu­tion required a seasoned leadership core capable of countering it and a correct guiding theory.

Many fine young communists developed in the course of the strug­gle to implement the ideas of the DIU. A new type of young communist immune to factional strife, flunkeyism and the lust for power and untainted by the past developed into genuine core elements capable of leading our youth movement and communist movement along a new path.

We acquired a guiding theory for the Korean revolution in the course of studying the new trends in Huadian and Jilin and paving the way for the struggle in the DIU.

Having decided to found the Young Communist League as a van­guard organization with a guiding theory, I set about to draw up a pro­gramme and rules for it.

Its programme emphasized that the Young Communist League should be guided by a theory that was bound up closely with the prac­tice of the Korean revolution and should fully repudiate factionalism.

With these preparations as our basis, we held a meeting to found the Young Communist League of Korea (YCLK) beneath the Yaowang Shrine in Beishan Park on August 28, 1927.

The meeting was attended by Choe Chang Gol, Kim Won U, Kye Yong Chun, Kim Hyok, Cha Kwang Su, Ho Ryul, Pak So Sim, Pak Kun Won, Han Yong Ae, core elements of the AIYL and other young communists.

I delivered a report, which was published in pamphlet form.

That day we sang the Internationale side by side as we had done when founding the DIU.

The YCLK was an underground youth organization fighting against imperialism and for national liberation and communism, and which was formed by seasoned and tempered young people from differ­ent revolutionary organizations, the core elements of the AIYL forming its backbone.

The YCLK, the advance detachment of the Korean young commu­nists, was the vanguard of the various mass organizations.

After founding the YCLK, we paid special attention to ensuring the purity of its ranks and strengthening their organizational and ideological unity and cohesion. If we had not done so it would have been impossi­ble to maintain its existence because of the manoeuvres of the military and civil police and the frantic subversive activities of the reactionaries and factionalists.

The YCLK attached great importance to the ideological education of its members and ensured that they made great efforts to study so as to raise their political, theoretical and leadership levels. They conducted serious study sessions and discussions on imperialism, colonies and national problems, as well as the immediate fighting tasks of the Korean revolution.

We attached importance to the organizational life of its members. In those days the YCLK held meetings for examining the conduct of its members once a month and reviewed their life. The members of the YCLK were tempered through their organizational life and it grew into a collective with a strong organization and rigid discipline.

We constantly tempered the members through practical activity, giving them a variety of assignments such as to lead lower organiza­tions, enlighten young people, students and other people and make the rural villages revolutionary.

We constantly replenished the YCLK ranks with fine young people tempered in revolutionary organizations. As a result, the YCLK rapidly spread not only in and around Jilin but also to wide areas of Manchuria including Dunhua, Xingjing, Huadian, Fusong, Antu, Panshi, Changchun, Harbin, and to Korea including its northern part. The YCLK played the vanguard role in the Korean revolution. It is common knowledge that in the communist movement the party assumes the lead­ership of the mass organizations. But in our country the party was not playing its proper role, so the YCLK had to guide the organizations of workers, peasants and women, as well as of young people and students, taking upon itself the work devolving on the party.

After founding the YCLK, we went among the masses quietly and without a fuss. It is enough to do things for the revolution and the peo­ple whether others recognize it or not. This was our view and attitude. When others went about, claiming to be legitimate out of a desire for hegemony, the young communists of the new generation advanced along the path of revolution step by step, shunning vanity.

The YCLK played a glorious role in promoting the organizational unity of young people, training hardcore elements and strengthening the internal forces of our revolution. The founding of the YCLK was a great impetus to the work of the young communists to found a new type of party and played a pivotal role in expediting it. Most of the members of the first party organization formed in the summer of 1930 were van­guard young fighters trained through the YCLK.

Recently we have fixed August 28, the day of the foundation of the YCLK, as youth day.

 

 

 

 

4. The Expansion of the Organization

 

 

Following the formation of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League and the Young Communist League we widened our activities over a vast area. In order to expand the organization, the hardeore elements of the YCLK and AIYL left Jilin.

Although I was a student in those days, I also used to visit various places. I even frequented places several hundreds of miles away from Jilin in order to seek a new theatre of activity. I would leave Jilin by the evening train on Saturday and return by the night train the following day after visiting places such as Jiaohe, Kalun and Guyushu. Sometimes due to unavoidable circumstances I would miss classes. Most of the teachers with the exception of the headmaster, Li Guang-han and teach­er Shang Yue, regarded my behaviour as very strange. Some people even guessed that probably I was working to pay my school fees because I had no father and my family was poor, Being a student, many restrictions and limitations were imposed on me. I was always short of time because I had to attend classes, study after school and supervise the work of various organizations in every spare moment.

It was during my school holidays that I could conduct my activities freely without the restriction of time. At ordinary times we would make preparations and, when our holidays came, visited various places to form organizations and enlighten the masses.

Going among the people was a trend in the homeland, too. During their holidays many students in the homeland visited the fanners to educate them. In the summer of the year when I was attending Hwasong Uisuk School, the newspaper Joson Ilbo formed enlightenment groups of students from secondary schools and older who were returning to their home villages during their holidays and sent them to the country­side after giving them a short course. Back in their home villages those students in the enlightenment groups conducted a campaign to abolish illiteracy by using the textbook on the Korean language prepared by the newspaper.

Those Korean students who were studying in Japan also returned to their homeland during their holidays. They formed lecture tour groups and visited various parts of the country to conduct enlightenment work. The youth associations belonging to the Chondoism and Christianity also visited the farmers and promoted the work of arousing the rural communities.

But the enlightenment movement conducted by the students at home did not develop to the level of revolutionizing and organizing the masses; it was confined to a mere reformist movement aimed at over­coming the nation’s backwardness. This was owing to cruel suppression by the authorities of the Japanese government-general that regarded all national movements aspiring to the development of national conscious­ness as against their colonial rule, and to the ideological limitations of the leaders of such movements. Even the enlightenment movement started to decline in the middle of the 1930s.

That this movement was merely a reformist movement can be seen clearly from the activities the students conducted in the rural areas. The main aspect of their activities was to abolish illiteracy and reform the living environment in the rural communities to make it more healthy. The activities conducted by the members of the Christian youth associa­tion included all kinds of cultural enlightenment aimed at guiding and inducing the rural population to lead a modern life. Their activities embodied a campaign to improve cooking and a movement to keep wells clean, and then proceeded to explaining chicken-raising and silk making and how to understand the certificates and applications issued by the authorities.

Taking advantage of the favourable conditions in which there was no direct suppression by the Japanese imperialists, we paid great atten­tion to gearing our activities to enlightening the rural communities to conduct a positive political struggle; we closely combined these activi­ties with those to organize the masses and make them revolutionary. Our work with the masses was conducted in such a way as to awaken them with education in patriotism, revolutionary education, anti-imperi­alist education and class education as the main aspect and to unite them in various mass organizations.

We made every possible effort to make the masses revolutionary. We did so because we had broken with the old way of thinking that the masses were only ignorant and uncivilized people who needed enlight­enment; we held the view that the people were our teachers and the main motive force behind the revolution, and we made this view our absolute belief.

With this point of view we went among the people.

“Go among the people!”

From that time on this became my motto throughout my life.

I started my revolutionary activities by going among the people and today, too, I am continuing to make the revolution by mixing with the people. I am also reviewing my life by going among the people. If I had neglected contact with the people just once and forgotten the existence of the people even for a moment, I would not have been able to main­tain the pure and genuine love for the people which I formed in my teens and become a true servant of the people.

Whenever I think of our society today in which the rights of the people are fully ensured and their wisdom and creativity are displayed without limitation, I feel grateful to the vehicle which first took me to the people when I was in Jilin.

It was during the winter holidays of 1927 that we first went among the people in real earnest.

The winter holidays were a bed of roses for the children of rich families. They either spent the whole winter at home reading love sto­ries or travelled by train to such large cities as Changchun, Harbin and Beijing to see the sights. On lunar New Year’s Day they prepared tasty food and made merry with fireworks. The Chinese have the custom of celebrating for a month from January 1 to February 2 by the lunar cal­endar. They call February 2 by the lunar calendar lontaitou (the day when the dragon raised its head), and finish their holiday only when they have eaten all the pigs, even the heads, which they killed in Jan­uary.

But, we could neither go sightseeing nor enjoy the holidays as they did. Instead, we thought about how we could do more for the revolution during the holiday.

When our holiday started I went to Changchun, taking with me the members of our art troupe. No sooner had I returned from there than I left for Fusong. Pak Cha Sok and Kye Yong Chun also went to Fusong with me, having agreed to spend the winter at my home.

We were very busy during that winter holiday.

As soon as I reached home I was surrounded by the members of the Saenal Children’s Union. They told me about the difficulties the union was encountering in its work.

From what the chairman of the union told me I realized that there were many problems to be solved.

In order to settle their difficulties we devoted a great deal of time to working with the members of the Saenal Children’s Union. We told the leading members of the union how they should conduct the activities of the art propaganda troupe, how they should conduct social activities, how they should work with the masses and how they should conduct the internal work of the union. At the same time, we frequently attended political symposiums and meetings to assess the conduct of the mem­bers.

Following an improvement in the work of the Children’s Union we formed the Paeksan Youth League with hardcore young people from the area of Fusong. We gave it the name of the Paeksan Youth League in that it was an organization of young people living around Mt. Paektu. However, that organization was in fact a guise for the Anti-Imperialist Youth League. We called the organization simply a youth league instead of giving it the name of the Paeksan Anti-Imperialist Youth League because we wanted to confuse the enemy and disguise the orga­nization. The Paeksan Youth League conducted overt activities in the guise of an organization under nationalist influence.

By rousing the members of the Paeksan Youth League we ensured that night schools were set up in Chongwajae and other rural villages in the area.

I judged that, in view of the growing number and expanding ranks of youth organizations, a newspaper to provide ideological nourishment for young people and broad sections of the masses was imperative. But we had to start the newspaper from scratch. We wanted to print some 100 copies of each issue. However, we had neither a mimeograph nor paper.

True, there was a small printing house in Fusong which was run by a Chinese man. But, in view of the content of the newspaper, it was impossible to rely on that print shop.

After pondering over the matter deeply, I was determined to pro­duce the newspaper by copying articles by hand. I mobilized the activists of the Saenal Children’s Union and the hardcore members of the Paeksan Youth League to do this. It took us more than a week to transcribe 100 copies.

On January 15, 1928 we finally published the first issue of the newspaper Saenal (New Day—Tr.).

It is hard to believe now that in those days we had the energy to write all the articles. I frequently miss the strength and youth we dis­played in those days. At that time we felt the greatest happiness in devoting ourselves wholly to the revolution.

A youth who has no dream, no courage, no ardour, no aspiration, no fighting spirit and no romance is not a youth. In one’s youth one must have a noble ideal and fight stubbornly to realize it whatever the difficulties. All the fruits which young people, who possess fresh ideas and a healthy and strong body, have cultivated and plucked at the cost of their sweat and blood are valuable wealth for the country. The people never forget the heroes who have created this wealth.

A man in his latter years misses his youth because his youth is the period of his life when he can do most work. A man is happiest when he can do a lot of work.

Afterwards I had the newspaper Saenal printed with the help of a mimeograph I had obtained from some close acquaintances of my father.

The most conspicuous of our activities during the winter holiday of 1927 was the performances of the art propaganda troupe. The art propa­ganda troupe in Fusong comprised members of the Saenal Children’s Union, the Paeksan Youth League and the Women’s Association. This art troupe performed for about a month in Fusong and the neighbouring rural villages. During our performance tour we formed organizations and enlightened the masses in many places. Such dramas as Blood at an International Conference, An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi and A Letterfrom a Daughter are literary works which we created and put on the stage in Fusong in the winter of that year.

When the art propaganda troupe, prior to its performance tour, was performing in the city of Fusong, the warlord authorities arrested me for no reason and took me to prison. Some feudalists had informed against me to the authorities because they did not like the content of our perfor­mance.

Zhang Wei-hua, a primary school fellow of mine, went to a lot of trouble to free me. He persuaded his father to put pressure upon the police authorities to stop them from searching our house.

Zhang Wei-hua’s father had been an intimate friend of my father because he had formed a good understanding with my father in the course of visiting our house to receive medical treatment. Although he was very wealthy he was a conscientious man. When my father initiated the re-establishment of Paeksan School in Fusong and was anxious to get permission for it, he had to negotiate with the people concerned about the matter.

Because such an influential man as Zhang Wei-hua’s father put pressure on the police, the warlord authorities had no choice but to release me.

The Koreans in Fusong rushed to the warlord authorities and demanded that they release me. My mother roused the organization to action and urged the masses to work for my release. Even some influen­tial Chinese figures condemned the conduct of the warlord authorities and demanded my freedom.

A short time later the warlord authorities were compelled to set me free.

After being released from the police station I left for Fusuhe village at the head of the art propaganda troupe. The art propaganda troupe put on performances in this village for three days.

 People from the neighbouring villages came to see our perfor­mance. So news about it spread widely around the surrounding settle­ments.

Having heard of our performance, some people from Tunzidong came to invite us to their village. We accepted their invitation with pleasure. The performance in Tunzidong was a great success. At the request of the villagers we had to extend our stay several times.

After the first performance, the chairman of the Saenal Children’s Union rushed backstage and told me that the village elder had sent for me.

An elderly man with a noble presence, a pipe in his mouth, was waiting for me outside the house where we had just given our perfor­mance. He was gazing at me attentively from beneath his long, thick eyebrows. The young man from Tunzidong who had guided us to his village approached me and told me that the elderly man was “Cha Chol-li.” (Cha is the family name and Cholli means a thousand ri, i.e., 250 miles—Tr.)

No sooner had I heard the name Cha Cholli than I bowed my head, saying:

“Old man, I am sorry that I am greeting you only now. I have not been able to greet you earlier because I heard you had gone out to the neighbouring village.”

“I heard about your art troupe there and have rushed back. Is it right that you are the son of Mr. Kim Hyong Jik?”

“Yes, it is right.”

“With a son like you, Mr. Kim can rest easy in his grave. It is the first time in my life that I have seen such a fine performance.”

I was somewhat perplexed, for the old man was treating me courte­ously and formally.

So I told him: “Old man, don’t speak like that, please. Why do you speak like that to someone who would be your own son?”

That day the elderly man invited me to his house. On my way to his home I asked him quietly:

“Old man, excuse me for asking you such an indiscreet question. Is it true that you cover 250 miles a day?...”

“Ha, ha! So you, too, have heard that rumour. In the prime of my life I could cover half that distance.”

Hearing him I realized that the elderly man Cha Cholli must have been a great fighter for independence as he was painted.

There was a reason that his surname was followed by a nickname Cholli instead of his real name.

Because of his nickname Cholli the elderly man was considered a mysterious figure among the Koreans in Manchuria.

During his lifetime my father had once expressed his admiration for the fast walking-speed of the elderly man. Then he told me that the nickname Cholli had been used for the elderly man from the time when he had conducted volunteer activities in the Kanggye area.

After coming to Manchuria Cha Cholli had belonged to Chamui-bu and been a subordinate of Sim Ryong Jun. I was told that he had most resolutely opposed Chamui-bu being placed under the rule of the Shanghai Provisional Government. Some people from Jongui-bu who were against the idea of an organization of the Independence Army falling under the jurisdiction of the Provisional Government, highly praised the stand of the elderly man. Among the people in Jongui-bu, the leadership body of which mostly consisted of ex-soldiers, the ten­dency prevailed of being dissatisfied with the Provisional Government which was made up of an overwhelming majority of civil officials.

That day elderly Cha Cholli told me a lot which would later serve as a lesson for me. He lamented bitterly over the fact that we had been deprived of our country owing to the corrupt and incompetent feudal rulers, although the Korean nation had previously been quite able to repulse the Japanese imperialist aggressors and develop as the dignified people of an independent state. He told me that one must not merely talk if one wants to conduct the independence movement and that one must take up arms and kill more Japanese. In addition, he said that we must sharpen our vigilance against the Japanese imperialists because they were extremely crafty; then he told me the following story:

“Have you ever heard how the Kyongsong Match Factory was ruined? The matches produced at this factory had the trademark ‘Mon­key’ and were very famous. Although the matches themselves were good, the trademark caught the eye of people because it was so strange. The trademark showed a monkey with a peach branch on its shoulder. It is said that the Japanese built a match factory in Korea, but they did not make much money from it because of its matches. So, after contriving various artifices they bought tens of thousands of boxes of ‘Monkey’ matches, went to a desert island and there soaked all the matchsticks in water. Then they dried them and sold them at the market. Everyone who bought these matches found that they were not fit for use because they did not light, so they bought only the Japanese matches. The Kyong­song Match Factory went bankrupt. That is what the Japanese are like.” Although it was impossible to confirm the truth of the story, it was very valuable in understanding Japanese imperialism.

The old man told that when the Japanese fired five shots with a five-chambered rifle he, in the prime of his life, could fire three shots with a matchlock. He added that now that he was confined to his home and was unable to fight any more because of his old age, he had become anxious and found it unbearable.

The old man said that the singing and dancing Unity Pole which we had put on the stage that day was very good. He deplored the fact that all the volunteer activities had come to nothing because they had failed to be combined and that the Independence Army had become impotent and was being chased by the Japanese because the soldiers did not com­bine their efforts and acted separately.

“Koreans should fight the Japanese in unity even if they are only three.”

This was what old man Cha Cholli said in a harsh tone. He was quite right. Only those who had experienced that unity meant victory and disunity meant ruin could say such a thing.

The old man took my hand and asked us, the younger generation, to fight well, saying that he would not be able to fight for Korea’s inde­pendence because of his old age. Hearing him I felt my noble mission to be to make the revolution well as a son of Korea, never failing to live up to the expectations of the people.

What old man Cha Cholli told me that night made a great impres­sion on me. His words that Koreans should fight the Japanese in unity even if they were only three, later served as a great lesson to us in our struggle.

Thus when we took the art propaganda troupe and mixed with the people we not only awakened the masses but also learned from them. As it is so now, so in those days, too, our teacher was the people.

Therefore, whenever I meet officials I tell them earnestly to go among the people. I always emphasize that going among the people is like taking a tonic and that failing to do so is like taking poison. One can find such people as old man Cha Cholli only when one mixes with the people. One finds philosophy, literature and political economy among the people.

Old man Cha Cholli was assassinated by his superior officer Sim Ryong Jun while he was working as head guard of Chamui-bu.

When I heard this sad news I was in a fury of indignation. I recol­lected the words of old man Cha Cholli that Koreans should unite to fight the Japanese even if they were only three. Such grievous misfortune would not have happened if the leaders of Chamui-bu had com­bined their strength as the old man had said.

We greeted lunar New Year’s Day that year in Tunzidong.

After New Year’s Day I sent the members of the art troupe back to Fusong and headed for Antu with Kye Yong Chun and Pak Cha Sok. In Antu County was Naidaoshan village inhabited solely by Koreans. This village, situated at the foot of Mt. Paektu and known as the first village under the sky, was a remote mountain village in a dense forest. The word Naidaoshan meant the mountain like an island in a forest. The Chinese call this mountain Naitoushan, meaning like a teat.

Fighters for the independence of Korea had been visiting this moun­tainous village for a long time. Hong Pom Do and Choe Myong Rok, vet­erans of the Independence Army had been to this village at one time.

We had already sent Ri Je U, a member of the DIU, to Naidaoshan with instructions to rally the young people of the area in an organiza­tion. We had done so because we intended to make the area around Mt. Paektu a major revolutionary base in the future.

Ri Je U (Ri U) hailed from Hwanghae Province. His father, while engaged in the independence movement, had been in contact with my father in the days when he was in Changbai. For that reason Ri Je U naturally joined me.

After our departure from Huadian I met Ri Je U again when I was organizing the Paeksan Youth League in Fusong. At that time I dis­cussed with him the matter of forming a branch of the Paeksan Youth League in Naidaoshan village. He told me, half jokingly, not only to give him tasks but also to come to him once and help him.

It was nearly 80 miles from Fusong to Naidaoshan. If one views Naidaoshan from China it is the last village in Manchuria. However, if one sees it from Korea it is the first village on the other side of Mt Paektu. Nobody lived within 25 miles of Naidaoshan.

We arrived at the village towards evening and, led by Ri Je U, stopped at the house of Mr. Choe who worked as a doctor of Korean medicine.

Choe told us that Jang Chol Ho had stayed twice in the room where we were staying and that Ri Kwan Rin had also been there. I could not help feeling solemn at the thought that we were continuing the revolu­tion in a place which had been visited by my father and cultivated by his friends.

After a few days in Naidaoshan village I could understand why Ri Je U had insisted that I visit the place. Naidaoshan village was very dif­ficult for outsiders to establish a foothold.

Most of the inhabitants of the village had the surnames Choe, Kim and Jo. They shunned the outside world and married among themselves. The daughter of a Choe married the son of a Kim, the daughter of a Kim was married to the son of a Jo and the daughter of a Jo became the daughter-in-law of a Choe. Because marriages were conducted in this way in a small village in a valley, all the people in the village were related and addressed one another as “Sister,” “Brother,” “Uncle” and “In-laws.”

Most of the people in this village believed in the religion of Chon- bulgyo. There was a legend that 99 fairies had descended from the sky and bathed in Lake Chon on Mt. Paektu before going back up to the sky, so, they had built a 99-room temple called the Tongdok Palace which they visited twice a year to offer up prayers. They had also built a temple called “Chonbulsa” in their village and went there every week or 10 days to pray.

The day after our arrival in Naidaoshan was the day when the believers in Chonbulgyo were to pray at the temple. Guided by Ri Je U, our party went up near to the temple and saw something splendid. The believers had gathered in one place, all of them, irrespective of sex, doing up their hair like the people of Koguryo and wearing colourful dresses. They were beating gongs, small cymbals and drums and ring­ing wooden bells with a clapper; the sounds of these instruments “Tongdokgung, tongdokgung” were very solemn. They said that this was the reason why the temple was called Tongdok Palace.

Ri Je U said that the Chonbulgyo religion was a source of trouble in the Naidaoshan area. He disliked Chonbulgyo because of his simple conception that religion was opium. When I heard about this religion from Ri Je U in Fusong, I thought the same about it. However, having seen how serious were the believers in Chonbulgyo who were perform­ing the ceremonies and how magnificent was the Tongdok Palace, I was obliged to think about it more deeply.

Guided by Choe and accompanied by Ri Je U, I went that day to see Jang Tu Bom, the founder of the religion of Chonbulgyo.

Jang Tu born had once fought in the Independence Army, Howev­er, with this army becoming impotent, he threw away his rifle and went to Naidaoshan. There he prayed to the mystical wonders of Nature on Mt. Paektu to deal out divine punishment to the Japanese and bless the Korean nation; thus he created the Chonbulgyo faith.

While I was talking to the founder of the religion, I could not take my eyes off the ears of millet hanging from the ceiling of his house. This was because the ears of millet were hanging in the same way as in Choe’s house. I asked Ri Je U if they were keeping these ears of millet for use as seeds. But he said that the millet was used in offering prayers.

The people in this area, where rice could not grow, used millet instead of rice when preparing sacrificial food. So in every household ears of millet hung either from the pillars or the ceiling. Even when they missed meals because of a shortage of food, they never touched this millet. They used it only when going to the temple on Mt. Paektu to offer up prayers. They pounded it on a quern with great sincerity, winnowed it and, with a wooden spoon, picked out the broken bits of mil­let, the grass seeds, the unhulled or half-hulled millet and odd ends of straw or blades of dry grass. Then they collected only grains of the same size one by one and wrapped them in Korean paper before putting the millet in clear spring water.

“Because of the damnable religion of Chonbulgyo the people of Naidaoshan have all gone crazy. It seems that the words of Marx, who defined religion as opium, are extremely wise. I wonder whether it is necessary and possible to remould these religious believers....”

Ri Je U grumbled thus and confessed that he sometimes felt the urge to set fire to the Tongdok Palace which he felt was taking the soul out of the people of Naidaoshan.

I criticized Ri Je U for his narrow point of view.

This is what I told him: - “Needless to say, I don’t deny the proposition of Marx that religion is opium. However, you are mistaken if you think that this proposition can be applied in all cases. Do you think it right to brand as opium Chonbulgyo, a religion which prays for dealing out divine punishment to Japan and blessing the Korean nation? I regard Chonbulgyo as a patriotic religion and all the believers in this religion as patriots. Our only task is to rally these patriots into a single force.”

Ri Je U and I exchanged opinions seriously. In the course of this we reached the conclusion that we should not destroy the religion of Chonbulgyo but actively support the anti-Japanese feelings of the believers in it. So I stayed there for about ten days and worked among the villagers. The believers in Chonbulgyo readily agreed with me when I said that one could not liberate the country merely by believing in a religion.

Indeed, that winter the people of Naidaoshan were utterly sincere in their treatment of us. The principal food of the people of Naidaoshan was potatoes. Potatoes mixed with kidney-beans were peculiarly tasty. Kye Yong Chun even joked, saying that the flat pieces of stone cover­ing the floor of the room would crack because of people passing wind.

If we had judged the situation merely on the strength of Ri Je U’s report in Jilin without going to Naidaoshan, or of rumours, we would not have gained a favourable impression of the religion of Chonbulgyo. We were able to appreciate the religion of Chonbulgyo and its believers fairly because we went to Naidaoshan and saw the Tongdok Palace and the sincerity of the believers as they offered up prayers, as well as the ears of millet hanging from the main beam of every roof.

It is never possible to possess a popular personality and a popular way of thinking that conform to the interests of the people if one only sits at one’s desk. Nor can one possess them by indulging in empty talk. They can be attained only through direct contact with the people to enable one to see and apprehend personally, with one’s own eyes and ears, the feelings of the people, their glances, their countenance, their manner of speaking, their gestures and their behaviour, not to mention their voice.

We gave precedence to political work to educate the villagers. Then we formed a village branch of the Paeksan Youth League and Children’s Expeditionary Corps.

After I returned to Jilin my uncle Hyong Gwon took charge of the work of the Paeksan Youth League. Together with Ri Je U he formed branches of this youth league in many villages in the area of Changbai such as Toksu, Tokgol, Cholgol, Yaksudong, Imsugol and Diyangzi as well as in the different areas of the homeland such as Sinpha, Pochon, Hyesan, Kapsan and Samsu.

The Paeksan Youth League entrusted the task of taking charge of its Changbai area organization to Ri Je U. He discharged this heavy responsibility with credit. My uncle Hyong Gwon and Ri Je U underwent many trials in working to make the area around Mt. Paektu revolu­tionary. Thanks to this we got a lot of support from the masses when we were conducting our revolutionary struggle later in this area.

One’s holidays are periods when one stops studying and takes a rest for a while. However, during the winter holiday of that year I learned a lot which I would not have been able to learn from books.

After returning to Jilin from our winter holiday we reviewed the work conducted by the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperi­alist Youth League over the previous six months and set the task of forming more mass organizations for various social strata involving young people and other people from all walks of life.

In order to implement this task, hardcore members of the Young Communist League such as Kim Hyok, Cha Kwang Su, Choe Chang Gol, Kye Yong Chun and Kim Won U left for Xingjing, Liuhe, Changchun, Yitong and Huaide Counties and for Korea. There they rapidly increased the numbers of various kinds of mass organizations such as the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League.

I stayed in Jilin and conducted the work of organizing the Peasants Union in Xinantun. Uniting the peasants in an organization is the work of preparing them as the motive force of the revolution. In particular, under the circumstances in our country where the peasants made up the vast majority of the population, winning them over was a matter of key importance on which depended the victory of the revolution.

We went to Jiangdong village and organized there the Peasants Union, a branch of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League and the Women’s Association. Following this we formed branches of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League in Kalun and Dahuanggou.

In the area of Jiaohe, too, we formed a branch of the Anti-Imperial­ist Youth League. It was after I met Kang Myong Gun, head of the organizational department of the Ryosin Youth Association, that I established relations with the young people in Jiaohe. This man seemed to have heard a great deal about me from Jang Chol Ho. Jiaohe was like an intermediary stop for Jang Chol Ho. Whenever he travelled between Jilin and Fusong he dropped in at Kang Myong Gun’s house in Jiaohe and informed him of the movement of the young people and students in Jilin. Then, when he returned to Jilin, he told me the news from Jiaohe. This is how Kang Myong Gun came to know me and I became interest­ed in the youth movement in the Jiaohe area. It was at this time that Kang Myong Gun came to Jilin to see me.

In those days I was staying at Jang Chol Ho’s house in Dongdatan to attend school.

Kang Myong Gun was more than 10 years older than me. However, he addressed me as “Sir” all the time and confided to me all the suffer­ings he was undergoing in his work and impatiently appealed to me for help. I could not help feeling sympathetic towards him, and could not but admire his revolutionary ardour, for he had come to visit me who was no more than an ordinary secondary school pupil, from Jiaohe which was 45 miles from Jilin.

In Jiaohe County in those days the Ryosin Youth Association was operating in the northwest and the Lafa Youth Association was active in the southeast with the Lafa Mountains as the boundary. The young Korean people in the Jiaohe area were mainly involved in these two youth organizations.

Initially the young people joined an organization with a noble aim. However, they gradually became disillusioned at the conduct of the leaders of the nationalist movement who only struggled for power and collected funds.

At the same time they were stunned by the empty talk of the pseu­do-Marxists who clamoured only for the “proletarian revolution” and “hegemony.”

This was more than enough for me to understand the feelings of Kang Myong Gun when he said that they were in confusion and unable to find a path to follow.

I told Kang Myong Gun about the state of the movement of the young people and students in the Jilin area and about the experience we had gained in our work.

I also told him to make good preparations, when he was back in Jiaohe, for forming a branch of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League. And, when he was leaving, I gave him many Marxist-Leninist publica­tions.

Although I had tried hard to awaken him in all sincerity, I could not feel easy about the work in Jiaohe after Kang Myong Gun had returned there.

After being determined for some time to visit Jiaohe, I went there at last through Laoilling. It must have been the spring of 1928. Kang Myong Gun was delighted to see me, saying that he had been thinking of visiting Jilin again. He said that, although nothing had seemed to be a problem when he was in Jilin, he had found many problems upon his return.

The rural youth in Jiaohe disagreed firstly on the matter of how to form the organization. Some claimed that, because the Ryosin Youth Association was an organization of nationalists, they should break with it immediately and form the Anti-Imperialist Youth League comprising those who shared the same idea. Others insisted that they should break up the Ryosin Youth Association.

On the problem of whom they should admit into the organization, too, they did not have a correct view. They excluded acceptable young people from those wishing to be admitted into the organization claim­ing, for instance, that it was difficult for some people to become mem­bers of the organization because they were “hostile elements” or “waverers.”

 I spent the day with the villagers in a room they used for enjoy­ment. Lying there with my head on a wooden pillow, I told them that in order to form an organization it was necessary to win over as many peo­ple as possible and that, to this end, it was important to educate and per­suade people persistently instead of dividing them into one side or another.

I also told them about the need to prevent young people from being affected by the nationalists and factionalists and to increase the role of the progressive hardcore young people in the Ryosin Youth Association and Lafa Youth Association. I also discussed their tasks with them one by one. Then I selected five hardcore young people from the Ryosin Youth Association and formed the Jiaohe branch of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League with them. After that I visited the Jiaohe area frequently and worked with the members of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League there.

I also started to unite in our organization the young people in the General Federation of Korean Youth in East Manchuria. In those days most of the young Korean people who were studying in Longjing were involved in the General Federation of Korean Youth in East Manchuria. They were under the influence of the Tuesday group.

But, Kim Jun, a pupil from Tonghung Middle School who was working as the head of the organizational department of this organiza­tion, came to see me after reading the magazines and pamphlets we had issued in Jilin. Through him I learned about the situation of the youth movement in the area of Longjing.

After his return from Jilin, Kim Jun maintained contact with me and started to spread my ideas among the pupils of various schools in Longjing such as Taesong Middle School, Tonghung Middle School and Unjin Middle School. Through them we taught our progressive idea to the young people of Jiandao and in the area within the jurisdiction of six towns in the homeland, including Hoeryong and Jongsong.

In those days I also paid attention to dealing with workers. In Jilin there were many factories, large and small, such as a thermal power sta­tion, a locomotive depot, a match factory, a textile mill and a rice mill. However, there was no organization to speak of, no organization to embrace the working class. The only organization that existed in those days was the Hansong Association which was formed in the spring of 1927 with the aim of finding employment for Korean workers and help­ing them in their everyday life.

We educated a young man who had come to the rural area after working at the Jilin Thermal Power Station and admitted him to the Anti-Imperialist Youth League. Then we had him take a job at the power station again. Thus we established a foothold at the Jilin Thermal Power Station and started to rally progressive workers.

By rousing the members of the Ryugil Association of Korean Stu­dents, we organized a night school for the workers at the pier on the River Songhua and, on such days as the anniversary of the March First Popular Uprising, May Day and national humiliation day, we visited them to make speeches and give art performances. On the basis of such preparatory work we formed the Anti-Japanese Trade Union in August 1928. The man in charge of this organization was a core member of the Anti-Japanese Youth League.

This was the first time for us to extend the domain of our activities to the working class and unite them in an organization. Until that time we had been expediting the awakening and organization of the young people and students, regarding them as the main object of our work.

We had this Anti-Japanese Trade Union, with Korean workers as its core, revitalize the Hansong Association, an overt organization. The Hansong Association gradually acquired a distinct political trend. After­wards the Hansong Association collected subscriptions and sent them to the Wonsan Labour Federation in order to help the workers of Wonsan with their general strike. When Korea suffered from a flood disaster in the summer of 1930, this organization formed a relief association in cooperation with various Korean organizations and collected a contribu­tion for the flood victims. This organization also played a major role in the struggle against the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project.

We accumulated extremely useful experiences in the course of reforming into revolutionary organizations, with Jilin and Jiaohe as the centre, the youth organizations which were under the influence of the nationalists and factionalists.

It can be said that the life of a revolutionary begins by going among the masses and that it is over when he parts from them.

I think that if my days at Hwasong Uisuk School when I organized the DIU were the start of my work among the young people and stu­dents, my days at Jilin Yuwen Middle School when I formed and expanded the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League were the heyday of my work among the young people when I, going beyond the bounds of the students, went deep into the midst of all sections of the masses including the workers and peasants and sowed the seed of the revolution everywhere I went.

At that time people referred to the activities of the young commu­nists from among the new generation and their influence, the “Jilin wind.”

 

 

 

 

5. The Demonstration of Unity

 

 

Having formed and built up our organizations we launched our practical struggle.

The struggle began with a student strike at Yuwen Middle School in the summer of 1928.

Until that time various matters concerning the running of Yuwen Middle School ranging from the management of the dining-hall, to the financial administration and to the operation of the library had been han­dled without problem in accordance with the democratic opinions of the progressive teachers and students. Our activities at the school were rela­tively free from restraint. This was a result of our struggle in coopera­tion with the school affairs committee.

However, the reactionary teachers manipulated by the warlords were never happy about this democratic system established through the joint efforts of the teaching staff and students. They tried to disrupt this system and deal with all matters at the school as they pleased. Among the teachers at Yuwen Middle School appointed by the Office of Educa­tion there were warlords’ agents who were always on the alert. Reac­tionary teachers, such as those in charge of school affairs, moral educa­tion and physical training were all paid agents of the enemy’s intelli­gence service. They manipulated the conservative students and young delinquents from the families of the landlords and bureaucrats who fol­lowed the warlords’ administration in order to probe constantly into the students’ ideological trends and the activities of the revolutionary orga­nizations.

 In the summer of 1928 we held mass rallies at the school almost every day to protest against the piratic second expedition of the Japanese imperialist troops to Shandong and the atrocities they commit­ted in Jinan.

This expedition was an important event by which the policy of the Tanaka government towards China could be judged. Japan’s first expe­dition to the Shandong area had been made immediately after the for­mation of the cabinet of Prime Minister Tanaka Kiichi in May 1927. At that time the National Revolutionary Army of Jiang Jie-shi was advanc­ing towards the Shandong peninsula in pursuit of Zhang Zuo-lin’s army stationed in Fengtian. In order to protect the warlord Zhang Zuo-lin whom the Japanese imperialists had trained from Jiang’s army that was advancing northward, the Tanaka government, on the pretext of protect­ing the lives and property of the Japanese, dispatched 2,000 troops from Lushun (Port Arthur) to Qingdao and later sent a reinforcement of 2,000 troops from Japan proper to the Shandong area.

Because Japan’s first expedition frustrated the northward advance of Jiang’s army and because Jiang guaranteed the safety of the lives and property of the Japanese resident in the Shandong area, the Japanese troops withdrew from the area that autumn.

But Jiang’s army resumed its revolutionary advance northward in the spring of 1928, so the fascist Tanaka government decided to send a second expedition and moved its troops in Tianjin and 5,000 troops from the Kumamoto division in Japan proper to occupy the railway in the Shandong area and seize Qingdao and Jinan. Jiang’s National Revo­lutionary Army also entered Jinan, and there was a clash between the soldiers of the two countries. The Japanese occupation army massacred many Chinese people in Jinan. A diplomat of the Kuomintang govern­ment was also killed by the Japanese soldiers.

The three shameless expeditions of the Japanese imperialist army to Shandong triggered off an outburst of resentment at the Japanese among the Korean and Chinese peoples. It provoked a strong protest and denunciation within Japan against the diplomatic policies of the Tanaka government.

Japan’s ultimate aim in dispatching her troops to Shandong was to separate Manchuria and the Huabei area from continental China and make them her colony. She needed a lever for that aim, and this was to be Zhang Zuo-lin. Japan calculated that she could occupy Manchuria without great difficulty if she were to tame and support him properly. The shots that echoed in Jinan were a warning of a possible massacre oftens of thousands of people in China in later years. When the Japaneseimperialists were freely killing even their compatriots in China in orderto create a pretext for sending in their troops, the Chinese people had a S premonition of the imminent misfortune that would befall them.

We organized public lectures, speeches and protest meetings todenounce the Japanese imperialist policy of aggression and the treach­erous acts of the Kuomintang, and thus stirred up our fellow students.

The reactionary teachers labelled our activities as communist pro­paganda and thus created a pretext for repression. They suddenly raided the school library and seized the progressive books there. They put pressure on the headmaster, Li Guang-han, to expel all the Korean stu­dents from the school, pretending to have found some important evi­dence against them. They alleged that the Korean students were either communist masterminds or the “spies of Japan” and were hostile to the Chinese teachers, so they could not conduct the noisy classes they attended. By the same token, the Right-wing students wantonly violated the democratic system at the school, insulted the progressive students and slandered the headmaster and the progressive teachers. Shang Yue was the prime target of their attack.

If the reactionary teachers and the students they manipulated had been left to their own devices, it would have been impossible for us to continue our academic pursuits and the youth movement freely. With the aim of driving out the reactionary teachers and defending the demo­cratic system by drawing on an organized force, we began a student strike centred on the members of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League.

Our demands were, first, that the treatment of the students be improved; second, that subjects be taught as required by the students; and third, that no more pressure be put on the progressive teachers and the headmaster.

The progressive teachers also threatened the provincial govern­ment, saying that they would enlist the help of the public if the students’ demands were not met. Leaflets and written appeals demanding the expulsion of the reactionary teachers were posted everywhere in the city. They were also thrown into the boarding houses of the reactionary teachers and the provincial government building.

As the student strike at Yuwen Middle School reached its height, the other middle schools in the city threatened the provincial govern­ment that they would join the strike.

The provincial government sensed that the student strike was spreading across the city; they reluctantly dismissed the reactionary teachers, including the teachers in charge of moral education, and accepted our demands.

That was our first victory in the mass struggle. In the course of this we became confident that we could emerge victorious in the struggle if we defined a proper target and organized the masses well.

Through our successful student strike, we gained experience and training. The strike encouraged the young people and students to follow us with greater confidence. We reviewed the success we had achieved in the strike and made preparations for mobilizing the enthusiastic young people and students in an active anti-Japanese struggle on a grander scale.

The schemes of the Japanese imperialists who had long been speeding up their preparations for the invasion of Manchuria became more blatant around this time.

In May 1928 Muraoka, the commander of the Japanese Kwantung Army, planned to send the 40th composite brigade to Fengtian (the pre­sent Shenyang) on the excuse of dealing with developments in China proper, and to move the army’s headquarters to Fengtian. Subsequently they blew up a train on a railway bridge at the entrance of Fengtian, the bridge where the south Manchuria railway and the Beijing-Fengtian railway met, killing Zhang Zuo-lin who was on his way back from Beijing to Fengtian. This was a deliberate prelude to the invasion of Manchuria.

If they occupied Manchuria, it would mean great difficulties for us who were active in northeast China. Until that time the Japanese imperi­alists could not deal with the Korean communists and independence fighters as they pleased because Manchuria was under the jurisdiction of China, but their occupation of Manchuria would alter the situation.

While making careful military preparations for the invasion of Manchuria, the Japanese imperialists, who had contained Jiang Jie-shi during three expeditions and stretched their tentacles deep into conti­nental China, speeded up the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project they had been pushing ahead with for a long time as a part of their preparations, the project to connect Jilin, a provincial seat of Manchuria, with Hoery-ong, a northern border town of Korea.

It was from the time of Emperor Meiji that Japan had harboured the ambition of laying such a railway, even if it meant resorting to force. The Japanese imperialists attached great strategic importance to this railway.

 After the so-called “Oriental meeting” the Tanaka government sub­mitted a letter to the Emperor in which, referring to the importance of the railways between Manchuria and Mongolia including the Jilin-Hoeryong line, they called the project the key to Japan’s policy towards the Continent.

As is well known, the main state policy proposed in this notorious letter which underlined their ambition and delusion of world domina­tion, just as Hitler’s Mein Kampf had advocated the theory of world supremacy in Europe, was to invade Manchuria and Mongolia, and the essential lever for this invasion was the 5 railway lines between Manchuria and Mongolia, including the Jilin-Hoeryong railway.

In this letter Tanaka hinted that with the finishing of these 5 rail­ways Japan would have a grand rail network connecting the whole of Manchuria with Korea and a direct line to north Manchuria, render­ing it possible to move troops and the necessary military supplies to any part of the area and suppress the Korean national liberation movement.

The shrewd brains in Japan estimated that if the Jilin-Hoeryong line was completed and the soldiers and goods were transported from Tsuruga in Japan to Jilin in Manchuria via Chongjin and Hoeryong in Korea, the distance and time of their transportation could be shortened considerably. This was why the Japanese imperialists proclaimed the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project to be their state policy and completed it in 26 years, in spite of all the difficulties.

The Chinese people at large, the young people and students in par­ticular, regarded it as an encroachment upon the rights of the Chinese people for the Japanese imperialists to construct railways as they pleased in Manchuria by wringing concessions on the plea of the unfair treaty they had entered into with the corrupt and inefficient bureaucrats in the last days of the Qing dynasty. In opposition to the agreement on laying railways through the introduction of foreign capital, the masses of people rose up to have the agreement revoked.

Instead of heeding the reasonable demands of the people, the reac­tionary warlords tried to win them over through a grand inauguration ceremony of the Jilin-Dunhua line which had been planned for Novem­ber 1, 1928, while scheming to undertake the Dunhua-Tumen railway project by force.

A daring act was needed to frustrate the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project, an act to warn the enemy that the Korean and Chinese peoples would not tolerate his invasion of Manchuria. It would also give the popular masses a signal to resist the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

In order to organize a mass struggle against the Japanese to frus­trate the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project, we called a meeting of heads of the YCLK and AIYL organizations in the cellar of the Yaowang Shrine in Beishan Park early in October 1928.

The meeting discussed slogans, methods of struggle and a course of action and gave each of us detailed assignments. It also discussed the placards, written appeals and leaflets to be used during the demonstra­tion. In accordance with our policy that the struggle against the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project must be a joint undertaking by the Korean and Chinese peoples, we decided to write all the propaganda such as leaflets, appeals and placards in Chinese and Korean and to conduct street agitation in the two languages.

The meeting decided that such organizations as the students³ com­mittees formed in the schools in Jilin, the Ryugil Association of Korean Students and the Korean Children’s Association should be activated and that such underground organizations as the YCLK and the AIYL should refrain as far as possible from overt action.

After the meeting at Beishan we worked all night to prepare for the demonstration.

 Han Yong Ae who belonged to the propaganda squad worked very hard. She, as a member of the Ryugil Association of Korean Students, had fallen under our influence during art performances and at the gath­erings where impressions on books were swapped. Later she became a member of the Young Communist League. A pupil of Jilin Girls’ Mid­dle School, she was good-natured but reticent and usually passed unno­ticed. However, she carried out every task given her, be it difficult or irksome, for the sake of the revolution. During art performances she volunteered to play characters which others would not play, and when teaching materials for the reading circle were in short supply, she mimeographed hundreds of pages of her own accord and distributed them to the circle members.

She stayed up almost every night preparing for the demonstration. She took a mimeograph to a barn of a house and, with a few Children’s Association members, duplicated tens of thousands of appeals and leaflets. She was known as a girl orator for the fiery speeches she made in Korean and Chinese to hundreds of people in the street.

I came to work as the head of the Young Communist League of Korea even among the Chinese young people and students because I upheld the banner of the communist movement from my early days in Jilin. When we launched the communist movement, the Manchuria provincial committee of the Communist Party of China had not yet been formed and there were not many Young Communist League members in Jilin.

While engaged in the work of the YCLK I also worked among Chi­nese young people. As we were at the helm of the YCLK, a great num­ber of Chinese young people followed us. Cao Ya-fan who was the head of the Young Communist League organization at Jilin Normal School, and Chen Han-zhang who was in charge of the Young Commu­nist League organization in the Dunhua area, were Chinese who main­tained relations with us.

In the course of making preparations for the demonstration, we were informed that the railway authorities were intending to hold the inauguration ceremony of the Jilin-Dunhua railway on November 1, 1928.

We launched the demonstration a few days earlier than we had planned, with the aim of lighting the torch of opposition to the building of the Jilin-Hoeryong line at the same time as disrupting the inaugura­tion ceremony of the Jilin-Dunhua line.

At dawn on October 26, 1928, the propaganda squad scattered leaflets and put up written appeals in the streets of Jilin. Observation squads, each of which consisted of two or three members of the Child­ren’ s Association, took their designated places at daybreak.

At the appointed time the students at all the schools in Jilin held simultaneous meetings and marched into the streets after issuing appeals against the building of the Jilin-Hoeryong railway. The streets were quickly filled with thousands of students. With placards reading, “Down with Japanese imperialist aggressors!” and “Oppose the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project by Japan!” written in Korean and “Down with Japanese imperialism!” “Down with the traitors!” and “Stop the Jilin-Hoeryong line project!” written in Chinese, they marched through the streets and gathered in the square in front of the provincial assembly building situated outside the Xinkai Gate.

Hundreds of soldiers and policemen checked their advance. The students, confronted by them, shouted slogans, awaiting our instruc­tions. They had to advance at any cost. So we sent into action pickets made up of the workers and peasants living in and around the city, as well as the students, in order to protect them.

The students, with the pickets leading them, marched forward shoulder to shoulder in the face of the bayonets. In the square a mass rally took place. I appealed to the thousands of people gathered in the square for the young people and students of Korea and China to unite and fight staunchly against the Japanese imperialists’ building of the Jilin-Hoeryong line.

After the meeting the demonstrators’ column marched in high spir­its to New Street where the Japanese consulate was situated. The street was seldom frequented by the people because of the outrageous behaviour of the consular police. The demonstrators shouted anti-Japanese slogans in front of the Japanese consulate, getting worked up, and continued their demonstration through Dama, Beijing, Chongqing and Shangyi Streets as well as other streets in the city.

Hard hit by the demonstration in Jilin the Japanese railway compa­ny indefinitely postponed the inauguration ceremony of the Jilin-Dun­hua line. Japanese shopkeepers deserted their shops and fled to their consulate. The windows of the Oriental Hospital run by the South Manchuria Railway Company were smashed.

The demonstration mounted higher as the days passed. We formed several student groups and saw to it that they installed platforms in dozens of places in the city and delivered speeches against the railway construction from dawn until late at night.

The anti-Japanese struggle that had started in Jilin spread all over Manchuria. The students and citizens of Changchun, in response to our struggle, waged a fierce struggle against imperialism and the building of the six railway lines. They also raided the house of the head of the Jilin-Changchun railway bureau. In Harbin and Tianjin they conducted a brave solidarity struggle, with many people sacri­ficing themselves. Our Korean compatriots living in the Yanji area also joined the struggle. Newspapers in the homeland reported our struggle every day.

As the demonstration expanded, we pushed ahead with the cam­paign to boycott Japanese goods. The masses ransacked Japanese shops and burned the goods with Japanese trademarks in the streets. Some of them were dumped into the River Songhua.

Alarmed by the possibility of the struggle against the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project combined with the boycotting of Japanese goods •developing into a full-scale anti-Japanese struggle, the barbarous Japanese imperialists instigated the reactionary warlords to open fire on the demonstrators. We had tried to keep the reactionary warlords in check. But as they were suppressing us, hand in glove with the Japanese imperialists, we could no longer confine ourselves to this. The demon­stration developed onto a wider scale coinciding with a funeral ceremo­ny for the victims under the slogan, “Down with the reactionary war­lords aligned with the Japanese imperialists!” That day the demonstra­tion reached its height with the participation of many more citizens.

The struggle continued for about 40 days.

In order to improve the situation, the Japanese imperialists sent for Zhang Zuo-xiang who was in Fengtian; but the appeasement measures the Jilin military control station adopted failed to check the surging spirit of the masses. This struggle was a heavy blow to the Japanese imperialists. They were particularly surprised at the united resistance of the Korean and Chinese peoples to Japan’s aggression in Manchuria.

The nationalists and those who, frightened by imperialist Japan’s invasion, had been thinking of turning tail, received a shock from our struggle. Up until then the nationalists had slighted the young people and students. Seeing that we, in our teens and twenties, had carried out something they had not dared to attempt, they changed their attitude towards us. From that time on they recognized that a fresh force from the new generation that was totally different from their own generation had appeared in the arena of the national liberation movement, and they ceased to slight us.

Through our struggle to oppose the Jilin-Hoeryong railway project we once again became keenly aware that the strength of the masses was inexhaustible, and we formed a firmer conviction that the masses, if properly organized, could display formidable strength that no force of arms could ever crush.

My faith in the strength of the masses became more unshakable and our method of leadership of the masses became more seasoned. In the practical struggle not only was I trained but also the organizations developed.

 

 

 

 

6. An Chang Ho Delivers a Political Lecture

 

 

In February 1927, the Korean immigrant society in Jilin was excit­ed by the prospect of welcoming someone. An Chang Ho, a veteran of the independence movement and an important member of the Shanghai Provisional Government, had arrived in Jilin via Beijing.

The Korean immigrants in Jilin gave him a red-carpet reception as if he were a Head of State. We, too, welcomed him warmly, singing Farewell to the Motherland. This was a song An Chang Ho had written when he was going into exile. It begins with the line Off I go, leaving you behind and ends with the line Don’t feel so sad for my leaving, my dear peninsula. In the days after the annexation of Korea by Japan the young people and students loved to sing this song; it was once known as the Song of Exiles because it was sung by so many exiles.

The Korean people respected and worshipped An Chang Ho as much as they loved his song Farewell to the Motherland. In speaking of his character and ability, many people used to say that he was fit to be the president of the country. This was no exaggeration. Even the leaders of the Independence Army organizations who looked down upon the provisional government respected him, calling him the “veteran fighter of the independence movement.”

It is well known that Ito Hirobumi, recognizing An Chang Ho’s value and trying to bring him under his control, had once proposed that he would establish a Tosan (An Chang Ho’s pen name) government if he supported Japan’s policies.

 Kangso, South Phyongan Province, is now celebrated as the birth­place of Chollima, the Taean work system and the Chongsanri spirit and method, but in the years of Japanese rule it was renowned as the home town of such independence fighters as An Chang Ho. As he came from Kangso, most of the people from west Korea would proudly say that he was one of them.

Saying that Korea had been conquered by the Japanese imperialists because of her low national quality, he formed such independence movement organizations as the Kongnip Association, the Sinmin Soci­ety, the Youth and Students’ Association, the Great Korean Citizens’ Assembly and the Hungsa Association, and he founded such education­al and cultural establishments as Jomjin School, Taesong School and Thaeguk Sogwan School. He also launched the newspaper Tongnip Sin-mun, and thus rendered a great contribution to the enlightening of the nation.

Among the veterans who dedicated themselves to the independence movement was the famous educator, Ri Sung Hun (alias Namgang). His name would remind everyone of Osan School. This was a famous pri­vate school he had founded and financed from his own purse.

Ri was granted an audience by Emperor Ryunghui²⁰ for his distin­guished service in the education of the younger generation. For the pre­vious 400 years no one from among the common people of west Korea had ever had an audience of the Emperor. So one can easily imagine the reputation he won from the unprecedented audience, Ri Sung Hun, a man of such high renown and reputation, had once been a brassware peddler intent on making money and had made a for­tune of more than 500,000 won in the form of real estate. He, a man of fortune, had happened to hear in Pyongyang a public lecture delivered by An Chang Ho in which he said that the cultivation of strength through education was the basis of national independence. Moved by this lecture, he had cut off his topknot, returned to his home town and started an education movement. An Chang Ho’s oratory overflowing with patriotic feelings had transformed the merchant’s outlook on life.

This example shows how great an influence the leader of the nationalist movement had on the public.

Tong-A Ilbo, Joson Ilbo and other newspapers in the homeland reported his arrival in Jilin in their headlines.

Students called on him at the Sanfeng Hotel and asked him to lec­ture the Korean students in Jilin. Many independence fighters also went to him and asked him to give a lecture. He accepted the invitation with pleasure.

The independence fighters used several channels to circulate news of the lecture, when and where it would be given and by whom. They put up large advertisements in many of the city’s streets including Xiangfu, Chelou, Tongchuan, Henan, Beida and Niumaxiang Streets.

The Korean residents in Jilin became extremely excited and buoy­ant because of the advertisements; they even greeted one another by saying, “Have you heard that Mr. Tosan has arrived?”

The night before his lecture I spent my time with 0 Tong Jin, talk­ing about An Chang Ho. 0 Tong Jin (alias Songam), having met in a foreign land after 17 years his former teacher from his days at Taesong School, was overcome by extremely warm emotions. He recollected how An Chang Ho had examined him orally when he was entering the teachers’ training course at the school and how he had come to love him after his enrollment there. He even sang the Song of the Youth and Stu­dents written by his old teacher and recalled with feelings of high respect how much energy he had directed to cultivating the younger people’s spirit of independence. In particular, he gave me a vivid description of his art of public speaking.

In his lifetime my father used to speak highly of An Chang Ho’s oratory. From what I had heard from my father in Mangyongdae I had learnt that An Chang Ho started his independence activities through his oratory and that his reputation was inseparable from his art of public speaking. I often wondered if it was true that when he spoke even the womenfolk of noble families were moved by his oratory and his theory of an ideal society and donated their rings and ornamental hairpins to the patriotic cause. If it was true, then what was the secret of his oratory that touched the heartstrings of the people? How good it would be if such a man of high reputation were to live in Jilin, instead of in Ameri­ca or in Shanghai? “If I had the right to elect the president of my country after its inde­pendence, I would choose An Chang Ho,” O Tong Jin said.

His words stimulated my interest in the political lecture.

After the memorial service for Martyr Ra Sok Ju²¹ in the Dadong Factory outside the Zhaoyang Gate, An Chang Ho delivered a lecture.

The lecture was attended by representatives of the three “bu” orga­nizations who had come for the memorial service and almost all the independence fighters, public figures, and students and young people from the city. The hall was filled to capacity, and many of the people in the audience had to stand around the sides.

The orator spoke about “The Future of the Korean National Move­ment.” As we had heard, he was no common orator. His eloquence pro­voked admiration from the audience from the outset. As he emphasized how the Korean nation could find a way out, filling the lecture with his profound knowledge of world history, the audience gave him several ovations. But the message of his lecture was questionable.

An Chang Ho lectured on the theory of perfecting the national character and the theory of an ideal society. His first theory consisted of the renovation of individual characters and the development of the national economy.

By the renovation of individual characters he meant that, since our backward country had become a colony of the Japanese because of the low level of the people’s characters and of their self-training, the people should improve their characters so as to lead an honest life, work hon­estly and achieve social harmony. His opinion was somewhat similar to that of Tolstoy in his Theory of Self-perfection and to Mahatma Gandhi’s view that man could not win his freedom without transforming and training himself.

In those days the symptoms of the worldwide economic crisis were evident in every aspect of life, causing the people to tremble with apprehension and fear. Fascistized imperialism was preventing the inde­pendence of mankind at the point of the bayonet and with the rope. The petty-bourgeois intellectuals trembled at the power of the iron-clad imperialists. In this situation they found spiritual refuge in the doctrine of non-resistance. This doctrine was the last refuge of those who were weak in their revolutionary will and were scared by the imperialist offensive. Those who had neither power nor will to combat the counter-revolution could only appeal for non-resistance.

The doctrine of non-resistance found expression in reformism in our country. After the March First Popular Uprising some of the leaders of the nationalist movement renounced the revolutionary pol­icy of active resistance to destroy the Japanese imperialist colonial rule, regarded the development of education and national industry as the highest aim of the nationalist movement and conducted a brisk movement for the cultivation of national strength in order to improve the spiritual qualities of our people and their standard of living. The modern intellectuals in the leadership of the nationalist movement tried to save the nation from economic collapse by patronizing domestic products and developing national enterprises. They launched a nationwide campaign to use home-made goods under the slogan, “Let us live on our own!” Their purpose was to pave the way to economic self-sufficiency.

Jo Man Sik, a leader of this campaign, dressed for his whole life in a Korean coat and trousers made of cotton and in a Korean overcoat as a symbol of his patronage of Korean products. His name cards were made of home-made paper and his shoes were a Korean make.

Ri Kwang Su’s Theory of National Transformation had a consid­erable effect on spurring the spread of national “reformism.” If one reads this article, one can identify the true nature and danger of “reformism.”

What I hated most in that article was that the author regarded the Korean nation as inferior. I thought that our country was backward, but I never believed that our nation was inferior. Koreans form a civilized and resourceful nation that was the first to build armoured ships and produce metallic type in the world; it can take pride in having made a great contribution to the development of Oriental culture. Our forefa­thers rendered no small contribution to the development of Japanese culture. Our nation’s gallant spirit of self-reliant defence that did not tolerate any foreign invasion was demonstrated even in ancient times, and our people’s impeccable morality has won the admiration of the world. Certainly, there were some shortcomings in the customs and conventions of our people; but they were minor and incidental, not important. Such incidental elements cannot be regarded as national traits.

In his article Ri Kwang Su attributed the fall of Korea to what he called the “inferiority of the nation,” but it was her corrupt and incom­petent rulers who were really responsible for the nation’s ruin.

His comments about the “inferiority” of our nation were in tune with what the Japanese imperialists were saying. The Japanese, when­ever they had a chance, would slander our nation, calling it “an inferior nation.” They claimed that, therefore, Japan should “protect,” “guide” and “control” the Korean nation.

Ri Kwang Su’s article was, in fact, an open letter of conversion addressed to the Japanese imperialists occupying Korea. In return for this letter he was allowed to write love stories with impunity under the nose of the Japanese government-general in spite of his past involve­ment in the independence movement. In his early years as a novelist he had been popular among his readers because he had written progressive works that catered to their tastes. He had written so many novels of a new style that he was called a pioneer of modern stories in our country. But his Theory of National Transformation damaged his reputation. The “reformist” elements that had been lurking and occasionally revealed in his novels loomed large in that article.

Worse still, the modern intellectuals who diverted the nationalist movement to the reformist trend even attempted to establish a private university sponsored by Koreans with funds raised through the cam­paign to pay the national debt. But .the government-general did not per­mit the founding of such a university as it would possibly have been a hotbed of independence fighters.