뜬 구름도 방황하는 시베리아 벌
칼을
짚고 홀로 서서,
흰 뫼 저편을
바라보니
사랑하는 00화는
희미하고
00에
목마른 사람이,
이천만 아처롭다
뜻을 열 곳이 없으므로
흑룡수에 눈물뿌려,
다시 맹세하노라
김경천(金擎天)
Even the clouds in the sky roam lost over the plains of Siberia
I gaze yonder the snow-covered hills leaning on my sword
My beloved flowers have faded away and my 20 million countrymen cry for help
My tears of helplessness flood the Siberian river
Renewing my vow to fight on.
Kim Gyong Chun
Gen. Kim Gyong Chun, a Kim-hae clan member and a distant relative of mine, was typical of the men who led the armed struggles to free Korea from Japan in the early 1900s. He graduated from the Japanese Military Academy. He came from a wealthy family. He was a professional military man with no preference for political ideology except for his love for Korea. He believed that the Korean people could become independent through military means. These military professionals wanted to fight the Japanese, man to man, using the same military arts they were taught by the Japanese.
After years of hardship and sacrifices, Kim was forced to swallow the bitter pill of defeat and the indignation of being deceived by his would be allies in China and the Soviet Union. He was arrested by the host country as a foreign spy and purged. Virtually all leaders of the Korean independence armies, Yi Dong Whi, Hong Bom Do, Kim Jwa Jin and many others, fell victim to evils of their so-called allies.
Gen. Kim Gyong Chun's and my great, great grandpa were said to be army buddies. The Kim-hae clan has produced many famous military leaders in Korea, including Gen. Kim Yu Sin, the hero of Silla's war of unification. Kim's birth name was Kim Kwang Suh, but he used “Kim Gyong Chun” and several other nom de guerre in China and Russia. He was born on June 5, 1888 in Sinchun, Bukchung-gun, Hamgyong Province, not far from where my great, great grandpa lived. His father, Kim Jung Wu, was a military officer in Yi Dynasty Army and his mother was from a yanban family.
In May 1895, the Yi government sent a group of 100 military officers, including Kim's father, to Japan to study modern warfare. The senior Kim majored in military engineering and returned to Korea in 1900. By 1904, he was a colonel in charge of the Yi Army armory. Kim Gyong Chun adored Napoleon and wanted to become a military man himself. In 1909, Kim Gyong Chun entered the Japanese Military Academy and graduated with the 23rd class in 1911.
Japan annexed Korea in 1909 soon after Kim Gyong Chun's departure to Japan and the Korean cadets at the Japanese Military Academy saw their motherland disappear right under their feet, finding themselves caught between a hard place and a rock. Some wanted to quit the academy and return home. Some wanted to commit suicide in front of the Emperor's Castle. But the cool heads led by Ji Chung Chun (his birth name was Ji Dae Hyong, later to command Kim Gu’s army in the 1940s) persuaded the Korean cadets to complete the training and use their martial skills to help regain Korean independence. The Korean cadets spilt into two factions: a pro-Japanese faction led by Hong Sa Ik and Kim Suk Won, and an anti-Japanese faction led by Ji Chung Chun and Kim Gyong Chun. Later the latter group split into left, right and centrist/nationalist factions. These factions fought among themselves in China and post-liberation Korea. Hong Sa Ik became the top-ranking Korean in the Japanese Army. On April 18, 1948, Lt. Gen. Hong was convicted of war crimes and hanged by the US. Hong was in charge of the Allied POW camps in the Pacific. He was the only Korean hanged for war crimes committed during WWII.
Upon graduation, Lt. Kim Gyong Chun was assigned to the First Infantry Division of the Japanese Army stationed in Japan. In October 1916, he returned home on a military leave and busied himself getting ready for his independence war. He sold his landholdings and raised the needed funds. In 1919, he managed to escape to China with Ji Suk Gyu, aka Ji Chung Chun and Li Chung Chun. Since he was an active officer in the Japanese army, getting caught would have meant certain death for desertion. The Japanese military put a price tag of 50,000 yen on his capture, dead or alive.
Figure 1. Lt.
Kim Kwang Suh, aka Kim Gyong Chun, of the Japanese Army, circa 1919 in Tokyo,
Japan. Courtesy:
ROK government archives.
He joined the faculty of the Sinhung Military Academy, which was set up to train Korean military officers in China. There were three Japanese-trained officers on the faculty: Sin Pal Gyun, Kim Kwang Suh and Ji Suk Gyu, and they made a blood oath to fight together to the end: they became the three-chun’s – Sin Dong Chun, Kim Gyong Chun and Ji Chung Chun, respectively. Sin Pal Gyun was killed in action fighting the Japanese in 1924 and Ji Suk Gyu became Kim Gu's military chief and returned to South Korea in 1945 as a national hero.
In 1920, Kim went to Siberia to procure arms for his men. Siberia was in chaos in those years. The Red Army was fighting a host of hostile armies - the White Russians, foreign mercenaries, the armies from Japan, the US, France and Great Britain. In the middle of all these, there were dozens of Korean independence armies and Chinese mounted bandits, ma-jok, operating in Siberia. By 1920, the Red Army took control of most of Siberia and all foreign troops, except the Japanese and the Koreans, were gone. It was natural for the Koreans to side with the Red Army and mount joint campaigns against the Japanese troops in Siberia. In fact, many of the Korean fighters embraced Marxism and the Comintern as the vehicle for achieving independence.
In March 1920, a combined army of the Koreans and the Bolsheviks attacked the Japanese troops and their White Russian allies in Yi-hang. The enemy troops numbered about 2,000 men. There were about 700 Koreans in the fight. The town was taken and the Japanese and their allies were massacred. The enraged Japanese began scorched-earth massacres of the Koreans in Siberia. They destroyed whole villages, killing women and children. Their aim was to destroy the support base of the Korean armies. Such barbaric acts by the Japanese further intensified anti-Japan sentiments and helped fill the ranks of the Korean armies.
Gen. Kim Gyong Chun saw the crying needs for military leadership and decided to plunge right into the anti-Japanese war in Siberia. He realized that he could not win any battle against the well-armed and numerically superior Japanese army and opted to wage guerrilla war. The Japanese had their own guerrillas: they employed Chinese bandits and the defeated White Russians to fight the Korean partisans. Gen. Kim Gyong Chun recruited, trained and led self-defense units in many of the Korean villages in Siberia. The Chinese bandits were particularly savage: they killed and raped the Korean peasants in the most savage way imaginable and Gen. Kim went after the Chinese with vengeance. He led his troops by galloping in front of them on a white horse, he was a cavalry officer in the Japanese Army.
The Chinese bandits operated out of a fort in Siberia built by the Japanese. Gen. Kim mounted a surprise attack on the fort and killed about 300 of the bandits. Only 60 of them got away. This was the last of the Chinese banditry in Siberia. Gen. Kim's army numbered only 102 full time, helped by 945 part-time at the time. Gen. Kim's little army killed more than 700 Chinese bandits from 1920 to 1921.
After exterminating the Chinese bandits. Gen. Kim went after other bandits - the remnants of the White Russians that preyed on unarmed Korean peasants. His partisans numbered about 300 regulars at this time. The Koreans received military supplies from the Red Army. In January 1922, Gen. Kim's army of about 200 mounted troops and a Red Army detachment attacked a large White Russian force in Yiman. The enemy had heavy artillery and the Red Army unit was routed after its commander defected to the other side. Gen. Kim swiftly reorganized the defeated Red soldiers and led a counter-attack. They took the town and wiped out the White Russian defenders.
russia,jpg: Key operating bases of Korean nationalists in Siberia. The 'Free City' is near Irkutsk. Stalin forcibly moved the Koreans, including Gen. Kim Gyong Chun and Gen. Hong Bom Do, to Kazakhstan in 1937.
In March 1922, Gen. Kim participated in a major campaign to eradicate the White Russian forces based at Usurisk. The Red Army assigned him the task of cutting off the escape route, which involved passing through a Japanese defense line. Gen. Kim placed dark clothe over his white horse and covered its hooves so as to avoid detection by the Japanese. His army had to cross a river but the only ferry was on the wrong side of the river. A 19-year old soldier volunteered to swim across the swollen river and fetch the ferry. Miraculously, he made it and Kim's army crossed the river safely undetected by the enemy.
In July 1922, in recognition of Gen. Kim's military achievements, the Red Army appointed him the commander of all partisans in the region, thus Gen. Kim came to command both Korean and Russian partisans. He once again resumed military training of young Koreans. He traded in opium in order to generate funds for his army and the Red Army officers, hired to instruct the Korean cadets. In September 1922, the 44-year old Kim led a combined army of three Red Army units and Korean troops on a expedition to wipe out a White Russian base near Tumen River. Gen. Kim led a cavalry charge and scattered the enemy, but his horse was shot dead and fell on him. His left leg was broken and his fighting days were over.
In late 1922, the Japanese troops withdrew from Siberia. The Soviets declared victory and ordered the Korean armies to disband and all Russian partisans return home. The Red Army turned against its former ally and the Koreans were incensed at this treachery of the Russians. There was little for them to do. Many of the Koreans obeyed and became Soviet citizens while others escaped to Manchuria to carry on their fight.
Gen. Kim lost his army and taught military science and the Japanese language at Korean Teachers College at Vladivostok. He became a Soviet citizen and served in the Red Army as Lt. Colonel. On September 29, 1937, a Soviet military court sentenced him three years in prisons on a trumped-up charge of espionage. He was accused of being a Japanese spy! In late 1937, Stalin moved all Koreans in Siberia to Kazakhstan. After serving his prison term, Gen. Kim was reunited with his family in Kazakhstan and took a job growing vegetables at a collective farm. A few months later, he was labeled the people's enemy and arrested by the Soviet Koreans. He was sentenced to 8 years of hard labor.
When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Gen. Kim was moved to a Gulag in Siberia and died of heart attack on January 2, 1942. On February 16, 1959, a Soviet military court exonerated Gen. Kim of all charges against him and restored his honor and citizenship posthumously. For many years, South Korea refused to honor Gen. Kim because he was a communist. It was illegal to mention his name and his anti-Japanese achievements were either ignored or ascribed to a wrong personage. However, with the recent thawing of the Cold War, South Korea now honors Gen. Kim as an independence war hero.
Gen. Kim and many others like him were victims of foreign powers. Stalin purged them. Japanese and their lackeys in China and Korea hunted them down and killed them by the thousands, the US military and pro-US Koreans killed nearly 500,000 nationalists in South Korea. Pro-Soviet Koreans killed nationalists in North Korea – no one knows how many. And the Korean War devoured over 2 million Koreans.
Ravages of international power struggles started early for the Koreans and the Korea has suffered the most by the Cold War, which still goes on in Korea.
Much of the information on Kim Gyong Chun was taken from the following sources:
1) http://www.independence.or.kr/media_data/thesis/1998/199809.html Research on Kim Gyong Chun, A Korean Nationalist in Russia" by Prof. Park Whan, Suwon University.
2) http://chaos.suwon.ac.kr/~hwpark/rusia/rusiapa/kckim01.htm A revised version of the above document.
3) http://http://chaos.suwon.ac.kr/~hwpark/rusia/rusiapa/kckim02.htm Kim Gyong Chun Family Interviews by Prof. Park Whan
4) http://www.dalgu.net/55815/w-29.htm The West Route Army
5) http://khmindong.or.kr/sinheung/found.htm Sinhung Military Academy
6) http://mnum.mokpo.ac.kr/cspark/³í¹®/Soando.htm Anti-Japanese Movement in So-ahn Region, Prof. Park Chan Sung, Mokpo University
7) http://www.hanmiinfo.co.kr/official4.htm Korean Nationalism - history
8) http://mahan.wonkwang.ac.kr/jucheon/column4-1.htm Rhee Syngman in America
9) http://members.tripod.lycos.co.kr/icanzeus/main.htm Korean Nationalist Leaders
For information on moo-goong-hwa, see:
1) http://vision.taegu-e.ac.kr/~kskim/natlflower.html Korean National Flower
2) http://vision.taegu-e.ac.kr/~kskim/mugung90.html Moo-goong-hwa and Korean Nationalism
For information on Gen. Kim Jwa Jin, see http://soback.kornet.nm.kr/~sk9505/inmool/cho02.html
For information on Hong Sa Ik, see http://my.dreamwiz.com/pcw0905/hisdata/hise/his30.html