A few short weeks ago, on May 29, 2014, China announced the dedication of a new memorial to the Korean Freedom Fighters in the City of Xian. Xian, the beautiful ancient Chinese capital of Changan, was the seat of the Korean Freedom Fighters in China. This announcement probably went unnoticed everywhere in the world except in Asia. Those countries that suffered under Japanese occupation during World War Two applauded this latest Chinese attempt at sticking a barb in the side of Japanese government that still refuses to apologize for the atrocities it committed during the war.
The monument, a huge structure, is set off by a large portrait of Ahn Jung Gun, the Korean patriot who assassinated the Japanese Governor General of Korea in Harbin, Manchuria in 1909. Abe's government protested, but like everything else on this issue (Japanese relations with its former Asian adversaries), it went unnoticed in most of the world's press. None of the U.S. news networks covered the story. Considering that only six months earlier China had dedicated a train station platform in Harbin to Ah Jung Gun, this latest dedication of a very large and prominent memorial was really more than just a burr in the side of Japanese government.
As soon as Japan had carried out the assassination of Empress Myongson in 1895, it set about the process of the take over of Korea. In 1898, Japan had officially declared that Korea was its "protectorate." Shortly after its victory over Russia in 1905 in the Russo-Japanese War, and the assassination of Governor General Ito by Ahn Jung Gun in 1909, Japan formally annexed Korea in 1910. Koreans began to protest Japan's occupation of its country and many began to flee the country to Manchuria. Ahn Jung Gun was one of the many that left the country. He went to Vladivostok, only to come to Harbin two years later to kill Ito. The Korean liberation movement started even before the official annexation. Many Koreans sought help from Russia and China. The Chinese were really in no position to help, they had their own problems with the very new and shaky Nationalist government just taking power. Russia too had its problems, only a few years away from its Bolshevik Revolution. So the Korean Freedom Fighters were sort of on their own, getting whatever help they could from wherever they could. But it wasn't until the March 1, 1919 uprising, the "Sahm Wohl Il Il" and its bloody aftermath that really gave the Korean War of Liberation a big push. More young men poured into Manchuria and sought to join the Freedom Fighters.
The Korean Freedom Fighters were really broken up into three elements. There were those that sought help from the Chinese and ended up in China, receiving some training and arms. There were also those that sought help from the Russians and were trained and armed by the Bolsheviks, especially after the revolution, during the Russian civil war. They used the Koreans to fight for their cause, since many of them were communists. Then there was the third element that was neither supported by the Chinese or Russians. They were the true nationalists and did not want to side with the communists nor the Chinese. They received their support, whatever they could get, from Korean patriots, both from Koreans living abroad and from Korea itself. It was, somewhat of a mixed group. The Russian supplied and trained "partisans" or guerrillas were for all practical purposes, Russian guerrillas. Those that were trained and supplied by the Chinese were very much like the Chinese Nationalist troops, even wearing Chinese uniforms. The third group was simply a guerrilla force dressed in a mixture of uniforms and armed with whatever they could get.
Just about all of the fighting and other anti-Japanese activities took place in southern Manchuria. The actions were very small, a minor fire fight here and there. But being a guerrilla war, and fought on a small scale, it definitely gave the Korean guerrillas the advantage. Although not many Japanese were killed, still more Japanese soldiers were killed than Korean guerrillas.
The Korean Freedom Fighters were a real problem to the Japanese Kwantung Army which was station around Mukden. Japan at the time had all sorts of political problems at home. When Russian Revolution was over, although the civil war went on until 1922, the Bolsheviks gave full support to the Korean guerrillas fighting the Japanese. The Chinese too, tried to give as much support as they could muster. Chang Tso Lin, the warlord in Manchuria mysteriously refused to send his troops against Korean guerrillas, although he willingly fought the bandits, "hoonhoozy." The Japanese were very annoyed with Chang Tso Lin and began plotting to kill him, which they eventually did in 1928.
In the meantime, the world wide depression hit Japan earlier than most countries. The militarists used this opportunity to gain control of the government, as much as they could. So, without the consent of Tokyo government, some of the officers of the Kwantung Army carried out the classic Japanese gekokujo, which literally means "to go against." It is a Japanese cultural thing, the gekokujo, which appears throughout Japanese history, the most famous being "The Incident of the 47 Ronin" in the early 18th Century. All these gekokujos are called "incidents" or jiken. So, the dissatisfied officers of the Kwantung Army plotted and carried out a gekokujo in 1931, which came to be known as "The Manchurian Incident."
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