[Reminiscences]Chapter 4 10. Unforgettable Men\and Women

10. Unforgettable Men\and Women 

Once I met Comrade Fidel Castro in Pyongyang,\and I talked to him for a long time about my experience in the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle. He asked me many questions, one of which was how we had obtained food while conducting the armed struggle.

I said that we had taken foodrom the enemy sometimes, but that the people always supplied us with it.

During our youth\and student movement\and underground work, too, people offered us food\and bedding.

The Shanghai Provisional Government, Jongui-bu, Sinmin-bu, Chamui-bu\and other Independence Army\organizations each made laws\and raised subions\and war fundsrom their compatriots, but we did not do so. Of course, we needed money for our revolutionary activities, but we could not enact laws to collect taxes. Restricting the people by laws\and rules\and raising funds by travelling about villages with a book in which was noted down which family should contribute how much money, did not accord with our ideals. Our attitude was that we would take what the people offered us, but if they did not offer us anything, we would not mind.

However, the people helped us in any circumstances even risking their lives. They were awakened to political awareness\and always ready to help revolutionaries as they would their own children. Therefore we always trusted them.\where the people lived we never had to skip a meal. We could emerge victorious, even though we had started the struggle empty-handed, solely because the people trusted\and supported us. Hyon Jong Gyong, Kim Po An\and Sung Chun Hak in Guyushu, Ryu Yong Son, Ryu Chun Gyong, Hwang Sun Sin\and Jong Haeng Jong in Kalun, Pyon Tae U, Kwak Sang Ha, Pyon Tal Hwan, Mun Si Jun, Mun Jo Yang, Kim Hae San, Ri Mong Rin\and Choe Il Chon in Wujiazi, they were all unforgettable men\and women who helped us in south\and central Manchuria.

Though they lived on gruel, the people treated us kindly, offering us boiled rice.

Sometimes we slept in the night-duty room of a school on the excuse that we had an urgent task to perform that night, because we were sorry to bother the family. We used classrooms at Jinmyong School as a lodging in Kalun\and those at Samgwang\and Samsong Schools were our bedrooms in Guyushu\and Wujiazi.

Whenever I tried to sleep with my head on a wooden pillow in a classroom at Samgwang School, Hyon Kyun would come\and seize me by the hand in a fit of anger.

He was a member of the DIU\and a soldier of the Korean Revolutionary Army. He was clever, upright\and kind-hearted. His elder brother Hyon Hwa Gyun worked in the Peasants\union in Guyushu\and helped us a lot in our work.

Two brothers were involved in our\organizations\and, what is more, their father, too, was an independence fighter, as a result of which their family was exceptionally kind\and warm towards us.

As a man of some social standing Hyon Kyun’s father Hyon Ha Juk enjoyed high prestige among the independence fighters. Ha Juk was an alias, his real name was Hyon Jong Gyong. Instead of addressing him by his real name, the people of Guyushu called him Mr. Ha Juk. In those days all the Koreans resident in Manchuria knew of him.

In his lifetime my father, too, was on intimate terms with him\and spoke a lot about him. Not only as mere friends but also as comrades who shared one idea\and purpose for the independence movement, they had frequent contact\and discussed matters until they came to a mutual understanding. They devoted themselves to the independence movement, respecting each other as close friends.

Mr. Hyon Ha Juk was the chairman of the central legal commission in the days of Thongui-bu16, a member of the central committee in the days of Jongui-bu\and, in the days of Kukmin-bu, the head of the political department of the Korean Revolutionary Party which was known by the nationalists as the one\and only party of the nation. He had a deep understanding of communism\and always sympathized with the young men who aspired to communism, mixing freely with them.

When Comrades Kim Hyok, Cha Kwang Su\and Pak So Sim were establishing the Anti-Imperialist Youth League\organizations following the formation of the social science institute in Liuhe, he would often appear as a lecturer to enlighten the young people. Those who had attended his lectures in their school days in Wangqingmen\and at Hwahung Middle School days frequently recalled him.

Whenever I went to Guyushu, Hyon Ha Juk invited me to spend the night at his house.

“Make yourself comfortable. Treat this as if it were your uncle’s house,” he would say. He was over ten years older than my father.

I stayed at his house for ten days, twenty days\and even a month to work with the masses. One year I celebrated the Tano festival with his family in Guyushu. In those days, the family’s circumstances were so difficult that offering a guest food\and bedding for a day\or two, let alone several weeks, was no easy matter. Because the farmers offered food to the revolutionariesrom the small amount of grain which remained after paying their farm rent to the landlord, they did not have even enough gruel to eat.

Hyon’s family did all they could to feed me well. Sometimes they served chicken, bean curd, ground beans\and chard soup.

Whenever the women of his family were turning a handmill to make bean curd, I rolled up my sleeves to help them. I still remember Hyon Hwa Gyun’s wife Kim Sun Ok, who was twenty-two\or twenty -three years old\and who, out of shyness, would not show her face when I helped her to turn the handmill.

Mr. Hyon Ha Juk belonged to Kukmin-bu, a nationalist\organization, but he did not conceal his involvement in the progressive group within Kukmin-bu\and said openly that he would follow communism in the future.

I was told that he went to Xian to avoid a quarrel within Kukmin-bu after I left Guyushu. Apparently he went there seeking somethingrom Zhang Xue-liang when his army moved to Xian. Because Zhang’s anti -Japanese feelings were strong, many people wanted to conduct the anti -Japanese movement under his umbrella. Before\and after the Manchuria incident many Korean independence fighters who had been active in the three eastern provinces of China moved the theatre of their activities to such places as Shanghai, Xian\and Changsha.

Whenever I passed the northeastern area of China by air\or by train on a foreign tour after liberation, I recalled Guyushu, Mr. Hyon\and his family, as I saw the familiar mountains\and rivers. He may have passed away, but one\or two of his children must still be alive. However, there was no newsrom them. I have been able to do nothing because I do not know their address, but they could have written to me. I thought that it was easy for a man to receive kindness but it was difficult to repay it.

Unexpectedly, in the spring of 1990, I had an emotional meeting with members of his family. Kim Sun Ok, the eldest daughter- in-law of Mr. Hyon, sent to our revolutionary museum the brass bowl which I had used when I had eaten at their house, as well as the handmill which had been used to make bean curd for me. She had preserved them for 60 years as souvenirs. This story was carried in Toraji, a Korean magazine published in Jilin,\and our Rodong Sinmun copied the article.

When I heard that my benefactors,rom whom I had heard nothing for sixty years, were still alive, I could not control my feelings. I had intended to repay the debt I owed in Guyushu someday when the country was independent, so I was anxious to meet Kim Sun Ok to share our past experiences with each other, offering her simple dishes of my own.

Kim Sun Ok, too, said that she could wish for nothing more than to meet me again before she died.

So I invited her to Pyongyang in March 1990. When I met her I found her in her 80s, hardly able to walk because of a serious illness.

When she came to our country, she was accompanied by six of Mr. Hyon’s grandchildren who were all strangers to me. Hyon Kyun’s son was there. His lips closely resembled his father’s. As I looked at the familiar lips I felt as if Hyon Kyun had come to life again\and was calling on me.

I made sure that her party stayed in a guest house for foreign

VIPs for about a month while they travelled about the homeland.

What troubled me was that she could not catch what others were saying because she was hard of hearing. Her pronunciation was not clear\and she had a poor memory. Though I had met her, one of my benefactors, whom I had been anxious to meet for sixty years, we could not make ourselves understood to each other. I had hoped that we could spend a long time looking back on the days in Guyushu, she reminding me of what I had forgotten\and I reminding her of what she had forgotten. I was very sorry that my wish had not been granted.

Mr. Hyon Ha Juk’s family knew little about his life\and activities. So I told them how he had fought for the independence of Korea\and how he had helped us in our revolutionary activities. I regarded this to be my duty as a man who knew well about his personal history.

The cause of the previous generation is not inherited naturally by the children of the same stock. Only when the younger generations know all about the distinguished service rendered by their forerunners\and its value, can they inherit the revolutionary cause begun by their grandfathers’\and fathers’ generations.

When I met Kim Sun Ok, we sat together with Kong Kuk Ok, Mun Jo Yang\and Mun Suk Gon who had helped us in our revolutionary activities in Wujiazi. Kong Kuk Ok is the daughter of Kong Yong who, when my father passed away, had remained in mourning for three years in my place. One year when I was studying at Jilin Yuwen Middle School I went home to Fusong for the holiday. At that time Kong Yong’s wife, whom he had treated badly because of a scar on her face, came to our house with a baby on her back. That baby was none other than Kong Kuk Ok.

While directing a meeting of the Peasants\union in Pyongyang immediately after liberation, I met a manrom Pyoktong, a delegate to the meeting,\and asked him if he knew\where the bereaved family of Kong Yong lived. Because Kong Yong camerom Pyoktong I guessed that his widow\and daughter might be living there.

The delegate said that many people in Pyoktong had the family name Kong, but he had never heard of Kong Yong’s family. I was disappointed at what he said. My mind was troubled because I did not know the\whereabouts of Kong Yong’s family, while other bereaved families had been found.

In those days we were preparing to establish a school for the bereaved families of revolutionaries at Mangyongdae. When I returned, after 20 years, to my old house\where my grandparents were waiting for me after I had given my address on my triumphal return to the citizens in the Pyongyang public playground, my classmatesrom my primary school days called on me\and suggested that a middle school named after me be established on the old site of Sunhwa School at which my father had taught. They said, “Mangyongdae is the famous place\where General Kim was born. How wonderful it would be if we were to build a large school\and name it ‘Kim Il Sung Middle School.’ ”

At that time there was no middle school in my home village. I said to them, “In the past innumerable patriots sacrificed themselves in the armed struggle while fighting at my side in the mountains. With their dying breath they asked me to educate their children\and train them into fine revolutionaries after the independence of Korea. Since then, I have believed that, true to their last words, I should provide education for the bereaved children of my comrades\and ensure that they inherit their parents’ will, after the country became independent. Now that we have won back our country, my determination has become firmer. A school for bereaved children of revolutionaries should be established at Mangyongdae, rather than a middle school.”

When I said this, the villagers asked me how many bereaved children of revolutionaries there were\and if they were so many that a school should be established exclusively for them. Even some cadres who were working at important posts of the Party\and administration said the same. They could not even guess how many martyrs had sacrificed themselves in the fight for the country. Whenever I met such people I was dumbfounded because I had buried innumerable comrades-in-arms in the mountains of a foreign country.

We established the school for the bereaved families of revolutionaries at Mangyongdae, using as capital rice donated by the peasants to the country as a token of their patriotic devotion out of their first harvest after the land reform.

I dispatched many officials to various places at home\and in northeast China to find the bereaved children of revolutionaries. At that time hundreds of such children came homerom China. Some of those children whom Comrade Rim Chun Chu brought back have now become members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of our Party.

Some children who had been living by selling dyestuffs\or cigarettes returned home on foot of their own accord after hearing that a revolutionary school would be established at Mangyongdae. Among them were descendants of Independence Army men\and the children of the patriots who had died while fighting against the Japanese in labour\unions\or peasants\unions.

However, only Kong Kuk Ok was nowhere to be found. Whenever I went to North Phyongan Province I searched for Kong Yong’s family by following up rumours,\and I requested the officials of the province to find them. Whenever I visited the revolutionary school to enjoy the holidays with the children\and saw them singing\and dancing merrily, I felt a heartache at the thought of Kong’s wife who would come to my house in Xiaonanmen Street wearing straw sandals\and with a wild herb package on her head,\and Kong Kuk Ok who was licking her hand on her mother’s back.

I discovered Kong Kuk Ok at last in 1967. It was after her mother had died. If her mother had known that Kim Il Sung was Kim Song Ju, she would have called on me. Apparently she said nothing about her husband’s activities to her daughter because she had not known who Kim Il Sung was\and, moreover, she was afraid that the communist party which had seized power was prejudiced against her husband who had belonged to the Independence Army.

I sent Kong Kuk Ok to the Higher Party School. After her graduation she worked for the Pyongyang City Party Committee\and in the museum of the Ministry of Railways. Because she is now too old to work, she is spending the rest of her life at home on an old-age pension.

Kim Po Anrom Guyushu was a friend of my father’s, as Hyon Ha Juk was. Once he was a company commander of the Independence Army. He said with regret that I had never visited his house,\and only went to Mr. Hyon’s, I was told. When friends of mine called on him, he said that he had been on intimate terms with Kim Hyong Jik\and was friendly with Song Ju, too, but that I had not visited him.

From then on I\dropped in at his house whenever I went to Guyushu. He had established a pharmacy\and offered some of the money comingrom it to support our Samgwang School. As a man of great enthusiasm for education, he was deeply concerned in enlightening the young people\and children. Whenever we requested him to give a lecture at Samgwang School he readily complied. He said that the people of Guyushu did not know even how to count money, so he worried about how we would gain the independence of Korea with such ignorant people. Nowadays people may not believe that adults could not count money, but in those days many of the Chinese\and Koreans living in Jilin were not able to calculate prices. The money issued in the province was differentrom that being circulated in the counties\and, in addition, there were various kinds of money of different values, such as the Jilin government cheque, the Fengtian tayang, the Jilin syotayang\and the silver coin. So many people could not calculate prices in the markets.

We got the peasants together at the night school\and taught them how to calculate prices. Seeing that those who had been regarded so ignorant were now mastering the four rules of arithmetic, Kim Po An said with satisfaction, “Of course, Koreans are naturally clever.” He observed the lessons at the night school\and at Samgwang School, saying that seeing their developmentrom ignorance to intelligence was very interesting.

Every student of the advanced course at Samgwang School was clever\and resourceful. Among them Ryu Chun Gyong\and Hwang Sun Sin still remain in my memory as unforgettable figures. Both of them came to the school on the recommendation of the revolutionary\organizations in Kalun. Ryu Chun Gyong’s father Ryu Yong Son helped us in our revolutionary activities, teaching the pupils at Jinmyong School. At that time Comrades Ryu\and Hwang were only 14\or 15 years old. When we were returning to Kalun\or Jilin after finishing our work in Guyushu, we would ask them to carry our weapons. The warlords were not so careful in searching women. The two girls always complied with our request. They would follow about 50 metres behind us with our weapons under their skirts. The warlord authorities searched us carefully, but they allowed the two girls to pass without taking any serious notice of them.

Hwang Sun Sin returned home after liberation\and worked as a farmer in her home village. She worked well, worthy of a member of the Children’s Expeditionary Corps in her Samgwang School days\and became famous for her good harvests. She enjoyed respect\and love among the people throughout her life\and, in the postwar period, worked as a deputy to the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Ryu Chun Gyong lived in various parts of Manchuria before returning home in 1979, saying that she would spend the last years of her life in the homeland as Ri Kwan Rin was doing. If she had returned home at a young age as Hwang had done, she would have become a famous career woman\and enjoyed a more worthwhile life in her old age for the society\and people. Of the girl pupils at Samgwang School she was the best at writing\and speaking. She was clear-headed\and very promising.

When we were making preparations to found the guerrilla army in Antu, she wrote to me expressing her intention to continue the struggle. Because we were so busy launching the armed struggle at that time\and because I considered that it would be difficult for women to follow men in the armed struggle, I failed to send for her. Though we advocated that women should have the same rights as men, at that time we did not regard women as being so good for the armed struggle. If she had returned home at the age of about fifty, we would have given her an education\and had her take part in social activity.

We established a principle\whereby, if we found those people who had taken part in the revolutionary struggle in the past\or had been involved in it, we would educate them, even if they were old,\and promote them to suitable posts before they started their political activities. However clever\and useful a person may be, he will become ignorant of the world, his thinking ability will decrease\and his view of life will get rusty if he coops himself up at home, awayrom social activity.

After liberation many fighters\and those who had been involved in the revolutionary struggle became buried socially without being promoted to suitable posts. The factionalists did not promote the anti -Japanese fighters to cadres for a long time, saying that their background was good but they were useless because they were ignorant. They should have provided them with an education if they were ignorant,\and trained them with a strong determination so that they could discharge their duties satisfactorily. But the factionalists excluded the anti-Japanese fighters\and turned their faces awayrom them.

Therefore, we saw to it that the bereaved children of revolutionaries\and those who had been involved in the revolutionary struggle, once they were found, studied at the Higher Party School\or the University of National Economics before being promoted to cadres, according to their preparedness. If they fail to study\and lead an\organizational life, even veteran revolutionaries lag behind the times.

In this process, a lot of anti-Japanese fighters, bereaved children of revolutionaries\and those who had helped the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle have grown up to become leading members of the Party\and government\and distinguished public figures.

Mun Jo Yang of Wujiazi was one of such people. When he worked as the head of the\organizational department of the Anti-Imperialist Youth League, he helped us substantially, together with Pyon Tal Hwan, Choe Il Chon, Ri Mong Rin\and Kim Hae San. He worked enthusiastically with us, writing articles, making speeches\and building up mass\organizations. I think that the meetings were held mostly at his house. When I was staying in Wujiazi, I became indebted to his brother Mun Si Jun’s\and Choe Il Chon’s families. Mun Si Jun was kind-hearted. He offered me food over several months without receiving any money. It is fresh in my memory how, when our party was active in Wujiazi, he went so far as to butcher his pig for us to eat, requesting us earnestly to liberate the country. I ate\and slept at his house for a long time. I very much liked the pickled garlic which was put on the table at every meal in his house. Because it had such a distinct taste, it was the first thing I recollected when I met Mun’s daughter Mun Suk Kon after liberation. So I invited her to my house to teach us to make the pickled garlic. Whenever I go to the provinces the people there put pickled garlic on the dining table, but it cannot be compared with the pickled garlic I ate in Wujiazi with cooked millet. Not long ago Mun Jo Yang celebrated his 80th birthday. Recalling the days in Wujiazi I sent him some flowers\and had a dinner prepared for him.

In Wujiazi I stayed at Choe Il Chon’s house for several days. He was the chairman of the Anti- Imperialist Youth League\and the chief editor of Nong-u. In those days he was called Choe Chon\or Choe Chan Son. The name Choe Hyong U printed on the cover of A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas was the pen name which he used when he was writing in Seoul after liberation. He was the most enlightened man in Wujiazi. He did not write poems as Kim Hyok did but had a distinguished literary talent in prose. That is why he worked as the head of the Changchun branch office of Tong-A Ilbo, while conducting activities as an underground political worker for several years under our\orders. In this process he collected a lot of material about our activities\and wrote many articles for publications.

Choe Il Chon was put on a blacklist by the Japanese intelligence service. The Japanese military policemen\and secret agents were on duty every day outside the Tong-A Ilbo office to watch him. The enemy became interested in him because he continued to work among the young people in Changchun, too,\and because he disseminated our activities widely among the patriots at home\and abroad. After we started the armed struggle in east Manchuria, he sent to the Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Army many hardcore young men whom he had trained himself in the Anti-Imperialist Youth League\organizations. We must conclude that the details of the national liberation struggle of Koreans in Manchuria that appear in A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas\and the vigorous\and passionate literary talent with which he described them were learned\and polished through his revolutionary practice.

When he was living in Shenyang\and Beijing Choe Il Chon went to Seoul many times to introduce the anti-Japanese armed struggle to the distinguished figures\and the peoplerom all walks of life at home. After the founding of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland he explained its programme to them. Influenced by his propaganda the Korean Language Society\and the Korean folklore movement led by Ri Kuk Ro gave their full support to the Ten- point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland\and, in accordance with this programme, conducted a struggle to safeguard the nation’s culture\and the spirit of the nation.

As the persecution\and surveillance by the Japanese authorities became stricter, Choe went to Seoul, taking with him material about our struggle\and the independence movement which he had collected while travelling around Manchuria when he was working at the branch office of Tong-A Ilbo,\and handed it all over to Ri Kuk Ro who was the head of the Korean Language Society. Among this material were copies of the magazine Nong-u we had published in Wujiazi.

“This material is worthy of being a national treasure. I am not able to keep it because I am followed constantly by the enemy. I will write the history using this material after the independence of the country. So I hope you will keep it until that time.”

Having made this request Choe returned to Manchuria. Immediately after liberation he took the materialrom Ri, who had kept it in safety at his request,\and wrote A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas. This book was printed on reclaimed paper mixed with grains of sand, but it was so popular that the young intellectuals studying history\and literature copied the full text out on white paper.

In the bloody atmosphere immediately after liberation in which the American military government defined anti-communism\and anti-north as the “state policy” of south Korea\and backed it with the bayonet, Choe even published cartoons depicting the anti-Japanese struggle to infuse in the young people\and children the anti-imperialist\and anti-Japanese spirit. It was wonderful that he wrote such a valuable book as A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas, tapping all his mental power, in Seoul\where political confusion\and disorder prevailed.

After entering the political world in south Korea he worked at important posts such as the head of the political department of the Korean Revolutionary Party, the department head of the Central Committee of the New Progressive Party, a member of the Committee for Welcoming General Kim Il Sung\and a member of the executive committee of the National Independence Federation,\and fought with devotion for the unity of the democratic forces and national reunification, joining hands with Ryo Un Hyong, Hong Myong Hui, Kim Kyu Sik\and other important figures. He was assassinated in Seoul by the reactionaries during the Fatherland Liberation War.

Choe Il Chon’s A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas is unfinished. He planned to write the next volumes after publishing volume 2, but he failed to do so because he could not find time to write them after stepping out on the political stage in south Korea. I was told that he intended to write about our revolutionary activities in all their aspects in the next volumes. If Choe Il Chon had not been killed, the next volumes would have been published\and, accordingly, more interesting material about our revolutionary history would have become known to the world.

Many decades have passed since then, so not many of those who can remember the days of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle remain alive. What is worse, those who can remember the early days of our struggle are only a few. My memory, too, is\limited. I have forgotten many experiences\and sometimes I fail to remember the correct dates\and names because my memory is dim.

Among those who helped us in our activities in central\and south Manchuria, Kim Ri Gap’s girlfriend Jon Kyong Suk remains most vividly in my memory. As a hero of the “Kumgang restaurant (Taesong restaurant) incident,” Kim was included in A Short History of Korean Revolutionary Movement Overseas. In the spring of 1930 some Japanese consular policemen disguised as Chinese arrested him at O Sang Hon’s (O Chun Ya) house in Fuxing Street, Jilin,\and escorted him to Changchun after gagging him\and binding his arms\and legs. In court he was sentenced to nine years in prison\and transferred to Dalian prison.

Jon Kyong Suk’s parents refused to allow their daughter to marry a revolutionary such as Kim Ri Gap, but Jon disobeyed her parents\and left home to follow her fiance to Dalian. At the time she was 18\or 19 years old. While carrying out her duties as the head of the Communist Youth League\organization at a textile mill, she supplied Kim with food\and clothing.

I was told of this by Dong Chang-rong, the then secretary of the east Manchuria special district committee of the Chinese Communist Party. He said that when he was engaged in underground party work in Dalian he happened to meet her\and was deeply moved by her true\and ardent love. He went on to say that when he saw her he felt that the faithfulness\and will of Korean women was very strong.

Listening to him, I also admired her for her noble character. His words reminded me of her preparing a dinner for me\and informing me of Kukmin-bu’s terrorist plan when we were staying in Wangqingmen to take part in the Conference of the General Federation of Korean Youth in South Manchuria. I thought that Kim Ri Gap must be a truly happy man.

On this occasion I cannot write the innumerable stories I would like to about my benefactors who offered me food\and provided me with my school fees\and travelling expensesrom their trifling savings when we young communists were running about vast Manchuria to save the nation. Many of them remain undiscovered, whether alive\or dead\and, should they be alive, we don’t know\where they are. If they appear before me even now it would satisfy a long-cherished desire of mine. How wonderful it would be if I could treat them\and we could share our experiences of several decades ago. However, even by doing that I cannot repay all the sincere efforts they made for me in the past.

I consider it my best payment\and gift to them to make the people prosperous, promote the well-being of the people\and carry out the revolution initiated with the support of the people. Until he has made such a contribution to the people, nobody can say that he has fulfilled his duty as a communist.