[Reminiscences]Chapter 5. People in Arms 1. The Earth in Agony

Chapter 5. People in Arms 

1. The Earth in Agony

With the advent of 1931 the whirlwind of white terrorism that had started in the wake of the May 30\and August 1 Uprisings swept across the whole territory of Manchuria with increasing force. In an attempt to root out the revolutionary forces that had been painstakingly fostered over many years by the Korean communists\and patriots, the enemy resorted to bloody repression everywhere. When I arrived in east Manchuria, I found the atmosphere there more strained than in south\or central Manchuria; the consequences of the uprising were even more horrible\and devastating there. When I saw the heads of the rebels on spikes at the South Gate of Dunhua, I realized how far the offensive of the enemy against the revolutionary forces had gone. Even after the May 30\and August 1 Uprisings the factionalists\and flunkeyists who were steeped in dogmatism\and petty-bourgeois vainglory staged riots in the name of anniversary revolts, harvest revolts\and terror revolts on such occasions as the anniversary of National Humiliation Day, the anniversary of the October Revolution\and the anniversary of the Guangzhou Uprising. The number of such riots reached several hundreds. This was why the storm of terrorism by the enemy was continuing into the following year.

In the course of this nearly all the revolutionary\organizations in Jiandao broke up. Even the people who had followed the insurgents with food for them, to say nothing of the hardcore men who had fought in the front line, were all captured\or killed. The\organizations we had rebuilt a year before when we were on our way to the River Tuman also suffered a considerable loss. Some of those taking part in the uprisings either surrendered to the enemy\or fell awayrom the revolutionary\organizations. When we visited villages in search of the\organizations that had gone underground, some people would not speak to us\and would only look at our faces fearfully. Others would say, “The communist party has ruined Jiandao,” “The whole area of Jiandao has become a sea of blood, a sea of flames due to the senseless moves of the communist party,”\and “If you dance to the tune of the communist party, all your family will be exterminated,”\and would turn awayrom\or give a wide berth to people known to be communists, regardless of their affiliation.

When I went to Mingyuegou, Ri Chong San who was a member of the Weng district party committee told me of the afflictions he had gone through following the uprisings. He said:

“Those higher up tell me incessantly to go among the masses\and restore\and expand the\organizations, but to be frank with you, I find meeting people now uninteresting\and discouraging. Those people who used to treat me with respect as a revolutionary,\and even those who were admitted to the\organization on my recommendation, have been keeping out of my way for months now. I feel so sad I can hardly carry on my revolutionary work. The wind of revolt blew a few times\and public feelings have turned nasty in Jiandao, I tell you. Sometimes I have the sudden thought that, if I have to live on like this with people giving me the cold shoulder, I would rather give up the revolution\and go away somewhere just to earn a living,\and then I shall find peace of mind. But it’s easier said than done. How can a revolutionary abandon his\original aim that he was determined to attain, come what may? In any event there must be some measures taken to find a way out, but I’m quite at a loss what to do,\and I only resent the confused situation.”

This was the anguish of Ri Chong San\and, at the same time, my anguish. All the revolutionaries in Jiandao experienced such mental agony in the years 1930-31. The situation was so grim\and dark that even such a faithful\and reticent old revolutionary as Ri Chong San had unburdened himself to me in that way. Of course, he did not abandon the revolution. Later I met him again in Antu. While I was away touring many counties on the banks of the River Tuman, he was transferred to the Antu district party committee. His face was much brighter than when he had been in Wengshenglazi. He said with great pleasure that things were going well at his new post. “Gone are the days of my nightmare,” he remarked. This expressed the change in his life. I could not find a trace of the bitter\and dismal look he had worn on his face when he complained that people kept aloofrom him. But until I met Ri Chong San at Wengshenglazi the revolutionaries in Manchuria had suffered terribly under the white terrorism\and had had to suffer anguish due to the cold\and wary attitude of the people.

I was also distressed with the same affliction. It was at that time that I had to eat watery maize gruel\and pickled mustard leaves\and stems for my meals\and sleep in the cold, drafty front rooms of people’s houses at night, resting my head on a wooden pillow\and fighting with my hunger pangs. The greatest pain molesting me in those days was that of hunger. Moving about Jiandao, I suffered muchrom the cold\and hunger. I had to pass the winter in my Western clothes without a quilted coat,\and so I always suffered morerom the cold than other people did. In houses\where no bedclothes were available, I would lie down in my clothes at night\and try to fall asleep. When I stopped at the house of Ri Chong San, they had no bedding\or pillow to offer me. So I lay down in my Western clothes at night, but I felt so cold that I could not fall asleep. It was such a tormenting experience that later when I went to my home in Antu I told my mother of what I had gone through that night. On hearing this, in a few days my mother made me a large quilted coat that looked like that of a cart driver. Whenever I happened to stop for the night at a house with no bedclothes I would cover myself with the quilted coat\and sleep cuddled up with my head on a wooden pillow wrapped in a handkerchief.

But such hardships were nothing to me. During my tour of Jiandao in the spring of that year I never once had a good night’s sleep. When I lay down to sleep at night, I remained awake because of the cold\and hunger\and, to add to that, I could not calm my mind at the thought of my murdered comrades\and of the ruined\organizations. I was also tormented by feelings of despair\and loneliness caused by the people’s unkind attitude. When I lay down in a cold room resting my head on my arm after meeting people who were cold\and aloof, I could not get to sleep because of visions of distrusting people floating before my eyes. To tell the truth, we had pinned great hope on the Jiandao area. Although factionalism had been rife in Yanji, the other parts of Jiandao had been relatively freerom the filth of factionalism. This had provided favourable conditions for the rapid growth of a new generation of communists in the area to develop the revolution in a new fashion. For many years our comrades had, through tireless efforts\and painstaking work, pushed steadily ahead with preparations for taking the anti-Japanese revolution onto a higher stage in the area. Nevertheless, the two uprisings had severely impaired the results of their hard work. The Left tendency had bewitched the masses for a time with its ultrarevolutionary phrases\and slogans, but the harm it did was as serious\and destructive as this. I believed it was not absurd to say that the Left tendency was an inverted manifestation of the Right tendency. So we hastened to Jiandao, setting aside everything else, out of our desire to make good the damage caused by the Left excesses\and speed up the preparations for switching over to the armed struggle as soon as possible. Our expectations had been great when we came to Jiandao, but the damage suffered there was more disastrous than anticipated\and, moreover, the people regarded the revolutionaries with distrust\and remained aloofrom them. Witnessing such a state of affairs was terribly distressing. What could be sadder for the fighters who were devoted to the people than to be forsaken by the people, who had given birth to them? If a revolutionary should forfeit the people’s confidence\and support even for a single day, he can scarcely be regarded as a living man. When the masses were cold\and unkind towards the revolutionaries, regardless of their affiliation, we were deeply grieved because to our great regret the uprisings had discredited the communists, the masses had lost faith in their leaders\and were falling awayrom the\organizations,\and barriers of distrust\and misunderstanding had appeared between the Korean people\and the Chinese people. This was our greatest anguish at the time.

But we did not just remain in a state of distress, anguish\and agony. If a revolutionary did not face problems in his struggle, he was not conducting a revolution. Faced with an\ordeal, he should strengthen his resolve\and pull through it without flinching\and full of confidence. In 1931 we worked tirelessly to sweep away the evil consequences of the May 30 Uprising in Jiandao. The first obstacle in the way of implementing the line adopted at the Kalun Meeting was the aftermath of this uprising. Without removing this obstacle quickly\and regrouping the revolutionary forces, it would be impossible to save the revolutionrom the crisis\and to develop it.

When departing for east Manchuria after winding up the Wujiazi Meeting, I set myself\and my comrades two tasks.

One was to conduct a general review of the aftereffects of the May 30 Uprising. Although we had not planned\or directed it, we felt it necessary to analyse\and review the uprising in a scientific mannerrom various angles. Despite the fact that the revolt had gonerom setback to setback, there were still fanatical believers in terrorism\and adherents to Li Li- san’s line in east Manchuria\and they were instigating the masses to conduct a reckless, violent struggle. Li Li-san’s line of “victory first in one\or a few provinces” was a dogmatic application of Lenin’s proposition on the possibility of victory in the socialist revolution in one country. This line had been a powerful stimulant in urging the masses to riot. It was a line laid down by someone who held power in the Chinese party\and passed down through\organizational channels. Therefore, people followed it for a long time until the man responsible, that is Li Li-san, resignedrom his post in the party\and his view was labelled as Left adventurism. In spite of their bitter experience of failure\and setback, the people could not shake themselves freerom the sweet illusion they had been given by Li Li-san. A review of the May 30 Uprising would free themrom this illusion. We decided to warn people against the careerism, fame- seeking\and petty-bourgeois vainglory of the factionalists\and flunkeyists through a review of the May 30 Uprising. I thought that the review would also mark a historic turning-point in awakening the revolutionaries in Manchuria to the importance of a scientific strategy\and tactics\and a method of leading the masses.

The other task was to put forward a correct line for\organizing the broad masses into a single political force\and to equip the new generation of communists with this line. The communists in the Jiandao area had no clear\organizational line to serve them as a guide in restoring\and consolidating the ruined\organizations\and expanding\and strengthening them. The factionalists\and flunkeyists active in east Manchuria were committing a glaring Left error also in\organizing the masses. While advocating a “theory of class revolution,” they admitted only poor peasants, hired farmhands\and workers to the\organization. They regarded all the other sections of society as having nothing to do with the revolution. In consequence, the people left out of the\organization would say in anger: “So this is what communism is like! The small fry are closeted together, leaving all the other people out in the cold. That’s communism, then.” In\order to remove this exclusivist tendency\and unite the patriotic forces of all social quarters, it was imperative to lay down\and implement as soon as possible a correct\organizational line which would make it possible to overcome the flunkeyist\and dogmatic tendency of clinging to the propositions of the classics\and the experience of other countries\and unite\and take in all the patriotic forces.

I set this as the object of the first stage of my work in Jiandao as I hurried on my way to east Manchuria. But while on my way towards Changchun in company with Ryu Pong Hwa\and Choe Tuk Yong after giving guidance in the work of the mass\organizations at Guyushu, I was arrested by the reactionary warlord authorities because of a report made by a spy. The warlord authorities had been keeping a sharp watch on our activities. They were as eagle -eyed as the Japanese police. They were even aware that we were going to east Manchuria to prepare for an armed struggle. Having realized that Guyushu was a major operational centre of the Korean communists in central Manchuria, the warlord authorities had instructed the administration office of Yitong County to send an inspector there\and had all our movements closely watched. In Guyushu there lived a Chinese landlord called Li Chu-yu, who, in touch with the inspector, had been spying on our movements. It was this Li who informed the inspector when we left Guyushu\and set off in the direction of Changchun. We were arrested at Duonandun by guard corps members who had rushed to the spot on the instructions of the inspector. After a few days’ interrogation in the detention room of the county office, we were escorted to Changchun,\where we spent some 20 days behind bars. That was my third time in prison. Headmaster Li Guang-han\and teacher Herom Yuwen Middle School in Jilin happened to be in Changchun at the time. On hearing of my arrest, they went to the warlord authorities\and protested strongly, saying,

“Kim Song Ju was found innocent\and acquitted at Jilin prison, so why have you arrested him again? We stand guarantee for .” I was set free thanks to the help of the two teachers. They were both communist sympathizers who had an understanding of communism,\and that was why, I presume, they did not hesitate to come to my rescue when I was in trouble. When I saw how they sympathized with me, protected me\and understood our cause with their whole hearts as ever, I was deeply touched\and filled with great emotion, an event which I could not forget all my life.

The first thing we did after arriving in east Manchuria was to conduct a short training course in Dunhua for the men of the Korean Revolutionary Army\and hardcore members of the revolutionary\organizations. In this short course lectures were given on the tasks for stepping up the preparations for an armed struggle in real earnest\and the ways to implement them, on the cardinal problems arising in providing unified leadership to the basic party\organizations,\and on the question of uniting the dispersed revolutionary masses in\organizations. This class, it could be said, was preparatory to the Winter Mingyuegou Meeting held in December that year.

After that short course, I toured Antu, Yanji, Helong, Wangqing, Jongsong\and Onsong giving guidance to the work of the revolutionary\organizations in those areas. On the basis of a full understanding of the actual situation in Jiandao\and in the six towns on the Korean side of the River Tuman, we called a meeting of cadres of the party\and the Young Communist League at the house of Ri Chong San in Wengshenglazi in mid-May, 1931. Historically this meeting is called the Spring Mingyuegou Meeting. Wengshenglazi means a rock giving out the sound of a ceramic jar. Before the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Mingyuegou used to be called Wengshenglazi. After they had usurped Manchuria, the Japanese established a railway station at Wengshenglazi\and called it Mingyuegou. The name became accepted\and people came to call the place Mingyuegou. At present Mingyuegou is the Antu county town, but when we held the meeting, it belonged to Yanji County.

The Spring Mingyuegou Meeting was attended by the cadres of the party\and Young Communist League\organizations, members of the Korean Revolutionary Army\and underground workers, numbering dozens of people in all. Of the communists of the new generation in the Jiandao area, Paek Chang Hon\and nearly all the other renowned revolutionaries were present at the meeting, I suppose.

My speech at the meeting was edited\and published under the title Let Us Repudiate the “Left” Adventurist Line\and Follow the Revolutionary\organizational Line. In this speech I mentioned the two tasks I set on leaving for east Manchuria. As I had planned, at the meeting we analysed\and reviewed the true nature of the May 30 Uprising\and put forward the revolutionary\organizational line of uniting the whole nation into a political force by firmly rallying the masses of workers, peasants\and intellectuals\and banding together the anti-Japanese forces of all other social sections around them.

The meeting discussed the tasks for the implementation of this\organizational line, the tasks of building up a hard core of leadership\and enhancing its independent role, of restoring\and consolidating the ruined mass\organizations\and enlisting peoplerom all walks of life in them, of tempering the masses in the practical struggle,\and of strengthening the joint struggle of the Korean\and Chinese peoples\and promoting their friendship\and solidarity. At the same time, the tactical principles were laid down of advancingrom small -scale struggles to large-scale ones\androm economic struggles gradually to political struggles,\and of skilfully combining legitimate struggles with underground ones, with special stress being laid on the matter of thoroughly overcoming the Left adventurist tendency.

It can be said in short that the Spring Mingyuegou Meeting in May 1931 was a gathering aimed at winning over the masses. The largest barrier to this was the Left adventurist line. This was why we resolutely criticized that line.

When we criticized Leftism\and advanced the comprehensive\organizational line, those attending the meeting voiced their whole-hearted approval of it. Many people took the floor,\and all their speeches were revolutionary. The speakers were unanimous in their opinion that Japan’s invasion of Manchuria was imminent\and that therefore they should make full preparations\and fight a decisive battle when the time came. Since the meeting was attended by many revolutionary veterans, there were many things to listen to\and learnrom. I learnt many lessonsrom the meeting. Following it, political workers left for all parts of Jiandao\and the homeland. I stayed in Mingyuegou for some time directing the work of the party\and mass\organizations in the area before proceeding to Antu. My plan was to help the revolutionary work in Jiandao\and in the homeland while staying in Antu. Antu was situated in a mountain recess a long wayrom the railways, main roads\and cities, well beyond the reach of Japanese imperialism’s evil power. Surrounded by steep mountains\and thick forests, the place was a favourable location for establishing contact with the\organizations in the six towns\and other areas in the homeland, to say nothing of the regions of Yanji, Helong, Wangqing, Hunchun, Fusong, Dunhua\and Huadian,\and was very convenient for founding\and training a guerrilla army\and promoting the work of building party\organizations. The composition of the population was also very good.

In addition, Mt. Paektu, our ancestral mountain, was nearby,\and we, the people who had not forgotten our motherland even for a moment, could draw great mental comfort\and inspirationrom its solemn\and majestic appearance. On a serene, bright day, the silvery grey peaks of Mt. Paektu were visible under the distant southwestern sky. At the sight of it in the distance, I felt my heart beating violently with a desire to take up arms\and win back my country as soon as possible. Although we were going to launch an armed struggle in a foreign land, we desired to raise the sound of gunshots against Japan within sight of Mt. Paektu. This was a feeling common to us all.

In April, after the short training course in Dunhua, I happened to go to Antu\and guided the work of the mass\organizations there. My mother was weak with illness. Medical science was still backward\and no correct diagnosis could be made of what was wrong with her. She would only say that she felt as if a “lump” were kicking about inside her\and take some kind of decoction. She did not care how serious her illness was but she worried about my moving about strange places all the time without a penny\and gave herself body\and soul to the work of the Women’s Association.

As I went back to Antu after two months’ absence, I was anxious in my mind about my mother. But when I arrived, I was relieved to see an unexpected glow in her cheeks. She used to tell me not to care about my home but devote myself heart\and soul to the work of winning back our homeland,\and yet when I turned up, she could not repress her joy\and would try to conceal her sickly appearance.

On hearing of my arrival, my grandmother who had comerom Mangyongdae rushed out in her stocking feet\and gathered me into her arms. Since coming to Manchuria in the year of my father’s death, she had stayed on in Fusong without returning home, eking out a scant existence with my mother. When my mother had moved to Anturom Fusong, she had gone, also. In Antu she had taken up residence at the house of Yong Sil’s maternal grandparents at Xinglongcun,\and stayed there\and at my home in turns. Yong Sil was the only daughter of uncle Hyong Gwon. After my uncle’s imprisonment, my aunt (Chae Yon Ok) had had a severe nervous breakdown. She had just had her first baby\and was looking forward to a happy life when her husband was sadly taken away to prison. So she had good reason for falling ill.

After uncle Hyong Gwon had been condemned to 15 years’ penal servitude\and started to serve his time in prison, I wrote to my aunt advising her to give her child to someone else\and remarry. But she did not marry again. She wrote: Even my elder sister-in- law who has no husband has not remarried\and is raising her three children in spite of all the hardships, so how can I marry for a second time when my husband is alive\and well? If I take a second husband, how grieved the father of my Yong Sil will be when he hears of it in prison! If I give away Yong Sil to someone else\and start a new home with another man, shall I be able to sleep in peace\and shall I be able to eat? Never suggest such a thing again.

My aunt was a prudent, graceful\and strong-willed woman. My mother had been living with her, but after coming to Antu, she had sent her sister -in-law to her parents’ home for a change. My grandmother, who was then staying with my aunt at her parents’ home, would look after her\and keep her company. Then, when her thoughts ran to her sick eldest daughter-in-law, she would go hurriedly to my home\and decoct some herb medicine\and cook meals for my mother. While she looked after her two weak daughters-in- law, my grandmother silently worried a great deal. So she spent years in an unfamiliar land unable to return home readily. This I think was due to her kind\and sympathetic affection as a mother -in-law for her two pitiable, lonely daughters-in-law. The night I arrived in Antu, she slept at my side. I awoke in the dead of night to find my head resting on my grandmother’s arm. It seemed to me that after I had fallen asleep, she had quietly pushed my pillow aside\and taken my head in her arm. My grandmother’s kindness touched my heart\and I could not bring myself to shift my head back onto the pillow. But she was not asleep. She asked me quietly: “You’ve forgotten your home, haven’t you?”

“How can I, grandma? Never for a moment have I forgotten Mangyongdae. I am longing to see my family\and relatives at home.”

“To be honest, I came to Manchuria to take all my family here back home. If I could not take you along with me, I thought I would still take back home your mother, your younger brothers\and all the others. But your mother won’t listen to me. She says that you have all come here pledging not to cross back over the River Amnok before winning back the country. How then can she turn back on the spur of the moment\and retrace her steps just because your father has passed away? So stubborn is she that she would not even look back just once when we were leaving Fusong. So I cannot ask her any more to go back home. If your living here is helpful to the winning of Korea’s independence, I won’t try to take you away but go back to Mangyongdae alone. When you feel homesick\and yearn for your grandfather\and grandmother, please write us a letter. Then we’ll think we’ve seen you. You know I can’t come here often.”

Later I could not comply with my grandmother’s request even once. I did not write her a letter because I thought that she would hear of my name\and the reports about the military achievements of the anti-Japanese guerrilla army carried often in the newspapers of my homeland. My grandmother sighed quietly as she said that if I was to do something great my mother should be in good health,\and that it was embarrassing that she was working so hard while her illness was goingrom bad to worse. On hearing this, I could not sleep because of my anxiety about my mother. I had many things to worry about as her eldest son\and the heir to the Mangyongdae family who should look to family affairs.

In those days it was much in vogue among the young people who were my revolutionary companions to think that a man who had stepped out on the road of struggle should naturally forget his family. The young revolutionaries were generally of the opinion that he who cared about his home was not equal to a great cause.

Criticizing such a tendency, I would say that he who did not love his home could not truly love his country\and the revolution. Yet, how much did I love\and care for my home? It was my view of filial piety in those days that earnest devotion to the revolution represented the supreme love for one’s family. I never thought of pure filial duty detachedrom the revolution. This was because I believed that the fate of a family\and that of the country were inseparably interrelated with each other. It is common knowledge that the peace of the country is a prerequisite to peace at home. It is a rule that national tragedy will inevitably affect the millions of families that make up the nation. Therefore, to safeguard the peace\and happiness of families it is necessary to safeguard the country;\and to safeguard the country, everyone must faithfully discharge his duties as a citizen. But a man should not lose sight of his family on the ground that he is engaged in the revolution. Love for his family constitutes a motive force which prompts a revolutionary to the struggle. When his love for his family cools, his enthusiasm for the struggle will cool also.

I knew in principle about the interrelation between a family\and the revolution, but I had no clear, established view of how a revolutionary devoted to the revolution should love his family. As I looked around the house, inside\and out, after getting up in the next morning, I found many things that needed a male hand to put them right. There was not enough firewood, for one thing. I decided that I would find time to lend my mother a hand in looking after the housekeeping. Putting aside everything else, that day I went up the mountain with my brother Chol Ju. I had decided to gather some firewood. But my mother came after us with a head-pad\and a sickle in her hands. I wondered how she had discovered\where we were, after she had gone out to the well. I implored her to go home but to no avail.

“I haven’t come just to help you. I want to have a talk with you here. Last night grandmother talked with you all night, didn’t she?”

Mother smiled brightly as she said this. Only then did I understand. At home grandmother was always beside me\and when she let go of me, my younger brothers would hang on to me\and would not let me go. While collecting firewood, mother kept close at my side, speaking to me all the time.

“Song Ju dear, do you remember a man named Choe Tong Hwa?”

“Yes. Choe Tong Hwa, isn’t he known to be in the communist movement?”

“He called at our house a few days ago. He asked me when you were likely to come to Antu\and wanted me to let him know when you did. He said he would like to have a discussion with you.”

“Did he? But why did he say he wanted to discuss with me?” “He said he wanted to tell you he was displeased with you for

going around telling the people that the May 30 Uprising was a mistake. He shook his head\and said he could not see why a sensible young man like Song Ju should be so critical of the uprising when it had been supported\and countenanced by people higher up. I’m afraid you’re out of favour with the people.”

“That may be possible. It seems there are some people who don’t take kindly to my views. But mother, what do you think?”

“I can’t claim to know anything of the world. I only think it a serious matter when crowds of people are being killed\and arrested. When all the hard core is gone, who will carry out the revolution?”

My mother’s simple yet clear thought delighted me. The people always had an unerring eye. There could never be a social phenomenon which defied the people’s judgement.

“You’re right, mother. You have passed fairer judgement on the matter than that man Choe Tong Hwa. Even now, the revolution is suffering because of the uprising, isn’t it? I have come to Antu to repair the damage.”

“So I suppose you must dash around busily as you did last spring. Don’t worry about household affairs again but devote yourself to your duties.”

This was the point of what she wanted to say to me. She must have begun talking about Choe Tong Hwa so as to tell me this.

After that I dedicated myself heart\and soul to the work of building up\organizations, as my mother wished. Antu also had been greatly victimized because of the May 30 Uprising. To add to that, the work of\organizing the masses was unsatisfactory in this area. To make Antu revolutionary it was essential above all else to expand the party\organizations\and party ranks\and firmly establish the\organizational leadership system of the party in the area. So in mid-June 1931 we formed the district party committee of Xiaoshahe, Antu County, with Kim Jong Ryong, Kim Il Ryong\and other core elements,\and gave the party committee the assignment of sending out political workers to the areas of Erdaobaihe, Sandaobaihe, Sidaobaihe, Dadianzi, Fuerhe\and Chechangzi to set up basic party\organizations. Following the formation of the district party committee, Young Communist League\organizations were extended to Liushuhe, Xiaoshahe, Dashahe\and Antu,\and anti-Japanese\organizations such as the Peasants Association, Anti-Imperialist\union, Revolutionary Mutual-Relief Association\and Children’s Expeditionary Corps were founded in these areas. As a result, the groundwork for organizing the masses was completed in the Antu area in the summer of that year. There was no village without an\organization. The greatest problem in making Antu revolutionary was that the revolutionary ranks were divided among themselves. Antu was divided in two halves—north\and south—with a river in between. Different youth\organizations had these villages under their influence. The young people’s\organization in the northern village was under the control of the followers of the Jongui-bu machinery\and that in the southern village was under the thumb of such Chamui-bu people as Sim Ryong Jun. These two\organizations were at daggers drawn,\and even the young people’s\organization of the M-L group led by Choe Tong Hwa was reaching out its hand to them, thus greatly complicating the situation within the youth movement. This being the situation we did not\limit ourselves to restoring the youth\organizations to their\original state but educated\and led the young people to unite them into one\organization. We guarded against\and ruthlessly criticized the slightest attempt to split the youth movement. This compelled people steeped in factional strife such as Choe Tong Hwa to adopt a prudent attitude to our opinion that a unified youth\organization should be set up in the Antu area.

In the process of making Antu revolutionary we ran up against the vehement obstructive moves of the hostile elements. In places like Kalun\and Wujiazi the village heads were all under our influence, but in Xinglongcun the village head cringed to the wicked landlord Wu Han-chang\and acted as his spy. He always spied on the movements of the villagers\and mass\organizations\and sent reports to the town. So we called a meeting of all the village inhabitants, men\and women, young\and old, to denounce the fellow,\and threw him out of the village. A few days later Wu Han-chang came to bargain with me. He said:

“I am aware that you, Mr. Kim, are a communist. I am really worried because I am always away in old Antu\and only my bodyguard remain here. If those reckless men in my bodyguard should find out who you are\and do harm to you, I shall be an enemy of all the communists, shan’t I? I am worried that I have to get along as I am doing now. Should the Japanese find out that I know about you, they will behead me right away before anyone else. So let’s settle the matter amicably between ourselves. I pray you, Mr. Kim, to leave this place for all time. If you need money for your travelling expenses, I’ll give you as much as you like.”

After hearing him out, I replied:

“There is nothing for you to worry about. I believe that, although you are a landlord, you must have a conscience as a Chinese man\and hate the Japanese imperialists who are out to swallow up China.

“I think you have no cause to turn against us\or hurt us. I take no exception to you\and the Chinese young people who are members of your bodyguard.

“If you were a worthless man, I would not talk to you in this manner. Rather than worrying about me, you ought to take care that you are not called a ‘running dog’ of the Japanese ruffians.”

At this, Wu Han-chang had nothing more to say\and left Xinglongcun village. After that, the man\and his bodyguard behaved discreetly towards us, maintaining a more\or less neutral position. The newly-appointed village head always considered our position\and carefully performed only those of his administrative duties that he was obliged to.

If we had failed to carry through the line of\organizing the masses in Antu, we would have been unable to subdue such an important landlord as Wu Han-chang\and neutralize him in the vast, wild land of Jiandao that was swept by white terrorism. The power of the\organized masses was truly unlimited\and there could be no such word as impossible for this power. The revolutionary\organizations in Xinglongcun\and the surrounding area moved forward in high spirits, expanding their forces.