[Reminiscences]Chapter 21 2. Chinese Landlord Liu Tong-shi

2. Chinese Landlord Liu Tong-shi 

 After liberation one day, the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung met Chinese comrade Peng Zhen\and recollected with deep emotion the days when the people\and communists of Korea\and China carried out their armed struggle together against the Japanese.

Peng Zhen praised the close class solidarity\and noble proletarian internationalism displayed by the Korean people\and communists in the joint struggle for national liberation. He then digressed\and told the great leader that during the operations to liberate Northeast China he had noticed that many Chinese landlords produced certificates with the signature\and seal, Kim Il Sung, Commander of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, which stressed that they had helped the Anti-Japanese Allied Army. In those days Peng Zhen was political commissar of the Northeast Democratic Allied Army.

Later, replying to the questions about the certificates, raised by those who were studying the history of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, the great leader recalled the following story:

The certificates remind me of Liu Tong-shi. If I tell you his story, you will have a better understanding of what was meant by the “aid-the-army” certificates.

Liu Tong-shi was a wealthy Chinese whom we met in Helong County after we moved to the area northeast of Mt. Paektu. He ended up having as close a relationship with us as was the case with Kim Jong Bu, the patriotic Korean landlord whom we had met in Changbai County.

His real name is Liu Yi-xian. He spoke Korean as fluently as his own mother tongue. When Chinese\and Koreans had anything to discuss, he volunteered to act as interpreter. So people called him Liu Tong-shi. Tong-shi means “interpreter”.

After the Battle of Wukoujiang in the area northeast of Mt Paektu, we carried out mobile operations in Helong, in the Samjang area of the homeland,\and then in Antu County. Later, staying in the Wukoujiang Secret Camp for a period, we conducted intensive political\and military activities.

In those days the main force was fighting elsewhere,\and only the machine-gun platoon\and the Guard Company were with Headquarters. We were suffering an acute shortage of provisions. All the Koreans living in the neighbourhood of the secret camp were poor peasants, so they found it difficult to help us, even though they wanted to.

When we moved into Helong County, our operatives said that the enemy controlling the area had spread a rumour that the revolutionary army would come there\and take away all the food, so they had all the food collected\and fixed the daily amount of food consumption per capita, allotting only two days’ rations at one time to those village representatives who came with ox-carts. The enemy even\ordered every household in the county to obtain two bottles of kerosene in\order to pour it over even these provisions if the revolutionary army demanded them.

I racked my brains over a solution to this problem. One day we went to a village\and talked with the inhabitants there. I happened to meet a man who said he had lived in the Xiaowangqing guerrilla zone\and came to Helong County when the guerrilla zone had been disbanded. In the course of talking to him, I heard in detail about the wealthy Chinese, Liu Tong-shi.

It seemed that if we succeeded in winning over Liu Tong-shi, it would help us both in keeping the anti-Japanese patriotic forces under our control\and in obtaining the supplies we needed.

However, my men Ju Jae Il\and Kang Wi Ryong, who had lived in Helong before they joined the guerrilla army, said that we should not pin any hopes on Liu. They even suggested that we should punish him because he was a detestable anti-communist who had occupied the post of head of a Self-Defence Corps at one time. They knew Liu Tong-shi relatively well.

According to them, Liu Tong-shi’s family lived at the foot of Mt. Niuxin, about twelve kilometres awayrom the Helong county town. I think that his village was called Longtancun. His house was an imposing one, surrounded by a long earthen wall with gun emplacements at the four corners.

His elder brother was already over seventy\and was treated as the elder of the family without doing anything. Liu Tong-shi himself, the second brother, was the mainstay of the family, taking charge of public affairs\and courting the government authorities. Liu Yi-qing, the third brother, managed the family property with his clerks.

According to Ri Pong Rok\and Pak Jong Suk, veterans of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle, Liu Tong-shi’s family had 100 shang of land alone. One shang amounts to 3,000 phyong, so 100 shang is equal to 300,000 phyong. In other words, the equivalent of about 100 hectares. They also owned a soybean oil factory, a dried-starch noodle factory, a distillery\and many shops. In Helong they had a department store, a restaurant\and a shop that had a monopoly on salt, all of which they ran through agents.

Liu Tong-shi’s family was famous for its large property, but its members were also notorious for their opposition to communists. Guerrillasrom Helong called this family the most wicked of all vicious elements. Liu Tong-shi’s son was serving as a policeman for Manchukuo in Helong. The guerrillas considered that this fact alone was enough to point to the true nature of this family. Exercising his authority as a policeman, Liu Tong-shi’s son used armed force to prevent coolies\and tenantsrom moving about freely.\and Liu himself informed his son’s police station against those whom he suspected of having connections with the Communist Party, thus setting them up for an interrogation,\or destroyed their way to earn a living by depriving them of tenant rights.

Nevertheless, I did not agree to the proposal of some people, that we should punish Liu Tong-shi’s family immediately\and dispossess them. This was partly because I had learned a lesson in my relations with Kim Jong Bu,\and partly because some people saw Liu Tong-shi in a different light. We could not dispose of him rashly\and carelessly without studying him in greater detail.

I thought we should give Liu Tong-shi the benefit of the doubt because he spoke Korean well\and also because he mixed unreservedly with the\ordinary people.

Furthermore, some people said that when the question of Korean tenants was raised at the government office, he had volunteered to be the interpreter\and sided with the tenants. This was also a good factor; there was nothing bad in this.

Others said that he pitied the Korean tenants, who were deprived of their own country\and were leading a hard life in a foreign land,\and that he took special care of them.

Moreover, it was said that Liu Tong-shi’s concubine in Niufudong was a Korean. This was also an interesting bit of news.

He sympathized with Korean peasants living in a strange land, he kept a Korean woman as a concubine,\and he was fond of the Korean language\and Korean customs. Then why was he regarded as a vicious landlord by some people? Why had this man, known to be kind-hearted, tormented Ju Jae Il’s\and Kang Wi Ryong’s families by having them dragged off to the police station?

To solve this mystery, I sent my comrades to Longtancun. They returned with a lot of information about Liu Tong-shi. Their inquiry revealed that Liu Tong-shi had become the enemy of those engaged in the communist movement because of the May 30 Uprising.

As you well know, the Left adventurists ran amok in the May 30 Uprising. They tarred with the same brush all those who owned land, regardless of whether the owners were pro-Japanese\or anti-Japanese. Egged on by the Leftists, the rioters committed all sorts of violent acts, such as breaking through the front gates of landlords’ houses\and setting fire to the granaries. Such ultra-Leftist behaviour disgraced the image of the entire Communist Party.

Since then Liu Tong-shi had regarded the Communist Party as his sworn enemy\and mercilessly persecuted those families that supposedly had communist fighters among their members. At the same time he was on very intimate terms with the warlords who shielded the landlords.

Liu Tong-shi became still more opposed to the Communist Party when he heard that, with the formation of the guerrilla bases in the Jiandao area following the September 18 incident, the party had divided the residential areas into “Red territories”\and “White territories”\and was hostile to everyone who lived in the “White territories”. He hated both the Japanese, who acted as the masters in Manchuria,\and the communists.

Liu Tong-shi would often say, “The Communist Party is my sworn enemy.”

I believed that he was against communists because of a temporary misunderstanding,\and that if we exerted a positive influence on him we would be able to persuade him to stop opposing communists, become our ally\and love his country. Liu Tong-shi was also displeased with the Japanese because after their occupation of Manchuria they disarmed\and disbanded his private army. I paid particular attention to his anti-Japanese sentiments.

Instead of punishing Liu Tong-shi\or confiscating his property, we resolved to urge him to cast aside his anti-communism\and to develop his anti-Japanese\and patriotic spirit. In this way we hoped to turn him into a supporter\and patron of our revolution. For this reason we sent an operative group, with O Il Namrom the 7th Regiment as its head, to pay him a visit.

On meeting Liu, O Il Nam told him that General Kim Il Sung had sent the group to hold talks with him,\and asked him whether he was willing to comply with the request.

Hearing this, Liu Tong-shi smiled bitterly\and said in fluent Korean:

“If you want to arrest me, arrest me without going into details. Why do you veil your intentions with the word ‘talks’? You’re probably saying that the Commander of the communist army requests an interview with me, a landlord, simply because you can’t come right out\and say you’re going to arrest me. When I heard the rumour that you were going around in Helong County, I, Liu Yi-xian, already knew that I would not be able to escape the fate of a fish on the chopping board. Now that I’m all ready\and prepared for death, don’t beat about the bush with a word like ‘talks’, but do as you please–kill me, take me away,\or confiscate my property.” He was spiteful because he thought O Il Nam’s operative group had come to kidnap him. They told me the old man spoke with great disdain.

Liu Tong-shi treated O Il Nam\and his party so coldly that the latter thought at first that their operation was a failure. The more obstinate Liu Tong-shi became, the more firmly O Il Nam resolved to try every possible means to get the old man to come to Headquarters. He explained that the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army was a group of genuine communists entirely differentrom those who during the May 30 Uprising knocked down at random all rich people, regardless of whether they were pro-Japanese\or anti-Japanese,\or whether they were patriots\or traitors. He also explained that the noble mission of this army was to achieve the liberation of both Korean\and Chinese people\and to protect their lives\and property. Then he added that if Liu Tong-shi really declined the request of our Headquarters, he would have his party quietly withdraw.

Hearing this, Liu Tong-shi, his mouth tightly shut, lost himself in thought for a good while. Then with a change in attitude he told O Il Nam that he had better stay there for a little longer\and tell him more about the current situation. He asked O Il Nam why he had bothered to come so far if all he was going to do was to leave suddenly. He then said that if Commander Kim had really invited him for talks, he would take the Commander’s request into consideration.

Perhaps he had been afraid of evil consequences of his refusal. Moreover, O Il Nam had behaved like a gentleman\and outlined the situation with calm good humour, so probably Liu Tong-shi became curious\and his anger left him.

“I’ve heard that Commander Kim’s unit fights well. However, Commander Kim is also said to be a communist, so he must despise rich people. To tell the truth, I have heard something about your army; judgingrom your speech\and behaviour, you are somewhat differentrom other armies. ... Anyway, I’ll go, since General Kim has asked me.”

Then he said: “If you want to take me, bind me with a rope as if escorting a criminal. If the Japanese become aware of the fact that I have obediently followed you of my own accord in compliance with Commander Kim’s request, they will dispatch their ‘punitive’ force\and behead me.\and my family will never be safe again. So take me as if you were kidnapping me.”

Although O Il Nam thought Liu Tong-shi’s idea a good one, he hesitated because my\order was to bring Liu Tong-shi in a decent way, not as a captive. O Il Nam thought that if he were to take Liu Tong-shi by binding him with a rope without approvalrom Headquarters, the same thing would happen as had happened when Kim Ju Hyon’s group acted violently towards Kim Jong Bu in Changbai County. It was fortunate that O Il Nam made this judgement.

Hearing O Il Nam’s report, I also thought that the scheme proposed by Liu Tong-shi was an ingenious one. I was about to support it, but some of the commanding officers cautioned that if we followed this idea, Liu’s son, the policeman, might create a commotion\and even the garrison would make a great fuss. If gunshots were heard in Longtancun, the enemy in Helong county town would immediately send reinforcements.

If we were to put Liu Tong-shi’s idea into effect, we had to operate over a wide area\and carry out large-scale military activities. Having decided to attack simultaneously the enemy in the three villages centring on Longtancun,\where Liu Tong-shi’s house was located, we took with us the 7th\and 8th Regiments as well as the Guard Company.

I commanded the operations, having established Headquarters at the village next to Longtancun, the village in which the house of Liu Tong-shi’s in-laws was situated.

Before launching the operation we changed our\original plan\and decided to make Liu Tong-shi, who had to manage all the affairs of his family, stay at home for the time being. Instead we would take Liu Yi-qing, his younger brother, because we thought that by so doing we would achieve the same result as by taking Liu Tong-shi without provoking his son\and the army\and police too much. Liu Yi-qing had no children.rom olden times the Chinese had a peculiar custom of loving, among all brothers, most dearly the one who had no children. Therefore, if Liu’s family established contacts with us under the pretext of negotiating the safe return of Liu Yi-qing, the enemy\and their neighbours would not suspect too much.

Our operations were successfully conducted as planned,\and our units withdrewrom the three villages simultaneously. When the unit of the revolutionary army was leaving his village, Liu Tong-shi called out his elder brother’s third son\and made him accompany Liu Yi-qing, his uncle, to take care of the latter. I suppose he sent his elder brother’s son to the mountains to reduce Liu Yi-qing’s loneliness.

My men told me they had had a great deal of trouble on their way back to the secret camp because of Liu Yi-qing. He could not walk too well because he was overweight. On top of that, he was an opium addict\and apparently the effects of the opium he had been smoking were wearing off. So we carried him on a stretcher. The revolutionary army, walking many miles, carrying an overweight opium fiend on a stretcher! Can you imagine it? Such an instance must be pretty rare. Indeed, in those days we went through all sorts of strange experiences.

I told O Paek Ryong, commander of the Guard Company, to take goodcare of Liu Tong-shi’s younger brother\and nephew. The men of the Guard Company pitched a tent for the guests\and looked after them well. Although we had difficulties with provisions in those days, we managed to give them good meals of rice\and meat soup.

However, Liu Yi-qing did not eat very much. We thought it was because the meals did not appeal to him since he was a wealthy man, used to eating all sorts of delicacies at every meal. However, this turned out not to be the reason. He had no appetite because of his craving for opium. Every day Liu Yi-qing pestered the men of the Guard Company for opium, saying he could go without meals but not without opium. He said he would pay them as much as they wanted, if only they would give him some.

My men could not comply with his request. At that time we had only a small amount of opium for emergency use at the medical centre as a substitute for anaesthetic. Finally losing his reason because of his craving Liu Yi-qing started hurling all sorts of abuse\and insults at the men of the Guard Company.

It was an absurd situation–the son of a landlord screaming for opiumrom the revolutionary army at their secret camp!

I told my men to bring the guests to the tent of Headquarters. Liu Yi-qing was in a terrible state. When an opium addict stops smoking opium, his vision becomes blurred\and he cannot keep proper balance.

I told the men at the medical centre to supply a small amount of opium to Liu Yi-qing every day, even if they had to use up all the emergency supply of opium. As soon as he lit up his pipe, Liu Yi-qing became animated\and walked on air with a broad smile.

It seemed he had never in his life done any physical work. He did not even know how to put away his bedding, so his nephew did it for him. Indeed, he had idled his time away living in clover, never lifting a finger for anything.

One day, as I was winding up my talk with him, I told that a man could feel the meaning of life\and have a good appetite only if he worked as hard as his physical strength allowed him. I went on to say that in olden times a certain princess had made others do everything for her, so she was finally unable even to peel an apple. I pointed out that if one depended only on others, one would eventually become this kind of fool. Liu Yi-qing said that he differed littlerom that princess. He added, nevertheless, that he was good at one thing: making dumplings. I was glad to hear that. It was fortunate that the man I had judged to be nearly an invalid at least had the skill of making dumplings, even though it was not an extraordinary skill.

I told one of the cooks at Headquarters to bring the stuff for making dumplings. Liu Yi-qing made the dough thin\and smooth, put in the stuffing\and made the dumplings with astonishing skill. He not only shaped them nicely, but made them as fast as lightning.

Eating his dumplings with my men, I praised his extraordinary skill.rom the following day on, whenever we were about to make dumplings, Liu Yi-qing rolled up his sleeves\and helped the cooks. On such days he became talkative\and even cracked jokes with me. One day, when he returned after making dumplings, he said that he felt joy in living now that he was working, as I had suggested. He said this sincerely.

However, we did not make dumplings every day. When there was no job for him to do, Liu Yi-qing was bored to death\and smoked more opium than on other days. I told him a lot of instructive stories, starting with the story about the Opium War\and telling him about Confucius\and Mencius. I even talked about certain patriotic men of property who had made their names in Chinese history. The names of Zhang Wei-hua\and Chen Han-zhang, revolutionariesrom wealthy families, naturally became the topic of our conversation.

Liu Yi-qing listened to me with great interest. One day he asked for a writing brush\and some paper. He wrote a letter to Liu Yi-xian, saying that he wanted to help Commander Kim with money\and property, although he was not quite ready to commit suicide for the sake of the revolution, as Zhang Wei-hua had done. He even showed me the letter.

Reading it, I could see it was not in vain that we had treated him humanely. Liu Yi-qing started the letter by writing about how he\and his nephew were getting along. He specially emphasized that he shared the same tent with me, that he was making dumplings with me\and that the men of the revolutionary army were kindly looking after him like their own brother. Then he wrote that since he had been treated hospitably\and kindly, he had to return the favour. He went on to say that if his elder brother sent such things as rice, cloth, shoes\and the like, they would be a great help in the operations of the revolutionary army,\and in that case he\and his nephew would be able to return home soon. Our education\and enlightenment of him had proved fruitful.

Liu Tong-shi, who was anxious about the safety of his younger brother\and nephew after sending them off to the mountains, was extremely pleased to receive this letter. He sent us notice of the date by which he would prepare the goods we needed,\and asked me to send some people to carry these things. We dispatched Ri Pong Rok with men numbering the strength of about one platoon to carry the goods. They brought back cotton cloth sufficient to make hundreds of uniforms, workmen’s shoes, rice, flour, pancakes, pork\and soybean oil. Liu Tong-shi sent such goods to our secret camp on three occasions.

As dealings with our comrades became more frequent, he requested a formal interview with me\and asked to be brought to our secret camp. He wanted to meet me, the Commander of the revolutionary army, to exchange greetings with me now that he was helping this army. I saw to it that he was brought to our secret camp.

When Liu Tong-shi was about to leave for his meeting with me, his policeman son came to oppose the trip. He said: “It seems that you, father, have decided to go to the secret camp of the revolutionary army after receiving Uncle’s letter. You’d better give this matter some thought. Uncle wrote that he\and cousin were living with General Kim Il Sung in the same tent\and making dumplings with him, I can’t believe that. How can the Commander of the revolutionary army share bed\and board with civilians? Moreover, Uncle is a landlord’s son. The Communist Party says all landlords must be overthrown. It’s obviously a whopping lie that the Commander of the revolutionary army shares bed\and board with a member of the hostile class\and that they make dumplings like housewives together. One of Commander Kim’s men must have forced him to write this.”

Liu Tong-shi answered: “Don’t talk nonsense. I’ve met Commander Kim’s men several times. All of them are polite\and warm-hearted young men, so I think Commander Kim has good men under him. Their behaviour towards me alone is enough to show me Commander Kim’s personality\and the discipline of the unit. Now that I’m in touch with the revolutionary army, I would like to go to the mountains to meet Commander Kim\and personally confirm the truth of your uncle’s letter.”

When Liu Tong-shi came to see me, he brought with him a uniform\and a coat made of plain but good-quality woollen cloth, a pair of boots\and a cap. These were all gifts for me. After exchanging a few words with him, I found him to be no\ordinary man\and not to be compared with his younger brother, either in personality\or knowledge. He was gentlemanly,\and his speech\and conduct were noble\and dignified.

Liu Tong-shi spoke to me in Korean, saying that we must have gone through many hardships in the mountains. Then he expressed his gratitude to me for the good care we had taken of his younger brother\and nephew. On my part, I thanked him for the large amount of goods he had sent to help our army,\and for visiting us despite his advanced age.

We pitched a separate tent for Liu Tong-shi\and had him meet his younger brother\and nephew there.

Liu Yi-qing said to his elder brother: “What do they mean by saying the soldiers of the communist army are red devils? That’s nonsense. No one in the world is as good-natured as these people. Commander Kim’s army is a gentlemanly army.” He thus praised the revolutionary army to the skies, even adding that he had been enlightened, thanks to Commander Kim.

Liu Yi-qing spoke so highly of us that after meeting his younger brother, Liu Tong-shi called on me again\and repeatedly thanked me.

On meeting Liu Tong-shi I was most surprised by the fact that he had excellent knowledge of not only the Korean language\and customs, but also of its history\and culture. He\and I understood each other very easily.

I was most impressed when he said he could not help but sympathize with Koreans when he saw them leading a hard life in a foreign land, deprived of their country. Just as I liked Chinese\and was attached to them, so did Liu Tong-shi love Koreans.

He asked me suddenly: “Commander Kim, people call your army ‘communist bandits’. Is it true that you are a communist?”

“Calling our army ‘communist bandits’ is a fabrication of the Japanese, but it’s true I’m a communist.”

“Then, Commander Kim, what do you think of me, a man who has been against all communists up to now?”

Probably one of the reasons he had come to our secret camp was to get a reply to this question, so I had to give him a prudent answer.

From the first days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, I had held a lot of negotiations with people who were against communism. Commander Yu was opposed to communism, as was Wu Yi-cheng at first. Ryang Se Bong, a Korean, was also hostile to communists although he was a patriot. It was only in his last years that he allied with communists. In each of my negotiations with Commander Yu, Commander Wu,\and Commander Ryang, I was in a position to speak in defence of communism\and to convince them of the need to ally with communists for the sake of a united front. The choice between alliance with communists\and opposition to them was up to them. Therefore, even though I always led the negotiations\and took the initiative, I had to wait for their answer anxiously.

The situation was different, however, in my talk with Liu Tong-shi. I was in a position to denounce his anti-communist acts, but he had to listen to my judgement. It was very gratifying that he wanted to find out our attitude to his anti-communist acts of his own accord. Anyhow, he was candid\and broad-minded.

According to my experience, there were two categories of anti-communism. One was deliberate\and active anti-communism, pursued by those who wanted to destroy communism because they thought they would meet their end if communists gained the upper hand. The other was blind anti-communism, pursued by those who either loathed communism at the sight of the wrongdoings perpetrated by pseudo-communists,\or by those who automatically rejected\and gave communism a wide berth, deceived by the pernicious propaganda of the imperialists. It could be said that Liu Tong-shi belonged to the second category.

If we were to lead himrom opposing communists into allying with them, we had to be candid with him about our attitude. I had to refrainrom currying favour with him just to receive aid goodsrom him; at the same time I could not denounce him to his face as a wicked man simply because he was a landlord\and anti-communist. It was important to tell him clearly the good\and bad points in his deeds, thus inducing him to ally with us\and love his country, instead of opposing us.

“I feel extremely sorry that you are against communists. However, we do not intend to punish you in the least, since you oppose communism because you do not understand it. Moreover, you love China\and the Chinese people despite your opposition to communists. You do not want to see your country ruined,\and you want to be a Chinese in your own country, even though you are a landlord\and against communists. I attach great importance to this. A man who loves his country can easily ally with communists.”

As I said this, Liu Tong-shi took my hand, full of emotion.

“Thank you, Commander Kim. Although there are many people\and many mouths in Helong, you are the only person who has recognized that I am a patriot. That’s enough to help me sleep in peace.”

He confessed that he had been against communists because of narrow-mindedness,\and asked what he should do to cooperate with us.

I said: “It is not hard to understand what alliance with communists means. Opposing Manchukuo, resisting Japan\and helping our revolutionary army all mean alliance with the communists. You already started cooperating with us the day you sent your younger brother\and nephew to us. Those who truly love their country\and nation will eventually understand communism\and reconcile with the communists, because the latter also love their country\and nation. Alliance with communists\and opposition to Japan is the most important patriotic deed for both Korean\and Chinese landlords.”

Liu Tong-shi said that he was fortunate to discover his own worth, although belatedly, thanks to Commander Kim.

The following day, however, he was strangely reticent. When I asked him if there was anything wrong, he simply replied no.

I summoned O Paek Ryong\and asked him whether anything undesirable had happened while the Guard Company had been looking after Liu Tong-shi.

O Paek Ryong said there was nothing particularly wrong. He added, however, that because Liu Tong-shi had asked to be allowed to inspect the secret camp, O had taken him around, showing him the training of the soldiers\and inviting him to a recreation party. When Liu Tong-shi was inspecting the cooking area, he was rather displeased at the sight of a pot in which gruel, a half-and-half mixture of sorghum\and edible grass, was boiling.

Liu Tong-shi asked: “Why are you preparing this sort of meal instead of rice, now that I have sent you dozens of sacks of rice? Of course, it’s understandable if you cook gruel in\order to spare your rice, but it’s unreasonable to serve even the Commander with gruel because of the shortage of provisions.” Probably he was shocked by the fact that the Commander ate the same meals as his men. He was still more deeply moved, while inspecting the medical centre, to learn that the centre had given his younger brother all the opium it had been saving to treat patients in an emergency. Having heard all thisrom O Paek Ryong, I thought I’d better send Liu

Tong-shi\and his party back home.

Liu Tong-shi, however, said that he would return home alone,\and requested me to allow his younger brother\and nephew to stay a little longer in our secret camp for the time being. He said he wanted to send more goods to our unit, but there had to be an excuse for him to do this. He said that if his younger brother\and nephew remained in our secret camp, this would be a good pretext in front of the Japanese, even if they found out about the delivery of the goods.

It was extremely gratifying that Liu Tong-shi volunteered to give us more help. It seems to be human nature for a person to try to prove himself worthy if complete confidence is placed in him.

Prior to Liu Tong-shi’s departure I gave him a modest farewell party. At the party he apologized to me for having been hostile to communists\and for having mistaken our revolutionary army for “bandits”. He said that he would be sparing with neither money nor goods to help the revolutionary army.

Before partingrom us, he asked me to write a certificate for him, so that when the 8th Route Army liberated Northeast China, he could show them that he had given material assistance to the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army. I wrote on a piece of silk in Chinese: “Liu Tong-shi is a fine patriot. He has given moral\and material assistance to the Anti-Japanese Allied Army.” Under that I wrote “Commander Kim Il Sung”\and then affixed my seal to it. The certificate Peng Zhen saw was probably this kind of document.

In those days many Chinese landlords in Manchuria pretended to cooperate with the Japanese, but secretly helped anti-Japanese fighters. They believed that the day would come when the Japanese imperialists were destroyed\and the puppet state of Manchukuo was returned to China.

Whenever they helped the People’s Revolutionary Army, Chinese landlords asked us to write a certificate with the words, Zhu Shi Kang. I wrote such documents for landlords in Changbai County\and for others in Emu\and Dunhua Counties.

Zhu Shi Kang are Chinese words, Zhu meaning “pig”, Shi, “eat”\and Kang, “bran”. Thus they mean that a pig eats bran. If we use the ideographs for “red”, “eat”\and “peace”, they are also pronounced Zhu Shi Kang, but in this case these ideographs mean that Zhu De conquers Kang De. In those days the 8th Route Army was called Zhu-Mao Army, with the ideographs standing for the surnames of Zhu De\and Mao Ze-dong. Kang De was the reign-title of Pu Yi, Emperor of Manchukuo, set up by Japanese. When the Chinese said, Zhu Shi Kang, it was a secret code, meaning that the 8th Route Army would liberate Northeast China.

After Liu Tong-shi had returned, many more goods than before arrived at the Wukoujiang Secret Camp. He sent all kinds of supplies by truck, which helped us greatly in our preparations for winter that year.

He also sent us a lump of opium as large as a wooden pillow in return for the opium our medical centre had given his brother.

With the Harvest Moon Day of that year near at hand, we sent Liu Tong-shi’s younger brother\and nephew back home. Bidding farewell to us, Liu Yi-qing shed a lot of tears. He said that once he was back home he would give up smoking opium\and live like a decent human being.

Not long after we had sent them back, we also left the Wukoujiang Secret Camp. Since then, we never had any more contact with Liu Tong-shi\or his brother. However, I always remember Liu Tong-shi\and believe that he lived conscientiously.

Among Liu Tong-shi’s relatives there is a man named Liu Zhen-guo, one of his nephews. This man sent a letter to the Party History Institute. According to this letter, Liu Tong-shi also recalled us frequently until his death. It seems that back homerom our secret camp, he clearly expressed his intention to oppose Japanese imperialists\and gave wide publicity to us.

It is said that Liu Tong-shi kept the certificate we had written at the Wukoujiang Secret Camp to the end of his life as a family treasure. I have been told that after his death, his younger brother’s family kept the document. I was very touched to hear that.

The heart-to-heart talks I had with Liu Tong-shi at the secret camp made us lifelong friends who never forgot each other. We remained on friendly terms with each other, although we were separated across a long distance.

What does this mean? It means that while those capitalists who seek only their own interests\and pleasure, caring nothing for their country, nation\or kinsmen, will never share our ideas, the conscientious capitalists who love their country, nation\and fellow citizens can become our companions, irrespective of their nationality, party affiliations\or political views. Differences in ideas\or property status cannot be an absolute criterion for judging people. The broadest criterion for judging people is how much\or how little they love their country, love their nation\and love their fellow human beings. It is a rule