Hong Beom-do
Commander of the Korean Independence Army who won at Bongo-dong and fought at Cheongsan-ri; died in Kazakhstan
Born in Pyongyang and orphaned young, he worked as a farmhand, soldier and miner before becoming a hunter in Hamgyeong. When Japan confiscated civilian guns in 1907, he raised a righteous army of hunters from Gapsan and Samsu and, fighting a guerrilla war in the mountains, earned the name "Flying Hong Beom-do".
In 1910 he moved to the Russian Maritime Province and Jiandao to train independence fighters, and after the March First Movement he commanded the Korean Independence Army. In June 1920 he lured a Japanese force into the Bongo-dong valley and routed it, and in October he fought at Cheongsanri alongside Kim Jwa-jin's Northern Military Administration. Escaping Japan's reprisals in Jiandao, the armies moved into Russia, where they suffered heavily in the Free City Incident of 1921.
He farmed in the Maritime Province until Stalin's deportations of 1937 sent him to Kyzylorda in Kazakhstan, where he worked as a theatre watchman and died in 1943. His remains were brought home on Liberation Day 2021 and buried at the Daejeon National Cemetery. He was posthumously awarded the Republic of Korea Medal in 1962.