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Person1898 – 1958

Kim Won-bong

Leader of the Uiyeoldan, the National Revolutionary Party and the Korean Volunteer Corps; Deputy Commander of the Liberation Army

Known as Yaksan, he was born in Miryang in Gyeongsang. After a short time at the Sinheung Military Academy in Manchuria, in November 1919 he founded the Uiyeoldan in Jilin with Yun Se-ju and other comrades and became its leader. It named seven kinds of people to be killed, among them senior colonial officials and collaborators, and five kinds of places to be destroyed, among them the Government-General and police stations.

Its members bombed the Busan police station (Park Jae-hyeok), the Miryang police station (Choe Su-bong), the Government-General (Kim Ik-sang), the Jongno police station (Kim Sang-ok) and the Oriental Development Company (Na Seok-ju), and in 1923 it took Sin Chae-ho's Declaration of the Korean Revolution as its guide. Seeing the limits of individual acts, he entered the Whampoa Military Academy in 1926, and in 1932 founded a military and political cadre school for the Korean revolution in Nanjing, whose graduates included Yi Yuk-sa. He formed the Korean National Revolutionary Party in 1935 and, with Chinese Nationalist support, founded the Korean Volunteer Corps in Hankou in 1938.

In 1942 he brought part of the corps into the Korean Liberation Army and became its deputy commander, and in 1944 he became the Provisional Government's minister of military affairs. He returned home in December 1945, but could make little headway amid the left–right conflict. Going north for the 1948 negotiations, he stayed and served as North Korea's minister of state inspection and of labour, but was purged around 1958. Because he served the North Korean regime, he has not been honoured as an independence patriot by the Republic of Korea.

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4 related events

  1. 1
    1919 – 1935Uiyeoldan (Heroic Corps)leader

    Kim Won-bong founded the Uiyeoldan at Jilin in Manchuria to destroy key Japanese institutions and assassinate officials.

  2. 2
    1935Korean National Revolutionary Partyleader

    The Uiyeoldan, the Korean Independence Party, the Korean Revolutionary Party and others formed the National Revolutionary Party in Nanjing, the fruit of the drive for a single party in China proper.

  3. 3
    1938 – 1942Korean Volunteer Corpscommander

    With support from the Chinese Nationalist government, Kim Won-bong founded the Korean Volunteer Corps at Hankou, the first Korean armed unit in China proper.

  4. 4
    1940Founding of the Korean Liberation Armycommander

    Settled in Chongqing, the Provisional Government founded the Korean Liberation Army under Commander-in-Chief Ji Cheong-cheon; the Korean Volunteer Corps joined it in 1942.

Related works

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People who appear alongside

  • Ji Cheong-cheon1888 – 1957

    Commander of the Korean Independence Army in the joint Korea–China campaigns and Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army

  • Kim Kyu-sik1881 – 1950

    Envoy of the New Korea Youth Party to the Paris Peace Conference, later Vice-Chairman of the Provisional Government

  • Kim Gu1876 – 1949

    Known as Baekbeom; founded the Korean Patriotic Organization and led the Liberation Army as Chairman of the Provisional Government

  • Sin Chae-ho1880 – 1936

    Nationalist historian who wrote the Ancient History of Joseon and the Declaration of the Korean Revolution; died in Lüshun Prison

  • Kim Sang-ok1890 – 1923

    Uiyeoldan member who bombed Jongno police station in 1923 and took his own life after a gunfight with the Japanese police

  • Na Seok-ju1892 – 1926

    Uiyeoldan member who bombed the Oriental Development Company and the Chosen Industrial Bank in Seoul in 1926 and then shot himself

  • Jo So-ang1887 – 1958

    Author of the Doctrine of Three Equalities, the basis of the 1941 Founding Principles

  • Lee Beom-seok1900 – 1972

    Officer at the Battle of Cheongsan-ri, later chief of staff and Second Detachment commander of the Korean Liberation Army

Themes this person appears in

  • World War II and Korea1937 – 1945

    Wartime mobilization and exploitation, independence armies, from the Cairo Declaration to liberation

  • Republican China and Imperial Japan1912 – 1949

    The age when the Republic of China, born of the 1911 Revolution, passed through warlord division, the May Fourth Movement, the United Front and the Northern Expedition, fought Japan’s invasion and split in civil war — as Japan moved from Taishō democracy through the Manchurian Incident and military coups to the war in China and the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and colonized Korea resisted through the March First Movement and armed struggle