[ks-open] Re: Communist Party membership of Korean nationalists

[Jacqueline Pak]

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Dear Prof. Choe,


Please excuse the delay in answering your query.  There are new 
revelations in my research about the Korean nationalist movement and 
its leaders, in addition to a new analysis of the historical backdrop 
of the political and ideological dynamics.  I hope that a body of 
evidence, rather than a few discursive points, can be explored and 
debated by those interested in the subject later.  

I can understand the sensitivity to the earlier communist involvement
of both of the prominent nationalist leaders. About the Communist 
Party membership and affiliations of YO UnhyOng and Kim Kyusik, there 
are numerous books in both Korean and English, including biographies. 
 (Here, I want to thank Prof. Chong-sik Lee for giving me a copy of 
his biography of Kim Kyusik.) At the meeting of the Far Eastern 
Toilers Congress in Russia in the early 1920s, I believe that they 
were more than pro forma communists.  I recall reading in Scalapino 
and Lee's work: An observation from a report from the meeting 
described Kim Kyusik as being quite forlorn and desperate at this 
time, having been turned away by the West and seeing Russia as the 
last resort.  Both will be later deeply disillusioned by their 
experience with communist Russia, however.  Yo also appears to have 
been more of an idealistic Christian socialist.  

Like his closest colleagues Yo and Kim Kyusik (aside from Kim Ku), An 
Ch'angho worked closely with communists and anarchists but never 
joined the communist party. An's politics evolved over time and he 
came to embrace his own vision of utopian socialism in his later 
years.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, 
Jacqueline Pak