Kim Ku (; August 29, 1876 – June 26, 1949), also known by his art name Paekpŏm, was a Korean independence activist and statesman. He was a leader of the Korean independence movement against the Empire of Japan, head of the Korean Provisional Government from 1926 to 1927 and from 1940 to 1945, and a Korean reunification activist after 1945. Kim is revered in South Korea, where he is considered one of the greatest figures in Korean history; his legacy is also somewhat less enthusiastically celebrated in North Korea, due to his anti-communist views.
Born in Haeju, Hwanghae Province, Joseon, to a poor farming family, Kim was involved in the Donghak Peasant Revolution in 1894. In 1896, he murdered a Japanese man whom he believed was connected to the assassination of Empress Myeongseong (though he is now generally agreed to be a civilian merchant), for which he was imprisoned until escaping in 1898. Kim was briefly a Buddhist monk before becoming a Christian and teacher in 1903. In 1911, he was arrested in connection with the 105-Man Incident and was again imprisoned until 1914. In 1919, he participated in the March First Movement against the Japanese. While in exile in the Republic of China, he helped found the Korean Provisional Government, and served as its president from 1926 to 1927 and from 1940. Kim also founded and led several other organizations, including the Korean Independence Party, Korean Patriotic Organization, and Korean Liberation Army.
After the surrender of Japan in World War II, Kim returned to Korea in 1945 as head of the provisional government. Kim became a critic of Syngman Rhee, the U.S.'s preferred candidate for leader of South Korea, and made efforts to prevent a permanent division of Korea. Defying the wishes of Rhee and the U.S., he went to Pyongyang to hold unification talks with Kim Il Sung, but was unable to reach an agreement. He fiercely opposed the establishment of separate states in North and South Korea, which took place in 1948. In 1949, before the outbreak of the Korean War, Kim was assassinated by army officer Ahn Doo-hee.
Early life
Kim was born Kim Ch'angam, on August 29, 1876, in T'otkol village, Paegunbang, Haeju, Hwanghae Province, Joseon. He was the only child of two farmers: mother Kwak Nagwŏn and father Kim Sunyŏng.
In 1892, at the age of 16, Kim took the but failed. He reportedly witnessed and was frustrated by the elite candidates engaging in cheating and bribes. He quit studying at the and spent three months studying philosophical and military texts on his own and reflecting on his life.(), following the East Asian practice of changing names after significant life events.
In early 1894, the peasant revolution began. 17-year-old Kim was appointed a district leader of P'albong () and given a Donghak army regiment of around 700. Around September or November,
First imprisonment (1896–1898)
Joseon authorities took a relaxed attitude towards Kim's arrest, and thus he was arrested three months later, around late June 1896, in his home. He was first held at a jail in Haeju, where he endured torture and poor treatment from Japanese authorities present at the jail, and was then moved to Incheon. He was deeply impressed by what he read, in spite of the isolationist beliefs he had acquired from his time in the Donghak movement and from Ko. He reportedly then abandoned the idea that Westerners were barbarians, and decided that embracing new ideas would revolutionize Korea.
He taught many of his fellow prisoners how to read and write. While he first did this in exchange for favors, he began doing it voluntarily. This helped his standing in the prison, as even guards would ask him for help reading and writing.
Escape and Buddhist monkhood (1898–1899)
thumb|[[Magoksa, the Buddhist temple where Kim stayed around 1898–1899 after escaping from prison. Picture from 2011]]
On March 19, 1898, he and several fellow prisoners successfully broke out of prison. In response, the Japanese arrested Kim's father and held him for a year.
In spring of 1899, Kim requested to go study at Geumgang Mountain. His request was approved by the head monk, who gave him rations of grain for his journey. Instead of going to the mountain, Kim slipped away from his fellow monks and reunited with his parents. By May, they made their way to Taebo mountain near Pyongyang. whom he broke the engagement off with in 1903.
Early Provisional Government (1919–1926)
On March 29, 1919, Kim began a train journey to Shanghai, China in order to join the Korean Provisional Government (KPG). He arrived on April 13, In November 1925, his mother and Shin returned to Korea to avoid interfering in Kim's work. Eventually, in September 1927, his eldest son In would also return to Korea. In 1930, Kim established and became the head of the Korea Independence Party, in an effort to unite the right-leaning members of the government.
Sakuradamon incident
On January 8, 1932, KPO member Lee Bong-chang attempted an assassination of Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo, in what became known as the Sakuradamon incident. Lee threw a grenade that missed the Emperor's carriage. He was later executed on October 10.
Infamy and escape (1932–1937)
After the Shanghai bombing in late April, Kim became infamous. In order to avoid putting other Koreans at risk, Kim sent statements to various newspapers in Shanghai in which he claimed personal responsibility for organizing the KPO's activities. Various Japanese government bodies put bounties on him worth a combined 60,000 Dayang (), an enormous sum for that time.
With this, Kim began a flight across China that would last until 1939 and rival the length of the famous Long March. First, the American Presbyterian missionary George Ashmore Fitch, a friend of Kim's and many others in the Korean independence movement, hid Kim and several others at his house in Shanghai. Fitch wrote in his 1967 autobiography of this event:
When the Japanese came close to finding him, Kim escaped by pretending to be an American couple with Fitch's wife.
Jiaxing, Haiyan, and 'marriage' (1932)
thumb|[[Kim Ku hideout (Meiwan Street)|Kim Ku's first hideout after escaping Shanghai. The stone memorial to Kim can be seen in front. (2013)]]
A Chinese sympathizer named helped Kim and others escape to a hiding place at 76 Meiwan Street () in Jiaxing. The building had numerous features to facilitate hiding, including false closets, hidden doors, and a boat docked underneath the house. It still exists to this day, with a memorial at the spot.thumb|200x200px|Zhu Aibao, Kim's 'wife' for five years. After sending her back to her hometown in November 1937, Kim never saw her again.
In order to make up for Kim's poor Chinese-speaking skills, Zhu proposed that he marry a local Chinese woman. She suggested he marry one of her friends, a middle school teacher. However, Kim thought a teacher would be too intelligent and might figure him out, and instead proposed marrying the 20-year-old owner of the boat he often rode, named Zhu Aibao (; ). They had a 37-year age gap. While they never officially married, they were functionally husband and wife, and began to live together on her boat.
Their time in Chongqing was to be difficult. Kim described his time here as his "Dying Period" (). The population of Chongqing was below 500,000 before the war, but after the Kuomintang and other refugees moved there, it surged to over 1,000,000. Housing was constantly in short supply, and regular Japanese bombing runs made the situation even worse. Kim frequently had to allocate money from their already-stretched budget for constructing or maintaining housing for KPG members and their families. From 1938 to 1945, around 70 to 80 Koreans died of pneumonia due to poor air quality, high humidity, and poor access to healthcare. Among them was Kim's eldest son In, who would die in 1945. Kim himself suffered from thiamine deficiency during this period, and spent many days hiding in bomb shelters and seeing trucks overflowing with dead bodies. Despite all this, the KPG actually lived relatively comfortably compared to much of the Chinese population of Chongqing, as the majority of Chinese families had even less reliable access to food and shelter.
thumb|The KPG's shabby third office in Chongqing. Used from 1941 until it was destroyed by Japanese bombings in 1944.
They moved office buildings four times, after each building was destroyed by Japanese bombings. Their second office building was so severely destroyed on September 2, 1940, that not even a single article of clothing could be salvaged from it. Their third office was damp, dark, and had no plumbing, so they placed a bucket in a corner to urinate in. They would use this office for four years (until January 1945), the longest they used a building since Shanghai. While there, around March 1942, Kim would finish the second volume of his autobiography, the Diary of Kim Ku.
Failure to unite the independence movement (1939–1940)
After his arrival in Chongqing, Kim began work on integrating the various parties. Despite arguing against integration four years ago, the war had changed his mind. Another significant motivation for this was to appease the Kuomintang leadership, who were disappointed in the movement's continued infighting, epitomized in the Changsha shooting incident. The Kuomintang had even mediated several integration talks in 1937, which failed.
thumb|Kim Won-bong's Korean Volunteers Army (October 10, 1938)
In particular, Kim sought to unify with Kim Won-bong. Unlike Kim Ku and the KPG, Kim Won-bong and the KNRP had actually succeeded in raising an army. On October 10, 1938, Kim Won-bong had created and became commander-in-chief of the first Korean armed forces in China, the Korean Volunteers Army (). The army, with the help of Japanese Communist Kazuo Aoyama, managed to raise 100 soldiers and funding from the Kuomintang. By February 1940, they would have 314 soldiers.
In early 1939, they began negotiating their merger in earnest, but sides had somewhat flipped since 1935; Kim proposed a single party, while the left-leaning groups wanted a multi-party government. After several meetings, on May 10, the two Kims released a joint statement () advocating for a one-party government and listing ten shared ideals for the liberated Korea. The shared ideals included topics such as gender equality, ending feudalism, land redistribution, and creating free compulsory education. On August 27, their parties participated in the Korean Revolution Movement Unification Seven Group Meeting () in the Qijiang District of Chongqing, although the two Kims did not personally attend. Two of the seven parties withdrew from the conference after refusing to unite. The remaining five agreed to unite in principle, but talks broke down over the specifics of the merger. They disagreed on who would command the armed forces and to what extent they should collaborate with the right-leaning Kuomintang. Shortly after the breakdown of the talks, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II began.
Kuomintang intervention, military and political unification (1942)
In May 1941, Kim Won-bong's KNRP began joining the KPG, albeit to much conflict. Later attempts for KNRP members to get elected into the National Council were highly controversial, and resulted in fist fights and nullified elections.
In early 1942, Kim became aware that the Kuomintang had been privately negotiating with Kim Won-bong to absorb the two dozen officers of the Korean Volunteers Army in Chongqing into the KLA. Kim Won-bong relented to this, on the condition that he become the deputy commander (), a position that did not yet exist in the KLA.
On May 13, the KPG relented and approved the merger. This effectively allowed the KLA to more freely collaborate with other Allied countries.
Eagle Project (1945)
In September 1944, Lee Beom-seok, then Chief of Staff of the KLA, began discussing a plan to send Korean guerrillas to the peninsula with various members of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). On February 24, the OSS completed a plan called the Eagle Project that was approved by US military headquarters on March 13. Kim's first meeting with Sargent was supposed to be on April 1, but on March 29, Kim's eldest son In died. Kim, Lee, and Sargent met on April 3, just north of Chongqing to discuss which operatives should be trained. Sargent's aide described Kim as follows:
thumb|Kim Ku (front, left) and General Donovan (front, right) meeting in Xi'an (August 7, 1945)
Training began in mid-May and proceeded relatively smoothly. The first class was set to graduate in early August. Kim decided to go there and meet General Donovan and the graduates of the first class in Xi'an, and took a US military plane there on August 5. They met when Donovan arrived on August 7. Spirits were high at the meeting; Donovan reportedly said "Let both of our governments work closely together from now on", and Kim replied "General, you took the words right out of my mouth".
Kim gave a telegram to Donovan that he wanted forwarded to President Harry S. Truman. On August 18,
thumb|237x237px|Photo commemorating the Eagle Project (September 30, 1945)
Kim later wrote that he was elated with how the meeting went, and that he was hopeful that the US would soon formally recognize the KPG. But around the time of the meeting, the US dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan, and less than a month later, Truman would dissolve the OSS.
Return to Korea (1945–1949)
Departing China
On August 10, 1945, Kim learned of the surrender of Japan. He later described his feelings as such: In addition, many Koreans were then distrustful of the US, and unsure of whether the US would support South Korea in the event of a Northern invasion. In a 1985 interview with the Japanese magazine Sekai, Kim Il Sung claimed that Kim Ku asked him for political asylum in the event that his relationship with the US soured. Kim Il Sung then claimed that Kim Ku got on his knees and begged for forgiveness for his past anti-Communist actions. The truthfulness of the latter claim is doubted by several South Korean scholars.
Kim returned to the South deeply concerned that the North would handily win if it invaded the South. (2009)
|image2=백범 김구 혈의(血衣) 일괄.jpg
|caption2=The clothes Kim wore upon his death, now a . (2011)
On June 26, 1949, while reading poetry in his office in the evening, Kim was shot four times by Lieutenant Ahn Doo-hee. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Almost five decades later, in 1996, Ahn himself was murdered by Park Gi-seo (), a bus driver and admirer of Kim Ku. The weapon involved in the murder was a 40 cm-long wooden rod, with "Stick of Justice" () and "Reunification" () written on it. In 2018, 70-year-old Park donated the stick, still faintly stained with the blood of Ahn, to the Museum of Japanese Colonial History in Korea.
Motive for assassination
Ahn stated that he had killed Kim because he saw him as an agent of the Soviet Union.thumb|199x199px|Kim Ku's funeral (July 5, 1949)According to Bruce Cumings's 1981 book, another possible motive for the assassination was Kim Ku's alleged connection to the assassination of Song Jin-woo, a leader of the Korean Democratic Party (KDP), who had chosen to work closely with the American military government.
On April 13, 1992, a confession by Ahn was published by The Dong-a Ilbo. In his confession, Ahn claimed that the assassination had been ordered by Kim Chang-ryong, who served as the head of Rhee's national security. In 2001, declassified documents revealed that Ahn had been working for the U.S Counter-Intelligence Corps, leading to suggestions of American involvement in the assassination. However, some have questioned the evidence for those accusations.
Legacy and honors
Diary of Kim Ku, his autobiography
His autobiography Diary of Kim Ku is an important source for the study of the Korean independence movement. It was designated cultural treasure No. 1245 by the Korean government on June 12, 1997.
In 1962, Kim was posthumously awarded the Republic of Korea Medal of Order of Merit for National Foundation, the most prestigious civil decoration in South Korea. On August 15, 1990, North Korea posthumously awarded him the National Reunification Prize.
Harvard University has maintained a Kim Koo Professor of Korean Studies position since 2004. Since 2005, the Korea Institute of Harvard has held the Kim Koo Forum on U.S.–Korea Relations. Since 2010, another Kim Koo Forum has been held at Peking University. In 2018, a third Kim Koo Forum was established in Seoul, which is dedicated to research around Kim and the KPG. In 2009, the Kim Koo Foundation and Kim's great-granddaughter Jung Hwa Kim ('08) donated materials to Brown University to found the "Kim Koo Korean Collection". The South Korean government considers several objects associated with Kim Ku to be objects of cultural heritage. This includes a , the bloodied clothes Kim wore upon his assassination, and calligraphy that Kim produced.
In February 2023, Starbucks Korea announced that it would donate a piece of handwritten calligraphy by Kim to the Korean National Trust for Cultural Heritage. It also released special edition tumblers depicting the calligraphy.
Public opinion
In South Korea, Kim has been consistently regarded as one of the greatest figures in Korean history. In a 2008 survey by Korea Research, 44% of respondents credited Kim Ku for establishing South Korea, above the first president Syngman Rhee.
In anticipation of the 60th anniversary of South Korea's founding, a national survey was conducted in 2007 on who should be portrayed on a new 100,000 Korean won bill, to be issued in 2009. On November 5, 2007, the Bank of Korea announced that Kim had won the vote. However, the new bill has been delayed indefinitely as of February 2023.
Characterization as a terrorist
For decades, there has been a debate in both academic and public settings over whether Kim can be considered a terrorist.
On July 19, 2007, Anders Karlsson of the University of London drew controversy while guest lecturing at Korea University when he described Kim's Korean Patriotic Organization (KPO) as a "terrorist group", and the KPO's agents as "terrorists". This characterization was immediately challenged by students in the course. One student pointed out that, unlike in September 11 attacks, Kim did not recklessly target civilians. However, Karlsson reportedly stood by his usage of the description at the time, and university administration stood by Karlsson's qualifications. Word eventually spread to the JoongAng Ilbo, which reported on the incident. Karlsson then withdrew the description. He said that he used the characterization out of expediency, and acknowledged that the word "terrorism" carried significant unintended weight.
South Korean conservatives generally express more negative opinions about Kim, and have used this characterization as well. In 2009, an article in The Korea Times discussed a textbook it described as "ultra right-wing". The textbook called Kim a terrorist and a "left-wing politician who was against the founding of the Republic of Korea and made no contribution to the new nation". According to a 2014 editorial also published in the Korea Times, a government-approved history textbook that described Kim as a terrorist was adopted in 14 high schools, around 1% of the 1,393 high schools in South Korea.
Steven Denney and Christopher Green wrote in Sino-NK that the KPO and its members have been described as terrorists in some circles in Japan, and that debate over the issue has contributed to conflict in Japan–South Korea relations.
Personal life
thumb|315x315px|The gravestone of Kim's wife Ch'oe Chun-rye. Clockwise from top left is Kim Ku (aged 49), Kim's mother Kwak Nagwŏn (66), his elder son In (5), and his youngest son Shin (2) (1924)
Kim was married to Ch'oe Chun-rye (; March 19, 1889 – January 1, 1924) until she died in Shanghai at age 34. She was first seriously injured due to a fall, then died from pneumonia. She was then buried in the Shanghai French Concession.
Kim Shin (1922–2016) served as the Chief of Staff of the Korean Air Force and a number of other roles in politics. After his retirement from public office, he managed the family's various foundations. He died aged 93.