Who Was Kim Gu in Korean History? Baekbeom, the Provisional Government and a Divided Peninsula

Kim Gu (1876–1949), also written Kim Ku and known by his pen name Baekbeom, was a leader of the Korean independence movement during Japanese colonial rule and a head of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in exile. After Korea's liberation in 1945 he worked to prevent the permanent division of the peninsula, and he was assassinated in Seoul in 1949, a year before the Korean War. In South Korea he is widely revered and is considered one of the most important figures in the country's history.

Background: from Joseon to colony

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Joseon dynasty was under pressure from foreign powers, and Japan's influence grew steadily. Korea became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and was annexed in 1910. Many Koreans who wanted independence worked abroad, especially in China, where exiles founded a provisional government in Shanghai in 1919. Kim Gu's life follows that whole arc, from a late-Joseon village to the politics of a divided country.

A farmer's son from Haeju

Kim was born on 29 August 1876 in a village in Haeju, Hwanghae Province, into a poor farming family, the only child of his parents. His father's family had lost its aristocratic yangban status generations earlier. His childhood name was Kim Chang-am.

His pen name, Baekbeom, combines a character taken from the word for a butcher, a low-status occupation, and a character meaning an ordinary person. It expresses the idea that even the humblest people should take part in the struggle for independence.

Donghak and the Chihapo incident

In 1893 he joined Donghak, a religious and social movement that led a major peasant uprising in 1894. He commanded a unit that attacked the fortress at Haeju and was defeated by government and Japanese forces.

In March 1896, at an inn in Chihapo, Kim killed a Japanese man whom he suspected of involvement in the 1895 killing of Queen Min (Empress Myeongseong), and left a statement saying he had acted to avenge the queen. Kim believed the man was a Japanese army officer; the English Wikipedia article says the general consensus today is that he was a civilian merchant named Tsuchida Josuke. Kim was sentenced to death, but King Gojong did not approve the execution. In prison he taught other inmates to read and studied books on Western history and science, and in 1898 he escaped.

Teacher, Christian and prisoner again

After a period as a Buddhist monk, Kim was baptised as a Protestant in 1903 and worked as a teacher and school principal. He joined the New People's Association, an independence group, in 1907. In 1911 he was arrested in the so-called 105-Man Incident, sentenced to 15 years and tortured in Seodaemun Prison, before being paroled in 1915. It was during this imprisonment, in 1912, that he took the name Kim Gu.

The Provisional Government in Shanghai

In April 1919, after the March First independence protests, Kim arrived in Shanghai and joined the new Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, first as police commissioner. Over the next decades he held its top posts several times, including head of the government from 1926 to 1927 and president from 1940 to 1947. He also began his autobiography, Baekbeom Ilji (the Diary of Kim Gu), completing the first volume in 1929.

Armed resistance in the 1930s

In 1931 Kim founded the Korean Patriotic Organization, a secret group created to carry out attacks on senior Japanese imperial and colonial figures. In January 1932 its member Lee Bong-chang threw a grenade at Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo, which missed; in April 1932 Yun Bong-gil set off a bomb at a ceremony in Hongkou Park in Shanghai, killing and wounding several Japanese military and colonial leaders. Both men were executed the same year. Kim publicly took personal responsibility for the group's actions. In 1940 the Provisional Government formally established the Korean Liberation Army.

Liberation and the fight against division

Japan surrendered in August 1945. Kim and fourteen colleagues landed at Gimpo Airport on 23 November 1945, after the Provisional Government had agreed to return as private citizens rather than as a government. Korea was now occupied by Soviet forces in the north and American forces in the south. Kim opposed the trusteeship plan announced at the Moscow Conference in December 1945, and he clashed with Syngman Rhee, whom the article describes as the United States' preferred leader for the South.

In April 1948 he travelled to Pyongyang for unification talks with Kim Il Sung, but no agreement was reached, and he opposed the creation of separate states in the north and south that year.

Assassination and unanswered questions

On 26 June 1949 Kim Gu was shot dead at Gyeonggyojang, his residence in Seoul, by an army officer, Ahn Doo-hee. Ahn said he had acted because he considered Kim an agent of the Soviet Union. Questions about who else was involved have never been fully settled: a confession published in 1992 claimed the killing was ordered by Kim Chang-ryong, a security chief under Syngman Rhee, and documents declassified in 2001 showed that Ahn had worked for the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps, though some have questioned how far that evidence goes. Ahn himself was killed in 1996 by an admirer of Kim.

Kim received the first state funeral of the Republic of Korea and was buried in Hyochang Park in Seoul, in a cemetery for independence activists that he himself had helped establish. In 1962 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Merit for National Foundation, and the Kim Koo Museum opened in Seoul in 2002.

Learn with Kim Gu: English phrases about history and leadership

Phrase	Meaning	Example
in exile	living outside your country, unable to return	The government worked in exile in Shanghai.
take responsibility	say that something is your duty or fault	He took responsibility for the group.
an ordinary person	someone with no special status	His pen name means an ordinary person.
remain unanswered	still have no clear answer	Some questions remain unanswered.
a turning point	a moment of great change	1945 was a turning point for Korea.

Try this: Choose a turning point in your own country's history and write three English sentences about it, using "a turning point" and "remain unanswered".