Who Was Yun Bong-gil? The Korean Independence Activist Behind the Hongkou Park Bombing

Yun Bong-gil, a farm teacher from Yesan, bombed a Japanese ceremony in Shanghai in 1932 and was executed at 24. His life, the attack, and how he is remembered.

Yun Bong-gil (1908–1932) was a Korean independence activist, best known for the Hongkou Park Incident: on April 29, 1932, he threw a bomb at a Japanese ceremony in Shanghai's Hongkou Park, killing two senior Japanese officials and wounding several others. He was arrested on the spot, sentenced by a Japanese military court and executed by firing squad in Kanazawa, Japan, on December 19, 1932, at the age of 24. In 1962 the South Korean government posthumously gave him its highest Order of Merit for National Foundation. His art name was Maeheon, and memorials to him stand in Seoul, Yesan, Shanghai and Kanazawa.

A village boy who left a Japanese school

Yun was born on June 21, 1908, in Yesan County, South Chungcheong Province, then part of the Korean Empire. He grew up as Korea fell under Japanese control: it became a protectorate in 1905 and was annexed in 1910. He entered Deoksan Elementary School in 1918, but the next year he dropped out, refusing the colonial education it offered, and studied instead at a village school that taught Korean and Chinese classics. That was the year of the March 1st Movement of 1919, a nationwide independence protest that the Japanese authorities crushed violently.

A teacher of farmers

Before he was a fighter, Yun was an educator. By 1926 he was running evening classes in his hometown for people from rural communities, and he organized a reading club. He wrote a textbook called Farmers Readers to teach poor young adults who could not attend school to read, founded a group to revive farming villages, and set up rural sports clubs, believing that a healthy body and mind would serve both rural development and national independence.

His activities did not go unnoticed. After a successful village festival in which he staged a satirical sketch called "The Rabbit and the Fox", he came to the attention of Japan's special higher police, the secret police that watched people considered a threat to the empire.

From Manchuria to Shanghai

In the 1930s Yun decided to join the independence movement in earnest. Before leaving, he wrote that he would not return home alive, believing he must die for his country and do something great. He went first to Manchuria, hoping to join an independence army, but the forces there were divided and weak. So he headed for Shanghai, where the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was based, working in a factory in Qingdao on the way to save money. He arrived in Shanghai in August 1931, studied English there, and visited Kim Gu, the leader of the government-in-exile, pledging to work for Korea's independence.

How was the Hongkou Park attack planned?

On January 28, 1932, Japanese forces attacked Chinese troops in Shanghai. After more than a month of fighting, the Chinese side retreated and a ceasefire was declared, and Japanese officials planned to hold a victory celebration at Hongkou Park on April 29, the Emperor's birthday. According to one account, Chinese officials who wanted to disrupt the celebration could not get anyone in, because no Chinese would be allowed to attend, so they asked the Korean Provisional Government for help, and Kim Gu agreed to organize the mission.

Kim Gu had learned from the failure of Lee Bong-chang, whose attempt to kill the Japanese emperor in Tokyo earlier that year had not succeeded, and prepared the explosives carefully. He chose Yun, who spoke fluent Japanese and was determined. On April 26, Yun joined the Korean Patriotic Organization and took an oath under the Korean flag, and the moment was photographed.

What happened on April 29, 1932?

Yun entered the park carrying a bomb disguised as a water bottle. The explosion killed Kawabata Teiji, the head of the Japanese residents' association in Shanghai, and mortally wounded General Shirakawa Yoshinori, who died on May 26. Lieutenant General Ueda Kenkichi and the diplomat Shigemitsu Mamoru each lost a leg, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburō lost an eye, and the consul-general was seriously injured. Yun then tried to kill himself with a second bomb hidden in a lunch box, but it did not explode, and he was arrested at the scene.

Trial and execution

A Japanese military court in Shanghai convicted him on May 25, 1932. In November he was moved to a prison in Osaka and then to Kanazawa, the base of the Japanese army's 9th Division, where he was executed by firing squad on December 19. He was buried in a cemetery in Kanazawa. In 1946, after Korea's liberation, Korean residents in Japan exhumed his remains, which were taken to Seoul and reburied in Hyochang Park with Korean funeral rites.

How is he remembered?

Reactions at the time differed sharply. Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese leader, praised Yun as a young Korean patriot who had done what tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers could not. Syngman Rhee, later South Korea's first president, disapproved of the attack and of Kim Gu's strategy of assassinations, arguing that Japan could use such acts to justify its oppression of Korea.

In South Korea today he is honoured as a patriot of the independence movement, and he is often mentioned alongside Kim Gu, Lee Bong-chang and An Jung-geun. For learners of Korean history, his story connects several threads at once: rural education in the 1920s, the exile government in Shanghai, and the war between Japan and China.

Learn with Yun Bong-gil: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to take an oath	to make a serious promise	Yun took an oath under the flag.
in earnest	seriously, with full effort	He joined the movement in earnest.
to lay down one's life	to die for a cause	He was ready to lay down his life.
to go into exile	to leave one's country for political reasons	Many activists went into exile.
to be honoured posthumously	to receive an honour after death	He was honoured posthumously in 1962.

Try this: Write three sentences about a historical figure from your country, using "in earnest" and "to go into exile".