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영어

This paper intends to present the life and activities of Gim Cheol-su (1983-1986) a prominent anti-Japanese Communist leader and a lifelong member of the anti-Communist South Korean society since the fall of 1946. Gim Cheol-su struggled to help Korea achieve national independence and worked towards social equality in Korean society. Through his political life, Gim Cheol-su emphasized the importance of the national unity and tried to eliminate factionalism among the nationalist and Communist groups. Gim Cheol-su was a leader of the Shanghai Group (Goryeo Gongsandang Sanghaepa) and later the Seou-Shanghai Group (Seosangpa) in the Korean Communist movement during the Japanese occupation. He also played a key role in leading his group to join the Tuesday Group (Hwayopa)-led Korean Communist Party at the end of 1925 and resurrecting the unified Korean Communist Party (the Second Party) at the end of 1926. After being marginalized by younger leaders who formed a faction called the ML Group (acronym for the Marx-Leninist Group) within the Party (‘dang jung dang’), Gim Cheol-su decided to oppose and dissolve the faction until the end of 1928. Based on shared political principle and beliefs, Gim Cheol-su supported the leadership of Bak Heon-yeong, a leader of the Tuesday Group and Seoul Communist Group (Seoul Kong Group) after the liberation of Korea from Japan in 1945. Gim Cheol-su’s life and activities symbolically mirrors the beginning and end, as well as the experiment and failure of the Shanghai Group within the larger Korean Communist movement. The Shanghai Group and Seoul-Shanghai Group differed politically from other communist groups with its emphasis on tradition and the uniqueness of Korean society and its revolutionary movement in contrast with Bak Heon-yeong’s Communist group, which attached more importance to the ‘the International Line (Gugje Noseon)’ which followed the directives of the Comintern and Soviet Communist Party. This explains the different development the communist movement in Korea compared with those of China and Vietnam where Mao Zedong and Ho Chi-minh had similar political lines with the Shanghai and Seoul-Shanghai Group of the Korean Communist Movement. Opposing the leadership of Bak Heon-yeong’s Korean Communist Party with regard to the issue of unifying the three left-wing political parties, Gim Cheol-su abstained from participation in the South Korean Labor Party (Namnodang) and retired from further political activities in the fall of 1946 and returned to his hometown, Buan, North Cheolla Province. Until his death in 1986, Gim Cheol-su refrained from any further political activities while having to overcome the hardship and strict surveillance under the anti-Communist South Korean authorities. His decision to spend the rest of his days in South Korea is in sharp contrast with the majority of Korean Communists and left-wing leaders who joined the South Korean Labor Party and later went across into the North.