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From Yeoju to Shanghai
Eom Hang-seop was a Korean independence activist who used writing, translation and political organizing to support the campaign against Japanese colonial rule. Born in 1898 in Yeoju, in what is now Gyeonggi province, Eom fled to China during the March 1 Movement of 1919, a nationwide uprising calling for Korean independence.
In Shanghai, he joined Dongjesa, a secret Korean independence organization, and worked for the Korean Provisional Government, the government-in-exile established after the 1919 movement. He served as an official in its justice department and helped gather information related to selecting a representative for his home region.
Eom later studied Chinese, English and French at a university in Hangzhou. Those language skills became central to his work as the independence movement sought international support and communicated across borders.
His family also had deep ties to public service and the independence cause. His grandfather, Eom Se-yeong, held senior government posts before Japan’s annexation of Korea. Eom’s wife, Yeon Mi-dang, and their eldest daughter, Eom Gi-seon, were later awarded South Korean state honors for their work with the provisional government.
Supporting a Government-in-Exile
When Eom returned to Shanghai in 1922, the provisional government was struggling with dwindling personnel and money. Its members sometimes lacked funds for rent and food.
Eom took a job with the administration of Shanghai’s French Concession and used his salary to support prominent independence leaders, including Kim Gu and Yi Dong-nyeong. The position also allowed him to learn about efforts by the Japanese Consulate to arrest Koreans and to assist members of the Korean community facing legal trouble.
Kim later wrote in his memoir that Eom neglected his own household to feed activists who had difficulty finding food and shelter. Kim said Eom’s government job served two purposes: financing the movement’s members and gathering information that could help them avoid arrest.
Over the following decade, Eom held a succession of organizational and political roles. He helped establish a Korean youth alliance in Shanghai in 1924, joined a constitutional drafting committee in 1926 and became a central committee member of a Korean youth group in China in 1929. He also worked as an organizer for the Korean Independence Party after its founding in 1930.
In 1932, Eom was elected to the provisional legislature and later led the Korean Independence Party’s propaganda department.
Independence Work Through Language
Eom became a close aide to Kim Gu, one of the best-known leaders of the Korean independence movement. He participated in the founding and reorganization of political parties that eventually formed a unified Korean Independence Party in 1940.
In 1941, he returned to the provisional legislature and chaired its foreign affairs committee. In May 1944, he was appointed propaganda chief of the provisional government’s cabinet and executive secretary to Kim, then the government’s leader.
Eom’s translation work helped publicize Korean resistance in China. After Kim wrote an account of activist Lee Bong-chang’s 1932 attempt to assassinate Japan’s emperor in Tokyo, Eom translated the text into Chinese. Chinese newspapers published the translation, bringing the Korean independence movement’s account of the incident to a wider audience.
A Link to the United States
Eom also played a role in the provisional government’s wartime contacts with the United States. As Kim pursued plans with the Office of Strategic Services, the World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, to train Korean operatives for a possible mission into the Korean Peninsula, Eom helped connect Kim with Syngman Rhee in the United States and worked to secure OSS training.
The plans reflected the provisional government’s effort to join the Allied campaign against Japan. Japan’s surrender in August 1945 ended colonial rule before the proposed operation could become the path to liberation.
Return to a Divided Homeland
Eom returned to Korea on Nov. 23, 1945, as part of the first group of provisional government leaders to come home. He resumed his work as Kim’s aide at Gyeonggyojang, Kim’s residence and political headquarters in Seoul, and drafted many statements and public appeals issued under Kim’s name.
Eom joined Kim, Rhee and others in opposing international trusteeship proposals for Korea. The U.S. military government summoned and warned him in January 1946 amid political tensions over the campaign.
He also worked at a political training institute founded in 1947 to educate people expected to take part in building a new nation. The school taught subjects including independence movement history, politics, economics, law, constitutional government, rural affairs and women’s issues.
As separate governments emerged in the U.S.-backed South and Soviet-backed North, Eom supported Kim’s attempt to negotiate across the dividing line. In April 1948, he traveled to Pyongyang with a Korean Independence Party delegation for meetings between political figures from both sides. He was one of seven committee members selected to draft a joint statement.
Abduction, Death and Recognition
After Kim was assassinated in Seoul on June 26, 1949, Eom delivered an emotional memorial address mourning the loss of his longtime leader. The political training institute where he had worked closed two months later.
Eom was abducted to North Korea during the Korean War in 1950. Although claims persisted that he had gone north voluntarily, he is generally believed to have been taken against his will.
While in North Korea, Eom continued to be associated with proposals for inter-Korean negotiations. He traveled as far as Moscow in 1954 in an unsuccessful attempt to reach talks in Geneva, but returned to Pyongyang after Swiss authorities did not issue a visa. In 1955, he joined five other prominent figures in an appeal calling for negotiations between North and South, though questions were later raised about whether the published message reflected their true intentions.
Eom was appointed to committees of a North Korean organization promoting peaceful reunification in 1956. Two years later, authorities arrested him on accusations of anti-party and counterrevolutionary activity.
He died of a chronic illness in Pyongyang on July 30, 1962, and was buried at the Patriotic Martyrs’ Cemetery in Sinmi-ri. South Korea posthumously awarded him the Order of Merit for National Foundation in 1989. North Korea awarded him its National Reunification Prize in 1990, leaving Eom as a rare figure formally honored on both sides of the divided peninsula.
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