Independence fighter claimed as lyricist of national anthem

By Kim Jae-won

A non-government organization said Monday that it will file a petition with the government to acknowledge independence fighter An Chang-ho as the author of the national anthem which is officially categorized as an anonymous work.

Young Korean Academy said that it collected abundant evidence which supports that An authored the anthem, rekindling a decades-long debate on authorship of the song.

“An wrote the lyrics of the anthem in Pyongyang in 1907, hoping it would boost the patriotism of Koreans who suffered from the oppression of the Japanese imperialists,” said Oh Dong-choon, a director at the academy.

Oh said that An sent the lyrics to Seoncheon Church in South Pyeongan Province from where the song spread to the whole nation. The anthem was first sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” before Ahn Eak-tai composed a new melody for it in the late 1930s.

Authorship of the national anthem is a six decades-long debate which has not been resolved yet. According to the academy, the government selected five candidates, including An, as a potential author of the anthem in 1955, but did not confirm who the author of the song was.

An, also known by his pen name Dosan, was one of the early leaders of the Korean-American emigrant community in the United States.

He established the “Shinminhoe (New Korea Society)” when he returned to Korea from the United States in 1907. It was the most important organization to fight the Japanese occupation of Korea.

He established the Young Korean Academy in San Francisco in 1913 and was a key member in the founding of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai in 1919.

He wanted to reform the character of the Korean people and the entire social system of Korea. Educational reform and modernizing schools were two key efforts made by him.