Yook Dong-baek

By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

Yook Dong-baek, a freedom fighter during the Japanese colonization, died last month in the U.S. after a traffic accident. He was 100 in Korean age, the oldest of from a designated government list of activists.

According to Seoul National University (SNU), the accident happened as Yook was on his way to Virginia to meet the president of Virginia Tech University in May to pay his condolences for the massacre that took tens of students' lives. He was hospitalized, but died shortly after on June 11.

Yook was recognized for leading a Suwon High School students' independence movement that took place in 1928, to counter Japanese colonization.

In 1926, he entered high school, which is now SNU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and assumed the leading role that had him imprisoned. He served his time at Seodaemun for 18 months.

The student protest is said to be the first in a long line of movements during the ``dark era.''

After the liberation, he worked for the Korean embassy to U.S. and taught high-tech agriculture at the State University of New York and University of Minnesota.

Yook was known as a diligent man _ he worked as a banker well into his 80s and made several recommendations to the Florida state government. He was one of the fierce opponents of the American government's forestry policy and is said to have even voiced complaints to former U.S. president Reagan on the case.

Yook was a proud Korean. ``There's a spirit of independence alive inside of me though it has been 80 years since I started the movement. Now, I want to see my country, my love, prosper_ that's my very last wish,'' he said during his visit to Korea last year.

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr