By Andrei Lakov
In mid-August, 1945 the Japanese colonial administration of Korea had no illusion: the war was lost. Their major worry was to ensure the evacuation of Japanese troops and civilians _ almost one million of them _ in an orderly manner.
The best way to keep law and order was to have a Korean quasi-government in place, led by someone who could be trusted by everybody. It was difficult to find such a person in the quarrelsome world of Korean politics, but the Japanese found a suitable personality: a prominent independence activist named Yo Un-hyung.
The following year, Soviet officers were drafting their proposal on the government of a unified Korea (in early 1946 the division was not decided upon yet). The Soviets proposed to give the post of prime minister to the person who, they felt, could be acceptable to almost everyone. Their choice was, once again, Yo.
What made this man, 60 years old in 1946, so acceptable to such different political forces? It was a quality unusual in Korean politics of the era _ tolerance. Indeed, in the era of quarrels and feuds, Yo managed to keep good relations with people across the political spectrum, and never got caught up in the petty clashes of political egos.
Born in 1886 to a landowning family, Yo received the then usual mix of a traditional and modern education; he became a Christian (for a while) and around 1919 joined the independence movement. He was soon attracted to Communism, traveled to Moscow and _ being probably the oldest of all aspiring Korean Communists of the era _ met Lenin and Trotsky.
Yo remained firmly on the left for the rest of his life, but he was never infected by the sectarian spirit so typical of the Stalinist communism of the 1920s and 1930s. His rational approach, his ability to see good things in people, and his attempts to find a middle ground won him the respect of many Korean politicians and intellectuals, but militant firebrands often branded him as an ``opportunist.’’
In 1929, Yo was arrested in Shanghai by the British police and extradited to Korea where he spent three years in a Japanese prison. After release, he became a chief editor of a major Korean newspaper _ another sign of the high respect he won in those days. When things got tough with the beginning of the Pacific War, he was arrested again.
When the Japanese began to withdraw, Yo’s name was put forward to form a Korean self-governing administration. He made clear that he would do it only if the Japanese would not interfere at all.
They agreed: after all, on August 14 the Japanese administration did not have many policy options available, and so Yo formed the first Korean quasi-government, the Nation Restoration Preparatory Committee.
Soon, in early September 1945, he was instrumental in the proclamation of the People’s Republic of Korea (do not confuse it with its near-namesake in the North). He wanted to create an indigenous government that would include prominent persons from both the right and left.
In the People’s Republic of Korea, the President’s position would go to Syngman Rhee, with many exiled politicians also being included. However, the American troops who, on September 9, took Seoul did not recognize the self-proclaimed People’s Republic, and the entire project collapsed.
The fate of the People’s Republic was a sign of things to come. For the next two years Yo worked hard, trying to reconcile the increasingly hostile right and left. He established a party of his own, with a left-leaning social-democratic program, but his major role was that of mediator and moderator. In this capacity, he secretly visited the North and met Kim Il-sung (roughly half his age at the time).
They obviously developed a good mutual understanding, and Yo’s children were to stay in the North where they were given preferential treatment and eventually allowed to join the country’s tiny elite.
However, all the sincere efforts, and all the good will and rationality that Yo brought to the table proved insufficient to change the direction of Korean history. The coalition government of a unified Korea might have been an attractive idea for many Koreans, but neither Moscow nor Washington were ready to compromise, and most local politicians, if anything, were even more militant than their overseas sponsors.
On July 19, 1947, Yo was killed by a young rightist zealot. One of the most rational minds of post-Liberation politics fell victim to the righteous passions of that cruel era. He was by no means only a victim of those passions: the late 1940s was the golden age of political assassinations.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul.