Choe Dong-o (崔東旿, 1892 – 1963) was an independence activist during the Japanese colonial period and a politician of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Life
Choe was born on June 22, 1892, into a devout Cheondoist family in Yongun-ri, Wolhwa-myeon, Uiju-gun, Pyeongan-bukdo. He was of the Haeju Choe clan, also known as Choe Hak-won (崔學源), and his art name was Uisan (義山). At that time, Uiju was a region where repression was weaker after the failure of the Donghak Peasant Revolution, and Son Byong-hi, the third patriarch of the religion, Uiam, had focused his missionary efforts there. Even during the Japanese colonial period, the religion's membership was maintained at more than twice that of the south, and this is also why Cheondoists are the largest group among religious believers in North Korea today. Choe Dong-o was a disciple who received direct instruction from Son Byong-hi. He joined Donghak in 1903, graduated from the Advanced Normal Course and the Law Course of the Cheondoist Central Jonghak Institute, and was appointed as a preacher (gangdosa). He worked as a core member of the Uiju Great Diocese and then took a leading role in the March 1st Movement. He was arrested by the Japanese police, imprisoned, and later released.
As domestic activities became difficult due to Japanese surveillance and repression, in October 1919 he fled to Shanghai, China, dispatched by the Cheondo religion. In November, he became a counselor of the Interior Department of the Provisional Government and a domestic investigator, and in March 1920 he was promoted to director of the Local Affairs Bureau of the Interior Department, seeking to connect with Cheondoist forces inside the country. He also established Cheondoist Jongri-won (religious offices) in Shanghai and Beijing, gathered Cheondoists who had come into exile, stressed unity and solidarity, and promoted national consciousness. At this time, he worked together with Ryu Dong-yeol, a fierce independence army commander who was also a Cheondoist and later became his in-law.
Choe sought to create a new, integrated and authoritative independence movement organization from the standpoint of the Creation faction, but failed to achieve his aim and moved to the Northeast region. In 1924, in Manchuria, he engaged in anti-Japanese activities with Kim Dong-sam, Hyeon Ik-cheol, Kim I-dae, Kim Won-sik, and others in the Justice Society (Jeonguibu), an independence movement group in Manchuria. In early 1925, he established the Hwaseong Academy under the Justice Society and served as its director.
In 1929, he served as foreign affairs committee chairman of the National Society (Gukminbu), an incomplete merger of the Justice Society, the New People's Society, and the Chamui Society, and then as international affairs department head of the Korean Revolutionary Party, which was dedicated to independence movement work after organizational restructuring. On July 2, 1931, when the Manbosan Incident, which the Japanese had fabricated through a Sino-Korean divide-and-rule scheme, occurred, Choe organized the Jilin Korean Overseas Manbosan Incident Investigation Society (吉林韓僑萬寶山事件討究會) and directed the investigation of the facts and negotiations with Chinese officials and citizens.
When the Manchurian Incident broke out in 1931 and Japanese attacks on independence armies intensified, Choe moved to the area within the Great Wall in November of the following year, and centered on Beijing and Shanghai, he continued his activities under the name of the Korean Revolutionary Party together with Ryu Dong-yeol, Hyeon Ik-cheol, Yang Ki-tak, and others. In July 1935, he, together with Kim Won-bong, Kim Kyu-sik, and others, founded the Korean National Revolutionary Party by uniting independence movement groups through a left-right coalition; however, when it deviated from the original line of great unity, he joined Ji Cheong-cheon and others in 1937 to rebuild the Korean Revolutionary Party. Afterward, he was active in various posts, including standing committee member and secretary-chief of the right-wing-centered Korean Independence Party, vice speaker of the Provisional Assembly in November 1939, and reappointment as Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government in 1943, and served as a state councilor, member of the Provisional Assembly, and member of the foreign affairs committee of the Provisional Government until he returned home after liberation in August 1945.
After Japan's defeat, on November 3, 1945, Choe arrived at Gimpo Airport via Shanghai as part of the first group together with Kim Gu, Kim Kyu-sik, and other Provisional Government officials from Chongqing. Due to the cold treatment from the US Army Military Government, they had no choice but to return to Korea as private individuals. Choe devoted himself to building an independent nation based on national unity even during the period after liberation. In February 1946, he became vice chairman of the Democratic National Assembly (Bija Gungmin-hoeui), and in July of that year he served as a rightist member of the Left-Right Cooperation Committee. In December, when the Interim Legislative Assembly was formed, he was selected as an appointed member and elected vice speaker, serving in that capacity.
However, as the atmosphere of the US-Soviet Cold War gradually intensified, and as the United States and the forces of Syngman Rhee pushed for a separate election in South Korea under UN supervision and the establishment of a separate government, Choe joined Kim Gu, Kim Kyu-sik, and others in attending the historic Joint Conference of North and South Korean Political Parties and Social Organizations in April 1948. Despite this effort at national unity through the North-South negotiations, division, partition, and a half-state were treated as a fait accompli. Moreover, due to the arbitrary actions of the Syngman Rhee government, even the liquidation of pro-Japanese collaborators was frustrated, and the Korean War then broke out. The Korean People's Army and political workers from the North that occupied Seoul rushed to carry out the so-called "invitation operation" (모시기 공작), taking people such as Kim Kyu-sik and other figures who had participated in the North-South negotiations and prisoners released from jail to the North. Choe Dong-o, who was a member of the Provisional Government's State Council, had participated in the North-South negotiations, and had an especially close personal relationship with Kim Il Sung, was a central figure in the invitation operation. Ryu Dong-yeol, a general who, unlike most Provisional Government officials, had participated in the US Military Government and served as director of the Ministry of Defense Bureau of Military Affairs, playing a midwife role in establishing the Korean military, was also a target.1
Through the so-called "invitation operation" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Choe Dong-o and Ryu Dong-yeol were taken to the North. Ryu Dong-yeol, then 72 years old, died on October 18, 1950, in Huichon, near his hometown of Pakchon in North Pyongan Province. After Ryu's death, Choe served as an executive of the Pyongyang-based Peaceful Reunification Promotion Association composed of people who had been taken north, received treatment equivalent to a minister, lived for another 13 years, and died of a heart attack on September 16, 1963. The two were buried in the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery in Sinmi-ri, southwest of Pyongyang. In South Korea, because of their abduction to the North, Ryu Dong-yeol was belatedly awarded the Order of National Foundation, Presidential Medal, in 1989, and Choe Dong-o was awarded the Order of National Foundation, Order of Independence, in 1990. Choe Tok-shin and Ryu Mi-yong, Choe Dong-o's son and daughter-in-law and Ryu Dong-yeol's son-in-law and daughter, who had also followed a path of anti-communism and anti-North Korea, defected to the United States in 1976 and voluntarily moved north again in 1986. Both worked in high-ranking positions in the North and ended their lives there; they are currently buried in the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery in Sinmi-ri, Pyongyang.2
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