Ju Se-juk (朱世竹, June 2, 1901 – 1953?) was a socialist Korean independence activist and journalist during the Japanese colonial period, and a socialist activist who worked abroad. At one time she was the wife of Pak Heon-yong, who took part in the establishment of the North Korean government and served as the first vice premier and foreign minister of its cabinet. After Pak was arrested by the Japanese police and they divorced, she fled to Moscow to evade the Japanese police's surveillance and remarried Kim Dan-ya. To disguise her identity she sometimes used the alias Han Se-juk, and in the Soviet Union she also used aliases such as Han Bera and Koreyeva.
She organized and founded socialist women's organizations such as the Joseon Women's Comradeship and the Joseon Women's Liberation League, and joined the Communist Party of Korea, for which she was at times imprisoned. She also joined and served as a member of Singanhoe and Geunuhoe. While studying in Shanghai, China, she carried out work to rebuild the Communist Party of Korea together with Pak Heon-yong, Kim Dan-ya, and others. After she went into political exile in the Soviet Union in 1928, she never returned to Korea.
In 1928, to evade arrest by the Japanese, she fled to the Soviet Union and lived there, but was falsely accused of being a Japanese spy and was exiled for five years starting in 1938. Because the Soviet Union did not permit it, she was unable to return to Korea even after liberation, and she was posthumously rehabilitated in Russia. In South Korea she was also recognized as a Korean independence activist, and in 2007 the Order of National Foundation was posthumously conferred upon her.
Life
Early life
She was born in 1901 to a farming family in Hamgyeongnam-do's Hamhung, and grew up in a comfortable environment. She attended Yeongsaeng Girls' School in Hamhung for two years, and later went to study in Gyeongseong, where she advanced to a secondary school.
During her secondary school years she took part in the March 1st Movement, was detained, and as a result discontinued her studies. In 1921 she went to study abroad in Shanghai, where she studied piano. Afterwards, she engaged in anti-Japanese and Communist Party of Korea organizing activities centered on Shanghai.1 She also met Pak Heon-yong, Kim Dan-ya, and others, and carried out communist movement activities.
It is known that the first full-length novel by Sim Hun, a classmate of Pak Heon-yong at Gyeongseong Jeil High School, The Lover of the East (《동방의 애인》, 1930), was modeled on Pak Heon-yong and Ju Se-juk during this period. Ju Se-juk and Pak Heon-yong were active together in the Irkutsk Faction and the Goryeo Communist Youth League, and they married in 1921. In April 1921 she entered the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, graduated in May 1922, and then returned home.
Socialist movement
In November 1925, in the "First Communist Party of Korea Arrest Incident," she was arrested together with Pak Heon-yong by the Japanese police in Gyeongseong, but because she was able to conceal her activities in the Goryeo Communist Youth League, she was released soon afterward due to insufficient evidence. In January 1925, together with Heo Jeong-suk, Park Won-hui, and others, she took part in organizing the Joseon Women's Liberation League; in February, she became a preparatory committee member of the All-Joseon Popular Movement Congress convened under the leadership of the Hwayo Society; and in April of that year she was elected a central alternate member of the Goryeo Communist Youth League, and in mid-April she took part in the preparatory congress for the founding of the Communist Party of Korea held at Aseowon in Gyeongseong, after which she joined the Communist Party of Korea. In 1926 she was arrested on suspicion of participating in the June 10th Manse Movement, and was released after two months. Afterwards she carried out activities to rebuild the Communist Party of Korea.
In May 1927, together with Kim Hwal-ran, Park Soon-cheon, Yu Yeong-jun, Choe Eun-hui, Park Won-min, Park Cha-jeong, Jeong Jong-myeong, and others, she took part in founding Geunuhoe (槿友會), an anti-Japanese women's movement organization, and carried out anti-Japanese national salvation activities and women's status improvement activities.12 In 1928, she and Pak Heon-yong, who had been temporarily released on medical bail after pretending to be mentally ill, escaped to Vladivostok in the Soviet Union while pregnant, and there she graduated from the Communist University of the Toilers of the East.
From the following year she worked under the alias "Koreyeva" (meaning "Korean woman") and carried out independence activities in Moscow and other places.12 In 1932 she moved to Shanghai on the instructions of the Comintern, but in 1933 Pak Heon-yong was again arrested by the Japanese police and contact was cut off.
Believing that Pak Heon-yong was dead, Ju Se-juk remarried in 1933 to Kim Dan-ya, an independence activist who had also lost contact with his wife Ko Myeong-ja. 33 However, rumors spread that Ju Se-juk and Kim Dan-ya had already been in an extramarital affair since around 1929, and that Pak Heon-yong, having learned of it, had broken off relations with Ju Se-juk. There was also a theory that after she separated from Pak Heon-yong, Ju Se-juk believed her husband was dead, but that Kim Dan-ya knew he was alive and did not tell her.
After the 1930s
In 1937, when Ju Se-juk was pregnant with her second child, Kim Dan-ya, together with figures of the Hwayo faction, was arrested in the Soviet Union on charges of being a "Japanese spy" and was executed immediately.45 Ju Se-juk was also implicated in this incident and was arrested by the Soviet police on the grounds that she was a Japanese agent.
Pak Heon-yong first learned of Ju Se-juk's remarriage from within Korea shortly after his release in 1939. Even the overseas communist activists who had confirmed that Pak Heon-yong was alive criticized Ju Se-juk and Kim Dan-ya, but Pak Heon-yong told them to bury the matter and keep silent.67
Exile and life after liberation
On May 22, 1938, the Special Council of the Soviet Union's People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs sentenced Ju Se-juk to five years of exile in Kazakhstan,8 and afterwards she lived there under five years of exile. During her exile her son died. In 1940 she was given labor punishment at a cooperative in Karmakchi, and worked there until 1946.
On August 15, 1945, while she was staying in Kazakhstan, she received news of liberation. Immediately after liberation, Ju Se-juk submitted a petition to Stalin asking to be "permitted to return to Joseon," but this petition was refused. However, the Soviet government allowed her to work as a factory worker at a weaving mill in Kzyl-Orda starting July 10, 1946.96
The Soviet Union kept secret from Pak Heon-yong the fact that Ju Se-juk had been exiled as a political prisoner, and Pak himself only thought she was getting along well in the Soviet Union. In early July 1946, Pak Heon-yong went to Moscow as a member of a Soviet visiting delegation. At that time Pak Heon-yong met his daughter Vivianna.7710
Later life
While staying in Kzyl-Orda, Ju Se-juk received news of the Korean War. Afterwards, too, she continually tried to learn about South Korea and North Korea through liaisons and merchants who travelled back and forth to Korea. While on her way to visit Moscow, where her daughter Pak Vivianna lived, she fell ill and died. Her son-in-law Viktor Markov attended her deathbed. Pak Vivianna recalled:
My mother, who had been branded as a dangerous element by the Stalin regime in 1938 and exiled to Central Asia, secretly came to Moscow in 1953 to see me, and died of illness. I was on a provincial tour at the time, so my husband watched over her deathbed. Still, my mother, who at least has a grave, is in a somewhat happier position than my father.6
Posthumous
In March 1989 she was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union, and her remains were interred in the ossuary of a Russian Orthodox Church monastery within Moscow.2
After the Roh Moo-hyun administration took office, public opinion favoring her rehabilitation emerged, and on August 16, 2007 she was rehabilitated and posthumously received the Order of National Foundation, Military Merit Medal (Aejokjang), of South Korea.11 The decoration was delivered through the South Korean Embassy in Russia to her eldest daughter Pak Vivianna. Regarding this posthumous conferral of the Order of National Foundation, right-wing groups in South Korea denounced it and held protests, arguing that the Order of National Foundation was being given to a communist.
Family
- Eldest daughter: Pak Vivianna (September 1, 1928 – November 7, 2013) – dancer and university professor in the Soviet Union and Russia
- Eldest son: Kim Vitaly
- Second daughter: ?
Related books
- Son Seok-chun. 《코레예바의 눈물》 (The Tears of Koreyeva). Donghaa. 2016. ISBN 9788996787280
References
- Lee Cheol, 《경성을 뒤흔든 11가지 연애사건》 (Eleven Love Affairs That Shook Gyeongseong) (Dasan Books, 2008)
- Ahn Jae-seong, 《박헌영 평전》 (A Biography of Pak Heon-yong) (Silcheon Munhaksa, 2009)
- Lee Jeong, Pak Heon-yong Ilde-ki (Im Gyeong-seok, Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2004)
- Hanguk Sahoejuui-ui Giwon (Im Gyeong-seok, Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2003)
- Lee Jeong, Pak Heon-yong Ilde-ki (Im Gyeong-seok, Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2004)
- Hanguk Sahoejuui-ui Giwon (Im Gyeong-seok, Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2003)
- Ko Jun-seok, 박헌영 (Yu Yeong-gu trans., Geul Publishing, 1992)
- Park Gap-dong, 박헌영 (Park Gap-dong, Insangsa, 1983)
- Hanguk Gongsanjuui Undongsa 1 (Kim Jun-yeop and Kim Chang-sun, Korea University Asia Problems Research Institute, 1967)
- Kim In-deok, 《한국현대사와 사회주의》 (Modern Korean History and Socialism) (Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2000)
- Institute for Korean Historical Studies, 역사비평: 1994년 가을 (Yeoksa Bipyeong: Autumn 1994) (Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 1994)
Notes