Kim Danya (金丹冶, January 16, 18991 – February 13, 1938) was an independence activist of the late Joseon period, and a socialist independence activist and journalist who mainly worked overseas during the Japanese occupation of Korea. He was rehabilitated as an Independence activist of South Korea in 2005. His birth name was Kim Tae-yeon (金泰淵).
Life
Childhood
Kim Danya was born on January 16, 1899, in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang Province, the son of a middle-class farmer. There are theories that he was born in 1899, 1900, or 1901. Russian sources state that he was born in 1901. Nothing is known about his family background, except that his father once rose to prosperity as a practitioner of Korean medicine. However, although his father was a Korean medicine doctor, after Japan annexed Korea in 1910 he was stripped of his license and became a farmer. Kim Danya is said to have studied Chinese characters for two years at a village schoolhouse at the age of six or seven. He is said to have lived an ordinary life like any other child until he finished common school in 1914.
Youth
Entry into the independence movement
In 1915 he entered Keisung School, a Protestant (Presbyterian) school in Daegu, and gradually awakened to new consciousness, beginning a "justified resistance" as the son of a colony. He took the lead in a boycott of classes against the American principal, a Presbyterian missionary, and a Japanese teacher who routinely beat Korean students, and in December 1916 he was expelled. 2 His family, who were Protestant believers, is said to have been greatly shocked that Kim Danya had been expelled for a class boycott against a Protestant missionary. The family, who had paid his tuition until then, flatly said they would no longer pay it. In January 1917, Kim Danya told only his mother, received a small amount of travel money, and left for Tokyo, Japan. He is said to have supported himself in Tokyo by working as a milk deliveryman, newspaper seller, and candy seller while attending Seigoku (正則) English School and trying to raise money for night school tuition. In August 1917 he received a letter from his father saying, "I will support your tuition, so come back," and Kim Danya soon returned to Korea. That September he entered Paichai School in Gyeongseong.
Independence movement
Activities in the 1920s
Having developed an early interest in student movements, he took part in the March 1st Movement while attending Paichai School. At the end of March he led a independence demonstration in his hometown of Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang, and was arrested and sentenced to 90 strokes of the cane by the Gimcheon branch of the Daegu District Court. He then engaged in the secret organization "Jeoksaengdan (赤星團)," and in December, to evade police pursuit, he fled into exile in Shanghai, China. After going into exile in Shanghai he met Park Heon-yong and Im Won-geun there, and the three became known as the Samin-dang (三人黨, "Three-Man Party") and worked together. After moving his base of activity to Shanghai, he served as an executive of the Irkutsk faction's Korean Communist Youth League. He was a close comrade of Park Heon-yong and Im Won-geun, known as the "Hwayo faction troika" and "Hwayo three-man team," with whom he had worked in the Korean Communist Youth League, the Hwayo Group, and the Sinheung Youth League.
In January 1922, when the Congress of the Peoples of the Far East was held in Moscow, he attended the meeting together with Yi Jeong Park Heon-yong, Mongyang Yeo Un-hyeong, Kim Kyu-sik, Yi Dong-hwi, and others. He traveled with Yeo Un-hyeong, Kim Kyu-sik, Park Heon-yong, and others by automobile to Mongolia, and in Mongolia by horse-drawn carriage and train, arriving in Moscow, Soviet Union. After the congress ended, on February 20 he met Vladimir Lenin, who had the greatest impact on his life. He met Lenin together with 17 representatives from various countries who had attended the "Far Eastern Youth Congress," and this brief meeting became the occasion for him to firmly establish his socialist ideas.
Afterwards, following instructions from the Comintern, he worked moving between Moscow, Shanghai, and within Korea. In April 1922, when he entered Korea to move the central headquarters of the Korean Communist Youth League into the country, he was arrested in Sinuiju together with Park Heon-yong and Im Won-geun, and was sentenced to one year and six months in prison by the Sinuiju District Court.
Period as a reporter for the Chosun Ilbo
In January 1924 he was released from prison and recuperated in his hometown of Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang, before being hired as a reporter for the Chosun Ilbo. While working as a reporter, including publishing articles such as "Impressions of Meeting Lenin" in the Chosun Ilbo, he joined the Hwayo faction in secret together with Park Heon-yong and Im Won-geun and was active in social movements. Among his many activities, the one he devoted the most energy to was the "Korean Communist Youth League," which was launched on April 18, 1925. In this youth league, Park Heon-yong was the chief secretary, Kim Danya was in charge of the "Investigation Department," and Ju Se-juk was a "candidate member."
Kim Danya's writing skills as a reporter for the Chosun Ilbo were outstanding, and his bright personality and wit made him popular with fellow reporters. However, it is said that he rarely socialized with colleagues after work.3
However, in early September 1925, Shin Il-yong (辛日鎔), a former member of the Seoul Youth Association who worked as an editorial writer for the Chosun Ilbo, caused a "libel incident," and the Government-General of Korea pressured the Chosun Ilbo, which was suspended as of September 8 and even had its printing press confiscated. The Government-General, holding the printing press, threatened that unless the progressive newspaper reporters were dismissed, the paper would not be allowed to publish. Paradoxically, it was the conservative reporters within the Chosun Ilbo who directly opposed the Government-General's pressure to dismiss progressive reporters. The conservative reporters argued for allying with reporters from the socialist organization Bukpunghoe to refuse the Government-General's demands and fight. However, the reporters of the Hwayo Group faction, centered on the progressive reporter Hong Jeung-sik, accepted the Government-General's demands.4
On October 15, the Chosun Ilbo, under pressure from the Government-General, dismissed 17 reporters, and among them, Kim Danya along with his colleagues Park Heon-yong and Im Won-geun were also dismissed.
Activities around the June 10 Movement and the 1930s
After being dismissed from the Chosun Ilbo in October 1925, to avoid the first arrests of the Korean Communist Party and to liaise with the Eastern Secretariat of the Comintern Executive Committee, he fled into exile in Shanghai for the second time in December 1925. After going into exile in Shanghai, from January to July 1926 Kim Danya served as chief editor of the Korean Communist Party's organ Hwahwa (火花, "Spark"). He also participated in establishing the "Overseas Department" of the Korean Communist Party, and while funding the domestic communist party, he carried out a campaign to rebuild the Korean Communist Party. In Shanghai he published the organ Communist, and in April 1926, upon hearing of the death of Emperor Sunjong of Korea, he produced leaflets and sent them into Korea, deeply involving himself in the June Tenth Independence Movement and leading worker strike movements. In 1929 he graduated from the International Lenin School in Moscow, and that July, in Vladivostok, together with Cho Du-won and others, he discussed carrying out a party reconstruction movement based on the Comintern's "December Theses," and then entered Korea together. In November, together with Park Min-yeong and Kwon O-jik and others, he organized the "Korean Communist Party Reconstruction Preparatory Committee," and took charge of the organizational department. However, in February 1930, when a warrant for arrest was issued by the Japanese police, he left Korea to escape the dragnet and went to Moscow, and in September moved his base of activity to Shanghai, China, where he engaged in anti-imperialist activities while publishing the magazine Communist. In 1932, the following year, a warrant for arrest was issued by Japanese police who had received a tip-off from a Japanese informant. His fellow activist in Shanghai, Park Heon-yong, was ultimately caught by the Japanese police, and while they were delaying, Kim Danya and Ju Se-juk escaped.
Afterwards, Kim Danya fled into exile in the Soviet Union with Ju Se-juk, and in 1934 he took a position managing Korean students at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. That year, although Kim Danya knew that his comrade Park Heon-yong was alive, he married Ju Se-juk for the third time, concealing from her the fact that Park Heon-yong was alive, while Ju Se-juk, Park Heon-yong's wife, believed him to be dead. Kim Danya had a first wife in his hometown, and his second wife was Ko Myeong-ja, who was also an activist.
Final years
In 1937, Kim Danya again had the opportunity to throw himself into the party reconstruction movement, as the Comintern had a plan to dispatch him to Korea to take up "party work." However, around this time, an intelligence organ of the Soviet Union suddenly notified Kim Danya, saying, "According to the intelligence materials we hold, it is not advisable to dispatch him to Korea for party work." Then, on November 5, 1937, the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs suddenly arrested Kim Danya.
The person who submitted an anonymous letter to the Soviet intelligence organ accusing him of being a "spy" was a Korean under the alias "Kim Chun-seong." It is speculated that Kim Chun-seong was Yi Seong-tae, a native of Jeju Island who was a member of the third executive committee of the Korean Communist Party created by Kim Chul-su, a Korean Communist Party executive. In that anonymous letter, not only Kim Danya but also Park Heon-yong, Cho Bong-am, Kim Chan, Kim Han, and other leading communists of the era were all branded as Japanese spies.5
Meanwhile, after being arrested by the Soviet intelligence organ, Kim Danya was cast from a "Korean Communist Party reconstruction activist" into a "Japanese informant." Subsequently, the trial proceeded before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union without any lawyer or right to rebut, and the Soviet court ruled that Kim Danya was "a Japanese intelligence agent and a first-class criminal as the leader of an organization aimed at counter-revolutionary uprisings and counter-revolutionary terrorist activities." Kim Danya was executed on February 13 of the following year, 1938, without receiving any defense.
Posthumous
In 2005, he was recognized as an independence activist when the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs of South Korea posthumously awarded him the Order of Independence, Order of Merit for National Foundation.
Other
He is said to have had a slender build and great height. His personality is also said to have been outgoing, with abundant sociability.
References
Notes