Kwon Ki-ok (權基玉, January 11, 1901 – April 19, 1988) was a Korean independence activist. In 1925 she graduated from the Yunnan Military Academy (Aviation Military Science Division) of the [[Republic of China (1912–1949)|Republic of China]], and she is regarded as the first Korean female aviator. She
Born~Died Jan 11, 1901 ~ Apr 19, 1988Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 2:51 PM
Director of the Social Affairs Department of the Korean Women's Patriotic Association, Member of the Supreme Council and Party Affairs Committee of the Korean Independence Party, Supreme Representative of the National Defense Committee of the Ministry of National Defense (South Korea) (1950–1955), publisher of the Korean Yearbook (1957–1972), Vice President of the Korea-China Cultural Association (1966–1975), honorary member of the Korea Veterans Association, adviser to the Korean Wo
Kwon Ki-ok was born in the second daughter of a family of declining yangban status at Sangsu-gu 152, Pyongyang Prefecture, South Pyongan Province, the second of four daughters and one son born to Kwon Don-gak (權敦珏) and Jang Mun-myeong (張文明). When she was born as the second daughter, her father half-jokingly named her Galne, a name carrying the meaning "go away quickly." At the age of eleven (1912), she took a job at a ginseng-pill factory to help support the household, and the following year, at the age of twelve, she enrolled at Sung-hyeon Elementary School, run by the Jang-daehyeon Church (章臺峴敎會, founded 1894). After graduating from Sung-hyeon Elementary School, she transferred into the third year of Soongeui Girls' School, a Christian school.
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Influenced by Park Hyeon-suk, who taught at Soongeui Girls' School, Kwon joined and worked with the Songjuk Society, an anti-Japanese secret organization. After American Art Smith performed an acrobatic flight in Pyongyang in May 1917, she began to dream of becoming a pilot.6
When the March 1 Movement broke out while she was still a student at Soongeui Girls' School, she actively took part in it. Through Park Hyeon-suk, she received instructions from Shin Hong-sik (申洪植, March 1, 1872 – 1937), one of the 33 National Representatives, and on March 1, 1919, she joined the demonstrations in Gyeongseong Prefecture and the simultaneous demonstrations in Pyongyang, after which she was briefly detained.
She later took part in raising funds for the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, but when her connection to Kim Jae-deok of the Pyongyang Youth Association, a youth organization in the Pyongyang area, came to light, she was arrested again and served six months in prison. During this time she maintained contact with the Provisional Government through Im Deuk-sam, Kim Jeong-jik, and Kim Sun-il, among others.
In the spring of 1920, after her release from prison, she formed a brass band and toured the Pyeongan and Gyeongsang provinces, engaging in popular enlightenment and serving as a liaison for independence activities. In the summer, she hid Mun Il-min and Jang Deok-jin, youth members affiliated with the Provisional Government who had infiltrated the area to bomb the South Pyongan Provincial Police Office, in the coal storehouse of Sung-hyeon Public School, and she helped carry the bombs to the site on the day of the attack.6
When the series of incidents in which Kwon had participated was exposed, a wave of arrests followed, and Kwon barely escaped just before she was to be arrested. With travel money secretly sent by Cho Man-sik, she boarded a Chinese anchovy boat and smuggled herself to Shanghai.6 Some accounts state that the Provisional Government highly valued her and sent Jang Deok-jin, the younger brother of Jang Deok-su, to help her defect to Shanghai.3
In November 1920, while staying at the home of Son Jeong-do, a pastor and Speaker of the Provisional Government's Provisional Legislative Assembly, Kwon expressed her ambition to become a pilot. After the March 1 Movement, her romantic dream of flying had been transformed into a grim resolve to fly an aircraft loaded with bombs and destroy the Japanese Government-General of Korea and the Imperial Palace in Japan. Understanding her aspirations, Kim Sun-ae (金淳愛, 1889–1976), the wife of Kim Gyu-sik, introduced her to Hongdao Girls' School in Hangzhou so that she could master Chinese and English, and Kwon first graduated from Hongdao Girls' School, a mission school.
On the recommendation of the Provisional Government, in early 1924 she enrolled in the Yunnan Military Academy Aviation Military Science Division (雲南陸軍講武學校 航空軍事學部). Among the four aviation schools established by Chinese warlords, Baoding Aviation School and Nanyuan Aviation School refused her admission because she was a woman, and the Guangzhou Guangdong Aviation School founded by Sun Yat-sen did not yet have a single aircraft. In December 1923, Kwon, carrying a letter of recommendation, negotiated directly with Tang Jiyao, the governor of Yunnan Province. Tang Jiyao, a warlord favorable to Korea's independence movement, was moved by the courage of a Korean who had come all the way across the sea to become a pilot, and he immediately approved her admission.
Meanwhile, there were several reasons why Kwon was able to enter an aviation school on the Chinese mainland during the Nationalist government period. First, she had a strong desire for independence, and there were demands from those around her. Because learning to fly would enable her to participate in the independence movement, Kwon worked hard to enter an aviation school, and the Provisional Government was also eager to secure aircraft as well as pilots. Second, the tuition was very low compared to Japanese aviation schools, and finally, she was able to enter through the recommendation of an influential figure.
Kwon was such an outstanding student that after about nine hours of flight training she was permitted to fly solo. At one point, the Japanese consulate even sent a hired assassin to kill her. On February 28, 1925, Kwon graduated as a member of the first class of the Yunnan Aviation School, becoming the first Korean female aviator. Afterward, at the request of the school's principal Yu Si-cheon, she took charge of spiritual education for junior students while conducting practice flights.
However, there was no stage on which Kwon and the other aviators could actually work. In May 1925, after returning to Shanghai, Kwon even told the Provisional Government that she would bomb the Japanese Government-General of Korea if they bought her an aircraft. Once she came to understand the Provisional Government's circumstances accurately, Kwon stayed in Guangdong with the Republic of China Guangzhou National Revolutionary Government in the autumn of 1925.
Around this time, Kwon was introduced as a female aviator in the Dong-a Ilbo on May 21, 1926, and also in the Joong-oe Ilbo on August 28, 1927.
Later, in the spring of 1926, through the introduction of Son Du-hwan, a powerful figure behind the Uiyeoldan, she joined the air force of Feng Yuxiang's reform-minded warlord army in Beijing. In April 1926, Kwon was appointed second flight officer of the Eastern Route Army Air Force. Around that time, through Seo Wal-bo, head of the Nanyuan Aviation School and commander of the Eastern Route Army Air Force, she met General Yu Dong-ryeol, an independence activist, and Mr. Yi Sang-jeong (the elder brother of poet Yi Sang-hwa).
In the spring of 1927, when the National Revolutionary Army established an air force, Kwon went to Shanghai and was appointed as a pilot of the Chinese Air Force. Around this time, Kwon met Choi Yong-deok and Kim Hong-il and became friends with them.
In January 1928, she was arrested by the Japanese police in Nanking and served time in prison, but after being interrogated at the Japanese consulate in Shanghai through the mediation of Chinese people, she was released. In February 1928, when she had to flee to Inner Mongolia that year, she married Yi Sang-jeong on February 29, and on May 31, 1928, she went with her husband Yi Sang-jeong to Tianjin.
She rose from second lieutenant to first lieutenant in the Republic of China Air Force, and when the air force was reorganized she became a senior captain (captain).7 In 1931, after Japan secretly occupied Manchuria, and in 1932 when it launched the Battle of Shanghai, Kwon flew an aircraft out and strafed Japanese troops with machine-gun fire. For her achievements in the Battle of Shanghai, Kwon received a military decoration.
In 1935, Soong Mei-ling, then vice chairwoman of the Aviation Committee, asked the pilot Kwon Ki-ok to carry out a propaganda flight to encourage Chinese young people who were unwilling to volunteer for the air force out of fear of airplanes. Kwon planned to bomb Japan after completing that flight, but on the day of departure, student demonstrations in Beijing made the political situation unstable and the plan itself was cancelled.
After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, she moved to Chongqing and worked as an instructor at the Army Staff College, lecturing on English and Japanese, methods of identifying Japanese troops, and their characteristics. In 1939, when the Provisional Government moved to Chongqing, Kwon persuaded the women, who were divided between left and right, to rebuild the Korean Women's Patriotic Association, a women's organization under the Provisional Government, and she served as its director of social affairs. Around this time, she was active under the alias Im Guk-yeong (林國英).
In the summer of 1943, Kwon, together with pilots such as Choi Yong-deok and Son Gi-jong, who were active in the Chinese air force, conceived of the organization of a Korean air unit and its operational plans. The "Organization and Operations of the Korean Liberation Army Air Unit," included in the Plan for the Establishment and Operations of the Korean Liberation Army, which the Provisional Government's Military Affairs Department submitted to the Provisional Legislative Assembly in March 1945, was the result of this effort. Its main content was that Korean pilots would directly take part in combat using aircraft supplied by the United States and China.6 However, because Japan collapsed earlier than expected, the plan was never carried out.
After liberation, she returned home in 1949, and Kwon, who became a expert consultant to the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, played a midwife role in the founding of the South Korean Air Force, earning the title "Mother of the Air Force." Her husband, Yi Sang-jeong, suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after liberation.6
Out of a conviction in the importance of accurate historical records, Kwon published the Korean Yearbook from 1957 to 1972. In 1966, she was introduced in the media as South Korea's first and only female publisher. In 1975, with the wish of raising young people who would be the children of all South Koreans and who would overcome Japan (克日), she donated her entire fortune to scholarship programs.6
From 1966 to 1975 she served as vice president of the Korea-China Cultural Association, and in 1968 she received a Presidential Commendation. In 1977 she was awarded the Order of National Foundation National Order.
She spent her later years on the second floor of an old wooden building with a wooden floor at Jangchung-dong 2-ga 191-4, Seoul, and died on April 19, 1988, at the age of 88. She was buried in the Patriots' Tomb of the National Cemetery. In August 2003, she was selected as the "Independence Activist of August" by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.
Family
Father: Kwon Don-gak (權敦珏)
Mother: Jang Mun-myeong (張文明)
Husband: Yi Sang-jeong (李相定, born June 10, 1897 – died October 27, 1947). Independence activist. Pen name Cheongnam (晴南), Saeun (汕隱). Major General of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China.
In-law: Choi Nam-seon (崔南善, April 26, 1890 – October 10, 1957)
In-law: Park Jung-yang (朴重陽, May 3, 1872 – April 23, 1959)
In-law: Heo Eok (許億, June 1, 1889 – 1957), Mayor of Daegu
There has been debate over who was the first Korean female aviator, Kwon Ki-ok or Park Kyeong-won4. The facts are as follows:
Kwon graduated from the Yunnan Aviation School on February 28, 1925, and received the appointment certificate of "Deputy Aviator, Aviation Office" from the Republic of China headquarters on April 20, 1926, so Kwon preceded Park by several years.
Looking at newspaper materials from that time, people then called both Kwon and Park "female aviators" alike. The Dong-a Ilbo of May 21, 1926, introduced Kwon under the headline "A Korean Wing in the Chinese Sky – Among Them, a Female Flying Expert." The Joong-oe Ilbo of May 25, 1928, also called Kwon a "female aviator." The Dong-a Ilbo article of September 4, 1926, which introduced Park, likewise described her as "Miss Park Kyeong-won, Korea's female aviator." There is an opinion that distinguishing between civilian pilots and fighter pilots only became relevant much later, when aircraft underwent rapid development as weapons.
The official records of the Republic of Korea, such as the materials in the archive of the Air Force Museum of the Republic of Korea Air Force Academy (located in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do) and the data collections of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, describe Kwon as the first Korean female aviator.
Numerous South Korean media reports, such as "The Patriotic Girl Who Flew in the Chinese Sky – An Interview with Mrs. Kwon Ki-ok, the First Female Aviator of Our Nation," and "The Sad August 15 of Kwon Ki-ok, Korea's First Female Pilot" (Weekly Women, August 27, 1969), identify Kwon as the first female aviator. Most notably, the memoir "My Résumé," serialized in the Hankook Ilbo in 24 installments from February 1978, describes Kwon not only as the first in Korea but as the "first female aviator in the East."
Kwon Ki-ok was born in the second daughter of a family of declining yangban status at Sangsu-gu 152, Pyongyang Prefecture, South Pyongan Province, the second of four daughters and one son born to Kwon Don-gak (權敦珏) and Jang Mun-myeong (張文明). When she was born as the second daughter, her father half-jokingly named her Galne, a name carrying the meaning "go away quickly." At the age of eleven (1912), she took a job at a ginseng-pill factory to help support the household, and the following year, at the age of twelve, she enrolled at Sung-hyeon Elementary School, run by the Jang-daehyeon Church (章臺峴敎會, founded 1894). After graduating from Sung-hyeon Elementary School, she transferred into the third year of Soongeui Girls' School, a Christian school.
Influenced by Park Hyeon-suk, who taught at Soongeui Girls' School, Kwon joined and worked with the Songjuk Society, an anti-Japanese secret organization. After American Art Smith performed an acrobatic flight in Pyongyang in May 1917, she began to dream of becoming a pilot.6
When the March 1 Movement broke out while she was still a student at Soongeui Girls' School, she actively took part in it. Through Park Hyeon-suk, she received instructions from Shin Hong-sik (申洪植, March 1, 1872 – 1937), one of the 33 National Representatives, and on March 1, 1919, she joined the demonstrations in Gyeongseong Prefecture and the simultaneous demonstrations in Pyongyang, after which she was briefly detained.
She later took part in raising funds for the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, but when her connection to Kim Jae-deok of the Pyongyang Youth Association, a youth organization in the Pyongyang area, came to light, she was arrested again and served six months in prison. During this time she maintained contact with the Provisional Government through Im Deuk-sam, Kim Jeong-jik, and Kim Sun-il, among others.
In the spring of 1920, after her release from prison, she formed a brass band and toured the Pyeongan and Gyeongsang provinces, engaging in popular enlightenment and serving as a liaison for independence activities. In the summer, she hid Mun Il-min and Jang Deok-jin, youth members affiliated with the Provisional Government who had infiltrated the area to bomb the South Pyongan Provincial Police Office, in the coal storehouse of Sung-hyeon Public School, and she helped carry the bombs to the site on the day of the attack.6
When the series of incidents in which Kwon had participated was exposed, a wave of arrests followed, and Kwon barely escaped just before she was to be arrested. With travel money secretly sent by Cho Man-sik, she boarded a Chinese anchovy boat and smuggled herself to Shanghai.6 Some accounts state that the Provisional Government highly valued her and sent Jang Deok-jin, the younger brother of Jang Deok-su, to help her defect to Shanghai.3
In November 1920, while staying at the home of Son Jeong-do, a pastor and Speaker of the Provisional Government's Provisional Legislative Assembly, Kwon expressed her ambition to become a pilot. After the March 1 Movement, her romantic dream of flying had been transformed into a grim resolve to fly an aircraft loaded with bombs and destroy the Japanese Government-General of Korea and the Imperial Palace in Japan. Understanding her aspirations, Kim Sun-ae (金淳愛, 1889–1976), the wife of Kim Gyu-sik, introduced her to Hongdao Girls' School in Hangzhou so that she could master Chinese and English, and Kwon first graduated from Hongdao Girls' School, a mission school.
On the recommendation of the Provisional Government, in early 1924 she enrolled in the Yunnan Military Academy Aviation Military Science Division (雲南陸軍講武學校 航空軍事學部). Among the four aviation schools established by Chinese warlords, Baoding Aviation School and Nanyuan Aviation School refused her admission because she was a woman, and the Guangzhou Guangdong Aviation School founded by Sun Yat-sen did not yet have a single aircraft. In December 1923, Kwon, carrying a letter of recommendation, negotiated directly with Tang Jiyao, the governor of Yunnan Province. Tang Jiyao, a warlord favorable to Korea's independence movement, was moved by the courage of a Korean who had come all the way across the sea to become a pilot, and he immediately approved her admission.
Meanwhile, there were several reasons why Kwon was able to enter an aviation school on the Chinese mainland during the Nationalist government period. First, she had a strong desire for independence, and there were demands from those around her. Because learning to fly would enable her to participate in the independence movement, Kwon worked hard to enter an aviation school, and the Provisional Government was also eager to secure aircraft as well as pilots. Second, the tuition was very low compared to Japanese aviation schools, and finally, she was able to enter through the recommendation of an influential figure.
Kwon was such an outstanding student that after about nine hours of flight training she was permitted to fly solo. At one point, the Japanese consulate even sent a hired assassin to kill her. On February 28, 1925, Kwon graduated as a member of the first class of the Yunnan Aviation School, becoming the first Korean female aviator. Afterward, at the request of the school's principal Yu Si-cheon, she took charge of spiritual education for junior students while conducting practice flights.
However, there was no stage on which Kwon and the other aviators could actually work. In May 1925, after returning to Shanghai, Kwon even told the Provisional Government that she would bomb the Japanese Government-General of Korea if they bought her an aircraft. Once she came to understand the Provisional Government's circumstances accurately, Kwon stayed in Guangdong with the Republic of China Guangzhou National Revolutionary Government in the autumn of 1925.
Around this time, Kwon was introduced as a female aviator in the Dong-a Ilbo on May 21, 1926, and also in the Joong-oe Ilbo on August 28, 1927.
Later, in the spring of 1926, through the introduction of Son Du-hwan, a powerful figure behind the Uiyeoldan, she joined the air force of Feng Yuxiang's reform-minded warlord army in Beijing. In April 1926, Kwon was appointed second flight officer of the Eastern Route Army Air Force. Around that time, through Seo Wal-bo, head of the Nanyuan Aviation School and commander of the Eastern Route Army Air Force, she met General Yu Dong-ryeol, an independence activist, and Mr. Yi Sang-jeong (the elder brother of poet Yi Sang-hwa).
In the spring of 1927, when the National Revolutionary Army established an air force, Kwon went to Shanghai and was appointed as a pilot of the Chinese Air Force. Around this time, Kwon met Choi Yong-deok and Kim Hong-il and became friends with them.
In January 1928, she was arrested by the Japanese police in Nanking and served time in prison, but after being interrogated at the Japanese consulate in Shanghai through the mediation of Chinese people, she was released. In February 1928, when she had to flee to Inner Mongolia that year, she married Yi Sang-jeong on February 29, and on May 31, 1928, she went with her husband Yi Sang-jeong to Tianjin.
She rose from second lieutenant to first lieutenant in the Republic of China Air Force, and when the air force was reorganized she became a senior captain (captain).7 In 1931, after Japan secretly occupied Manchuria, and in 1932 when it launched the Battle of Shanghai, Kwon flew an aircraft out and strafed Japanese troops with machine-gun fire. For her achievements in the Battle of Shanghai, Kwon received a military decoration.
In 1935, Soong Mei-ling, then vice chairwoman of the Aviation Committee, asked the pilot Kwon Ki-ok to carry out a propaganda flight to encourage Chinese young people who were unwilling to volunteer for the air force out of fear of airplanes. Kwon planned to bomb Japan after completing that flight, but on the day of departure, student demonstrations in Beijing made the political situation unstable and the plan itself was cancelled.
After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, she moved to Chongqing and worked as an instructor at the Army Staff College, lecturing on English and Japanese, methods of identifying Japanese troops, and their characteristics. In 1939, when the Provisional Government moved to Chongqing, Kwon persuaded the women, who were divided between left and right, to rebuild the Korean Women's Patriotic Association, a women's organization under the Provisional Government, and she served as its director of social affairs. Around this time, she was active under the alias Im Guk-yeong (林國英).
In the summer of 1943, Kwon, together with pilots such as Choi Yong-deok and Son Gi-jong, who were active in the Chinese air force, conceived of the organization of a Korean air unit and its operational plans. The "Organization and Operations of the Korean Liberation Army Air Unit," included in the Plan for the Establishment and Operations of the Korean Liberation Army, which the Provisional Government's Military Affairs Department submitted to the Provisional Legislative Assembly in March 1945, was the result of this effort. Its main content was that Korean pilots would directly take part in combat using aircraft supplied by the United States and China.6 However, because Japan collapsed earlier than expected, the plan was never carried out.
After liberation, she returned home in 1949, and Kwon, who became a expert consultant to the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, played a midwife role in the founding of the South Korean Air Force, earning the title "Mother of the Air Force." Her husband, Yi Sang-jeong, suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after liberation.6
Out of a conviction in the importance of accurate historical records, Kwon published the Korean Yearbook from 1957 to 1972. In 1966, she was introduced in the media as South Korea's first and only female publisher. In 1975, with the wish of raising young people who would be the children of all South Koreans and who would overcome Japan (克日), she donated her entire fortune to scholarship programs.6
From 1966 to 1975 she served as vice president of the Korea-China Cultural Association, and in 1968 she received a Presidential Commendation. In 1977 she was awarded the Order of National Foundation National Order.
She spent her later years on the second floor of an old wooden building with a wooden floor at Jangchung-dong 2-ga 191-4, Seoul, and died on April 19, 1988, at the age of 88. She was buried in the Patriots' Tomb of the National Cemetery. In August 2003, she was selected as the "Independence Activist of August" by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.
Family
Father: Kwon Don-gak (權敦珏)
Mother: Jang Mun-myeong (張文明)
Husband: Yi Sang-jeong (李相定, born June 10, 1897 – died October 27, 1947). Independence activist. Pen name Cheongnam (晴南), Saeun (汕隱). Major General of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China.
In-law: Choi Nam-seon (崔南善, April 26, 1890 – October 10, 1957)
In-law: Park Jung-yang (朴重陽, May 3, 1872 – April 23, 1959)
In-law: Heo Eok (許億, June 1, 1889 – 1957), Mayor of Daegu
There has been debate over who was the first Korean female aviator, Kwon Ki-ok or Park Kyeong-won4. The facts are as follows:
Kwon graduated from the Yunnan Aviation School on February 28, 1925, and received the appointment certificate of "Deputy Aviator, Aviation Office" from the Republic of China headquarters on April 20, 1926, so Kwon preceded Park by several years.
Looking at newspaper materials from that time, people then called both Kwon and Park "female aviators" alike. The Dong-a Ilbo of May 21, 1926, introduced Kwon under the headline "A Korean Wing in the Chinese Sky – Among Them, a Female Flying Expert." The Joong-oe Ilbo of May 25, 1928, also called Kwon a "female aviator." The Dong-a Ilbo article of September 4, 1926, which introduced Park, likewise described her as "Miss Park Kyeong-won, Korea's female aviator." There is an opinion that distinguishing between civilian pilots and fighter pilots only became relevant much later, when aircraft underwent rapid development as weapons.
The official records of the Republic of Korea, such as the materials in the archive of the Air Force Museum of the Republic of Korea Air Force Academy (located in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do) and the data collections of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, describe Kwon as the first Korean female aviator.
Numerous South Korean media reports, such as "The Patriotic Girl Who Flew in the Chinese Sky – An Interview with Mrs. Kwon Ki-ok, the First Female Aviator of Our Nation," and "The Sad August 15 of Kwon Ki-ok, Korea's First Female Pilot" (Weekly Women, August 27, 1969), identify Kwon as the first female aviator. Most notably, the memoir "My Résumé," serialized in the Hankook Ilbo in 24 installments from February 1978, describes Kwon not only as the first in Korea but as the "first female aviator in the East."