Mun Myeong-gi (文明琦, Birth name: Mun Gi-seop (文基燮), Japanese name: 文明琦一郞 (Fumiaki Kiichirō), 18 June 1878 – 6 October 1968) was a merchant, businessman and bureaucrat of Joseon and the Japanese colonial period. He belonged to the Namp'yeong lineage, his family register was in Yeongdeok-myeon, Yeongdeok County, North Gyeongsang Province (present-day Yeongdeok-eup), and he was from Anju County, South Pyongan Province. It is said that the Herring gifts he gave became the origin of the word sabasaba, meaning lobbying or currying favor.
In the late Korean Empire period, he accumulated money as a fish seller, and from the 1910s he earned enormous profits in the paper industry, and from the 1920s in the mining industry. In 1935 he paid 100,000 won of his property in the form of a national defense donation, used it to buy two airplanes, and donated them to the Government-General of Korea. The colonial authorities widely reported this, and named the airplane he donated "Mun Myeong-gi Ho." Also, from the early 1930s, in addition to taxes, he paid enormous amounts of national defense donations, and was given the popular nickname "Patriotic Old Man." In 1936 he led a civic movement called the "One County, One Airplane" donation, in which money was collected in each county across Joseon to donate one airplane to the Japanese army, and he organized the Chosŏn National Defense Aircraft Donation Association, making him one of the representative pro-Japanese collaborators. In 1949 he was arrested by the Special Committee for the Investigation of Pro-Japanese Collaborators, indicted, and listed in various pro-Japanese biographical dictionaries.
Life
Making a fortune in the paper industry
His family register was in Yeongdeok, North Gyeongsang, but he was born in South Pyongan's Anju County, where his father had moved, and as a child he settled in Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang, with his parents, making the North Gyeongsang region his base of livelihood. He ran small-scale businesses in Yeongcheon and Yeongdeok, gradually gathered capital, and in 1907 opened a paper factory and entered the paper industry.
In 1907, relying on the guarantee of the Yeongcheon police chief, Mun Myeong-gi was able to buy paper on credit in an amount ten times his own capital.1 At that time, on the road from Yeongdeok in North Gyeongsang to Cheongsong, there was Jipum-myeon (知品面), and in this Jipum-myeon were the famous hanji production areas of Sokkok and Nulgok. This was because there were many paper mulberry trees, the raw material for hanji.1 After returning from Manchuria and North China in 1912, anticipating that he would earn huge money by exporting paper to China, he established Hanmun Yanghaeng, a large paper company and trading firm.
It is said that after the annexation of Korea by Japan, people of Jipum-myeon bought the fields of Yeonghae with the money they earned from selling this paper. Mun Myeong-gi bought up all the hanji and waited for it to sell, but Chinese merchants who had been buying hanji put up obstacles. The Chinese merchants held out, saying, "We will not buy unless it is half the market price."1
Watching this situation closely, Mun Myeong-gi took a hard line. "I will never sell at half price. I would rather burn it all." Indeed, when they saw him start a fire with firewood and begin throwing bundles of hanji into it, the Chinese merchants realized that Mun's words were not a bluff.1 "We'll pay a proper price." "No, I'm so angry at what you're doing that I'll burn everything, business and all." "Please, buy it." "Then pay us four times the price." In this way, Mun Myeong-gi received several times the normal price and sold the hanji, which he had almost monopolized, to the Chinese.1
The originator of the satirical word sabasaba
Mun Myeong-gi would two or three times a month hang bundles of herring on the gate handle of the police chief's house and then disappear. The Japanese police chief, who had accepted these several times, wondered "who is leaving this herring and disappearing?" Eventually he learned that the protagonist was Mun Myeong-gi, a Korean fish seller. "Why do you keep leaving herring at my house?" "I made a profit selling fish at the Yeongcheon market. In markets in other regions, public order was poor and gangsters extorted a lot of tax from me, but in Yeongcheon public order was secured and I was not extorted. So I felt grateful to the Yeongcheon police chief, and I decided to bring to you in kind an amount equal to what I would otherwise have been extorted by gangsters.1"
Hearing his words, the chief found them plausible. From the chief's standpoint, saying that public order had been secured and business had become easier was not an unpleasant thing to hear. Mun Myeong-gi's face was plump with money, and the chief, pleased with his articulate way of speaking, became willing to help.1 Afterwards the police chief acted as his guarantor, which helped him buy hanji, and he earned large sums of money with the hanji he bought at that time. In Japanese, herring was called sabai, so his gifts gave rise to the satirical term sabasaba as its origin.
It seems that from around the time he was trading back and forth with China, he cooperated closely with the Japanese and received help in expanding his business, but the exact circumstances are unknown. His business flourished day by day, and Mun Myeong-gi, running the paper industry and fisheries together and succeeding by also investing in gold mines, became a great wealthy man known throughout the province. Mun Myeong-gi used the money he had earned in the paper industry to enter the gold mining business in 1932 and acquired a mine.1
The airplane donation campaign
From 1920 to 1933, Mun Myeong-gi served as a member of the Provincial council of North Gyeongsang (appointed as an elected member of the provincial council in 1920, 1924 and 1930, and as an appointed member in 1927), and while active as a local notable, in 1935 he made a large national defense donation to purchase airplanes. The Public Information Bureau of the Government-General of Korea reported this widely as "the sincere devotion to the nation (愛國의 至誠)" from a philanthropist, and held a donation ceremony to publicize it, which made him known as a nationwide pro-Japanese collaborator. In October 1935 he presented to the Japanese emperor a toad-shaped gold nugget discovered at the Yeongdeok gold mine he operated, and the airplane he donated was named "Mun Myeong-gi Ho" (文明琦號).
In August 1939, as representative of the North Gyeongsang Provincial Council Member Gwangjehoe (廣濟會) Chinese Front Comfort Mission, he visited and comforted the Japanese army in North China and Manchuria and returned. At this time he had already carried out pioneering pro-Japanese activities that endorsed suicide bombing; he organized the Chosŏn National Defense Aircraft Donation Association and carried out an airplane donation campaign, toured various places giving lectures urging support for the war of aggression, and visited units on the Chinese front to comfort the soldiers.
Fanatical pro-Japanese conduct
While Japan was vigorously invading China, he repeatedly donated national defense funds, took the lead in recruiting volunteer corps, and sold a mine he operated to donate one airplane to the Chōsen Army Headquarters. He is recorded as having donated two airplanes in total.2 Japan then widely publicized this and carried out a campaign for one airplane donation per county (gun) unit. In 1943 they also carried out a so-called ship donation (獻艦) campaign to donate not only airplanes but ships.
Mun Myeong-gi, in return, obtained from the Japanese the exclusive right to supply kamidana (神棚), symbols of Japanese gods, to every household, and earned enormous money. A kamidana was a wooden box shaped like a shrine, installed high at the front of a house, in which was placed a kind of talisman inscribed "Tensho Kōtai Jingū" (天照皇大神宮); the aim was to make people bow in it morning and evening, thereby instilling a sense of imperial subjecthood and loyalty.3 Unlike a simple pro-Japanese collaborator, he showed behavior suggesting a deep faith in Japanese Shinto. He installed a kamidana, a small shrine for Amaterasu who appears in Japan's founding myths, in his home and bowed to it morning and evening, and he promoted a movement to place kamidana in every household in order to spread it throughout the country.
Beyond this, he adopted Japanese ways in all aspects of food, clothing and shelter, and showed a fanatical attitude to the point of forcing his family to use only Japanese language even at home. He actively cooperated with the semi-coerced Sōshi-kaimei policy, and after changing his surname and given name, he wrote articles explaining the process and reasons for choosing his new name, and took part in publicity activities. For these services, he received the title "Patriotic Old Man" (愛國翁) from the Japanese, but Koreans mocked him to the extent that he was given the nicknames "Yasetsuki" (野蠻琦) or "Yahenki" (野變琦) and "patient of the donation disease." In August 1939 he led a movement to promote the construction of the railway between East Sea and Uljin. From 21 April 1941 until liberation in August 1945 he served as a councillor of the Chūsuin of the Government-General of Korea. In 1943 he also organized the pro-Japanese organization Hwangdo Seonyanghoe (皇道宣揚會) and served as its chairman.
After liberation
After liberation, in January 1949, as the Special Committee for the Investigation of Pro-Japanese Collaborators began its activities, he was suddenly arrested at his home in Yeongdeok County on 24 January of that year and indicted. However, on 25 May of that year he applied for Bail, citing his old age, and was soon released on bail, and when the Special Committee was forcibly dissolved he received no particular punishment.
Mun Myeong-gi lived to the age of 90 and died on 6 October 1968. His grave is in Gangsu-myeon, Yeongdeok County.
The epitaph inscribed on his tombstone, made on 15 August 1969, was written by the poet Yi Eun-sang. The epitaph praised Mun Myeong-gi (birth name Mun Gi-seop, Japanese name 文明琦一郞) as "one who, born into the world, succeeded by his own strength, which is difficult, and who lived long and left virtuous deeds, which is even more difficult, and who was able to accomplish those difficult things and enjoy a meaningful life by himself," and wrote that "his eldest grandson, Doctor of Medicine and National Assemblyman Tae-jun, along with more than fifty grandchildren and great-grandchildren on both sides, are all distinguished figures, and so we know that the old saying that descendants of a family that accumulates virtue receive blessings is not empty." The epitaph shows no trace whatsoever of Mun Myeong-gi's pro-Japanese conduct during the colonial period.45
Posthumous
In 2002 he was included in the "List of 708 Pro-Japanese Collaborators" selected by the Lawmakers' Association for Establishing National Spirit together with Gwangbokhoe, and in 2008 he was included in the list of persons planned for inclusion in the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators compiled by the Institute for Research in Collaborationist History for inclusion in the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators. He was also included in the List of 705 Pro-Japanese Collaborators announced in 2009 by the Committee for the Investigation of Pro-Japanese Collaboration.
Family
Mun Myeong-gi had five sons and seven daughters with his two wives. His eldest son went missing immediately after liberation. Mun Sin-ja, who serves as chairwoman of the Korea-Uzbekistan Association and chairwoman of the Korean Wave Culture Promotion Foundation, is a daughter he had at the age of sixty.
Next to Mun Myeong-gi's grave is the cenotaph of the father of his eldest grandson, Mun Tae-jun. Mun Tae-jun, the politician of post-liberation Korea, is his grandson. Mun Tae-jun served as a National Assemblyman during the Third Republic and Fourth Republic, as Minister of Health and Social Affairs during the Sixth Republic, and as president of the Korean Medical Association. Mun Tae-jun lives in Yongsan District, Seoul, and Mun Sin-ja, the daughter Mun Myeong-gi had at sixty, lives in Daegu.
References
- 《The Judgment of National Spirit》 〈Part 7〉 Hyeoksin Publishing (1949). ‘飛行機 獻納에 狂奔한 朝鮮新聞社長 文明琦의 罪惡史’ (The Criminal History of Mun Myeong-gi, President of the Chosŏn Shinmun, Who Rushed Into Airplane Donation)
- Institute for Research in Collaborationist History (1 March 1993). 〈Mun Myeong-gi: A Fanatical Pro-Japanese Collaborator Who Received the Title "Patriotic Old Man" (Kim Gyeong-il)〉. 《99 Pro-Japanese Collaborators 2》. Seoul: Dolbegae. ISBN 978-89-7199-012-4.
Notes