AN CHUNGGŬN AND BEYOND: INDIVIDUAL TERROR IN THE KOREAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT AS SEEN FROM RUSSIA/SOVIET UNION, 1909 TO THE EARLY 1930s

Abstract

Individual terror of the modern kind came to be practiced by some of Korea’s militant nationalists at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. The historical background for this was the frustration brought on by the inability of the Taehan Empire to defend itself effectively from the ongoing colonization by Japan. Culturally, nationalist individual terror was rooted in the Confucian respect towards those “killing themselves in the name of humaneness” (salsin sŏng’in), but was also influenced by reports on the deeds of Russian, Polish and other “nihilists” that often appeared in the Korean press in the first decade of the twentieth century. The topic of this article is the reverse gaze—the perceptions of the Korean nationalist terror by Russian and, later, Soviet observers. That the Russian press outlets influenced by revolutionary radicals fully justified An Chunggŭn’s 1909 assassination of Itō Hirobumi, was to be expected. However, even some conservative dailies also took An Chunggŭn’s side, ascribing the assassination to the brutalities accompanying the Japanese colonization of Korea. A number of Maritime province-based news outlets, such as Priamurye, attempted a balanced, neutral approach of sorts. Given the lingering hostility towards Russia’s erstwhile battlefield enemy, Japan, and the prevalence of individual terrorism inside Russia’s own anti-autocracy struggle, the semi-sympathetic stance towards An Chunggŭn’s shooting of Itō was perhaps natural. Similar attitudes towards Korean nationalist acts of individual terror continued further into the Soviet period: militant nationalists were expected to become Korean Communists’ allies in the future.