“I braced myself for this: in one’s youth, the love for one’s country is stronger and more resolute. It surpasses the love for parents, for brothers and sisters, even the love for wife and children. I was determined to leave this way, even at the sacrifice of my life, my fatherland’s rivers and mountains as well as my parents.” ? in the letter sent by Patriot Yun Bong-Gil on October 18, 1930, from Quingdao, China.
Born on June 21, 1908, during the Japanese colonial rule, at Yesan, Chungcheongnam-do province, Yun Bong-Gil was a spirited boy. Inspired by Korea’s March 1st independence movement against Japan that emerged in 1919, he rejected Japanese imperialistic education and learned both Chinese classics in a private school and modern scholarship. Acting as a farm activist devoted to enlightening farmers and reviving the farming villages, he operated evening classes and reading clubs, organized agricultural cooperatives and wrote books for farmers. In March 1930, when he was 23 years old, he headed to China after realizing his bigger ambitions for his country and the Korean people. Young Yun Bong-Gil met Kim Gu, the independence activist, at Shanghai, the home to the Provisional Government of Korea during Japanese colonial rule. On April 29, 1932, he, after clarifying his great cause of the fatherland’s independence, threw a bomb into the platform where Japanese army’s leaders were participating in a ceremony held at Honkou Park, Shanghai to celebrate a Japanese victory. This incident exposed, in and out of the country, of the Korean people’s lamentable reality under Japanese colonial rule, and provided a turning point in the languishing movement to gain independence from Japan. Arrested immediately on the spot, Patriot Yun Bong-Gil was executed by a firing squad on December 19, 1932 at the outskirts of Kanazawa city, Japan, ending his short 25 years of life. This happened two years after he sent the letter about his strong and resolute love for his fatherland.
Now, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Patriot Yun Bong-Gil, a commemorative stamp is issued. It features both Patriot Yun Bong-Gil and the written oath of the “Hanin aegukdan” (Korean Patriot Society), reflecting on the meaning of the sublime death he chose as a brave son of his fatherland.
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