Korean Volunteer Army
조선의용군
The Korean armed force formed in July 1942 from the North China detachment of the Korean Volunteer Corps as the army of the Korean Independence League (chairman Kim Tu-bong). Commanded by Mu Chong and based in the Taihang Mountains, it served under Eighth Route Army command from 1943, doing propaganda work and fighting the Japanese. After liberation it entered Manchuria, grew by recruiting young Koreans into People’s Liberation Army divisions, and was absorbed into the Korean People’s Army in 1949–1950. Its leaders formed the Yan’an faction in North Korea.
In depth
The North China detachment fought at Hujiazhuang in December 1941 and broke out of the Japanese encirclement of the Taihang Mountains in May 1942, a battle in which Zuo Quan, deputy chief of staff of the Eighth Route Army, was killed together with more than ten Koreans including Yun Se-ju and Jin Gwang-hwa. The army trained cadres at schools such as the North China Korean Youth Military and Political Cadre School and the Yan’an Korean Military and Political School, and numbered 850 to over 1,000 by 1945. For the Communist Party it was also a counterweight to both the Soviet-backed Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army in Manchuria and the Kuomintang-influenced Korean Liberation Army.
On 11 August 1945 the party ordered the Korean Volunteer Army into Manchuria. Some who crossed the Yalu were disarmed by the Soviet military government, and about a hundred commanders including Mu Chong entered North Korea as private individuals in December. The 2,000 who entered Manchuria in November split into the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th detachments, recruited young Koreans in Yanbian and elsewhere, and grew into the PLA’s 164th and 166th Divisions and Independent 15th Division, which fought in the civil war. In July–August 1949 the 164th and 166th (under Pang Ho-san) entered North Korea as the KPA’s 5th and 6th Divisions, and in April 1950 the Independent 15th became the 12th Division. In all 55,000 to 60,000 men joined the KPA, strengthening North Korea’s forces on the eve of the Korean War. The Yan’an faction was purged after the August faction incident of 1956, by 1958.