Korean Volunteer Corps
조선의용대
A Korean armed unit formed at Hankou on 10 October 1938 by the Korean National Front Federation, led by the Korean National Revolutionary Party, with Kim Won-bong as commander-in-chief. Under the second united front it served under the Nationalist Military Council, mainly doing propaganda work against the Japanese army. In 1941 many of its members moved to the Eighth Route Army’s bases in north China and formed its North China detachment; in 1942 that detachment became the Korean Volunteer Army, while the main body in Chongqing was absorbed into the Korean Liberation Army as its 1st Detachment.
In depth
In 1937 at Wuhan the Korean National Revolutionary Party, the Korean Youth Vanguard League, the Korean National Liberation League and the Korean Anarchist Federation formed the Korean National Front Federation and set up the corps as its armed body. The Japanese anti-war activist Kazuo Aoyama drafted the plan, which won the consent of Zhou Enlai, deputy head of the Military Council’s political department, among others, and of Chiang Kai-shek. At its founding it had a 1st Detachment of 42 members from the National Revolutionary Party and a 2nd Detachment of 74 centred on the Vanguard League, and its members received food and operating allowances from the Nationalist government. Many spoke Korean, Chinese and Japanese, so it mainly did psychological warfare such as leaflets and loudspeaker broadcasts, and also interrogated prisoners.
Amid discontent at being kept to rear-area propaganda, the deputy commander Kim Hak-mu argued in 1939 for moving north; members who went from Luoyang to the Taihang Mountains in March 1941 joined Choe Chang-ik’s North China Korean Youth Federation in July to form the corps’ North China detachment. In the battle of Hujiazhuang on 12 December, 29 of its members fought some five hundred Japanese. In July 1942 the detachment was reorganised as the Korean Volunteer Army of the Korean Independence League under Kim Tu-bong, and Kim Won-bong, having lost control in the north, joined the Provisional Government and brought the main body into the Liberation Army. Veterans of the Korean Volunteer Army formed the Yan’an faction in post-liberation North Korea.