Paek Chŏnggi
Paek Chŏnggi was a Korean anarchist and independence activist. A participant in the March First Movement, he was attracted to socialism and anarchism while he was a student in Japan, going on to join the Korean anarchist movement after moving to China. There he plotted the assassination of a Japanese consul, but he was arrested before he could make the attempt and died in a Japanese prison.
Biography
Paek Chŏnggi was born in 1896. An activist of the March First Movement, in 1919, Paek organised an independence demonstration in his home town and witnessed the movement's suppression in Seoul. He briefly fled to Manchuria, where he was active in the local Korean independence movement. In 1921, Paek moved to Japan and began studying at the University of Tokyo. There he became a socialist, after he started reading the Labor Newspaper and other socialist works. Paek was then attracted to anarchism through the work of Japanese anarchists such as Kōtoku Shūsui and Ōsugi Sakae, as well as that of the Russian anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin.In 1924, he moved to China, where he joined the Korean anarchists led by Shin Chae-ho. In the Chinese capital of Beijing, Paek gathered together with other Korean anarchists and independence activists, with whom he co-founded the Korean Anarchist Federation in April 1924. Paek then moved to Shanghai, where he worked with the, a Korean anarchist terrorist group.
In March 1933, Paek attempted to assassinate a Japanese consul in the Six Three Pavilion Restaurant, as part of a plot by the BTP. But his plans were already known by the Japanese police, due to the work of an informant, and they awaited his arrival at the restaurant. He was arrested before he was able to carry out the attack. Paek and his co-conspirators, Yi Ganghun and Won Simchang, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Paek was transferred to Japan and incarcerated in the prison of Nagasaki, where he died, in 1934.
Remembrance
On 31 July 1934, the Black Newspaper ran an article that paid tribute to Paek, remembering him as "a rebel who stood on the front line of human liberation". After the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945, Korea was liberated from Japanese imperial occupation. Paek's remains were repatriated to Korea and buried in Hyochang Park. Paek was interred alongside Lee Bong-chang and Yun Bong-gil, in what became known as the Tomb of the Three Martyrs. Paek's epitaph includes his last words before he died:In the 21st century tomb, Paek's tomb is still visited by people paying their respects to Korean independence activists.