There can be various ways to love one’s country. And there may also be many ways to memorialize heroic deeds of a great individual. Lee Seok-young (1855-1934) gave away his vast wealth to help resurrect his fallen country; and now his adopted hometown of Namyangju is responding with a series of projects to nurture future generations in the name of the legendary activist for Korean independence.

On Feb. 16, Namyangju City hosted a ceremony marking the 87th anniversary of Lee’s death. The venue was the Lee Seok-young New Media Library. The eye-grabbing facility packed with high-tech equipment to engage the digital generation opened in January. Only a limited number of guests could attend due to the COVID pandemic and the gathering proved to carry more meaning than an anniversary of the hero’s demise.

As a family representative acknowledged, it was tantamount to a funeral service never held for Lee. There is a heartbreaking reason. After exhausting his enormous fortune to assist independence struggles, Lee passed away in desolation. He literally starved to death in an impoverished neighborhood in Shanghai. Under Japan’s heightened surveillance, he was buried without a proper funeral in a public cemetery in the humble suburbs of the city. His remains were lost in the ensuing turmoil.

Japan escalated its oppression of Koreans in April 1932, when Korean independence activist Yun Bong-gil detonated a bomb in Shanghai’s Hongkew Park, killing and wounding several Japanese dignitaries. The Korean provisional government, established in Shanghai in the wake of the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919, moved to Hangzhou. By the time of his death, Lee had lost four younger brothers and both of his two sons in anti-Japanese struggles.

The Lee family, as is well known, left a peerless legacy in the Korean independence movement. Soon after Japan’s annexation of Korea in August 1910, Lee and his five brothers agreed to move together to Manchuria and build an education and military training base for young Koreans there. Descending from a wealthy noble family, they possessed a vast amount of land and trove of houses in and around Seoul. They hurriedly disposed of their assets, amassing a fortune equivalent to some 2 trillion won today.

Most of the money was raised by Lee Seok-young, the second brother. He had inherited an outsized fortune from his adoptive father, who owned a country villa and extensive land in present-day Namyangju.

Thus, on Dec. 30, 1910, the six Lee brothers and their families secretly departed from Seoul one by one to start an arduous journey. The party of 60 people met in the northern border city of Sinuiju later on the day. From there they crossed the frozen Yalu River by night to arrive in Dandong before dawn. Traveling on horse carriages through snow-covered fields across mountains and rivers, they arrived in Zoujiajie village in Liuhe County, southwestern Jilin Province, in early February.

The Lee brothers played vital roles in the establishment and operation of Sinheung Military School, the cradle of activists for armed resistance against Japan. The school was founded in 1911 and closed in 1920 under increasing Japanese suppression, during which period it produced some 3,500 graduates. They constituted the backbone of victorious campaigns against Japan across Manchuria in the 1920s and later guerilla activism in mainland China.

Each of the brothers took on roles that suited their personal character and circumstances. After their financial resources were depleted around 1920, they went their separate ways. They wandered from Fengtian (today’s Shenyang) to Tianjin, Beijing and Shanghai, each passing away in dire situations.

The fourth brother, Lee Hoe-young (1867-1932), a self-proclaimed anarchist who valued individual autonomy, was the mastermind of the family’s activities. A Christian convert and reform-minded educator, he devised major initiatives such as Emperor Gojong’s dispatch of envoys to the 1907 International Peace Conference in The Hague and the emperor’s clandestine pursuit of asylum in China. Both moves were intended to manifest to the world the illegitimacy of Japan’s colonization of Korea. Both failed.

Lamenting his experience, Lee was convinced that military struggle would be more effective than diplomacy in reclaiming national sovereignty. He died in prison in Lushun, allegedly from torture, a few days after being arrested in Dalian on his way from Shanghai to Manchuria. He was on his last journey to forge alliance with the Korean revolutionary forces in Northeast China and assassinating Nobuyoshi Muto, commander of the Kwantung Army.

The fifth brother, Lee Si-young (1869-1953), who served for the Korean provisional government from its founding and stayed within the mainstream institution, was the only one of the six brothers who survived and returned to the liberated Korea. He served as the first vice president of the Syngman Rhee government, founded in 1948.

Naturally, Lee Hoe-young and Lee Si-young took the most limelight as heroes of independence movement. But in the Lee family, they say there has been a kind of instruction for everybody to keep in their heart: “Without the support of the second grandfather, no movement for independence would have been possible.”

In her memoir, “Western Jiandao Record: From Beginning to End,” written in 1959-1966 and first published in 1975, Lee Eun-suk, wife of Lee Hoe-young, recalled:

“My second brother-in-law, always worrying about the absence of school for young people, bought land and declared building a school after the spring equinox. He offered thousands of pyeong of land and paid for fuel and food for everyone as well. ... There’s nobody like my brother-in-law in the whole world today, but who would know? Thinking of this I feel heartrending, but how could I write it all down?”

Namyangju City is also building the Lee Seok-young Square in front of the royal graveyards of Gojong and Sunjong, the two last rulers of the Joseon Dynasty, which succumbed to Japan. The square will have a history hall, an instructive place for young people to learn lessons from tragic times.


Lee Kyong-hee
Lee Kyong-hee is a former editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald. She is currently editor-in-chief of Koreana, a quarterly magazine of Korean culture and arts published by the Korea Foundation. -- Ed.