 Meet
the Founder - Part 5
Getting Koreans Together
Last issue we left General Choi Hong-Hi unwillingly part of the Japanese
Army near the end of World War II. He talked with his Korean friends and
tried to figure out how they could get themselves out of the Japanese
Army, and the Japanese Army out of Korea. They were fighting a war they
wanted to lose but not die in, they were overworked and underfed, and
they were treated horribly by the Japanese soldiers. They wanted to go
home, but unless Japan left Korea for good, they had no home to go to.
Something had to be done.
Choi Hong Hi needed to find out how many Korean soldiers in the army
felt the same as he did, but he had to ask everyone in secret. He knew
that if he got caught he would be thrown in prison, or maybe even killed.
How do you think he managed to do this right under the noses of the Japanese?
1.He sent secret messages written on rice paper?
2.He just walked around asking everyone if they wanted to get out of
the army?
3.He won 2nd place in a song contest and used his prize to meet all
the korean soldiers?
Believe it or not, he did #3,it was just like NZ Idol army style. All
the soldiers were waiting for a concert to start, but the main act was
an hour late, and so the soldiers had a little talent quest while they
were waiting around. Choi and one of his buddies got up and sang a Japanese
song (so that the Japanese soldiers would not suspect anything), then
a Korean song, and they got second place.
They won a very unusual prize... forty steamed dumplings filled with
red beans...(I bet you would LOVE to win that!), but Choi knew how hungry
all the korean soldiers were, so he shouted out in korean to come and
have a bite of the dumplings, and while they ate he wrote down all their
names and quietly invited them to a secret meeting.
This was the very beginnings of the Korean Independence Movement. About
30 of them would meet once a month, for
so-called friendship meetings, but what they were really doing was planning
how to destroy the Japanese Army from the inside. They were going to start
with their own unit (42nd) and go from there. With any luck they hoped
the Japanese and German armies would have lost the war soon after that
anyway. Up until now General Choi had been very lucky, but unfortunately
that was about to change...
Did he get out alive? Go to part 6
Text from Taekwon-Do and I, The Memoirs of Choi
Hong-Hi, the founder of Taekwon-Do |
