Hyon Chun-hyok

On 15 August 1945, Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule. The northern half of Korea was then placed in a trusteeship under the Soviet Union, called the Soviet Civil Administration. However, the Soviets did not arrive in Pyongyang until 26 August. Before then, the city was wracked with hunger, violence, and looting.[2]

According to the records of the Communist Party of Korea (CPK), on 17 August, Hyŏn departed from Seoul to Pyongyang and likely arrived on the 18th. The Pyongyang district branch of the CPK was established on the 17th.[lower-alpha 3] There are Russian records that state Hyŏn was released from prison on 16 August and had a meeting with the local Japanese governor on 17 August. A Japanese source says that on 15 August the CPK began distributing leaflets that read "Protect Japanese lives",[lower-alpha 4] but Jung questions the chronology of both these claims.[2]

There were not many communists in Pyongyang at the time of liberation. In fact, the majority of the city was composed of right-leaning Christian nationalists. The communists who were there mostly congregated on the official branch of the CPK after its creation. However, on 20 August a small but violent minority led by Jang Si-woo formed their own party of the same name,[lower-alpha 5] except that it was unaffiliated with the CPK and it called itself the Pyongyang city branch.[lower-alpha 6] Their ideology rejected cooperation with other political ideologies and called for an immediate communist revolution. They denounced Hyŏn and the other branch as traitors and had several violent clashes with them.[2]

For the several weeks before his death, Hyŏn was the highest-ranking communist in North Korea, and has been discussed in the context of potential Soviet candidates for leadership of North Korea, alongside Kim Il Sung.[3][2][4] However, he is often considered by later scholars to have been relatively independent and removed from the Soviet command structure.[5][3] He had few contacts within the Soviet Union and was not trusted by Moscow.[3] By contrast, Kim Il Sung was an adequate speaker of Russian and had been known to the Soviets from his time as an anti-Japanese guerrilla.[6]

On 27 August, Hyŏn formed a militant organization within the branch called the Red Guard.[7][4] The Red Guard was formed in response to violence and instability in the wake of the collapse of the Japanese colonial government. It engaged in several significant clashes with the Japanese and Korean police in Pyongyang, especially because the majority of police at the time were right-wing.[2]

In one incident, they planned to preemptively strike the security forces led by Choe Neung-jin, but Cho Man-sik intervened. He managed to convince them to halt the attack by saying, "Should we really be fighting other Koreans when the Japanese are still watching our every move?"[2][lower-alpha 7]

The Soviets entered the city on 26 August. On 27 August, Hyŏn met with the commander of the 25th Army, General Ivan Chistyakov. Hyŏn adopted a policy of cooperating with the Soviets, which earned him and his organizations Soviet support. However, this also drew the ire of the right wing, the anti-Soviet left-wing, and the nationalists who opposed the trusteeship of Korea.[7]

Soviet support made the Red Guard a significant player in the Pyongyang security scene, which was highly unstable in the first few months. The Soviets disarmed the Japanese police in Pyongyang on 27 August.[7] The Soviets, the Red Guard, and the various police forces in Pyongyang had numerous conflicts over time.[7][4]

According to a 1992 interview with Yoo Gi-seon,[lower-alpha 9] the chief of the East Pyongyang police who initially investigated the murder, just after lunchtime, he learned of Hyŏn's death and rushed over to Cho's house to interview him. Yoo's recalling of the interview is now an important source for understanding Hyŏn's death.[8]

The assassin(s) were never caught and fled to the South. Yeom Dong-jin, the founding leader of Daedongdan and generally agreed to have ordered the assassination, was briefly arrested as a suspect but was soon released.[9] He then fled south along with other members.[10][11]

Hyŏn is now buried in the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery, in what is now North Korea.[1] His funeral and funeral procession can be briefly seen in a 1945 South Korean newsreel released a few weeks after his death.[12][13]

For decades, the date of the assassination was uncertain, with various sources naming 2, 3, 4, 18, or 28 September as the date. However, Hyŏn's tombstone has the date as 3 September.[1] Jung also compiled a list of publications and testimonies that provided dates for the assassination. Most sources used the 2, 3, and 4 September dates. The historian Kim Chang-soon was the first to propose the 28 September death date in 1961. He originally proposed this date to support his theory that Kim Il Sung ordered the murder, as Kim was not present on the peninsula until weeks after 3 September.[1] In a 2018 book, the Western scholar Michael Seth used the 28 September death date.[14]

While the identity and motive behind the killing is not known with certainty, it is the general consensus that the main attacker was Paek Kwan-ok of Daedongdan, which was the predecessor to the White Shirts Society (WSS).[8][11][10]

However, until the 1990s, it was widely believed that left-wing forces were behind the attack.[7][8] Cho's Korean Social Democratic Party and the right-wing in the South believed that that Jang's forces were behind it.[8][1] They believed Jang and other communists targeted Hyŏn because he was too willing to cooperate with the right. In 2021, Jung noted that this was still a possibility, as the perpetrators remained unknown due to their evading arrest.[1]

The historian Kim Chang-soon, a former North Korean communist who defected to South Korea in 1950, proposed in 1958 and 1961 that Kim Il Sung and the Soviets ordered Jang and Kim Yong-bom to orchestrate the attack. This theory was also supported in 1962 by a significant reporter on Kim Il Sung, Han Jae-deok, who provided the drunken testimony of an interpreter for the Soviets as evidence. Jung, knowing Hyŏn's death date as per the tombstone, said that Kim Chang-soon was likely swept up in anti-Kim Il Sung sentiment in the wake of the Korean War.[1]

In 1993, the theory that Daedongdan was behind the murder was first proposed in Lee Yeong-shin's 1994 book Secret Organization White Shirts Society,[lower-alpha 10] which was based mostly on extensive interviews of Yeom's acquaintances and family. This led to significant renewed interest in Hyŏn's murder, which had been largely forgotten about until that point.[7]

In a 2002 episode of the documentary series Now I Can Say It, a 21 May 1986 recording was released that they alleged was of Paek confessing to the murder:[8][1][lower-alpha 11]

Mr. Yeom [Dong-jin] and I [met with the Red Army] Major Kang Hoon twice. That bastard [Kang] didn't understand anything about his comrades in the 'great Red Army'. The Germans who occupied Stalingrad raped [Soviet women] and plundered. How can [the Soviets] do [the same here]... [So we said to Hyŏn], because you're the head of the communists here, go talk to the Soviets about this. But [Hyŏn said] we should go talk to them. So we told him we'd see him again tomorrow, and we did. [He] asked how it went, and what could we even say? So then [we decided], alright, we need to get rid of this son of a bitch.

— Now I Can Say It, Episode 46: Secret Organization White Shirts Society

They alleged that the recording was of Paek and provided by Paek's older brother, Paek Kŭn-ok.[lower-alpha 12] As a result of the recording, the consensus became that the assassination was carried out by Daedongdan in retaliation for rape and looting that occurred at the hands of the Soviets.[7][lower-alpha 13]

However, in 2021, Jung Byung Joon questioned both the assumed identity of the speaker and the stated motivation. Jung found the original recording and other materials involving the speaker, and claimed that the recording was actually of Paek's older brother.[7]

He also provided his own theory for the motivation: that the murder was mainly motivated by the conflict over the Pyongyang security situation, and not by retaliation against the Soviets. He reasoned this because Paek's older brother was the head of one of the police forces that had conflicts with both the Red Guard and the Soviets, and would be motivated to portray the Red Guard in a negative light by having one of the assassins dressed in their uniform. In addition, he noted that the murder was of a Korean relatively disconnected with the Soviets, and not of a Soviet actually engaging in a crime. Finally, he argued that reports of Soviet atrocities only emerged a few weeks after the confirmed assassination date of 3 September, and were unlikely to be the motivation.[7]

He also notes that the chronology provided in another testimony by the elder Paek is seemingly incorrect; Paek stated that a first meeting with Hyŏn took place on 10 September, and a second meeting and the murder took place on 18 September. He theorizes that Paek either misremembered or misrepresented the event, in an attempt to portray the Soviets negatively.[7]