Robert Kim

10.18399/acta.2012.15.1.008

Soon Hyun (Hyŏn Sun) Korean National Revolutionary Party Hawaiian Branch Korea’s independence Kim Wŏn-bong Korean immigration in Hawaii

The present study focuses primarily on Soon Hyun’s involvement in the Hawaiian Branch of the Korean National Revolutionary Party that was organized in Hawaii in 1943. The party was originally organized in China in 1935, and its American branch in Los Angeles was created in 1942. As its chairman Hyun raised money and sent it to Kim Wŏn-bong to assist Kim in his struggle against the Japanese forces in China. Also, as a chairman of the Hawaiian branch of the party, Hyun expressed displeasure with a number of decisions made by the government of the United States by writing to news media in Honolulu. He wrote to protest against the American military decision to classify the Korean residents in Hawaii during the Pacific War as enemy aliens. He was not in favor of the American military government established in the southern half of the Korean peninsula after the end of World War II and condemned the indiscriminate bombing and killing of civilians in North Korea during the Korean War. Because of the stance he took on these issues and the company he kept, he was mistaken for a radical or a Communist sympathizer. But he was only a passionate patriot for Korea who believed that the Korean masses should have control over political power and that the government to be established in Korea after the end of World War II should be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.