Picture of Martyr’s Arrest to be Removed

Yun Bong-gil threw a bomb disguised as a water bottle to assassinate leaders of the Japanese army at Hongkou Park in Shanghai, China on April 29, 1932, when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule. However, a photo which was widely assumed to depict Yun being arrested by Japanese soldiers soon after the assassination attempt will be removed from a Korean history textbook, putting an end to the controversy over the authenticity of the photo.

Kumsung Publishing will take the picture out of the history textbook, “Korean Modern History,” which will be published this year and, in its place, insert another picture of Yun which had been taken four days prior to the attempt in front of the Taegeukgi, the Korean flag, during an oath-swearing ceremony of the Korean Patriotic Organization.

The picture, which will be removed from the textbook, was published in The Asashi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, on May 1, 1932 and there has been debate on whether the person in the picture is Yun or someone else.

Kang Hyo-baek, professor at Kyunghee University who served as the consul of the Korean Consulate General in Shanghai in 1999, claims that, “It was not Yun, but someone else who was arrested at the scene.”

Kim Hak-joon, former dean of the University of Incheon (president of Dong-a Ilbo), who wrote “The Critical Biography of Patriot Yun Bong-gil,” also raised questions. “The Japanese may have picked another picture because Yun looked so confident when the arrest was made,” he said.

However, the family of the late Yun refuted the claims.

“Yun has a long, thin face that he looks different (if you look at him) from the front and the side. And he looks older because he married at the age of 15,” said one of the deceased Yun’s family members.

peacechaos@donga.com