Chang Chun-ha

Chang Chun-ha (장준하, 張俊河, August 27, 1918 in Uiju County – August 17, 1975 in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province) was a Korean independence and democracy activist who later became a journalist in South Korea.

This is a Korean name; the family name is Chang.
Chang Chun-ha
Hangul
장준하
Hanja
張俊河
Revised RomanizationJang Jun-Ha
McCune–ReischauerChang Chun-Ha

Military career

When Korea was under Japanese rule, he participated in education activities and voluntarily joined the Japanese army called Sugada but he escaped the army in 1944 when he was in Suzhou, Jiangsu. His joining of Sugada army was only nominally voluntarily as it was forced by the Japanese army for Korean males to join the army. He then was trained at China Central Officer School and became a warrant officer in the Chinese Central Army. In 1945, he visited Korean Liberation Army located in Suzhou and joined the army from the February as a commissioned officer. While serving the Korean liberation army, he participated activities with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS; the predecessor of the CIA). In November 1945, he came back to Korea via the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.[1][2]

In politics

After returning to Korea, Chang worked as a secretary of Kim Gu and participated in Lee Beom-seok's Chosun Ethnic Youth League. After the establishment of Republic of Korea, during the First Republic of South Korea, he worked for the government as a secretary. In 1950, he was in charge of citizen spirit reformation in the Ministry of Education and Culture (문교부). In 1952, he was the directing manager of national ideology research institution. He also worked in two more positions in the Ministry of Education and Culture and founded a periodical called Sasangge.[3] He established the Dong-in Literary Award in 1956. Sasangge acrimoniously denounced the 자유당 administration and became the starting fire of the 4.19 revolution. After the 4.19 revolution took place, he took positions in the Ministry of Munkyo during the second republic.

After the May 16 coup, he opposed the South Korea–Japan conference and the sending of troops to Vietnam War. During the 1967 South Korean presidential election, he made an issue out of the career of Yun Bo-seon on Park Chung-hee's pro-Japanese and Workers' Party of South Korea activities. He was then sent into prison for insulting the head of the state. After he came out of prison, he worked with Yun Bo-seon and New Democratic Party (South Korea)[4] in the Korean National Party.

From 1975, when he was preparing to fight against the Park Chung-hee administration, he died mysteriously in Pocheon, Gyeonggi-do. The South Korean government announced that Chang's death had been caused by loss of footing while climbing down a mountain. However, after Chang's death, continuous doubts were raised whether it was a homicide by Park's government. To such doubts, the Park administration declared the state of national emergency and arrested anyone who mentioned the death of Chang Chun-ha. The death of Chang Chun-ha has been re-investigated, but there have not been any clear conclusions yet.[5]

Awards

Chang was awarded the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts.[6]

gollark: In any case, if their page on "fluent design" doesn't explain it and wastes space and my CPU cycles for no good reason, I don't want it.
gollark: It's not as if they're massively different nowadays.
gollark: It has giant text and images for no reason, doesn't do scrolling properly, and conveys basically zero information.
gollark: This is very light on information on what it actually is, and if that site there is an example of it I don't want it.
gollark: I'm always willing to redesign my website for no good reason!

See also

References
  1. "임정귀국". 1999 Institute of Historical Studies. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2014-04-10.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. "사상계". 브리태니커. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
  4. Nahm, Andrew C. (2004-01-01). Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea. Scarecrow Press. p. 148.
  5. Park, Kyung-Man (16 August 2012). "Chang Chun-ha's family hopes to know truth of his death after 37 years". the Hankyoreh. Retrieved 10 April 2014.
  6. Awardees Archived 2014-08-11 at the Wayback Machine Ramon Magsaysay Award
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.