What Did Kim Gu See in Pyongyang?

Eleven in the morning, July 11th, 1948. A visitor arrives at Gyeonggyojang unannounced.

Liu Yuwan, Chinese Minister at Seoul. The talk runs a little over an hour.

The report he sent home opens with this line.

On the second page, beside the passage recording Kim Gu's words —

someone has drawn a line by hand.

Kim Gu crossed the 38th parallel to stop the partition.

He went to Pyongyang for unification.

That is what we were taught.

One thing is missing from that account.

What he saw in Pyongyang.

Two months after he came back, he said this to the Chinese Minister.

He went to see.

And he described what he saw with precision.

He was seventy-one.

Born in 1876 — the year the Treaty of Ganghwa was signed.

On February 10th, 1948, Kim Gu issued "A Tearful Appeal to Thirty Million Compatriots."

A separate government must not be established.

Six days later, on February 16th,

Kim Gu and Kim Kyu-sik sent a joint letter north.

Addressed to Kim Il-sung and Kim Tu-bong.

It was delivered through the Soviet Army mission in Seoul.

The proposal was that leaders of North and South meet and talk.

The North gave no response.

For nearly a month, no answer.

What lay behind that silence surfaced later.

A memoir left by Lebedev of the Soviet military administration.

On March 10th, Lebedev asks Kim Il-sung about the letter.

Kim Il-sung answers.

Two days later, Kim Tu-bong presses for a decision.

Kim Il-sung says this.

In Seoul they were waiting for an answer.

In Pyongyang there was no reason to hurry.

The answer came at the end of March. But not in the way expected.

On March 25th, Pyongyang Radio went out first.

It announced that the North Korean Democratic National United Front had resolved to convene a joint conference on April 14th.

The broadcast came first; the letter arrived after it.

On March 27th a letter co-signed by Kim Il-sung and Kim Tu-bong arrives. It is dated March 25th.

The envelope read: "To Messrs. Kim Gu and Kim Kyu-sik."

What the letter contained was not an invitation.

It was a reprimand.

Kim Gu and Kim Kyu-sik knew it.

On March 31st the two issued a statement of their impressions.

Are we merely being asked to attend a banquet already prepared — they said as much,

and said they would go.

The United States tried to stop them. And failed.

On April 9th the American political adviser in Korea reported this to Washington.

In Seoul something else was already being said.

The headline on page two of Hyundae Ilbo, April 15th, read —

"The Two Kims Have Already Surrendered — North Korea's Deceptive Propaganda"

This was before they went.

On the morning of April 19th, the front of Gyeonggyojang was blocked by people.

Young men and students who had come to stop him.

Kim Gu shook them off and left by the back gate.

That same day the joint conference opened at the Moranbong Theater in Pyongyang.

Forty-six organizations. Five hundred and forty-five delegates.

On April 20th, guided by Kim Tu-bong, Kim Gu meets Kim Il-sung.

There he asks for a meeting between the two of them alone.

A man of seventy-one asking a man of thirty-six.

And he makes this point.

Does the North's constitution not mean the founding of a separate government?

On April 22nd, Kim Gu gives a congratulatory address. About five minutes.

That same day, a reporter asks him

whether the conference looks neither cooperative nor equal.

Kim Gu answers.

From the platform — "a great advance."

To the reporter — "I am worried about that too."

The same day.

On April 23rd the conference closed and the resolutions were adopted.

Then on April 30th a joint statement was issued.

In the joint name of fifteen organizations from the North and twenty-eight from the South.

There were four points.

One — foreign troops shall withdraw at once and simultaneously.

Two — we are confident that no civil war will follow the withdrawal.

Three — through an all-Korea political conference, a unified government shall be established.

Four — the separate election and separate government in the South are not recognized.

Keep the second point in mind.

Yet Kim Gu's name is not on that document.

Om Hang-sop signed for the Korea Independence Party; Song Nam-hon for the National Independence Federation.

The two men themselves did not sign.

The American telegram to Washington records how it stood.

Among the southern participants, the only non-leftists were the two men's organizations.

And the resulting document does not carry their names.

It is the document we remember as "the agreement of the leaders of North and South."

On May 5th the two return to Seoul.

They did not take part in the general election of May 10th.

Two months pass.

On July 17th the constitution is promulgated; on July 20th the assembly elects Syngman Rhee president.

A government was being formed.

In between, at eleven in the morning on July 11th,

Liu Yuwan, the Chinese Minister, calls unannounced at Gyeonggyojang, where Kim Gu was living.

He speaks as soon as he sits down.

Kim Gu did not answer.

The record reads:

Liu Yuwan wrote down the other man's expression along with his words.

So this document holds not only what Kim Gu said,

but what he did not say.

He had brought three letters.

From Wu Tieh-cheng, Foreign Minister Wang Shih-chieh, and Chiang Kai-shek.

He tells him in advance that all three carry one and the same message.

Then he offers a Chinese proverb.

Then comes the ultimatum.

Here Kim Gu speaks for the first time.

What he knew was coming, and what he had on his mind, are not written in the document.

Reading it as the demand to cooperate is closest to the context.

Liu Yuwan goes on to the harder part.

And he relates something that happened in North China.

Kim Gu answers.

He knew.

And still he says he will not enter the government in the South.

He gives his reason as well.

The "Democratic Party" here is the Korea Democratic Party — the Hanmindang.

The same landlord bloc that Rhee is said to have been held by.

As the talk goes on, this time it is Kim Gu who asks.

Liu answers that China, America and England will recognize it together.

Kim Gu asks again.

He was calculating.

Whether this government could survive.

And then he says what he saw.

The record calls the Soviet Union "Russia" — the English usage of the time.

Liu Yuwan answers at once.

And he presses.

Two months and ten days earlier, the document bearing Kim Gu's name had read:

And on July 11th he said this:

He was seeing it exactly.

And what he saw pointed the opposite way from the document that carried his name.

This record was written by the Chinese Minister to report to his own government.

It was classified strictly secret. It was not written to persuade anyone.

In the record Kim Gu said this.

Ten days later, on July 21st, Kim Gu and Kim Kyu-sik form the Association for the Promotion of Unified Independence.

There is no ground for linking the two as cause and effect. Only that this was the order.

On July 24th the American political adviser sends a telegram to Washington.

Thirteen days after the conversation.

On August 15th the founding of the Republic of Korea is proclaimed. Sejongno was covered with people.

On August 12th the Republic of China provisionally recognized the Korean government

and appointed Liu Yuwan its representative with ambassadorial rank.

And on June 26th, 1949, Kim Gu is shot dead.

Three days later U.S. Army intelligence compiles a background report.

The document names An Du-hui as a member of a certain organization and an informant of the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps.

But the evaluation box at the foot of the page goes no further than "probably true."

The U.S. Army did not verify it; U.S. Army intelligence wrote down what it had been told.

In Pyongyang he saw it exactly, and he knew exactly what was coming.

Kim Gu was shot on June 26th, 1949.

The war began on June 25th, 1950.

One year, less a day.