[KS] Korean National Anthem Composer & A House of Spies

hoffmann at koreanstudies.com hoffmann at koreanstudies.com
Thu Dec 26 20:50:40 EST 2019


Dear Koreanists:
 
THIS IS A MANUSCRIPT OFFER.

I am posting this to the KS List to solicit interest. I am looking for  
a place to publish my research over the past ten months, both as a  
short magazine “preview” and in a longer academic format as a book  
chapter or short book. Please contact me if interested in including  
this in any prospective book or publication project related to modern  
Korean history or cultural history (please no IS publications) where  
it might be suitable. You reach me at:  hoffmann at koreanstudies.com
 
_WORKING TITLE:_
AN IK-T’AE AND THE ESPIONAGE ACTIVITIES OF THE BERLIN MANCHUKUO LEGATION
 
_SUBJECT: _
THE KOREAN NATIONAL ANTHEM COMPOSER AN IK-T’AE 安益泰 (1906–1965), HIS  
BERLIN RESIDENCE, THE KWANTUNG ARMY’S BERLIN ESPIONAGE NETWORK AND  
JAPANESE INTELLIGENCE AGAINST GERMANY AND THE USSR, NAZI  
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, JEWISH EMIGRATION AND THE MANCHUKUO LEGATION, AND  
(SPACE PERMITTING) POSSIBLY A SECTION ON DIRECT NAZI–KOREAN RELATIONS  
AND FASCISM IN KOREA.
 
This new investigation has grown out of my book on /Berlin Koreans and  
Pictured Koreans/ (edited by Andreas Schirmer), which is thanks to the  
publisher and Dr. Schirmer now freely and legally available as a PDF  
download at https://b-ok.cc/dl/3720015/8a4481 and elsewhere).  
Indirectly, this new research on An was also triggered by Yi  
Hae-yŏng’s critical /An Ik-t’ae k'eisŭ/ [The An Ik-t’ae Case  
(published Jan. 2019)]  
(https://book.naver.com/bookdb/book_detail.nhn?bid=14450400). Apart  
from its convincing argument, the book unwittingly demonstrates the  
stunning discrepancy between public interest and actual, factual  
research on the national anthem composer, not to mention the lack of  
contextualization within the wider field of cultural-political history  
unconfined by the containment efforts of Korean national  
historiography. While my own time and resources are very limited, by  
expanding the usual range of source materials and secondary literature  
studied, and by shifting my focus to the direct as well as political  
environment An Ik-t’ae lived in, I have now come to some surprising,  
new, revealing conclusions. The study is mostly based on publications  
and source materials from Germany, Spain, Japan, China, Britain,  
Sweden, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, the US, and former Manchukuo.  
Before you start guessing—hardly any part of this ‘story’ is published  
in Korea or in any Korean studies publications (although a  
considerable part of the information derives from published materials).
 
Thus far, research on An Ik-t’ae and collaboration tends to revolve  
around his 1942 and 1943 “Manchukuo” propaganda concerts in Berlin,  
Vienna, and Paris, along with his radio broadcasts in Spain (some of  
which have been known since 2006; others I uncovered in 2015). The  
larger propagandistic role of An Ik-t’ae has received considerable  
media attention in recent years. Therein An is still uniformly  
depicted as an exceptional case. However, as I had argued in /Berlin  
Koreans and Pictured Koreans/, his propaganda work for both the  
Japanese and the Nazis was not so exceptional by any means. From the  
mid-1930s the tide had turned; quite a number of Koreans (more than  
those dealt with in my book) were involved in producing fascist  
propaganda or adopting Nazi youth ideology. Chang Myŏn’s younger  
brother, for example, helped construct bombers for the Nazis (and  
later continued this line of work for the U.S. military). There are  
also several well-known cases, e.g. of the independence fighter and  
fascist Yi Pŏm-sŏk (on an official visit with Nazis leaders in  
Berlin) and philosopher An Ho-sang. Both propagated National  
Socialist ideologies before and after liberation. But there are many  
others whose activities were forgotten and/or covered up over the  
passing years. The former Korean language lecturer at Berlin  
University, Kang Se-hyŏn, for example, even guided a Hitler Youth  
group through Korea and organized mass rallies for them. After  
liberation he directs the training of 70,000 youth in Suwŏn, where he  
tells American and Australian reporters that “his curriculum is based  
on Hitler Youth ideals,” pushing Korean youth to be “educated in the  
history of the Hitler Youth movement” (from an Australian newspaper,  
June 27, 1947). In Berlin, a Korean scientist even had an important  
position in the team that co-shaped Nazi race ideology at the core  
institute of Nazi race research—the home institute of Mengele,  
Auschwitz’s gruesome Angel of Death. The list goes on and on. Ōshima,  
“the German ambassador to Germany” (/chūdoku Doitsu taishi/), as  
Japanese diplomats nicknamed him at the time, would even go as far as  
to offer his friend, the German foreign minister Ribbentrop, to use  
Japan’s network of Korean spies within the USSR. Little did he know  
that one of his own Japanese diplomats had handed over two generations  
of Japanese diplomatic code books to Stalin’s NKVD, enabling the  
Russians to read every single radio communication between Berlin and  
Tokyo, and between all consulates and embassies within Europe. My  
proposed article, though, focuses solely on two very specific  
subjects: An Ik-t’ae’s Berlin residence and espionage and  
counterespionage surrounding the Berlin Manchukuo Legation (or  
embassy, as we would call it today).
 
I won't let you go without an anecdote (history is always personal):
 
“Are these any different than the Nazis? And this is what you want to  
study now?” my father
confronted me with disgust and righteousness as we watched Korean  
paratroopers slaughtering their own people in Kwangju on the late  
evening news. It was May 1980. Four decades earlier, at the age of  
seventeen, he had been a paratrooper in the Nazi Wehrmacht. The  
following week I left my small village for Hamburg. There, I met my  
future Korean language lecturer at the university for a preparatory  
fall semester talk. Having mentioned my interest in the arts, he got  
all excited and loudly proclaimed: “Ah! In that case you really have  
to walk over to my colleague and office neighbor. You won’t believe  
it, but he actually met with An Ik-t’ae on a daily basis—you know, the  
composer of our national anthem!”
 
But that was 1980. I was not even eighteen. On my mind were David  
Bowie and punk rock, and Müller-Westernhagen lived just around the  
corner; on rainy days even Kim Min-gi would do. Nothing could have  
been more distant yet closer to home than a Furtwängler wannabe,  
someone embodying a culture associated with fascism and all that  
despicable mess my parents’ generation had created in a few short  
years. Sensing that I was utterly unimpressed, my lecturer was quick  
to clarify the historical significance of his statement: “No, no, not  
after the war, during the Nazi period, in the Manchukuo Embassy!” I  
still did not quite grasp his reference to the Manchukuo Embassy then,  
it just confused me.
 
This was all forgotten for four decades, until I saw two photos of a  
retired Chinese literature professor in the study of a Berlin  
architectural historian earlier this year. It is only now that I see  
the sad irony in all of this. I ended up helping that professor carry  
some boxes of books to the elevator, and never asked him about the  
Korean composer. Indeed, that professor had once worked as the  
secretary of the Manchukuo Legation, where he and An had met daily. As  
I know now, technically, An Ik-t’ae had at the end resided inside the  
Manchukuo Embassy, the European center of the Kwantung Army’s  
intelligence operations, a place overcrowded with with agents of  
various nationalities holding Manchukuoan passports. (Yes, I refer to  
the embassy itself, no mistake there … But for the details, you’ll  
have to read my article.)
 
(Feel free to repost or forward.)
 
 
Have a nice day!
 
Berkeley, December 26, 2019
 
Frank Hoffmann
(hoffmann at koreanstudies.com)
 
-- 

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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com
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