[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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