Kim Chang-ryong
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Kim Chang-ryong | |
|---|---|
| Hangul: |
김창룡
|
| Hanja: |
金昌龍
|
| Revised Romanization: | Gim Chang-ryong |
| McCune-Reischauer: | Kim Ch'angnyong |
Kim Chang-ryong (1920-1956), was the right hand man of Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea. He was assassinated in 1956 by his own men.
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[edit] Early life
Born to a poor family in Yonghung, South Hamgyong Province during the period of Japanese rule, Kim Chang-ryong enrolled like many other young Koreans in the Japanese Army in Manchuria. Formerly a MP (Military Police), he soon became a reputed detective, whose work was to uncover spies. In 1941, in order to arrest Wang Gunlai (王近禮), a Chinese spy master, Kim disguised himself as a beggar and got a job as Wang's delivery man for his department store. Kim even had himself arrested several times until he obtained Wang's trust. The Japanese military eventually caught about 60 agents from the Soviet Union.
[edit] Homecoming
After the Japanese were defeated by the Allies in 1945, Kim Chang-ryong came back to his home village, then part of North Korea and under Soviet occupation. At that time, he was wanted by the Communists for his acts done as a Japanese detective so he kept a low profile not to be uncovered. At the end of year 1945, he visited his friend and former assistant Kim Yun Won (金允元) in Chorwon, but the latter betrayed him and sold him out to the Soviets, who sentenced him to death for "anti-Korean deeds", i.e. capturing Korean resistants against the Japanese occupation. But as Kim was carried on a truck to the place of his execution, he jumped off the vehicle and escaped through the mountains in freezing weather to reach a relative's house three days later. Recovering from his wounds, he was waiting for the right moment to flee to South Korea. But he did not know that his own family had betrayed him and was captured again by the Soviets, who sentenced him to death for the second time. But this time too, Kim managed to escape, killing with a chair the Soviet soldier who was guarding him, and walked to South Korea.
[edit] South Korea and the Korean War
Kim Chang-ryong arrived in Seoul in May 1946 and joined several different corps of the ROKA (Republic of Korea Army) to eventually be assigned to G-2 (intelligence). Kim had seen how terrible the situation in North Korea was and he had sworn to himself that he would do everything for his country not to become like above the 38th parallel north. What he wanted was indeed to prevent anybody from making South Korea a communist country. And he found yet another enemy in the army : corruption. Since then he was determined to get rid of both the communist spies and corruption. Therefore, as soon as Kim could detect the tiniest sign of those two things, he got the suspect arrested. But since almost all major officers in the army were involved, he inevitably made countless enemies very quickly who swore that some day they would have their revenge. One of them was Kim Do Young who naturally was afraid of Kim Chang-ryong who threatened to have him arrested. In addition, Kim Chang-ryong had obtained President Syngman Rhee's trust, who saw him as an efficient young officer who would be able to "clean up the mess" in the army, yet without political power since he had served in the Japanese army. Rhee knew that Kim's sense of loyalty could not be perverted by lust for power (in addition he had served in the Japanese military, because of which he would never have enough support to become a serious political adversary) and so he was the ideal right hand man. Kim Chang-ryong, now a superior officer, formed with the support of the US Army officials the US CIC or Counter-intelligence Corps. It was this unit who was responsible for arresting and interrogating thousands of (assumed) North Korean spies and corrupted officers. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and other American officers even nicknamed him "Kim the snake". Kim's relentlessness was so that by July 1949, a little less than 5,000 soldiers and officers of the ROKA had been arrested and interrogated. Of course, like always, the CIC committed excesses and had several innocent people arrested and was blamed for that.
[edit] Death
In 1953, then head of the Korean CIC, Kim Chang-ryong was promoted to a Junjang (Brigadier General) and then, in 1955, to a Sojang (Major General), a fact which indeed exacerbated the resentment that the other officers (including most probably Park Chung-Hee, President of the Republic of Korea from 1963 to 1979) had against him. They had already tried several times to assassinate him but until then all attempts had failed. Yet, in the early morning of January 30, 1956, Kim Chang-ryong left home in his car accompanied by his driver, there was another car barring the road. As he shouted at his visitors to get their car off the road, they shot him three times and got away. Thus, Kim Chang-ryong, then aged 36, was taken to hospital where he died.
[edit] Controversy
From the moment Kim Chang-ryong's body was exhumed and transferred to the National Military Cemetery of Daejeon, there was amongst other things a huge controversy about the assassination of Kim Gu, a former leftist and nationalist president murdered on June 26, 1949 by Lt. Ahn Doo-hee. Kim Gu's relatives, a rich and powerful family in Korea, claimed that it was sacreliegious to even think of burying such a "criminal" in this cemetery, for Ahn Doo-hee allegedly claimed he had been ordered to kill Kim Gu by Kim Chang-ryong, then a captain in the army.
