Han Duk-su

For the prime minister of South Korea, see Han Duck-soo.

In this Korean name, the family name is Han.

Han Duk-su
Portrait of Han Duk-su
Personal details
Born	February 18, 1907 Dongho-dong, Naenam-myeon, Gyeongsang County, North Gyeongsang Province, Korea
Died	February 21, 2001(2001-02-21) (aged 94) Tokyo, Japan

Han Duk-su
Chosŏn'gŭl	한덕수
Hancha	韓德銖
Revised Romanization	Han Deoksu
McCune–Reischauer	Han Tŏksu

Han Deok-su (February 18, 1907 – February 21, 2001) was a North Korean activist who founded the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) in 1955.

Life and career

Early life

Han Deok-su was born on February 18, 1907 in Imperial Korea as the eldest son of Mr. Han Gi Man and Mrs. Jang Nae Gok. According to Deok-su himself, he developed anti-Japanese tendencies due to the March 1st Movement in 1919. After attending Daegu Gyeseong High School for four years, Deok-su left Korea to study in Japan in 1927, wishing to become a vocalist, but was unable to pass the entrance exam for a music school. Two years later, he instead entered the Department of Social Sciences at Nihon University in Tokyo and worked as a newspaper deliveryman before dropping out. Afterwards, he turned his attention to the labor movement, and in 1931, he joined the Tokyo branch of the general trade union under the National Council of Japanese Trade Unions.

Activism

In August 1933, Deok-su moved to Atami and became a standing member of the Higashizu Labor Union. In September 1934, he was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison with a three-year stay of execution on the charge of having organized a labor dispute among his fellow Korean laborers, who had been under forced labor at the construction site of the Tanna Tunnel.

Despite repeated arrests and imprisonments, Deok-su still advocated for Korean rights before the country gained independence from the empire of Japan on August 15, 1945. After September 1945, he served as a representative of a Kantō district association of Koreans and a member of the preparatory committee for Chongryon, which was founded in October 1945 and formed on May 25, 1955. After the end of the Pacific War, he led the formation of the Korean Association in the Kantō region and oversaw the formation of the League of Koreans in Japan in October 1945, serving as chairman of the Kanakawa Prefecture headquarters and central headquarters, and later serving as Director General. He was elected director of the general affairs bureau, and later director of the cultural and educational affairs bureau, of Chongryon, as well as the co-chairman of Chongryon in 1947.

In December 1949, after the League of Koreans in Japan was ordered to be disbanded by the Japanese government, Deok-su was appointed as the head of the National Countermeasures Department of the Japanese Communist Party, and in 1951, he opened the Nine Wolseobang (九月書房) to sell publications donated by the propaganda department of North Korea's Workers' Party of Korea and use the proceeds to develop the Korean Zainichi movement.

Additionally, Deok-su served the Fatherland Front Central Committee as its member since 1949, and as a member of its chairmen's group from 1957 until his death in February 2001. He strived to reorganize the Korean compatriots' movement in Japan following Kim Il Sung's Juche-oriented line after 1952, including re-publishment of the magazine Choson Sinbo and resumption of the work of the Korean News Agency based in Tokyo.

Death

On February 21, 2001, Han Deok-su died in Tokyo, Japan from pneumonia. Afterwards, a funeral committee was appointed with So Man-sul as its chairman and Ho Jong-man as vice chairman.