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재일사학자 김정명 아오모리대학교 명예교수

When I heard the news that Professor Kim Jeong-myeong passed away at the age of 87 in July, the joys and sorrows I had shared with him over the course of our friendship occurred to me like a short movie. Forty-one years have passed since I first met him at an academic conference in the summer of 1978.

Born in Yangyang, Gangwon-do Province, in 1932, Professor Kim went over to Japan sometime in 1953 before the armistice, or around 1954. Having settled in Tokyo, he entered the law department of Meiji University to major in politics ad received a master’s degree in international politics and diplomatic history at the graduate school of Meiji University. Then, he earned a doctorate in politics in March 1965 with his thesis “The Korean War and Research into the United Nations.” It was due to the teachings of Kamikawa Hikomatsu, a professor of Meiji University famed as an emeritus professor of University of Tokyo and a member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. He published “Road to the Unification of Korea” (Tokyo, 1972) with his teacher, Kamikawa. He obtained his Japanese nationality by marrying a lady from the Ichikawa family while serving as a researcher at the Japan Institute of International Affairs within Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and has been active with the name Ichikawa Masaaki since then. He broadened his academic activities after being hired as professor at Aomori University, a national higher learning institute.

Aomori is in the northeastern tip of Honshu. But Prof. Kim mostly lived in Tokyo as he stayed in Aomori only for one or two days, possible thanks to the intensive lecture system. He lived a relatively stable life since his wife owned a small building in Kita Otsuka, Toyoshima-ku, the central district in Tokyo, and she operated a clothing store inside it. Furthermore, his wife arranged a research office-cum-living room in a “manshyon” to support Professor Kim’s research. Professor Kim mostly lived in a place which was very close to his home and uncovered a lot of data while frequenting the parliamentary library.

Against this backdrop, Professor Kim published the six-volume Joseon Independence Movement (1970). He then published Korea Annexation Data (1978, three volumes), and Compilation of Japan-Korea Diplomatic Data (Volume 1-4 1979, Volume 5-10 1981). Korea here does not mean today’s Korea, but Joseon or the Korean Empire. All these books were produced by Hara Shobo in Tokyo. 

Professor Kim Jeong-myeon’s focus was the Joseon’s Independence Movement, particularly on collecting data about Patriotic Marty Ahn Jung-geun. He succeeded in looking for a handwritten copy of the “Theory of Oriental Peace” by Ahn Jung-geun, with a great deal of effort. Ahn authored the “Theory of Oriental Peace” in prison after shooting Ito Hirobumi to death, but its original copy has not been discovered yet. What Prof. Kim discovered is a handwritten copy that a Japanese person, impressed by Ahn Jung-geun, left to his descendants. Scripts by Ahn Jung-geun, which might otherwise have been forgotten, were revealed to the world by Professor Kim for the first time. Later Professor Kim ascertained that the handwritten copy of “Ahn Eung-chil History,” titlted after Ahn Jung-geun’s childhood name was the original. These achievements caused him to be recognized as a trailblazer in studies of Ahn Jung-geun in Japan. 

A press copy of “Ahn Eung-chil History” ⓒ Ahn Jung-geun Memorial Hall

Professor Kim concentrated on the issue of the unification of the Korean Peninsula since 1960. He founded the Pacific Rim Research Institute to publish the “Korea-North Korea Yearbook,” a source book concerning South and North Korea, and he organized six-nation international academic conferences involving South and North Korea, the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, and Japan at the Japan Press Center in downtown Tokyo every year over 11 years from 1985 to 1995. Scholars and policymakers from the six nations attended the conference sponsored by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun and Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo and had serious debates about peace and unification of the Korean Peninsula and further peace and prosperity in East Asia. I attended the conferences almost every year and conversed with scholars from the so-called Communist bloc, including North Korea, the Soviet Union, and China, who were not easy to meet at the time, and I built friendships with them. My friendship with Dr. Alexander Vorontosov of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russia Academy of Sciences is attributed to these conferences and our friendship remains intact even today.

Professor Kim, who was naturalized as a Japanese citizen, was born as a Korean and, therefore, must have been quite lonely, cared for me like I was his biological younger brother. When I was a guest professor at the department of international relations, part of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, University of Tokyo, in Komaba, Meguro-gu, for one semester from March to September in 1984, Professor Kim picked six of my theses written in Korean then translated and published them under the title of “Division Structure of the Korean Peninsula” so that I could use the book to teach Japanese students. He was thoughtful enough to take me to the publishing company in Ronsosha to introduce what was contained in the book to me. Moreover, he introduced a few scholars in Japan to me. After his wife died, 10 years ago, Professor Kim spent his later years under the care of his daughter. He was ill in bed after collapsing three times because he drank out of loneliness; nonetheless, the image of him, immersed in reading, lingers before my mind’s eye.