The liberation of Korea from Japan on August 15, 1945 was not the end of Korean people's independence movement. As the Korean Peninsula was divided into the North under the Soviet Union military government and the South under the United States militar...
The liberation of Korea from Japan on August 15, 1945 was not the end of Korean people's independence movement. As the Korean Peninsula was divided into the North under the Soviet Union military government and the South under the United States military government with the legitimacy of the provisional government of the Republic of Korea unrecognized, the complete national independence was yet to be achieved.
Back to the liberated South, Kim Koo continued to build united front for the "most urgent and important mission" of creating "independent sovereignty." He advocated for the unity of "every Korean except very few pro-Japanese collaborators" regardless of ideology or age as a one person. The South-North Negotiations of April 1948, three years after the liberation marked the culmination of the unification movement of right-wing nationalists including Kim Koo and Kim Kyu-sik.
Those who see the South-North Negotiations of 1948 negative emphasize that the movement was doomed to failure from the beginning and it actually ended up with "failure" as two separate governments were established in the North and the South. They claim that its goal of preventing separate governments through the negotiation was unrealistic, therefore the attempt was meaningless and was only manipulated by the North. However, the real implication of the South-North Negotiations and united front movement should be understood not based on its failure or success but based on how the movements have been succeeded and developed over time.
Though Kim Koo experienced several ups and downs and repeated failures among complicated political changes, he was dedicated to the realization of a complete, independent and united country throughout his life from years of independent movement before the liberation to days of anti-trusteeship and the South-North negotiation movement after the liberation. 72 years after the liberation, today there have been increasing attempts to deny the meanings of independence movement from Japan and to appreciate only the "establishment" of the Republic of Korea as a separate government in the South led by the right-wing groups after the liberation while the division regime on the Korean Peninsula has been further solidified. In this regard, the need to review and reevaluate the 1948 South-North Negotiation and the national independent unification theory of Kim Koo is stronger than ever. The proper reinterpretation of the 1948 South-North Negotiations will also provide meaningful sources to develop a future unification process.