World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseYi Dae-hyong, later known under his nom de guerre Ji Cheong-cheon, was born in 1888. In 1914, he graduated from the Japanese Military Academy and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Japanese Army. In 1919, he joined a Korean guerrilla group fighting against the Japanese occupation, and he would transfer the knowledge he had obtained in the Japanese Army to fellow resistance fighters. In the 1930s, he went to China to join the group of Koreans who had formed a provisional Korean republic in Shanghai. In 1940, he was made the commander in chief of the Korean Liberation Army, which was co-sponsored by the provisional government as well as the Chinese Nationalist government. In this role, he fought the Japanese in China and in Southeast Asia. He also attempted to persuade Japanese collaborationist Hong Sa-ik to join him, but he would fail in this task. After the war, he served as a member of the Korean National Assembly. He passed away in 1959 and was posthumously awarded the Order of Independence Merit for National Foundation in 1962.

Ji Cheong-cheon Timeline

Photographs