Yang Gi-ha

Yang Gi-ha (梁基瑕, 10th day of the 10th lunar month of 1878 – 1 February 1932) was an independence activist of Korea. His art name was Hasan (荷山). His other names were Im Chang-ju (林昌周) and Yang In-won (梁仁元).

Life

He was a descendant of the Yongseong Buwongun branch (Hwi Juun) of the Namwon Yang clan and was born in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province. He studied Confucian learning extensively and served as a bureaucrat in the Korean Empire, including as magistrate of Gongju County. When the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty was concluded in 1910, he abandoned his official post and went into exile in Xījiandao (Western Jiandao).

At that time, Jiandao was home to Yu In-seok, a prominent Confucian scholar from Gyeongsang Province with experience as a righteous army leader, who had come into exile with his followers. Yang Gi-ha associated closely with Park Jang-ho, Jo Maeng-seon, and others under Yu's command, and sought to establish an overseas base for the independence movement. After the March 1st Movement of 1919, Yang and these men organized the Korean Independence Corps (Daechongjae Park Jang-ho) in Qiandao and joined armed anti-Japanese struggle. When this organization split into the Giwon Independence Corps and the Minguk Independence Corps, he joined the Minguk Independence Corps (Daechongjae Jo Byeong-jun), which was centered on the young faction advocating republicanism.

In 1920, under the jurisdiction of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, he helped form the Gwangbokgun Headquarters (commander Jo Maeng-seon), which united independence army groups in southern Manchuria, and he assumed the post of Director of Propaganda. Having established ties with the Provisional Government at this time, Yang served as a member of the Provisional Legislative Assembly and took part in founding the , remaining in for a little over three years. However, he opposed the line of , one of the leading forces of the Provisional Government, and in 1922 raised a motion of no confidence against President Rhee, going through conflict before returning in 1924 to the armed independence movement faction in .