Zhu Dehai (; 5 March 1911 – 3 July 1972) or Joo Duk-hae () was a Korean Chinese revolutionary, educator, and politician of the People's Republic of China. He served as a political commissar of the Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He was the first governor of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture from 1952 to 1965. He also served as the member of the National People's Congress (NPC) for several years. He was known as a political moderate and defied orders from the during the Great Leap Forward while maintaining a close relationship with the North Korean government. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards stigmatized Zhu as a North Korean spy, and he was expelled from all political positions.
As a Korean minority high-ranking cadre, Zhu contributed to improve the social status of the Korean minority in China. His support for Korean's autonomy in northeastern China culminated in the establishment of Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in 1952. He also paid attention to the education for Korean Chinese. In Yan'an, Zhu was a founder of the Military and Political University for Korean Revolution (; ). He also played a crucial role in the establishment of Yanbian University, the first university in Yanbian prefecture.
Born as the son of a poor Korean farmer who immigrated to Primorsky Krai, Russian Empire in 1911, Zhu was inspired to become a communist by attending a school sponsored by Korean communists. As a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he engaged in guerrilla actions against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. In 1935, he followed the party's command to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East and graduated in 1938.
Zhu joined the Chinese Communist Party headquarters in Yan'an and took up a position in the education department for the Korean Chinese minority in China. During the Chinese Civil War, he organized and led a voluntary battalion of Korean communists and occupied Harbin along with the People's Liberation Army. Zhu came to prominence through his exploits during the Chinese Civil War.
In 1949, shortly before the foundation of the People's Republic of China, the CCP appointed Zhu to be the first secretary of the Yanbian Local Committee of the Communist Party, which represented all ethnic Koreans in northeastern China. In 1952, he became the first governor of the freshly established Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Simultaneously, he rose in influence in the central politics of China. In 1954, he was appointed vice governor of Jilin Province and elected to the 1st National People's Congress. He served as the member of the congress for 3 consecutive terms until the Cultural Revolution.
In 1966, Zhu became the target of criticism by the Red Guards in Yanbian. Mobilized by Mao Yuanxin, a cousin of Mao Zedong, Red Guards accused him of treason and being the province's "top capitalist". He resigned from his position in 1966 and was sent down to Hubei Province, where he died of lung cancer in 1972.
After the demise of Mao and the subsequent downfall of the Gang of Four, Zhu Dehai was posthumously rehabilitated officially in 1978. In 2007, his remains were moved from Wuhan to Yanji.
Early life
Zhu Dehai was born Oh Giseop (; ) in Dobea (; ), Nikolsk-Ussuriysky, Primorskaya Oblast (present-day Primorsky Krai), Russian Empire in March 1911. His father, Oh Wooseo, born in Hoeryong, a border city in Korea, immigrated to Primorsky Krai during the great famine in 1902. Dobea, approximately 50 kilometers from Ussuriysk, was a small settlement established by immigrant Korean farmers like the Oh family. Oh Wooseo worked as a poor tenant farmer in a remote valley away from the village. Zhu was the youngest of two children.
When Zhu was seven years old, his father was killed by a Chinese robber. Zhu, his brother, and his mother Ms. Heo moved to his late father's hometown, Hoeryong, in October 1918. Two years later, the family moved to Jiandao, China, the most popular destination for Korean immigrants during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Zhu's family settled in a Korean immigrant town called Sudong'gol (present-day Guang Xin Xiang, Longjing, Jilin), where Zhu had an uncle with a farm.
In Sudong'gol, Zhu enrolled in the Fourteenth Public Elementary School of Helong County, run by the Republic of China's local government. Zhu's revolutionary and nationalistic consciousness was greatly inspired by the school's teaching of the Xinhai Revolution and Sun Yat-sen. Zhu graduated elementary school in Winter 1922. However, due to poverty, he could not continue his studies. He worked in order to support his family.
Early revolutionary activity
Communist education While working as a laborer in Longjing for several years, Zhu learned of conflict between the Japanese and the Korean minorities in Jiandao. In 1927, Zhu became a student of a private school owned by Kim Kwangjin, a locally prominent Korean communist. Driven by Korean nationalism and the ideal of the communist revolution inspired by Kim, he joined the Communist Youth League of Korea () in 1929. This organization was affiliated with the Korean Communist Party, an underground party outlawed by the colonial government of Korea. Zhu delivered secret messages among the organization's members, who were looking for a way to smuggle firearms to Korea.
Organizing communes In February 1930, Zhu left his family to become a revolutionary. He joined a team of communists who planned to build a base for an upcoming communist's revolution in Ning'an, Heilongjiang Province. In Ning'an, Zhu settled in a farmhouse near the urban area, where his comrades stored rifles in secret. In August, according to the Comintern's new guideline, "One nation, One Party," he switched membership from the Communist Youth League of Korea to Communist Youth League of China. Later in 1930, the CCP's Harbin branch ordered Zhu's organization to prepare a riot early the next year. However, in November, the Republican authorities revealed the riot and most local cadres were arrested. In the midst of chaos, Zhu escaped from the scene and found refuge on a nearby mountain.
In January 1931, Zhu left his shelter and settled in a village called Chengzicun () near Jingpo Lake, under an alias. In May 1931, he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party and was named by the party as secretary of the village, in recognition of his contribution to the building of a commune.
Partisan activity during the Japanese invasion On 19 September 1931, the Imperial Japanese army invaded northeastern China. As the nationalist government withdrew from the region to avoid confrontation, the Chengzicun commune became occupied by the Japanese army by late September. Shortly after the Japanese invasion, Zhu and his communist colleagues fled to Mishan, Heilongjiang, which was yet to be overrun by the Japanese army. The local committee of the party in Mishan sent Zhu to , a small town in the southern vicinity of Mishan, to build a revolutionary base in the village. He worked for the party in Errenbanxiang, forming a sham marriage with one of his comrades to avert suspicion from the Japanese patrols and pro-Japanese local authorities by 1934.
The Japanese army seized Mishan in May 1932. In a protest against the Japanese occupation, Zhu organized an anti-Japanese mass rally in October 1932. However, he was caught at the scene of the protest. When the police investigated him, he used the alias Zhu Dehai for the first time. He continued to use this alias from then onwards. Zhu denied the police accusation that he was the mastermind of the rally, and he was discharged. In Spring 1934, in order to break away from Japanese surveillance, Zhu moved his base to a mountain slope near the River Hada (), along with approximately twenty guerrilla members. For a year on that base, contracting tuberculosis, Zhu trained approximately one hundred guerrillas. These guerrillas later constituted the third battalion of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a partisan army fighting the Japanese puppet regime of Manchukuo.
Activities during the Sino-Japanese War
Education in Moscow and Yan'an Because his worsening illness prevented Zhu from working on the front lines, the party sent him to Moscow for treatment and cadre education. In Summer 1936, with his destination unknown, Zhu crossed the Russo-Manchurian border to go to Vladivostok and rode the train to Moscow. The party enrolled him in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in late 1936. He first enrolled in the course for Chinese students but switched to the Korean course. During the coursework, he studied the basic theory of Marxism–Leninism, the history of the communist movement, and military strategy. At the university, he was also acquainted with other Chinese cadres, such as Kang Sheng, who later accused Zhu as a traitor of the party during the Cultural Revolution.
Zhu and his cohort graduated the course in Summer 1938. After a year of travel from Moscow via Xinjiang, Zhu finally arrived in Yan'an. The Chinese Communist Party ordered him to study further at the Counter-Japanese Military and Political University so that the party could send him back to work in northeast China. At the school, he studied with notable Korean communists such as Zu Chungil (who later became the North Korean ambassador to Moscow) and Kim Changdeok (who later became the commander of the Fifth Division of the Korean People's Army). He graduated the course in Winter 1938.
Eighth Route Army In Winter 1938, the party cancelled its plan to send Zhu to the northeastern front, due to the impending Japanese offensive toward Yan'an. Zhu was instead assigned to the 718th Regiment of the Eighth Route Army. For three years, he served as a political commissar in the regiment, dispatched in Nanniwan of Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region, a small village approximately thirty kilometers away from Yan'an. According to a biography on Zhu, he also participated in some form in the Yan'an Rectification Movement. In 1942, the party sent him to Yan'an again to enroll in an advanced education course for high-ranking cadres. During the course, he researched the application of Marxism–Leninism to China. In Yan'an, Zhu befriended Zhu De, Hu Yaobang, and Zhou Enlai, who later supported Zhu's political stance in Yanbian.
Education for Korean Communists In 1943, after his graduation, the party ordered Zhu to establish a cadre school for the education and training of Korean communists. This school, later called Military and Political University for Korean Revolution (; ) was established by Zhu and other high-profile Korean communists, such as Kim Tu-bong, and trained about 200 graduates. Those graduates later formed the Yan'an Faction, a group of Pro-Chinese communists in North Korea. Zhu took charge of the management of the school until the defeat of the Japanese Empire.
Korean minority leadership
Chinese Civil War
After the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union occupied Korea. Many Korean communists returned to an independent Korea, which they assumed would soon be unified. Zhu instead expected that the division of Korea would be perpetual. He believed that Korean communists in the CCP should govern Manchurian territory in northeast China, where more than a million ethnic Korean lived. Once the CCP occupied the northeast, the communists could recruit and train a Korean army that could consolidate the divided Korea.