Independence activist, journalist and educator; imprisoned in the Dongyang Academy case in Jiandao; Order of Merit for National Foundation, Patriotism Medal
| Life | 1900 ~ 1968 |
| Era | 일제강점기·광복 이후 |
| Clan | 온양 방씨 |
Bang Han-min (方漢旻, 1900-1968) was an independence activist and journalist under Japanese rule and an educator after liberation. Of the Onyang Bang clan, his pen name was Aseong. According to Wikipedia he was born in 1900 into an Onyang Bang yangban family at Ganggyeong, Nonsan, South Chungcheong, the second son of Bang Gyu-seok and Jo Hyeon-jeong. His grandfather Bang Dal-ju was a military officer, and his father passed the military examination in 1884, reached the rank of tongjeong daebu and continued to be chosen as township head of Ganggyeong and Seongdong after the annexation.
After the Gongju Agricultural School he studied sericulture at the model farm in Suwon. Around the founding of the Chosun Ilbo in 1920 he joined it as a reporter in the editorial and city departments, criticizing Japanese rule through veiled articles on the rise and fall of Rome or conditions in Egypt, and was dismissed. He then worked for the Dong-A Ilbo, but as police surveillance tightened he went to Tokyo, where in 1922 he published the Munhwa Sinmun with fellow students and organized student protests over the massacre of Korean workers in Niigata.
He then went to Longjing in North Jiandao and helped found the Dongyang Academy to give national education to young Koreans. In 1923 the Japanese consular police arrested him, alleging that people at the academy planned to destroy government offices and assassinate officials, and the Cheongjin District Court sentenced him to ten years under the explosives control regulations; he is said to have shouted "Long live Korean independence!" in court and received an additional penalty. While he was imprisoned in Daejeon and seriously ill, about three hundred people from his hometown petitioned for his parole, and he was released in June 1928 on suspension of sentence. Arrested again in 1929 and tried in 1931, he was, according to Wikipedia, held in Daejeon prison until October 1937, his health ruined by long imprisonment and torture.
After liberation he taught sericulture at the Suwon agricultural college that preceded Seoul National University's College of Agriculture, and in 1952 he served on the founding committee of Inha Institute of Technology and taught economics there. He died in Incheon in 1968. The government posthumously awarded him the Order of Merit for National Foundation, Patriotism Medal, in 1990, and the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs named him Independence Activist of the Month for January 2010.