Lieutenant general of the Japanese army (listed in the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators)
| Life | 1889 ~ 1946 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 남양 홍씨 |
Hong Sa-ik was a Korean officer who graduated from the Japanese Army Academy and Army War College and rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. His clan seat was Namyang; he came from the Tohong line and was a descendant of Hong U-won, a leader of the Southerner faction under King Sukjong.
He was born in Daedeok, Anseong, Gyeonggi Province, into an impoverished yangban family as the third son of Hong I-yu, and after losing his father young was raised by his much older eldest brother; records give his birth year variously as 1887 (family register) or 1889 (gravestone). He studied the Chinese classics as a boy, but when the civil service examinations were abolished he chose a military career on the advice of a relative, the Korean Empire army officer Hong Jung-yu. He entered the Korean Empire Military Academy in 1905; after the army was disbanded in 1907 and the academy closed, he went to Japan in 1909 as a government-sponsored student and transferred into the Central Military Preparatory School.
He graduated from the Japanese Army Academy's 26th class in 1914 and later completed the regular course of the Army War College. He was promoted to major general in 1941 and to lieutenant general in 1944. He reportedly refused to adopt a Japanese name and openly stated, "I am the Korean Hong Sa-ik," and is known as the only Korean of commoner background to complete the War College's regular course during colonial rule.
Wartime collaboration In March 1944 he was appointed chief of logistics for Japan's Southern Army headquarters in the Philippines and for about ten months oversaw camps holding Allied prisoners of war. After the war a tribunal in Manila held him responsible for the abuse of prisoners by his subordinates; he offered no defense and was executed in September 1946. He is listed in the Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Collaborators.
His fellow students in Japan included Yi Eung-jun, Kim Seok-won and Ji Cheong-cheon. After liberation his son was dismissed from his job on account of his father, and from the 1980s the journalist Song Kon-ho and others re-examined his life, prompting continuing debate over how to judge him.