Politics·Nobility (Pro-Japanese collaborator)
| Life | 1839 ~ 1919 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 전주 이씨 |
Yi Bong-ui (1839-1919), a military official of late Joseon and a bureaucrat of the Korean Empire, rose through posts including royal messenger, magistrate of Suncheon and Namyang, chief of the capital police, mayor of Hanseong, and Minister of Justice, eventually reaching the offices of Right State Councilor and Left State Councilor. After the founding of the Korean Empire he served as an army lieutenant general and general and, as a judge of the Office of Royal Relatives, was ennobled as Prince Wanseong.
In 1911 his son, Yi Gi-won, inherited the title of baron along with a 25,000-won bestowal bond, and in 1912 Yi Bong-ui received the Order of the Japan-Korea Annexation Merit and was ranked at the fifth court grade. However, according to testimony from Sin Ik-hui, Yi Bong-ui was already comatose at the time of the annexation, so the extent of his personal responsibility for these acts of collaboration is disputed, and he was excluded from the list of collaborators compiled by Kim Seung-hak in 1946. Nevertheless, he is listed as a collaborator by the government's Committee for the Investigation of Pro-Japanese Collaborationist Activity and in the Institute for Research in Collaborationist Activities' Dictionary of Pro-Japanese Biography.