Politics/economy (pro-Japanese anti-national collaborator)
| Life | 1906 ~ 1979 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 밀양 손씨 |
Son Chang-sik, of the Miryang Son clan, studied precision machinery at the Tokyo School of Arts and Crafts before moving to Shanghai around 1932, where he built a career as an entrepreneur. After starting out working for Chinese factory owners, he expanded his own precision-machinery manufacturing business and earned a reputation as an inventor, becoming known in the Korean press as "the Edison of the East."
During the war, however, he secretly supplied weapons to Japanese forces through military manufacturing contracts and maintained close ties to Japanese intelligence in Shanghai, heading the Shanghai Gyerimhoe in 1941, an organization that monitored anti-Japanese activity; he is reported to have informed on independence activist Han Seong-su, leading to his execution, even as he kept up contact with resistance groups linked to the Provisional Government. After liberation he narrowly escaped arrest as a collaborator with the help of Provisional Government associates, and he was subsequently named on three separate pro-Japanese collaborator rosters compiled in 2002, 2008, and 2009.