Yeom Dong-jin

Yeom Dong-jin (; February 14, 1909 – after June 24, 1950), also known as Yeom Eung-taek, was a Korean far-right militant and independence activist. He was the main founder and leader of the White Shirts Society, a secret fascist terrorist organization that assassinated several Korean politicians.

Most scholars believe he was also a double-agent for the Japanese Kempeitai. He and the White Shirts Society have been linked to a number of crimes and assassination attempts. This includes an attempt on Kim Il Sung in 1946, the assassination of Lyuh Woon-hyung in 1947, and the assassination of Kim Ku in 1949. However, there are varying degrees of debate on whether he was truly responsible for these actions.

Historiography Much of Yeom's life remains unknown or uncertain. Even Yeom's name and birth year have been the subject of uncertainty. Ahn Gi-seok also constructed his own biography of Yeom in 2005. Among Korean scholars, Jung Byung Joon was the first to discover and write about the document. The document was written on June 29, 1949, just after Kim Ku's assassination on the same day, and submitted several days later on July 1. It consisted of four pages with a confidential classification level that discussed Yeom, the White Shirts Society, Kim's assassin, and Kim's relationship to the preceding topics. In fact, despite numerous studies on the CIC's activities in Korea published in the preceding decades, Cilley had been virtually unknown to scholars until that point.

The report is considered to be mostly reliable by South Korean scholars, although there is disagreement on how to interpret its information. Yeom also had an older sister. He was of the Paju Yeom clan.

Yeom graduated from the Chunghwa-gongnip Primary School . He then enrolled in a regular course at the Sunrin Commercial School in Seoul on April 1, 1926, and graduated at age 22 in March 1931. Afterwards, he spent some time at the Munsan area of Paju. His academic record at the university was discovered by Jung in 2021.

Luoyang Military Academy In February 1934, Yeom attended a joint KPG–KMT training course at Luoyang. which was the direct predecessor to the 1945 White Shirts Society. The group was first conceptualized at the Buddhist temple Yongmyongsa,

Assassination of Kim Hyeok

After the liberation of Korea, there is evidence that Kim Hyeok joined a secret police task force in Gyeonggi Province that planned to assassinate 10 Japanese police officers.

Around 5 pm on November 24, 1945, Kim Hyeok was murdered in Seoul. The incident was largely reported on as a simple hit-and-run robbery, and was largely forgotten about until Jung rediscovered Yeom's link to it in 2021. According to a 1977 report in the Kyunghyang Shinmun which contained an interview of the police inspector in charge of the case Na Byeong-deok , it was a revenge-killing by Yeom.

Based on the use of the word "colleague" , Jung speculated that Yeom may have been on the task force alongside Kim. Jung further speculated that Kim had been aware of Yeom's past as a spy, which motivated Yeom to quash any chance of his past being outed. Following the incident, the special task force was dissolved and 24 special agents were fired from the Gyeonggi police.

White Shirts Society

Establishment After his escape to the South, Yeom briefly returned to Pyongyang and called a meeting of the remaining Daedongdan members. There, he asked them to also make their way South and join a reformed version of the group. According to Ahn, after Yeom's defection to the South, he ordered that Kim, then the leader of a militant left-wing youth group associated with the Communist Party of Korea, be kidnapped and taken to the house of Oh Dong-jin in Seoul. At Oh's house, Yeom persuaded Kim to join the right-wing. He appealed to the fact that Kim's father, Kim Chwajin, had been killed by communists. Kim apparently agreed and began violently forwarding right-wing causes in South Korea. Ahn noted the existence of theories that Yeom, via his connections to the American government, was later able to have Kim released from jail after his arrest on terrorism charges.

Non-fiction

Yeom and the WSS were covered in the 20 January 2002 46th episode of the South Korean documentary series .