Yi Jeonggyu

Yi Jeong-gyu (; 1897 – 1984) known by his pen name Woogwan was a Korean anarchist. He spent much of his youth in China, where anarchists were relatively freer than in occupied Korea, and collaborated with not only Chinese anarchists but also with ones from various countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and Russia. He was one of the pioneers of the Korean anarchist movement in the early 1920s, and one of the most prominent Korean anarchists in China of that period.

Life His family lived in Nonsan, Chungcheongnam-do, and Yi Jeong-gyu was born in Jangbong-do, Incheon of South Korea. He attended Incheon High School (formerly Incheon Public Commercial School) in 1911 under Japanese rule. After graduating, he got a job at a bank but resigned in protest against racial discrimination from the Japanese. Around that time he became involved with the independence movement.

After establishing anarchist organizations, the Korean anarchists sought to build a new Korean society with independence based on anarchist principles. To this end, he collaborated with Chinese anarchists and Esperantists. In mid-1923, Yi co-established a Beijing school for Esperantists and taught in its middle school.

Later in 1923, Yi joined in an anarchist project to build a farming commune in China's Hunan Province. They intended to relocate fifty Korean peasant families to join with existing Chinese peasant families in the region to grow profitable ginseng. The project was a cooperative organization of co-cultivation, co-consumption, and co-ownership. Yi Jeong-gyu was elected to serve as one of the secretaries of the Eastern Anarchist Federation (EAF, Dongfang wuzhengfu zhuyizhe lianmeng; ), which was established by anarchists from various East Asian countries, Korea, China, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam (Annam; 安南) to strengthen international ties and build an ideal society that secures the independence of each nation and individual freedom. In the first issue of its journal The East ((Dongbang); Japanese:Tōhō; Chinese:Dongfang) published simultaneously in those three East Asian languages on August 20, 1928, he contributed a now-lost article titled “To Inform Eastern Asian Anarchists”. In this piece, Yi Jeonggy called for the revolution in Korea, aided by the cooperation of “Eastern Anarchists”. After 1946, he taught at Sungkyunkwan University. He died in 1984 and did not apply for the status of during his lifetime.