Yun Bong-gil

Yun Bong-gil (21 June 1908, Yesan, Korea – 19 December 1932, Kanazawa, Japan) was a Korean independence activist best known for orchestrating the deadly bombing of a gathering of Japanese dignitaries in the Shanghai International Settlement in 1932.

Shanghai bombing
On 29 April 1932, he carried out a bombing attack using a bomb disguised as a water bottle (it is widely misconceived as a narrow lunch box; Yun carried two bombs to Shanghai, one being the water bottle and the other being the lunch box. The water bottle was used for the killing while the lunch box was intended to be used to kill himself after the assassination, but failed to detonate) at a Japanese army celebration of Emperor Hirohito's birthday in Hongkou Park, Shanghai. The bombing killed Yoshinori Shirakawa, a general of the Imperial Japanese Army, and Kawabata Sadaji (河端貞次), a Government Chancellor of Japanese residents in Shanghai. It also seriously injured Kenkichi Ueda, Division 9 commander of the Japanese Imperial Army, Kuramatsu Murai (村井倉松), Japanese Consul-General in Shanghai, and Shigemitsu Mamoru, Japanese Envoy in Shanghai.

Yun was arrested at the scene and convicted by the Japanese military court in Shanghai on 25 May. He was transferred to Osaka prison on 18 November, and executed in Kanazawa on 18 December. He was buried in Nodayama graveyard.

Chiang Kai-shek quoted "A young Korean patriot has accomplished something tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers could not do." Syngman Rhee, however, disapproved of the incident and Kim Gu's strategy of assassinations as a means to achieve Korean independence, arguing that it justified Japanese suppression.

Aftermath
In May, 1946, his remains were excavated by Korean residents in Japan, transferred to Seoul and given funeral rites. He was then reburied in the Korean National Cemetery. In 1962, the government of South Korea's Second Republic praised his bombing attack, and posthumously bestowed the Republic of Korea Cordon (Grand Cordon) of the Order of Liberation Merit on him.