A Borderland Radical: The Life and Struggles of Heo Seongtaek (1908–?), a Korean Anti-Colonial Revolutionary

Abstract

The present article explores the life and struggles of Heo Seongtaek (1908–?), a typical peasant (and later worker) grassroots militant of 1920–1930s colonial Korea. He actively participated in both the post-1945 radical labor movement and subsequently in the establishment of the North Korean regime, and was purged after the regime consolidated in the 1950s. The radical peasant movement of the northern Korean county of Seongjin—of which Heo was one of the leaders—was characterized by a combination of spatial dynamism, mobility, and varied repertoires of resistance. These repertoires creatively blended technically legal, a-legal and illegal forms and techniques of struggle. The chosen forms of resistance varied, including both legal reading societies, a-legal mass meetings, and illegal coercive and violent methods (forced destruction of debt documents, anti-spy struggles against police informers etc.). Both a-legal, and especially illegal, methods could invite police repression but were also conducive to solidifying the counter-hegemony of the peasant radicals

A Borderland Radical: The Life and Struggles of Heo Seongtaek (1908–?), a Korean Anti-Colonial Revolutionary