Conflict1945

Planned Homeland Advance Operation

The Korean Liberation Army trained with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) for an operation into Korea, but Japan surrendered before it could be carried out.

Eagle Project — Korean Liberation Army troops training with an OSS instructor, 1945
Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea · Public domain · Source

In 1945 men of the Second Detachment at Xi’an (under Lee Beom-seok) and the Third at Fuyang took OSS special training and formed an advance force to enter Korea in August. Japan’s surrender on 15 August came first, and the operation never took place.

Kim Gu wrote in his memoir Baekbeom ilji: "Ah! The Japanese have surrendered! For me this was less joyful news than the sky falling in." He feared that because Koreans had not won liberation by fighting Japan themselves, their voice in the postwar settlement would be weak.

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States and rulers at the time: United States · allied force — President Franklin D. Roosevelt → President Harry S. Truman
Republic of China
Places: Xi'an

People

Kim Gu1876 – 1949
leader · Known as Baekbeom; founded the Korean Patriotic Organization and led the Liberation Army as Chairman of the Provisional Government
Lee Beom-seok1900 – 1972
commander · Officer at the Battle of Cheongsan-ri, later chief of staff and Second Detachment commander of the Korean Liberation Army
Ji Cheong-cheon1888 – 1957
commander · Commander of the Korean Independence Army in the joint Korea–China campaigns and Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army

Before and after

Earlier: 1944 Korean Founding League
Later: 1945 Yalta Conference

Themes that include this event

World War II and Korea1937 – 1945
Wartime mobilization and exploitation, independence armies, from the Cairo Declaration to liberation