Kim Hong-il (general)
Kim Hong-il (23 September 1898 – 8 August 1980) was a Korean independence activist and a general of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Korean War, who later became a diplomat and politician in South Korea. Born in North Pyongan, he did his early schooling in China and Korea, and had a brief career as a teacher before his connections with the nascent Korean independence movement led to his imprisonment. He fled into exile in China in 1918, and served in the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army from 1926 to 1948, following which he moved to the newly-independent South Korea to join the Republic of Korea Army. He commanded South Korea's I Corps during the first year of the Korean War, and was then sent to Taipei as South Korea's ambassador to the Republic of China, which by then had retreated to Taiwan. His assignment there ultimately lasted nine years. He returned to South Korea in 1960 following the April Revolution which ended the rule of Syngman Rhee, and served briefly as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Park Chung-hee junta. He ran for the National Assembly, first unsuccessfully in 1960 and 1963, and was then elected in 1967 and became a major figure in the opposition New Democratic Party.
Kim Yong-ik
Kim was born in Cheongmu, now known as Tongyeong, a seaport, and was raised in Korea under Japanese rule. He studied English literature at Aoyama Gakuin University from 1920–1943 graduating with a PhD in English Literature. At the age of 28 he traveled to the United States to study English Literature at Florida Southern College. He then studied at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, where he earned an MA in English literature. He later studied creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. From 1957 to 1964, Kim taught in South Korean universities including Ewha Womans University University and Korea University. Kim returned to the United States in 1965 to be closer to the publishers in the United States. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley as a visiting professor from 1972–1973 and then at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1973–1990. Kim traveled to Korea for a semester in early 1995. While there, he fell ill, and subsequently died on April 11, 1995. Im Bok Kim also edited many of his works (both in English and in Korean), in spite of not being credited, although she was referenced later in an interview with the author.