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 Hong-il (general)
After his release, Kim fled into exile in China in 1918. There, he was able to enter the Guizhou Military Academy thanks to an introduction by . In China he used a variety of aliases, including the Korean name Choe Se-pyeong () and the Chinese names Wang Hsiung (), Wang Yi-shu (), and Wang Fu-kao (). After his graduation in 1920 he proceeded to the Russian Far East to try to gain Russian support for the Korean independence movement, but faced numerous setbacks: first the fratricidal killings of the in 1921, and then the withdrawal of Russian support in 1922. As a result, he crossed back into Northeast China late that year. He remained there for a few years, and briefly returned to teaching to make a living, taking up a post at the established by in the village of Mingdong (Myeongdong) in Helong County, Jilin. His alias Choe Se-pyeong itself embroiled him in a minor scandal in the village: it was rumoured he wanted to court a woman there whose surname was also Choe, but romance between individuals with the same surname was not encouraged in traditional Korean society, due to the possibility of violating the prohibition on marriage between people belonging to the same "bon-gwan" (clan). As a result, he revealed his real name to several people.