Kim Myŏng-hwan
Kim Myŏng-hwan | |
|---|---|
| 킴명환 | |
 Kim Myŏng-hwan in 1937 after being crowned Emperor | |
| Emperor of Menghe | |
| In office September 1937 – November 1944 | |
| Preceded by | Kwon Chong-hoon |
| Succeeded by | none |
| Deputy Director of Police, Donggyŏng | |
| In office 1924–1927 | |
| Preceded by | Moon Heui-sohng |
| Succeeded by | Chhoi Ho-choon |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 19 January 1889 Donggyŏng |
| Died | 15 November 1944 (aged 55) Donggwangsan, Donggyŏng |
| Nationality | Meng |
| Political party | Menghe Nationalist Party |
| Children | Khim Min-chi Khim Seung-ah |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | Federal Republic of Menghe |
| Years of service | 1910-1917 |
| Rank | Lieutenant |
Kim Myŏng-hwan (Menghean: 킴명환 / 金明桓, historically transliterated as Khim Myoung-huan) was the second Emperor of the Greater Menghean Empire, taking power after Kwon Chong-hoon’s death in 1937 and ruling until Menghe’s surrender in 1944. While in power, he took on the reign name of Donghui Daeje, or the Donghui Emperor (동희 대제 / 東熙大帝, also transliterated Tongheui Dayche).
He is best known for his leadership in the later two-thirds of the Great Conquest War, which began under Kwon’s leadership. Kim’s early reign was marked by major successes, including the formation of an alliance with Maltecna, the withdrawal of Sylvan forces from Innominada, and sweeping advanced into Maverica and Khalistan. By 1942, however, the tide had turned decisively against Menghe, and Kim was forced to manage the retreat of Menghean forces. He was highly influential in the decision to seek a peace settlement, but did not live to see the end of the war, committing suicide after the ceasefire came into effect.
Compared with his predecessor, Kim Myŏng-hwan has a more mixed legacy. Abroad, he is still remembered mainly as the leader of Menghe during its aggressively expansionist phase, but in Menghe he has been rehabilitated as a great leader who oversaw the defense of the nation and there are multiple temples in his name. Critics have accused the current regime of whitewashing Kim Myŏng-hwan’s involvement in war crimes and glorifying him as part of Choe Sŭng-min’s personality cult.
Early life
Kim Myŏng-hwan was born in 1889 in the city of Donggyong, then the capital of the Sinŭi Dynasty. His mother was one-quarter Oyashimese, the descendant of a merchant enclave which had settled in the city centuries ago. His father was a high-ranking official in the city treasury, but he lost his job after Menghe's reunification in 1898, and struggled to find new work. With his family slipping into poverty, Kim Myŏng-hwan decided to enroll in the Menghean Naval Academy at the age of 18, hoping that a military career would provide him with a stable source of income.
Early career
While Kim Myŏng-hwan was still training in the Naval Academy, the War of the Sylvan Succession broke out, soon escalating into [{Septentrion]]'s first global conflict. After Menghe entered the war, Kim was rushed into service as a midshipman on the light cruiser Wihae, and sent to support Menghe's attack on the Allancian colony of Ummayah. While his ship participated in coastal bombardment, he did not see combat, and decided to retire from the Armed Forces after his contract was terminated at the end of the war.
Upon returning home, however, Kim Myŏng-hwan learned that his parents and his younger sister had died in a localized outbreak of bubonic plague, which had left 20,000 people dead within the city limits. The Navy leadership had deliberately withheld news of family deaths, fearing that it would erode morale. Devastated by this news, Kim Myŏng-hwan briefly volunteered as a city doctor, then joined Donggyŏng's police department, moving up the ranks with a reputation for loyal service.
Many historians consider the death of Kim Myŏng-hwan's family to have been highly influential in his subsequent radicalization. Bubonic plague was the disease responsible for the Menghean Black Plague, and many nationalists in this period associated it with Casaterran uncleanliness and moral decay. Kim is known to have been in contact with General Kwon Chong-hoon several times during this period, and his surviving diary entries relate a strong embrace of Menghean nationalism sprinkled with references to Casaterran racial inferiority.
During the Coup of February 18th, Kim Myŏng-hwan made his loyalties clear, seizing control of the police headquarters and ordering his officers to open the city gates for Kwon's troops. Deeply grateful for this action, General Kwon appointed Kim as his chief of staff in the new Imperial administration, and treated him as one of his most trusted confidants.
As Emperor
Crisis of 1937
On August 4th, 1937, the Gwangmu Emperor unexpectedly passed away, suffering a stroke while leaving a cabinet meeting. This set off a brief period of confusion, as it was not clear who Kwon intended to serve as his successor. General Han Tay-choon used this opportunity to shoulder ahead as the rightful successor, claiming that as Supreme Commander of the Imperial Menghean Army he was best positioned to address Menghe's wartime needs. Against him, the more radical Chha Hay-chin of the Committee for Ethnic Affairs refused to cede control, on the basis that Kwon had favored him during his rule.
In the turbulent month that followed, Kim Myŏng-hwan outmaneuvered both. At first, he appeared to take Chha's side, publishing confidential intelligence documents that revealed General Han had been engaged in an affair with the Meng wife of a Casaterran immigrant. After Han resigned in disgrace, however, Kim then turned on Chha Hay-chin, using his newfound control of the Army and the Police to place him under arrest for plotting a takeover and to subsequently purge the government of his supporters. The dust settled on September 23rd, when Kim Myŏng-hwan was formally sworn in as the Donghŭi Emperor.
Wartime leadership
Having consolidated his control over the country, the new Donghŭi Emperor took several steps to stabilize Menghe’s wartime situation. The first was an immediate declaration of war against the Maverican Confederation, which had invaded the border kingdom of Nersia after Kwon’s death, hoping to accomplish it as a fait accomplit before a new leadership could come to power. This was a risky move, as it drew more troops away from the war effort in Innominada, but Kim viewed it as an imperative act if Menghe was to retain the support of its allied states along the Maverican border.
Soon after this came a period of détente with Polvokia, Menghe’s neighbor to the north. As part of the agreement, Menghe recognized the full extent of Polvokia’s claims in the disputed Wonbuk territory, which had been the site of intense border clashes in 1933. The two countries then signed a non-aggression pact, and by 1939 Polvokia was shipping large amounts of grain, coal, and oil across the border to supply Menghe’s war machine.
Having expanded the war to include Maverica, Kim Myŏng-hwan saw a need to draw Sylvan land and naval forces out of Innominada, where they had managed to stall the Menghean advance. With this goal in mind, he sent two diplomats on a secret mission to Casaterra, one to Maltecna and one to the Federation of Socialist Republics. Hoping to hedge his bets, he had contacted both of Sylva’s main rivals, hoping to convince either to attack metropolitan Sylva. The FSR’s representatives turned down the offer, as they were preoccupied with the worrying situation unfolding in Erquin, but the Maltecnans and their allies expressed interest, and agreed to launch an invasion of Sylva if Menghe expanded its war effort to New Tyran’s colony in Khalistan.
With Sylvan and Tyrannian forces occupied elsewhere, and the weakest states in the Maverican Confederation leading the country’s defense, Menghe experienced its greatest wartime gains in this period, advancing deep into Maverica and liberating much of Khalistan. Yet Kim Myŏng-hwan also bears responsibility for two of Menghe’s biggest wartime blunders: declaring war on the Organized States of Columbia in March 1941, and failing to anticipate New Oyashima’s declaration of war in January 1942.
From that point onward, Kim Myŏng-hwan oversaw the waning of Menghe’s wartime empire, including the withdrawal from Khalistan, the entry of Maverican forces onto Menghean soil, and the carpet bombing of Menghe’s major coastal cities.
Role in Menghe’s surrender
According to the accounts of his lieutenants and subordinates, Kim Myŏng-hwan was deeply distraught at the devastation inflicted by Allied strategic bombing, and by the often exaggerated reports of Maverican forces exacting revenge in the areas they took. Headed by ardent nationalists, the Army and Navy leadership demanded that Menghean forces fight to the death, even if it required every man, woman, and child to take up arms.
Disturbed by the implications of this suggestion, Kim Myŏng-hwan began to advocate for a negotiated peace settlement, stating that he did not want to be remembered as the Emperor who oversaw the total destruction of Menghe’s people and culture. At first, the Army leadership stubbornly refused to concede, and was early in the process of planning a coup when the Allied forces dropped an atomic bomb on Haeju. News of the destruction this weapon inflicted tipped the balance in favor of the peace party, and Menghean diplomats working through contacts in Polvokia and the FSR offered a surrender on the sole condition that Menghe remain a sovereign state under a new government.
After news arrived the following night that Allied commanders had accepted the surrender offer, Kim Myŏng-hwan instructed his subordinates to begin arranging the details of the surrender, and withdrew into his personal quarters in the Donggwangsan palace. Dressed in traditional robes, he committed suicide with a knife on the palace’s upper eastern balcony, just as the sun was rising over the ruins of the city. The location of his death is marked in the palace today, inlaid in red tiles on the otherwise blue floor.
Legacy
Responsibility for war crimes
There has been some scholarly and much political debate on the role Kim Myŏng-hwan played in Menghe’s war crimes. Present from the early days of the conflict, these atrocities intensified later in the war, as forces of the Menghean Army attempted to execute a “racial scorched-earth policy” by “liquidating” creole and mixed-blood populations as they retreated from Maverica and Innominada. By some estimates, the death toll from these campaigns may be as high as five million people, though as a result of poor record-keeping on both sides the exact count is disputed.
Apologists for the Donghui Emperor have maintained that he renounced General Kwon’s more extreme policies, softening enforcement of the racial classification system on the home front and pursuing diplomatic agreements with Casaterran powers. Indeed, there is extensive documentation in Kim’s own memoirs and those of his confidants that he did not harbor as radical views as Kwon, viewing the country’s affairs in more pragmatic terms.
Opponents of this view have argued that in spite of the views he expressed in private, Kim Myŏng-hwan said nothing against the Army’s war crimes in public, and did not discipline officers who were known to be responsible. It is also known that, while perhaps less extreme than his predecessor, Kim Myŏng-hwan still held the then-prevailing view that persons of Casaterran descent were spiritually unclean and that ethnic Meng were racially superior.
The current Menghean regime in particular has come under fire for whitewashing Kim Myŏng-hwan’s legacy, in part by shifting the bulk of the guilt for war crimes to Kwon Chong-hoon’s highly charged rhetoric. Much of this has stemmed from the desire in both the SRM and the DPRM to rehabilitate Kim Myŏng-hwan as a hero defending the country from invasion, and to reframe the Great Conquest War as a struggle against Casaterran imperialism.
Canonization as a Sŏngin
Shortly after Kim Myŏng-hwan’s death, the National Council for Chŏndoism made a unanimous decision to posthumously elevate him to the status of Sŏngin, comparable to a saint or minor god, in recognition of his leadership during the war and his decision to spare the country further suffering. The National Council for Sindoism did the same, ruling that the Donghui Emperor had been the incarnation of a god on earth.
Upon arriving in Donggyong and hearing of this news, Allied occupation authorities immediately ordered the Councils to revoke its ruling and forbade the construction of temples in Kim Myŏng-hwan’s name. The Republic of Menghe government upheld this policy, and oversaw a campaign for the destruction of village shrines dedicated to Kim and other members of the wartime leadership.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Menghe government made no official changes to this law, in part because it sought to discourage idol worship and promote state atheism, but it did substantially relax enforcement. In 1994, Choe Sŭng-min formally abolished the law, and has promoted the construction of Sŏngindan in Kim Myŏng-hwan’s name.
Adding to the confusion, Kim was cremated by palace officials in accordance with Chŏndo tradition, but his ashes were deliberately taken out of the city so that Allied officials would not find and desecrate them. In the turmoil of the occupation period and the Menghean War of Liberation, all record of their true location has been lost. The search for his ashes has become a popular pursuit for amateur historians in Menghe, and several hoax finds have been brought forth and debunked.