Founding Chairman, Captain Shin Yong-Wook (신용욱) of Korean National Airlines

On the Korea Aviation Day, 2017

Korea observes Aviation Day on October 30. Why? How? Some may question why and how Aviation Day was set for October 30 in the Korean calendar. The Korean Transportation Ministry made the decision to set up the Korean Aviation Day for the advancement of Korean aviation industry and technology for commercial flight and space science exploration. The Ministry chose October 30, the first day a commercial flight took place in Korea from Seoul to Busan in 1948 after the first Korean government was established after the liberation from Japan. It was KNA, the Korean National Airline’s first passenger flight in the First Republic.

Today, everybody recognizes KAL, Korean Air Line, one of the world-class airlines. But only a few may remember KNA-the Korean National Airline started by Captain Shinn Yong-wook. It was the first Korean airline in the country’s history. It was a small airline company basically flying between Seoul and Busan. Captain Shinn was a First-class pilot who had completed the Oguri Aviation School training program in Japan and studied further at Japan Doah Aviation College in Tokyo in the 1920s and then flew over the sea between Japan and Korea (now known as Korea Strait) in 1925 by his own airplane, Salmson 2, French bi-plane aircraft. His first flight over the skies of Seoul in 1925 after taking off from the Yongsan runway was hailed by all Korean people. He was a proud pilot all his life. His sense of pride as the first-class pilot endured all the difficulties he confronted during his lifetime.

In the same year 1925, Captain Shinn founded the first Chosun (Korean) aviation school and trained Chosun pilots. In 1931, he started the Chosun Airline Company, his own airline company to transport passengers, airmails and packages from Seoul to major cities in all Korean Peninsula. Once he helped fishing boats find a school of sardine massively migrating in the East Sea. He also used his small airplane and a helicopter to spread pesticides and fertilizer on rice paddies for his hometown farmers. He was a popular pilot elected twice for the Kochang district National Assembly seat in the Republic of Korea.

He was one of the main construction crews to build major airports in the nation and runways, aircraft hangars and safety facilities. At the time, Korea was not divided, even though it was under the Japanese rule. The runways were not as long as we see today. They were green flat meadows.

Shinn Yong-Wook was born to a landlord gentry in Kochang, North Jolla province in 1901. He graduated Wheemoon High School and then went to an aviation school in Tokyo, Japan. He met Ahn Chang-nam, well known in Korea as the first pilot in the Korean history, at Wheemoon High School. Since the Wright Brothers flew for the first time for a few minutes in human history in 1903 in the North Carolina beach, flying was a dream to many dreamful boys.

Ahn and Shinn were two boys who dreamed of flying the vast blue sky. Ahn was one year older than Shinn. Ahn went to the Oguri aviation school in Tokyo before Shinn. They trained together. Ahn earned his 2nd-class pilot license and returned to Korea.
Shinn completed his 1st-class pilot training earning the first Korean 1st-class pilot license. Many Japanese pilots envied him then. And he studied airplanes more scientifically at the Doah Aviation College. He then returned to Korea, home country, piloting his own small wooden airplane, Salmson 2, that he purchased with his affluent family support. He became a sensational young pilot when he flew the plane over the sea between Japan and Korea (the Korea Strait) to come home in 1925.

His ambition to operate his aviation school and airline company would have had to be approved by the Japanese colonial government. During the 1930s, Japan controlled Manchuria and established its puppet regime there. Japan invaded the mainland China. I am sure that he and his company airplanes were commandeered by the Japanese to the Pacific War in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Under the circumstances, Shinn would not have been given a choice to be free from Japan’s war campaigns. Here, some may today be critical about his acts of collaborations with the Japanese government.

On this Korea Aviation Day, I am not trying to review Captain Shinn and his life with KNA in detail. At least, however, I think that his life under the Japanese colonial ruler is today being unfairly tainted as a close collaboration with the Japanese government.

I can sympathize how hard it would have been at the time for him to continuously strive for his dreams to fly, compromising his good conscience. Life under the Japanese rule could not be easy to him and in fact to all Chosen (Korean) people. Some willingly cooperated with the colonial ruler and some others reluctantly did to survive against their good conscience.

Captain Shinn was not anyone but a person wanting to be an airplane pilot. He just wanted to live his life as a pilot and continued to keep the same dream he had as a teenage boy to his death by suicide at 59 following bankruptcy in 1961. In 1958, his passenger airplane, Changrang, was hijacked to North Korea and another airplane’s wing was broken at unexpected strong wind from the sea on its landing at Sooyoung airport, Busan. He could not recover from these unexpected traumatic experiences. He chose his honorable exit from life. His funeral ceremony was conducted by the Korean Enterprisers’ Association. Many prominent political leaders and journalists delivered touching eulogies for their farewell.

General Park Chung-hee, as a coup leader, ordered him to pay back the government loan to him. He committed suicide by drowning himself in the Han River, looking at his airplanes on the Yoido runway. He built the runways when he started his life as a pilot in the 1920s. I feel sympathy for him. I could understand why he had to collaborate, which would have been just to keep up his dreams to fly.

I want to place Captain Shinn next to the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, and Howard Hughes in the aviation history. I hope that critics today do not irresponsibly conclude on the issue of his collaborations with the Japanese authorities those days. I also hope that people today remember the invaluable pioneering contributions that Captain Shinn made to the development of the Korean civil aviation.

More than seventy years have passed since the liberation… Debating and continuously and indiscriminately “killing” the so-called pro-Japanese collaborators is a big waste of our precious time and also not constructive for the future of our country, Korea As we commemorate the Korea Aviation Day on October 30, let us look back our remarkable aviation history from the KNA, the first commercial airline in Korea to the now world-class KAL and Asiana. The first part of history has been a stepping stone to the second stage of history and further progress. Let us see the future under the bright blue sky.

Yearn Hong Choi Dr. Choi is a Washington-based poet and writer.
(The Korean Times / 한국일보 Korea Aviation Day 20)