1932: Lee Bong-chang, would-be Hirohito assassin
October 10th, 2014 Headsman
On this date in 1932, Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang was hanged at Ichigaya Prison for attempting to assassinate Japanese Emperor Hirohito.
The would-be assassin under arrest.
Remembered now as a patriotic hero, Lee on January 9, 1932 chucked a grenade at an imperial procession in Japan as it passed the imperial palace’s Sakuradamon Gate — the aptly-named Sakuradamon Incident. Korea at that point had been directly ruled by Japan since 1910.*
Lee’s hand grenade targeted the wrong carriage, and didn’t even kill the occupants of that conveyance — it just injured a guard. A second grenade failed to explode altogether.
Three months after Lee’s attempt, another Korean, Yoon Bong-gil, also tried to murder Hirohito with a bomb. Both men are interred with garlands at Seoul’s Hyochang Park. A statue of our man Lee, poised with a grenade in hand, stands in the park.
* Newspapers in China — also under Japanese occupation — expressed regret that Lee’s attempt had missed its mark; this impolite language helped to catalyze a Japanese show of force later that month known as the January 28 Incident or the Shanghai Incident.
On this day..
- 1614: Magdalena Weixler, "my innocence will come to light" - 2020
- 1983: Waldemar Krakos, Dekalog inspiration - 2019
- 1796: Claude Javogues - 2018
- 1989: Jimmy Chua and his Pudu Prison siege accomplices - 2017
- 1783: Jacques Francois Paschal, rapist monk - 2016
- 1867: Not Santa Anna - 2015
- Corpses Strewn: The Streltsy - 2013
- 1698: The Streltsy executions begin - 2013
- 1987: Eshan Nayeck, the last executed in Mauritius - 2012
- 1707: Johann Patkul, schemer - 2011
- 1800: Prosser's Gabriel, slave rebel - 2010
- 1923: Susan Newell, the last woman hanged in Scotland - 2009
- 1911: Several revolutionaries on Double Ten Day - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Assassins,Attempted Murder,Capital Punishment,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,History,Japan,Korea,Martyrs,Notable for their Victims,Occupation and Colonialism,Separatists,Terrorists
Tags: 1930s, 1932, hirohito, lee bong-chang, nationalism, october 10, tokyo
Yoon did not target HIrohito, but a gathering of Japanese military officials in Seoul celebrating Hirohito’s birthday. He too was sentenced to death and executed in Dec., 1932.
(Correction: it happened in Shanghai, not Seoul.)