Talk:Yi Suchong

Chinese VS Korean:

While the idea that Suchong may be Korean is intriguing, there is one major issue with it:

He describes the Japanese attacking and slaughtering his city.

Now, the Japanese were entirely capable of being brutal to the Koreans, but an all out assault and massacre? That meshes far better given their behavior in China.

By WWII, Korea had been a part of the Japanese Empire for roughly thirty years, and was considered a part and parcel of a "Greater Japan." The Imperial regime certainly persued ugly policies of Nipponization and other "charming" activities, but they weren't doing much on such a scale (for the same reason, the possibility that he is Manchurian is unlikely: the Japanese were cruel taskmasters, but they didn't raze entire cities wholesale in 1931, when they walked into Manchuria)

The alternative is that, somehow, Suchong described the 1894/95 Conquest of Korea from the Qing/Manchu Chinese Empire, where the Japanese did actually assault Korea. However, since Suchong would have to have been grown up by that point (let's say 18 years minimum), he would have to be around, oh, 60-70 years old by the time of his death. Slim possiblity? Yes, but not a great one.

That, and the fact remains that Japan's conduct in 1894 wasn't nearly as bad as it would be after the war or in China, and we have a wrap.

Yes, the idea of him being a collaborator hired by the US after the war is intriguing, but the fact remains that there are countless ways he could have escaped from a similar situation in China, not the least amongst them being the fact that he simply sold the Japanese out (if, indeed, he was more involved with them than a one-time opium sale/givaway to save his neck) to the KMT or CCP as the war turned.

Overall, it is far more likely for the reasons I have stated that he is Chinese.