Oh Hee-ok, last female Korean independence fighter, dies at 98

At South Korea's 72nd annual national liberation day ceremony on Aug. 15, 2017, the usual formalities of the occasion gave way to an unexpected moment.

As the then-President Moon Jae-in and other officials rose for the national anthem, a small, elderly woman took the stage alone. In a voice that was thin and trembling but remarkably clear, she began to sing Korea's national anthem to the melody of "Auld Lang Syne."

Her rendition echoed the defiant spirit of the colonial era, when Koreans sang their anthem to the Scottish melody in yearning for independence from Japanese occupation (1910-1945), before the current version was composed in 1935.

The woman was Oh Hee-ok, one of South Korea's last surviving independence fighters. On Sunday, The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs announced her death at the Veterans Health Service Medical Center in Seoul, where she had been hospitalized for several years. She was 98.

Born in Manchuria in 1926 to a prominent family of resistance fighters, Oh joined the independence movement at a remarkably young age. By 11, she was already a member of a youth military organization connected to the Korean Provisional Government, then operating in exile in Liuzhou, in what now belongs to China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

According to her eldest son, Kim Heung-tae, in a 2019 interview with the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation, Oh's resistance work was far-reaching. She participated in various cultural campaigns in Liuzhou to boost morale among displaced Koreans and rally support from Chinese locals. She even conducted reconnaissance missions, infiltrating Japanese military bases to deliver secret messages to Korean conscripts on behalf of revolutionary leaders.

In the 1940s, Oh joined the Korean Liberation Army, the military arm of the Provisional Government. She remained an active member of the Korea Independence Party founded by the independence movement leader and later politician Kim Koo, until Korea's liberation following Japan's surrender to Allied powers in 1945.

After the Korean War, Oh spent 38 years as a primary school teacher. In 1990, she received the Order of Merit for National Foundation in recognition of her contributions to the independence movement.

Her legacy is particularly significant as one of the few female freedom fighters officially recognized by the South Korean government. Of the 18,172 independence activists acknowledged by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs as of November 2024, only about 660 — less than 4 percent — are women. Before her death, Oh was the last surviving female independence activist among the five remaining veterans of the liberation struggle.

Oh's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday at Seoul National Cemetery, where she will join other patriots in their final rest. The Ministry plans to fly flags at half-staff at its facilities nationwide in her honor.