In July 1921, there was an article in Dong-A Ilbo with the following headline.

<New Aviator Ahn Chang-nam Tokyo Oguri Flying School Assistant Professor, a twenty-year-old youth from Joseon this year>

In the 1920s, there was an aviator who became the beacon of hope thanks to outstanding achievements in numerous flying competitions at only the age of 20.

Ahn Chang-nam, the first aviator to fly across the sky of Joseon.

He decides to become an aviator after watching an American pilot’s aerobatics in Yongsan, Seoul in September 1917.

After completing the driving course at the driving school in Osaka, Japan in 1918, he returns to Seoul and engages in transportation business.

After learning how to fly the airplane at the Akabane airplane factory in Tokyo, he enters the Oguri Flying School and graduates just in three months.

He gets a license after coming in joint 1st place at the Japan Commercial Aviator Examination held in May 1921, and comes in second place at the commercial aircraft competition at Chiba held in June the same year. In November 1922, he competes in the Tokyo-Osaka round-trip postal flight competition and receives an award of excellence as well as a second-degree aviator license.

His accomplishments were not just about his flying skills.

The fact that there was a Joseon person who was an aviator – which was a new profession at the time – empowered the people of Joseon whose senses of hopes and dreams were becoming diminished under Japan’s colonial rule.

As if answering to the people’s desire, he arrives in Seoul on December 5th, 1922. Five days later on December 10th, as a homecoming flight, he takes off from the airfield in Yeouido, flies over downtown Seoul and its palaces, then lands in the same airfield again.

Although aviators were able to gain high income and respect by flying for leisure and spreading flyers more than commercial or freight transport, he decides to join in the independence movement.

After witnessing Japan’s brutality of massacring Joseon people during the Kanto Earthquake in September 1923, he defects to China and seeks to fulfill the country’s independence through the revolution in China. In 1926, with the persuasion of Yeo Woon-hyung, he starts recruiting aviators for the independence army while working as an air force lieutenant general and the principal of Shanxi Flying School. In 1928, he puts effort into increasing the military strength of Joseon aviators while serving as a commander in a Chinese military group that was carrying out armed struggles against Japan.

He also made efforts including supporting independence movement funds by joining the Daehandoklip Gongmyeongdan (an independence movement organization based in Shanghai, China), and pushing ahead with the establishment of anti-Japan flying and military schools. The plan was to put together 75.000 troops, advance from the northern regions, then induce China and the Soviet Union to take part in the war by falling back to China and fighting with the Japanese army, thus achieving independence.

But on April 2nd, 1930, he laid down his life for the country at the young age of 29 when his plane crashed mid-flight training due to engine problems.

During his lifetime, he left the following writing in Gae Byok, a magazine published by the Chondogyo Youth Association for the enlightenment of Joseon people.

… Let’s say that Gyeongseong is a small street. Let’s say that it is an insignificant city. But isn’t it the Seoul of my home country. Isn’t it our city. Our city that can get bigger and wider in the future, and Gyeongseong where the people who will do so are moving and growing. It would not be the first or second time an airplane would have flown in its sky but they were a disgrace for us or even a threat for us. Then while we were being happy and delighted regardless of doing it well or bad, I thought pleasantly about myself being able to fly in our spirit of solidarity. Truly, every time the head of the airplane pointed west while I was flying in Japan, I don’t know how many times my heart pumped and I wiped away my tears with the mind that I wanted to come to Gyeongseong that I could not even see.

Ahn Chang-nam, the great aviator who changed Korea.

We want you to become the Ahn Chang-nam of the 21st century and complete the Republic of Korea as how the aviator dreamt of!