Zhao Yonghua was involved in the Yanbian Cultural Revolution and was publicly executed as a murderer due to a false charge. He was surrounded by a large crowd of people, held down, and shot in the head. Zhao Yonghua's body bled from the front of his head and he collapsed face-up on the grassland. About 402,000 cases of wrongful conviction occurred throughout China.
The Cultural Revolution, which shook China from May 1966, also left deep scars on the society of the Yanbian Korean people in the remote border region from August 1966. It was a difficult time when their own ethnicity was denied and they were oppressed. At the behest of Madame Jiang Qing, the conflict between the Han and Korean peoples was encouraged, and it developed into a carefully orchestrated plan to eliminate the ethnic group, even to the point of killing each other. The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, located along the Tumen River in Jilin Province, China, was granted autonomy by the Chinese government in 1952 for the Korean people, one of China's 55 ethnic minorities.
Mao Yuanxin was the son of Mao Zedong's younger brother, Mao Zemin. He was born in Xinjiang in 1941, and when he was two years old, his father Mao Zemin was killed by ethnic minority forces. After that, Mao Zedong took care of Mao Yuanxin as if he were his own son. Mao Yuanxin attended Tsinghua University in Beijing and graduated from the Harbin Military Engineering Institute in 1964. As soon as the Cultural Revolution began, he took his followers with him and went to Yanbian at the end of October 1966.
Mao Yuanxin received instructions directly from Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing. Mao Yuanxin caused ethnic conflict in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, resulting in many casualties. Mao Yuanxin was known as the “Grand Old Man of the Northeast” and boasted great power. After the death of Mao Zedong, he was arrested along with the Gang of Four. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison and 4 years of political disqualification. He was released in 1993 after serving his sentence.
For over a decade, the Korean photographer Ryu Eung-gye excavated the history of migration and settlement of the Korean people in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and other parts of northeastern China. He met a Korean photographer who had documented the Yanbian Cultural Revolution, and obtained a huge amount of film. He published the painful “Yanbian Cultural Revolution”, which vividly recreates a bygone era. The fact that the Cultural Revolution was experienced by the Korean minority in China has not yet been made public.
