Go Ae-shin

Go Ae-shin was a Joseon Korean noblewoman and a soldier in the anti-Japanese Righteous Armies during the Righteous Armies Wars.

Biography[]

Go Ae-shin was born in Joseon, the daughter of Go Sang-wan and his wife Kim Hui-jin, and the paternal granddaughter of the famed scholar Go Sa-hong. Her parents were involved in the anti-Japanese resistance movement during the 1870s, resulting in their deaths in 1875. Ae-shin was raised by her grandfather, who allowed her to receive a quality Confucian education, but strongly disapproved of her insistence on smuggling newspapers into her room to keep in touch with current affairs and international politics.

Go later threatened to kill herself rather than live a secluded life as her grandfather wished, and, when her grandfather said that she should die, then, Go went on hunger strike to prove her determination. Her grandfather relented and assigned the gunner Jang Seung-goo to bring Go into the mountains and train her in shooting. Jang had Go change into the clothing of a rebel and had her address him formally as "master", and, over the course of ten years, she trained to be a sharpshooter with the help of broken pots (used for target practice) sold to her by Hwang Eun-san.

In 1902, she assassinated the American Logan Taylor, a foreign affairs advisor to Emperor Gojong of Korea who had been selling information to the Japanese, and who viewed Joseon as uncivilized. During the assassination, Go found that another masked assassin had been sent to kill Taylor, and she locked eyes with him before escaping. She was later summoned before the Acting US Consul Eugene Choi, who was interviewing witnesses of the assassination, and the two realized that they were the two assassins involved. Over the next few weeks, Go and Choi repeatedly came across each other, and Go was confused as to whether Choi was a comrade (motivated by a love for Joseon) or a foe (motivated by his loyalty to a foreign imperial power). In spite of this complicated relationship, and her unwilling betrothal to Kim Hui-seong, Go fell in love with Choi and persuaded him to hellp the Righteous Armies in their struggle against the Japanese.