Jo So-ang

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Jo So-ang" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message) You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Korean. (March 2015) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Korean Wikipedia article at [[:ko:조소앙]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ko|조소앙}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Jo So-ang 조소앙 趙素昻
Jo in 1936
Personal details
Born	(1887-04-30)30 April 1887
Died	September 10, 1958(1958-09-10) (aged 71)
Political party	Korea Independence Party

Jo So-ang (Korean: 조소앙; Hanja: 趙素昻; 30 April 1887 – 10 September 1958) was a Korean politician, educator, and Korean independence activist. He spent much of his career in exile in China, working in the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. After Korea gained its independence in 1945, he returned to Korea. He was a right-leaning politician who supported the Provisional Government over the various competing left-leaning organizations.

He participated in drawing up a draft of the proclamation of the independence of Korea in 1918 while he was studying in Japan, and after 1919, left for Shanghai to join the Provisional Government. He served various roles in the Government until 1945, including as Minister of Foreign Affairs^[1] and head of the Korean Independence Party. He also organized the society of policies on current affairs with Kim Ku and Yeo Unhyeong, contributing to establish the theories on diplomacy of the provisional government. In 1948, Jo and other politicians including Kim Ku, Kim Gyusik, and Kim Il Sung visited Pyongyang to attend a joint conference between left and right leaning politicians in an effort to keep the Korean peninsula unified.^{[citation needed]}

He ran for a representative of the national assembly and was elected in 1950. In the same year when the Korean War broke out, he was abducted and taken to North Korea.

Jo So-ang served roles in the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. The Government was established in exile in Shanghai on April 13, 1919, following the Japanese suppression of the March First Movement. The interim government resisted Japan's colonial rule of Korea and supported the Korean independence movement. In the midst of dividing political alliances, Jo So-ang remained loyal to the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea and was elected as their secretary and diplomatic correspondent. Making him in charge of the interim government's remittances, propaganda, and public relations work. In May 1919, Jo traveled to Europe in order to attend the International Socialist Conference to appeal international support and recognition for South Korea's independence movement. In March 1921, after attending the Communist Party Congress in Moscow, Russia, he returned to Beijing with critical views on communism. Jo would incorporate his views and experience with communism when writing his political theories and teachings.

In 1930, based on his "Three Principles of the Equality" Jo So-ang wrote up a draft establishing what is renowned as a national and social democracy. He argued that in order to achieve social democracy, equality between individuals, equality between ethnicities, as well as the equality between nations must be attained. Following this principle, he suggested that to acquire equality amongst individuals it must be through immediate political equality such as free and equal elections. Next, in his theory, he advocated for the equality between ethnicities. Equality between ethnicities would be achieved through equal economic developments and equal educational opportunities. For the betterment of the nation as a whole, Jo so-ang presumed that the political system should be based on a parliamentary democracy in which the execution of the assimilation of lands, production of facilities/institutions, along with a mandated educational regime should be held at the expense of the socio-economic system. In 1941, not long after the "Three Equality Principles" was accepted by the Korean Provisional Government, the theory became known as the "Fundamental Governing of National Reconstruction". Not only did his theories guide the Korean Independence Party during the occupation, but also served as the main foundations of legislation for the country post-liberation.

So-ang passed away in 1958 at age 71.