professor at the Manchukuo Jianguo University. In November 1943, Choe attended the Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo, which was intended by the Japanese government to mobilize support for the war throughout Asia for its Pan-Asian war goals. During the conference, Choe delivered a speech to a group of Korean students studying in Japan calling the "Anglo-Saxon" powers Britain and America the most deadly enemies of Asians everywhere, and urged the students to do everything in their power to support the war against the "Anglo-Saxons", saying that there was no higher honor for a Korean than to die fighting for Japan's efforts to create the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere". During his speech, Choe praised Japanese imperialism and stated that the Koreans were fortunate to be colonized by Japan. Choe also claimed that originally Korean culture had been violent and militaristic much like Japanese culture, but then had gone "soft" under Chinese influence. Furthermore, Choe suggested that his historical research had established that the Japanese were the descendants of immigrants from Korea, and the samurai being of Korean descent had preserved the true, violent essence of ancient Korean culture. The South Korean historian Kyung Moon Hwang wrote that there is a striking contrast between Choe, the passionate patriot who penned the Declaration of Independence in 1919 vs. Choe, the Chinilpa collaborator of 1943 urging Korean university students to enlist in the Imperial Japanese Army and die for the Emperor of Japan. Kyung suggested that the change in Choe was caused by the fact that Japan had occupied Korea in 1904 during the Russian-Japanese War and by the early 1940s, the "permanence" of Japanese rule was assumed by most Koreans as every attempt to win independence had always ended in failure. Given this situation, Koreans like Choe had lost their youthful idealism and abandoned their dreams of freedom, simply hoping to reach an accommodation with the Japanese that might at least preserve some sort of Korean cultural identity. In 1949, Syngman Rhee’s government arrested Choe for collaboration with the Japanese during the colonial period, but he was released when the trial was suspended. During the Korean War, Choe served on the Naval History Committee; after the war, he served on the Seoul City History Committee. He died in October 1957 after struggles with diabetes and hypertension. Choe remains a deeply controversial figure in Korea today, being respected for his historical work