Hong Sa-ik

Hong Sa-ik
Hong (left seated) at his war crimes trial in 1946
Born	February 2, 1887 Anseong, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
Died	September 26, 1946(1946-09-26) (aged 59) Manila, Philippines
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service/branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1914-1946
Rank	Lieutenant General
Commands held	Imperial Japanese Army
Battles/wars	World War II Philippines campaign (1944–45)

Hong Sa-ik (hangul 홍사익;hanja 洪思翊; 2 February 1887 – 26 September 1946) was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army, and the top-ranking ethnic Korean in Japan to be charged with war crimes relating to the conduct of the Empire of Japan in World War II.

A graduate of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, Hong was placed in command of the Japanese camps holding Allied (primarily U.S. and Filipino) prisoners of war in the Philippines during the latter part of World War II, where many of the camp guards were of Korean ethnicity. Hong was held responsible for all the atrocities committed by Imperial Japanese Army prison guards against allied POWs, and was hanged in 1946.

Hong, a member of the Namyang Hong clan, was born in 1889 to a yangban family in Anseong, Gyeonggi-do. In 1905, as the Eulsa Treaty was being signed, he entered into the military academy of the Korean Empire. With the abolishment of the academy in 1909, he transferred to Japan's Central Military Preparatory School (陸軍中央幼年学校, Rikugun Chūō Yōnen Gakkō^?) as a government-financed student along with Crown Prince Yi Eun on the orders of dethroned Emperor Gojong.