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People & Stories
Japanese Colonial Period

No Deoksul

盧德述Police

1899~1968

Noh Deok-sul (1899–1968) was a police officer during the Japanese colonial period and one of the most notorious pro-Japanese collaborators in the force. Serving as a detective in the higher police (special political section), he took a leading role in arresting and torturing Korean independence activists, and adopted the Japanese name Matsuura Kō under the forced name-change policy. He continued to serve as a police officer in the Republic of Korea after liberation, and is remembered as a figure symbolizing how the reckoning with pro-Japanese collaboration was left incomplete in modern Korean history.

Key achievements

  • Japanese colonial Special Branch detective who tortured independence activists — representative pro-Japanese police officer