It participated in various battles and intelligence activities against the Japanese, including alongside the British Army in India and with the United States in the Eagle Project.

After the brutal suppression by Japanese authorities of the pro-independence March 1st Movement of 1919, thousands of Koreans fled the peninsula.

They made various efforts to coordinate with the various Korean guerrilla warfare groups in Manchuria, but lacked the funds and manpower to do so.

One of Kim's main asks at the meeting was assistance and funding in establishing a cavalry training school for the numerous Koreans in Manchuria.

[5][6] They eventually met in May 1933, and Chiang granted permission for Kim to train resistance fighters in the Luoyang branch of the Republic of China Military Academy.

The school was closed for a variety of reasons, including internal conflicts between left and right leaning members and 21 January 1935 negotiations between the Kuomintang and Japanese governments.

The KPG made a plan to quickly raise an army to join the Chinese in fighting the Japanese, but they abandoned this within months as they escaped across the country alongside the Kuomintang.

Like their failed proposal in 1938, it was wildly ambitious, calling for 110,000 party members, 1,200 officers, 100,000 soldiers, and 350,000 guerrillas raised after four years, totaling 541,200 personnel across six countries.

On 11 April 1940, Chiang approved Kim's proposal for creating a KPG army, albeit with funding granted only depending on immediate needs.

They held a grand ceremony at then-luxurious Jialing Hotel (Chinese: 嘉陵賓館), in order to establish the army's credibility and reputation.

[11] On 12 November, the army was held in rear areas but, to a limited extent, engaged in propaganda, intelligence, and guerrilla activities.

[6] There, they began conducting covert operations, recruiting youths, and publishing Chinese and Korean language newsletters.

The KLA was growing rapidly, as hundreds of Koreans from all over China flocked to join, but the soldiers were sitting idle and underfunded.

Kim Won-bong relented to this, on the condition that he become the Deputy Commander (Korean: 부사령관; Hanja: 副司令官), a position that did not yet exist in the KLA.

[15][16][17] Kim Won-bong's relationship to the KPG would continue to be strained, even as he was elected as head of the Armed Forces on 11 April 1944.

[citation needed] Finally, on 1 May 1945, after a few months of negotiations, the KPG gained full control over the KLA under an agreement with the Kuomintang entitled Measures to Aid the Korean Liberation Army (원조한국광복군판법; 援助韓國光復軍辦法).

Beginning in late 1944, KLA officials began discussing cooperation with agents from the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

[19][22] In September 1944, Lee Beom-seok, then Chief of Staff of the KLA, met with Colonel Joseph Dickey of the US Military Intelligence Service in Chongqing.

[note 2] Lee then met with OSS Agent Captain Clyde Bailey Sargent, who was fluent in Chinese and a former professor at Chengdu University.

The declaration of Japan's intent to surrender on August 15 threw the Korean Peninsula into chaos, and the Soviet Union continued its attacks.

The Red Army quickly overwhelmed Japanese forces and gained the north of the Korean Peninsula, but the US landed in the South and accepted the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the south, marking the division of the Korean Peninsula into de facto spheres of influence between the Americans and the Soviets.

There has been a movement in South Korea for years to change the National Armed Forces Day from October 1 to September 17 in honour of the foundation of the Korean Liberation Army in 1941.