Ho Ka-i
Алексей Хегай
1908–1953
✕ Purged, died under suspicious circumstances
Principal organizer of the Workers' Party of Korea and leader of its early Soviet faction
At the Second Party Congress in March 1948, Ho Ka-i took the podium unannounced and rebuked officials who had apologized without admitting wrongdoing: "An apology that does not own the mistake is empty words" — setting a new standard of party discipline.
A Soviet Korean revolutionary dispatched to Pyongyang in 1945 by the Soviet occupation authorities, he became the principal organizer in the founding of the Workers' Party of Korea. As first secretary and second vice-chairman of the Central Committee, he pursued a Soviet-style elite cadre party and, during the Korean War, led a sweeping purge that expelled over 450,000 of the party's 600,000 members. His clash with Kim Il Sung over whether to build a mass party or a vanguard party led to his removal in 1951, making him the emblematic figure of the Soviet faction's rise and fall in the early DPRK.
Career timeline
- 1930Joined the CPSU(B)
- 1932Secretary of the Far Eastern Komsomol committee
- 1937Purged from the Party; deported to Central Asia with other Soviet Koreans
- 1939Reinstated in the Party; resumed cadre work in Uzbekistan
- 1946Member of the Political Committee and head of the Organization Department, Workers' Party of North Korea
- 1948Vice-chairman of the Workers' Party of North Korea and chairman of the Inspection Committee
- 1949First Secretary and Second Vice-chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee
- 1951Dismissed after confrontation with Kim Il Sung; demoted to Deputy Premier