Activities and affiliations

Political and party leadership Workers' Party of North Korea 1889–1958? ↓ Vanished after removal 1958

Independence activist, linguist, and Yan'an faction leader who served as the first head of state of the DPRK

On the day the People's Assembly adopted the new DPRK flag in July 1948, Kim Tu-bong personally lowered the Taegeukgi and raised its replacement. Barely a year earlier, he had been the man passionately explaining the old flag's philosophical meaning to a skeptical Soviet general.

A Hangul linguist trained under Chu Sigyŏng who led the Korean Independence League in Yan'an. Became the DPRK's first head of state in 1948, though real power lay with Kim Il Sung. Purged and vanished in the 1958 August Faction Incident.

Military command Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions 1900–1976 ○ Illness

The Manchurian guerrilla who became the KPA's first commander and the DPRK's nominal head of state

In December 1955, Choe Yong-gon presided over the trial of Pak Hon-yong and sentenced him to death, rejecting pleas for clemency from Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

After military training at Yunnan and Whampoa academies, he led anti-Japanese guerrilla war in Manchuria as chief of staff of the 2nd Route Army and commander of the 7th Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, forming the Manchurian trio with Kim Il Sung and Kim Chaek. Returning in 1945, he played the decisive role in converting Cho Man-sik's Korean Democratic Party to a communist line; upon the DPRK's founding in 1948 he became its first Minister of National Defence and Chief Commander of the Korean People's Army, the KPA's senior field commander during the Korean War. From 1957 to 1972 he chaired the Supreme People's Assembly Standing Committee, the DPRK's nominal head of state, and served as the regime's diplomatic face abroad. He received a state funeral at his death in 1976 and was interred in the Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery.

Political and party leadership Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions 1912–1994 ○ Illness

The founder of North Korea returned from the Soviet Far East

On 14 October 1945, more than 100,000 gathered at Pyongyang's sports ground for a rally honouring the liberating Soviet army. A Soviet general introduced 'the national hero and famous partisan leader, comrade Kim Il Sung.' Onto the podium stepped a 33-year-old — the crowd stared in disbelief, having expected a legendary guerrilla in his fifties.

After guerrilla activity against Japanese rule, he served with the Soviet Far East’s 88th Separate Rifle Brigade in the 1940s and rose to the center of power in northern Korea under Soviet occupation authorities after 1945. Having founded the DPRK in 1948, he concentrated party, state, and military power over decades.

Military command Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions 1913–1976 ✕ Car crash

The Soviet-Korean general who signed the Korean Armistice at Panmunjom

At Panmunjom on 27 July 1953, General Nam Il and Lieutenant General Harrison barely acknowledged each other as they signed eighteen copies of the armistice. In those ten minutes that stopped three years of war, he was the face of North Korea.

A Koryo-saram born in the Russian Far East, he was deported with his family to Central Asia in 1937 and served as a Soviet Army officer at Stalingrad and the Battle of Berlin. Dispatched to northern Korea in 1946, he became a close aide to Kim Il Sung, and when the Korean War broke out he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Korean People's Army. From 1951 he led the communist delegation at the Panmunjom armistice talks for two years and on 27 July 1953 signed the Korean Armistice Agreement as the KPA's senior delegate, becoming the face of North Korea to the world. After the war he served as Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier, surviving the purges that eliminated most of his Soviet-Korean colleagues, but died in a suspicious car crash in 1976.

Military command Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions 1918–1950 ✕ Killed in action

The KPA's first Chief of General Staff who finalized the invasion plan with Soviet advisers

Col. Yu Song-chol, operations director, recalled: 'The jeep carrying Chief of Staff Kang Kon, right ahead of mine, flipped to the side of the road with an ear-splitting explosion. A land mine. Kang was killed on the spot.'

Comrade-in-arms to Kim Il Sung through the Manchurian anti-Japanese guerrillas and the Soviet 88th Separate Rifle Brigade, Kang became the first Chief of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army upon its founding in 1948. On 29 May 1950, together with Lt. Gen. Nikolai Vasiliev, head of the Soviet military advisory group, he finalized the 'Preemptive Strike Operation Plan' that launched the invasion of South Korea; after the war began, as chief of staff of the Front Command he directed the advance down to the Pusan Perimeter. On 8 September 1950, as UN forces counterattacked, his jeep struck a land mine laid by retreating ROK troops near the Kum River, killing him instantly. Kim Il Sung and Pak Hon-yong personally carried his coffin at the funeral, and he was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Republic.

Political and party leadership Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions 1941–2011 ○ Illness

The successor between a Soviet birth record and the Paektu myth

One sentence at the 25 April 1992 military parade: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" — his only recorded public utterance in 17 years of rule.

Consolidated as successor from the 1970s, he inherited power after Kim Il Sung's death in 1994 and led the DPRK for 17 years through post-Soviet isolation, economic crisis, and the nuclear confrontation with the United States.

Security, intelligence and policing Democratic People's Republic of Korea state institutions ?–1992 ○ Natural death (died )

Founder of North Korea's state security and enforcer of its political repression

Arrival dates conflict: Russian Wikipedia and Lankov say 1946 (Lankov: September), English Wikipedia says October 1945. By 1947 he already headed the state protection (political police) department, and Lankov considers it likely he was the first head of North Korean state security.

A Koryo-saram from the Russian Empire whose birthplace is undocumented and whose birth year sources give as 1912, 1913 or 1914. He worked in the Soviet NKVD and intelligence agencies. Russian Wikipedia and Lankov date his arrival to 1946, English Wikipedia to October 1945. By 1947 he already headed the state protection (political police) department, and in September 1948 became Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Director of the Political Security Bureau, though Lankov holds he was never again allowed to control the political police. He held the security portfolio as Minister of Social Security (March/May 1951) and Interior Minister until November 1960. Russian Wikipedia describes him both as organizer of the North's repression system and as an executor who carried out the leadership's directives. Of the Soviet faction, he escaped the purges and died on 18 July 1992.