Korea

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1873–1935 ○ Died of illness

Pioneer of Korean communism who fused the Bolshevik revolution with national liberation against Japanese rule

On his deathbed he declared: 'I die without seeing the Korean revolution succeed. Comrades, you must establish a Korean Soviet Republic.'

A pioneer of Korean communism who transformed from a Korean Empire army officer into a socialist revolutionary, becoming the first to fuse Marxism with the Korean national liberation struggle. He founded the Korean Socialist Party in 1918, served as prime minister of the Korean Provisional Government where he championed armed resistance, and after breaking with Syngman Rhee led the Korean Communist Party (Shanghai faction) in pursuit of combining national liberation with class revolution.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1886–1947 ✕ Assassinated

He met Lenin and Sun Yat-sen, then staked everything on left-right unity: the last Korean unificationist before partition

“A revolutionary does not die in bed. I will die in the street.” He said this to his children after surviving multiple assassination attempts. On 19 July 1947, at the Hyehwa-dong rotary, a bullet from the White Shirts Society found him.

In 1918 he founded the New Korean Youth League and sparked the March First Movement through the February 8 Declaration of Independence. He co-founded the Korean Provisional Government, met Lenin and Trotsky in Moscow (1922), and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party at Sun Yat-sen's invitation. In August 1945 he secured peaceful transfer of authority from Japan's governor-general, formed the Committee for Preparation of Korean Independence, and became vice-chair of the People's Republic of Korea. In 1946–47 he led the left-right cooperation movement with Kim Kyu-sik, the last serious attempt at a unified Korea, before being assassinated by a right-wing terrorist. He is officially honored by both South and North Korea.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1905–1938 ✕ Executed · rehabilitated 1983

Internationalist socialist who fought across the Korean independence movement and the Chinese Revolution, subject of Song of Arirang

"Even in death, I want to see Korea's independence and the victory of the socialism I have believed in all my life." — to Nym Wales in Yan'an, 1937

Born in Ryongchon, North Pyongan Province. After joining the March 1st Movement in 1919, he traveled to Japan and China, joining the CCP in 1922. He studied at Whampoa Military Academy and Sun Yat-sen University, fought with the Red Army in the 1927 Guangzhou Uprising, and founded the Alliance for the Liberation of the Korean People in Shanghai in 1936. In 1937 he gave over 22 interviews in Yan'an to American journalist Nym Wales; the resulting book Song of Arirang (1941) became a vivid first-person account of the Korean independence struggle and the Chinese Revolution. In 1938 he was framed as a 'Trotskyist and Japanese spy' by Kang Sheng's security apparatus and executed; the CCP formally rehabilitated him in 1983.