Democratic People's Republic of Korea

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1885–1951 ✕ Drowned in the Chongchon River

From civil-rights lawyer of the March 1st Movement to first Chairman of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly: a progressive nationalist

When he submitted a motion of non-prosecution during the March 1st Movement trial, the Japanese courtroom erupted in protest — and the scene, reported nationwide, made Ho Hon the symbol of the anti-colonial lawyer.

One of the first lawyers of the Korean Empire (1907), he defended 47 national representatives in the March 1st Movement trial and was honoured alongside Kim Byong-ro and Yi In as one of the 'three great civil-rights lawyers.' Elected chairman of Singanhoe's Central Executive Committee in 1927, he led the united-front independence struggle and after liberation served as Vice Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for Korean Independence and Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Korea. He led the South Korean Workers' Party (1946–1948), then crossed north for the inter-Korean negotiations, becoming the first Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly and first President of Kim Il Sung University, a progressive nationalist who bridged the independence movement and the socialist left in modern Korean history.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1898–1958 ↓ Purged, died in custody

Heroic Corps founder who evolved from anarchist bombings to DPRK cabinet, lone figure spanning the Korean revolutionary spectrum

On first meeting Kim Ik-sang in Beijing, Kim Won-bong told him: 'Freedom is won by our strength and our blood… We must be the first to shed it.' Kim Ik-sang joined the Heroic Corps on the spot and weeks later walked into the Japanese Government-General building in Seoul and threw a bomb.

Anarchist militant who founded the Heroic Corps (Ŭiyŏltan) in 1919 and led a six-year campaign of bombings and assassinations against Japanese colonial authorities. After military training at the Whampoa Academy, he founded the Korean National Revolutionary Party (1935) to build a united front, commanded the Korean Volunteer Corps, and later joined the Provisional Government as Deputy Commander of the Korean Liberation Army and Minister of Military Affairs. Following liberation he pursued left-right cooperation, but after Yeo Un-hyeong's assassination he joined the 1948 North-South talks and remained in the DPRK as State Inspection Commissioner and Minister of Labor until his purge in 1958. His trajectory, from anarchist bombings to united-front politics to DPRK cabinet, makes him the only figure to span the entire Korean revolutionary spectrum.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1900–1955 ✕ Executed

Architect of the Korean Communist Party's rebirth; leader of the Workers' Party of South Korea

At his 1927 trial in Sinuiju, he ate his own excrement in court to feign insanity, securing medical release before escaping to Moscow.

The foremost leader of Korea's communist movement from the colonial era through liberation. He rebuilt the Communist Party of Korea and led the Workers' Party of South Korea, but after defecting north he was outmaneuvered by Kim Il-sung and executed as the scapegoat for the Korean War's defeat.

Socialist-bloc leader 1900–1976 ○ Died ; state funeral

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 troika 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.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1903–1951 ✕ Died of exhaustion

Korean revolutionary military leader who fought alongside Kim Il Sung in the Manchurian anti-Japanese guerrillas

Kim Il Sung kept a small safe in his office throughout his life. When Kim Jong Il opened it after his father's death in 1994, he found only one photograph inside — a faded picture of Kim Il Sung with Kim Chaek.

Beginning with the Korean Communist Party and Chinese Communist Party in 1920s Manchuria, he committed himself to armed anti-Japanese struggle and rose to command guerrilla operations in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army alongside Kim Il Sung and Choe Yong-gon, the three known as the 'Manchurian partisan troika.' After returning to Korea in 1945, he became Kim Il Sung's closest comrade, leading the creation of the North Korean branch of the Communist Party and orchestrating the campaign to install Kim as paramount leader. When the DPRK was founded in 1948, he became its first Deputy Premier and Minister of Industry, directing postwar industrial reconstruction. He commanded Korean People's Army forces at the front during the Korean War and died of exhaustion in January 1951; the DPRK posthumously named a city, a university, and a steel complex after him.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1904–1952 ↓ Purged Dec 1950, died of illness

The only Korean to complete the Long March, Eighth Route Army artillery commander who led the Korean Volunteer Army and the Yan'an faction

Of some thirty Koreans who set out on the Long March, Mu Chong alone survived to reach Yan'an.

He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1925 and became the only Korean to complete the Long March, rising to artillery commander of the Eighth Route Army. In northern China he organized the Korean Independence Alliance and the Korean Volunteer Army, serving as its commander-in-chief and emerging as the military leader of the Yan'an faction. After liberation he returned to North Korea, serving as KPA artillery commander and II Corps commander during the Korean War, but lost his power struggle with Kim Il Sung and was purged in December 1950 on charges of battlefield failure and murder. His downfall signalled the elimination of the Yan'an faction.

Socialist-bloc leader 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.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1916–1950 ✕ Killed in action; posthumously promoted

A general whose colonial military career met failure at the war’s outbreak

At dawn on 28 June 1950, the Han River bridges were destroyed on his order.

Chae Byeong-deok was a general who moved from an officer career in the Imperial Japanese Army into the founding and expansion of the South Korean armed forces after liberation. When the Korean War began in June 1950, he was Army Chief of Staff and failed to organize adequate forward readiness and command, while bearing responsibility for the order that led to the premature destruction of the Han River bridges during the retreat from Seoul. Dismissed soon after the outbreak, he was sent to the southern front and killed in action at the Battle of Hadong in July.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1917–1949 ○ Died in childbirth

Anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter on Mt. Paektu, posthumously revered as one of the 'Three Generals'

One day while the unit marched, five or six enemies rose from the reeds and aimed at the General. Comrade Kim Jong-suk shielded him with her own body and shot down an enemy with her revolver.

Kim Jong-suk was an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter who served as a women's unit commander under Kim Il Sung in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, fighting in the Battle of Pochonbo and other engagements. She married Kim Il Sung in 1940 and gave birth to Kim Jong Il in the Soviet Far East; after liberation she helped found the Korean Democratic Women's Union, and after her death in childbirth in 1949 she was posthumously revered as the 'Woman General of Mt. Paektu,' becoming a central figure in the 'Three Generals' political mythology of the Paektu bloodline.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1918–1950 ✕ Killed by a land mine

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.

Socialist-bloc leader 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.

Socialist-bloc leader 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.