Kim Chaek
김책
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.
Career timeline
- 1927Joined the Korean Communist Party; arrested and imprisoned in the Kando Communist Party incident
- 1930Joined the Chinese Communist Party; Secretary of the Dongjing District Committee
- 1933–1940Political commissar of the 3rd Route Army, Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army; Secretary of the North Manchuria Provincial Committee
- 1942–1945Political commissar, 3rd Battalion, 88th Special Brigade, Soviet Far East
- 1945–1946Led creation of the North Korean Branch of the Communist Party; first president of Pyongyang Academy
- 1946–1948Vice-chairman of the North Korean People's Committee; Political Committee member of the Workers' Party of North Korea
- 1948–1951Deputy Premier and Minister of Industry, concurrently Deputy Minister of National Defence
- 1950–1951Frontline commander of the Korean People's Army during the Korean War