People of the Revolution and the USSR

Communist Party of Korea Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism 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.

Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism 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.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Communism ?–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.