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.
Career timeline
- 1918Founded New Korean Youth League in Shanghai; became its leader
- 1919Led the February 8 Declaration of Independence; Deputy Foreign Minister of the Korean Provisional Government
- 1920–1922Joined Koryŏ Communist Party (Shanghai faction); met Lenin and Trotsky at the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Moscow
- 1925–1929Joined Chinese Nationalist Party at Sun Yat-sen's invitation; participated in First United Front
- 1933–1936President of Chosun JoongAng Ilbo; Chairman of Joseon Sports Council
- 1944Founded the secret Korean Restoration Brotherhood; built nationwide network
- 1945.08–09Chairman, Committee for Preparation of Korean Independence; Vice-Chair, People's Republic of Korea
- 1946–1947Led left-right cooperation movement with Kim Kyu-sik; Chairman, Labor People's Party
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
Kim San was an internationalist socialist who fought across the Korean independence movement and the Chinese Revolution. He left twenty-two interviews with American journalist Nym Wales in Yan'an that became Song of Arirang (1941), a first-person account of that struggle; in 1938 he was executed on false spy charges and rehabilitated by the CCP in 1983.
Career timeline
- 1919Participated in March First Movement; detained by Japanese police for 3 days
- 1921Studied in Tokyo, then moved to China
- 1922Joined the Chinese Communist Party
- 1923Joined Communist Youth League; published magazine Revolution
- 1925–1927Studied at Whampoa Academy & Sun Yat-sen University; fought in Guangzhou Uprising
- 1936Founded Alliance for Liberation of the Korean People in Shanghai; elected Korean revolutionary representative
- 1937Lecturer at Yan'an Anti-Japanese Military Academy; interviewed by Nym Wales
- 1938Arrested by Kang Sheng's security apparatus; executed on false espionage charges
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.
Career timeline
- 1930Joined the CPSU(B)
- 1932Secretary of the Far Eastern Komsomol committee
- 1937Purged from the Party; deported to Central Asia with other Soviet Koreans
- 1939Reinstated in the Party; resumed cadre work in Uzbekistan
- 1946Member of the Political Committee and head of the Organization Department, Workers' Party of North Korea
- 1948Vice-chairman of the Workers' Party of North Korea and chairman of the Inspection Committee
- 1949First Secretary and Second Vice-chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee
- 1951Dismissed after confrontation with Kim Il Sung; demoted to Deputy Premier
