Korean Communist Party (Shanghai faction)
상하이파 고려공산당
A Korean communist party organised in Shanghai in May 1921 by Yi Tong-hwi on the basis of the Korean Socialist Party. It is called the Shanghai faction to distinguish it from the Korean Communist Party formed in Irkutsk at the same time. As the rivalry between the two factions intensified, the Comintern dissolved both parties in December 1922.
In depth
According to the Korean source, the Shanghai faction of the Korean Communist Party was a socialist organisation formed in Shanghai, China, in 1921 around Yi Tong-hwi, on the basis of the Korean Socialist Party founded on 11 May 1918. Yi had left the Provisional Government at the end of January 1921 after clashing with President Syngman Rhee and with Yi Dong-nyeong, Yi Si-yeong, Shin Kyu-sik and others over its reform, then set about founding the party, describing this as a shift from a “national movement” to a “social movement”. Its leading figures were Yi Tong-hwi, Kim Rip, Pak Chin-sun and Yi Han-yŏng.
The party was closely linked with Voitinsky, secretary of the Comintern’s Far Eastern Bureau, and had ties with Chinese and Japanese socialists and with Chang Tŏk-su and Ch’oe P’al-yong at home. In Irkutsk, meanwhile, a congress of Korean communists on 4–17 May 1921 formed a rival Korean Communist Party. The two factions competed for recognition and support from the Soviet government and the Comintern, and their struggle over command of Korean armed units led to the Free City Incident of 1921.
When its calls for reconciliation and unification failed, the Comintern dissolved both parties in December 1922 and in February 1923 set up the Korburo under its Far Eastern Bureau to organise a unified communist party. The Korean source judges that the unprincipled factional strife between the Shanghai and Irkutsk groups harmed not only the early communist movement but the national liberation movement as a whole.