Korean Socialist Party (1918)
한인사회당
A left-wing Korean independence organisation formed in Khabarovsk in May 1918 around Yi Tong-hwi. The Korean source regards it as the first socialist party founded by Koreans. In May 1921 it was renamed the Korean Communist Party (Shanghai faction).
In depth
According to the Korean source, the Korean Socialist Party was formed in Khabarovsk on 11 May 1918 (28 April Old Style) with Yi Tong-hwi at its centre. Yi had fled to the Russian Maritime Province after the 105-Person Incident of 1911, was arrested by the Kerensky Provisional Government in 1917 and was freed with the help of the Khabarovsk Bolshevik Alexandra Kim. The source says that when Britain, the United States, France and Japan intervened militarily against the Russian Revolution, he argued that “Russia’s socialist revolution must be combined with Korea’s national liberation movement”, parted ways with Yi Dong-nyeong and founded the party.
The article on the Korean Communist Party says the Korean Socialist Party was formed around Yi Tong-hwi, Pak Ae, Chŏn Il and others with the support of Krasnoshchekov, chairman of the Far Eastern People’s Commissariat sent by the Bolshevik party, and that it was then the only Korean socialist party recognised by the Comintern. Around the same time Yi Tong-hwi took part in organising a Korean Red Guard in the Maritime Province. In its early form it was an expedient communist organisation serving national liberation.
In 1919 Yi Tong-hwi took office as premier of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai as leader of the Korean Socialist Party, giving the Provisional Government the character of a coalition of nationalist and socialist forces. Differences of line with other members of the Provisional Government led the party to withdraw from it, however, and in May 1921 it was renamed the Korean Communist Party. To distinguish it from the Korean Communist Party formed in Irkutsk, it is called the Shanghai faction of the Korean Communist Party.