Pak Hon-yong (28 May 1900 – 19 December 1956) was the Secretary of the Workers' Party oof South Korea from 1946 to 1950, Vice Chairman of the Politburo from 1949 to 1953, and also Foreign Minister. Pak was one of the founders of the Workers' Party of Korea, fighting against Japan's armies during World War II. In 1948, three years after founding the communist party, he moved to North Korea, and was a friend of Kim Il-sung. He was purged in 1956.
Biography[]
Pak Hon-yong was born in Yesan in South Chungcheong in the Choson Empire-era Korea. During Japanese rule over Korea he was one of the main leaders of the Korean communist movement and in the 1940s he attempted to create the Workers' Party of Korea during World War II. However, Japan cracked down on the communists and he went into hiding until war's end in 1945. That year, he finally was able to found the KCP in the southern half of the Korean peninsula. When the democratic state of South Korea was set up in 1948 he was pressured by the United States to move north. He became friends with North Korea's leader Kim Il-sung and the two led North Korea during the Korean War, fighting against the US, South Korea, and several capitalist countries.
After the war's end in 1953, Pak Hon-yong was arrested in a purge of the Workers' Party of Korea (the South Korean Workers' Party and North Korean Workers' Party were merged), and despite the pleas of Soviet Union Ambassador Ivanov, Kim Il-sung had Pak executed in 1956.