Communist Party of Korea Founded: Resistance Against Japanese Rule

Kim Yong-bom and Pak Hon-yong founded the Communist Party of Korea in 1925, meeting in secret in Keijo while Japanese colonial police monitored every suspicious gathering. They risked execution for organizing under occupation. Years later, those same men would help shape the North Korean government and the conflict that tore families apart across the peninsula. The party's founding took place on April 17, 1925, during the period of Japanese colonial rule that had begun with the annexation of Korea in 1910. Japanese authorities maintained an extensive surveillance network targeting Korean political organizations, and the founding meeting was conducted under conditions of extreme secrecy. The new party aligned itself with the Comintern in Moscow, receiving funding and ideological direction from the Soviet Union. Pak Hon-yong emerged as the party's most significant leader, organizing labor strikes and peasant movements throughout the 1920s and 1930s while repeatedly evading Japanese arrest. The party was suppressed multiple times by Japanese authorities, with waves of arrests decimating its membership. After Japan's defeat in 1945 and Korea's division along the 38th parallel, the Communist Party split between north and south. Kim Il-sung, a different figure from the party's founders, consolidated power in the north with Soviet backing, while Pak Hon-yong led the southern branch and eventually fled north. Pak served as North Korea's foreign minister and was instrumental in planning the Korean War invasion of 1950, reportedly assuring Kim Il-sung that 200,000 southern communists would rise in support. When the anticipated uprising failed to materialize, Pak was blamed, arrested in 1953, and executed in 1955 after a show trial. The party founded in secret in 1925 had consumed its own creators.