Introduction
23pThe compiler's introduction to the collection. Chang Hak-pong, himself a Soryŏnpʻa (Soviet Korean), compiled these biographical sketches between 1995 and 2001. The introduction provides context for who the Soviet Koreans were, why they were sent to North Korea, and what happened to them under Kim Il-sung's purges of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Document
PDF sourced from the Library of Congress Korean Rare Book Collection. 23 pages.
Transcription — handwritten Korean, first pass in progress
This document is a handwritten Korean manuscript (and in some cases photocopied typed pages) from a collection compiled 1995–2001. Full transcription requires manual reading or AI vision-based OCR of the scanned pages. Transcription is in progress.
Translation / Context — first pass
Handwritten Korean manuscript — first-pass transcription in progress. The introduction presents the background of the Soviet Korean faction (소련파, Soryŏnpʻa): ethnic Koreans who had grown up in the Soviet Union and were dispatched to the newly established DPRK starting in 1945 to staff the government and military. They brought Soviet administrative and military expertise. Kim Il-sung, fearing their Soviet connections as a rival power base, purged most of them following the August Factional Incident (1956). This manuscript preserves their stories.