ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at elite figures and their interactions by considering the power structure of the KWP from the late 1940s to mid-1950s. Before the Korean War, the nominal multi-party structure had already collapsed into a socialist one-party structure in which the Korean Workers’ Party dominated the North Korean political system, and the other parties were relegated to stooges for the communist party. In this period, the power structure of the Workers’ Party was oligarchic in the sense that the indigenous, the Soviet Korean, the Yanan, and the guerrilla factions shared political power within the party. In the absence of the Soviet forces, power struggles began among these factions and intensified during the war. This chapter examines the development of the Workers’ Party, power struggles, elite debates, and the specific elite figures concerned.
