Alexandra Petrovna Kim (Александра Петровна Ким, 김알렉산드라)
She is the first Korean Bolshevik, and it is her influence which led Yi Tong-hwi (이동휘) to become a communist and together, with Pak Chin-sun (박진순), created the first Korean socialist party, Hanin Sahoedang (한인 사회당).
Alexandra was born in 1885 in Sinelnikovo, Primorsky Krai, Russia. A second-generation Russian-Korean, she was the child of Korean immigrants. In 1902, her father Pyotr Semyonovich died and she was adopted by her father’s friend, Polish-Russian railway engineer Marc Iosipovich Stankevich. She would eventually join the Bolshevik party.
She witnessed the working conditions of the workers at the Dongcheong Railway construction site and the logging farms in the Ural mountains. She led the Ural Workers League on behalf of ethnic minorities who had come into Russia for work, including Koreans and Chinese.
She was captured by by the Russian counter-revolutionary forces, the White Army, and on September 16, 1918, after being tortured, she was shot and killed by the Amur river. She was 33.
At the time of her death, she was secretary of the Khabarovsk Bolshevik organization and a commissar on the Far Eastern Council of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
At 24 Karl Marx Street in Khabarovsk, Russia, there is a monument to Alexandra Kim.
A biography was published in Korea by author Jung Cheol-hoon (정철훈) called “알렉산드라 페트로브나 김” (Alexandra Petrovna Kim).
There is also a Webtoon created by about Alexandra Kim called: “시베리아의 딸, 김알렉산드라” (Alexandra Kim, daughter of Siberia). It is based off the biography mentioned above. You can read it here.
Joseon Bolshevik – an article detailing her life
A KBS history video about her life (korean only, no english subs)