Pak Chin-sun (박진순)

Pak Chin-sun (박진순), also known as Pak Dinshun. His name could also be spelled: Park Jin-soon.

Born in Korea in 1987 and settled in Russia as a youth before World War 1. He rallied to communism in 1917 and was elected to the Comintern Executive Committee.

He, along with Yi Tong-hwi (이동휘) and Alexandra Kim, established the first Korean socialist party, Hanin Sahoedang (한인 사회당). He acted as the Secretary of the original party and then later was part of Yi Tong-hwi’s Shanghai faction.

He was selected, along with Yi Han-op and Pak Ae, to represent the party and report its activities to the Comintern.

Pak Chin-sun received 400,000 rubles from Moscow to be delivered to the party in Shanghai, leaving Moscow on August 5, 1919. When he reached Irkutsk, he encountered Kim Chol-hun, the Chairman of the newly formed Irkutsk party, who demanded the money be given to their party instead.

In 1920, he delivered a speech at the Second World Congress of the Communist International entitled “The Revolutionary East and the Immediate Problems of the Communist International.” The speech appeared in the Petrograd Pravda, the official newspaper organ of the Petrograd Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), on July 27, 1920. He later was appointed an official advisor on Korean affairs in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.

A PDF copy of the speech can be downloaded here.

A slightly different translation of his speech appears in “Workers of the world and oppressed peoples, unite! Proceedings and documents of the Second Congress, 1920” by John Riddell. This also includes Pak Chin-sun’s theses. His speech can be found on 906 of this particular PDF. (Libgen)

A French translation of his speech and theses can be found here: https://www.marxists.org/francais/pak_chin-sun/index.htm

On January 21, 1922, a letter signed by Kim Kyu-shik was sent to the mandate commission of the first Congress of the Toilers of the Far East which requested that Pak Chin-sun be barred from attending the Congress. It is not clear whether or not Pak Chin-sun was allowed to attend.

In 1922, he was relieved of his duties from the Comintern. From 1923 to 1928 he studied at Moscow University and lectured on philosophy at several Moscow universities.

On December 1937, he was arrested on charges of participating in a terrorist group during Stalin’s Great Purge. The execution was carried out on March 19, 1938. He was rehabilitated by the USSR in July 1956.