The Kapsan Faction Incident takes its name from the region of Kapsan in the old South Hamgyong Province (present day Ryanggang Province),[1] home to an underground liberation organization during the anti-Japanese struggle called the Kapsan Operation Committee.[2] Members of this group had fought alongside Kim Il-sung against the Japanese and were thus part of Kim's Guerrilla faction of the Workers' Party of North Korea following the liberation of Korea.[2] The origins of the group are so tied up with Kim Il-sung's activities that sometimes the entire Guerrilla faction is called the "Kapsan" faction.[3] Gradually, the faction became seen as distinct from the rest of the Guerrilla faction due to political differences.[4] Kim had ousted other factions of the party in a series of purges in the 1950s,[2] most notably the August Faction Incident in 1956,[5] but the Kapsan faction remained.[2] In the aftermath of the 2nd Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in 1966, the Kapsan faction started setting forth its grievances.[6]