Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army
Kim Il-sung, later to become leader of North Korea, was a high-rank officer in this army, and attained a distinction that he invaded China-Korea border and attacked Japanese police station in Bochonbo 1939. It was widely reported by Korean presses such as Donga Ilbo and he became famous in Korea as the most prominent leader of the anti-Japanese movement. After the war, some of the Korean nationals in this army became the first generation of the leaders of North Korea. Besides Kim Il-sung, An Gil, Kim Chaek, Choe Yong-gon and Kang Kon were also Korean high-rank officers of NAJUA, later assumed high positions in North Korea.
Workers' Party of Korea
Kim Il-sung and his guerilla faction had purged the WPK of its opposing factions during the 1950s and the 1960s, to the dismay of both the CPC and the CPSU. The domestic faction was the first to go (in 1953–55), followed by the Yan'an faction in 1957–58 and the Soviet Koreans (along with anyone else deemed unfaithful to the WPK leadership) in the 1957–62 purge. According to historian Andrei Lankov, "Kim Il-sung had become not only supreme, but also the omnipotent ruler of North Korea—no longer merely 'first amongst equals', as had been the case in the late 1940s". After purging his WPK opposition, Kim Il-sung consolidated his power base with nepotism and hereditary succession in the Kim family and the guerilla faction. Beginning in the late 1980s, "a high (and increasing) proportion of North Korean high officials have been sons of high officials." Since the 1960s, Kim Il-sung had appointed family members to positions of power. By the early 1990s, a number of leading national offices were held by people in his family: Kang Song-san (Premier of the Administrative Council and member of the WPK Secretariat), Pak Song-chol (Vice President), Hwang Jang-yop and Kim Chung-rin (members of the WPK Secretariat), Kim Yong-sun (Head of the WPK International Department and member of the WPK Secretariat), Kang Hui-won (Secretary of the WPK Pyongyang Municipal Committee and Deputy Premier of the Administrative Council), Kim Tal-hyon (Minister of Foreign Trade), Kim Chan-ju (Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Chairman of the Administrative Council) and Yang Hyong-sop (President of the Academy of Social Sciences and chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly). These individuals were appointed solely because of their ties to the Kim family, and presumably retain their positions as long as the Kim family controls the WPK and the country. The reason for Kim's support of nepotism (his own and that of the guerrilla faction) can be explained by the fact that he did not want the party bureaucracy to threaten his—and his son's—rule as it did in other socialist states.