Cho, Man-sik

CHO MAN-SIK (1882?-1950?). Cho was a Christian nationalist leader who played an important part during the Japanese colonial period in the self-strengthening and anti-Japanese movements. In the early 1920s, he organized the Korean Products Promotion Society, which encouraged the use of native products. In 1945, he was nominated to the cabinet of the short-lived Korean People's Republic, based in Seoul. He was later head of its organization in the north, the People's Committee for North Korea, based in Pyongyang. Once the Soviet forces had established control in the north of the peninsula, Cho became head of the Five Provinces Administrative Bureau, which did not last long. In November 1945, Cho founded the Korean Democratic Party. While he at first worked with the Soviet forces, his opposition to trusteeship and his religious background made him increasingly unpopular with them. As a result, he was purged in early 1946. His dismissal was the decisive step in ending the independence of the smaller parties in the North. There is no record of when he died, but it is widely assumed that he was killed at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950.

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