Pak Ui-wan

Pak Ui-wan (; September 19, 1911 – 1961?) was a North Korean politician who served as a Vice Premier of North Korea and member of the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's unicameral parliament until he was purged in 1958.

Biography Born September 19, 1911, in Korea, Empire of Japan, with family moved to the Russian Empire and became Koryo-saram. Some say that his name Ui-wan was changed from Russian Ivan, and some say that his original name was Ui-wan.

After the Russian Revolution, he worked as a secretary for the Soviet Youth League. After graduating from the Rostov State University of Railways, he married Alexandra Lee, a Korean. On June 22, 1937 their son Yuri was born, and Alexandra died in 1938. When the forced migration of Koreans began, Pak Ui-wan was forcibly relocated to the Uzbek SSR. He later remarried a Russian woman named Natalia Gorbatova. Then, after the defeat of the Japanese Empire, he was sent to North Korea under Stalin's instructions. Arriving in December 1945 with other communists, he was appointed deputy director of the railway bureau of the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea, and in 1947 took all of his family to North Korea. Then he divorced Natalia and marries a Goryeo-in, Pyongyang 6 school principal, Yulia Na Kwak.

In September 1948, with the formal establishment of North Korea and the inauguration of the first cabinet, he was appointed as the first minister of transport. In 1954, he was appointed Vice Premier and Minister of Light Industry. In April 1956, he was elected as a candidate member of the Standing Committee at the 3rd Party Congress. At a plenary meeting in September 1956 he criticized Kim's policies sought to return to the Soviet Union, but the new Soviet ambassador Alexander Puzanov ignored his request. In March 1958, when the 1st Conference of the Workers' Party of North Korea was held, he was attacked fiercely and was expelled along with Kim Tu-bong and O Ki-sop. Following the conference, in accordance with the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, he was dismissed from the deputy prime minister and replaced by Ri Ju-yon.