page_title: People's Committee (postwar Korea)
section_title: Committees in the North
hierarchical_section_title: People's Committee (postwar Korea) / Committees in the North
caption_attribution_description: Cho Man-shik
context_page_description: The People's Committees were a species of largely local committee-government which appeared throughout Korea immediately following the conclusion of the Second World War. These committees existed in their original form from August 1945 to early 1946.
context_section_description: People's Committees North of the 38th parallel were proportionally more numerous and more powerful than their counterparts in the south. The demographics of the North featured many more small holding farmers and landlords whose patrimonies where much smaller than their southern equivalents. This meant that the residents of the North were more receptive than those in the south to societal and land reorganization. Indeed, most PCs in the North were able to begin and complete land redistribution before the Soviet occupiers ever arrived. This contrasts sharply with the South where land redistribution would remain an important issue for at least the rest of the 1940s.
  The northern committees had a fundamentally different relationship from the southern with both their occupation authorities and their Korean state. A leftist-sounding name and traditionally socialist political projects were no barrier to participation with the Soviet Union or the DPRK. The Soviet Occupation forces recognized the PCs and initially tried to work with them. Cho Mansik, a conservative Christian nationalist, was the leader of the South P'yong'an Committee. This was the most important People's Committee in the North of Korea and in the days after liberation he was the most popular and powerful political figure in the North. The Soviets attempted to work with Cho but quickly tired of his behavior. Instead of dealing with the PCs openly, the Soviets used komendaturas or groups of local commanders and political officers to get rid of Japanese remnants, to install pro-Soviet leadership for the PCs, and to bring the local committees in line with the political objectives of the occupation government. 
  Once this was accomplished, the Soviet Occupation forces directly integrated the People's Committees into the nascent DPRK. They did this by creating the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea (PPCNK) in February 1946. The PPCNK would be a counsel of all of the PCs throughout the northern provinces and would form the nucleus of the future DPRK. However, this was not a legitimization of the power of the PCs. The People's Committees, once brought under heel by the Soviet occupation forces, were lumped into the state apparatus after being purged of potential reactionaries and subjected to Stalinist style one-candidate elections. The completion of this process by early 1946 is illustrated by the fact that PCs were being used as apparatuses for seizing tax in kind. Since such taxes were one of the most hated aspects of the colonial administration, the trappings of which the PCs tried to erase, this activity on the part of the People's Committees would represent complete loss of popular control. Thereafter, their appearance of populist action and democratic involvement was important in maintaining the electoral facade in the early Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but had little further effect on the state of North Korea.
caption: Portrait of Cho Mansik in 1947
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