Pak Kum-chol

Pak Kum-chol
Pak in 1962
Personal details
Born	1911 (1911) Kapsan County, Kankyōnan-dō (South Hamgyong Province), Korea, Empire of Japan
Died	May 1967 (age 55–56)
Cause of death	Unknown, possibly suicide or execution
Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl	박금철
Hancha	朴金喆
Revised Romanization	Pak Geum-cheol
McCune–Reischauer	Pak Kŭm-ch'ŏl

Pak Kum-chol (Korean: 박금철; 1911 – May 1967) was a North Korean politician. Having been a guerrilla during the anti-Japanese struggle, he became a high-ranking politician after the liberation of Korea. Pak aligned himself with his former guerrilla brothers in arms from the Kapsan Operation Committee (갑산공작위원회; 甲山工作委員會) to form a faction within the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) called the "Kapsan faction". This faction sought to replace Kim Il Sung with Pak. Kim retaliated by purging the faction in 1967 in what is known as the Kapsan Faction Incident. Pak was sent to work at a factory in the countryside and was either executed or died by suicide in May 1967.