Cho Bong-am

In thisKorean name,the family name isCho.

The Right Honourable Cho Bong-am
조봉암
Member of theNational Assembly
In office 31 May 1948 – 30 May 1954
Constituency	Incheon
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry
In office 15 August 1948 – 22 February 1949
Personal details
Born	(1898-09-25)25 September 1898 Incheon,Korean Empire
Died	31 July 1959(1959-07-31)(aged 60) Seodaemun Prison,Seoul,South Korea
Political party	Progressive
Alma mater	Communist University of the Toilers of the East

Cho Bong-am
Hangul	조봉암
Hanja	Tào phụng nham
Revised Romanization	Jo Bongam
McCune–Reischauer	Cho Pongam

Cho Bong-am(Korean:조봉암;Hanja:Tào phụng nham,25 September 1898 – 31 July 1959) was a South Korean independence activist and politician, who ran for president in theSouth Korean presidential electionin 1956. He was a founding member of theCommunist Party of Korea(조선공산당;Triều Tiên cộng sản đảng) and theProgressive Party(진보당;Tiến bộ đảng), a moderate socialist democratic party in South Korea which was one of the country's major political forces.

In 1919, Cho Bong-am participated inMarch 1st Movementand was imprisoned for the duration of one year. Cho Bong-am studied in Japan and the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, he was active in theKorean Communist Party.AfterJapanese rule,Cho left the Communist Party in 1946, criticising it for its subservience to theSoviet Union.After the end of theUnited States Army Military Government in Koreain 1947, Cho became the Minister of Agriculture underSyngman Rhee's presidency.

In 1952, Cho ran for the presidency for the first time against sitting president Rhee, andYi Si-yeong.He received only 0.8 million votes out of 5.2 million.

The left-liberal Progressive Party was founded in the aftermath of theKorean Warunder Cho's leadership. Cho and his followers were able to build a wide coalition with the country's leftist forces. Cho also successfully created coalitions with right-wing forces opposed toSyngman Rhee's dictatorship. The party's founding and moderate success in Korea's hostile political environment is considered a large result of Bong-am's personal charisma. The Progressive Party advocated peaceful unification withNorth Korea,through strengthening the country's democratic forces and winning in a unified Korean election. Cho called for both anti-communist and anti-authoritarian politics, as well as advocating for social welfare policies for the peasants and urban poor.

In the 1956 election, Cho ran against Rhee, the anti-communiststrongmanpresident. Cho lost with 30% of the vote, which exceeded expectations. Following the election, the Progressive Party broke apart due to factionalism.

Three years after the election, Cho was charged with espionage and receiving funds from North Korea. His first trial resulted in an acquittal but he was convicted in a second trial and was executed on 31 July 1959.His death sentence was posthumously overturned in 2011 by the South Korean Supreme Court.