Han, motivated by personal grievances against his rival writers, sometimes acted as the force behind the purges within the cultural establishment as well.

[7] During his career, Han earned the official title of "the greatest writer of modern Korean literature", which he shared with Yi Kiyŏng, and was called a "living classic".

His subsequent fame would only be due to his association with the Korean Artist Proletarian Federation [ko] (KAPF),[10] which he joined in Seoul in 1927.

Some, like Kim Namch'ŏn [ko], sought to gather a wide range of both moderate and progressive writers to write "democratic national literature".

[12] A writers' association called the Headquarters for the Construction of Korean Literature [ko] (MR: Chosŏn Munhak Kŏnsŏl Ponbu) was founded in 1945 immediately after the liberation by Kim and others.

[14] In retaliation Han, together with other writers including Yi Kiyŏng, founded the Korean Proletarian Literature Alliance (MR: Chosŏn P'ŭrollet'aria Munhak Tongmaeng).

[8] The two organizations became merged to form Korean Writers' Alliance [ko] (MR: Chosŏn munhakka tongmaeng) in late 1945.

[16] Soon after starting his career in North Korea, Han had become one of the earliest and most enthusiastic admirers of Kim Il Sung,[8] with whom he had met in February 1946.

[24] Writers opposing Han, such as Yim Hwa [ko], were purged because of their connections with South Korean communists.

When the Domestic faction, including its leader Pak Hon-yong, were purged,[8] Han attacked their associates in the literary circles from 1953 onwards.

[26] It is possible that Han influenced Kim Il Sung to wage his campaign against the Soviet Koreans' faction specifically on the literary front, culminating in Kim's famous "Juche speech" of 1955: On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work.

[34] This position made him the most powerful cultural administrator of the country and he effectively ran the whole system of publishing literature and providing for the writers.

[6] During his ministerial career, Han initiated a campaign to diminish the importance of Russian language teaching in North Korean colleges in the spring of 1956.

[46] Andrei Lankov considers Han mediocre as a writer[8] and assess his rivals Kim Namch'ŏn and Yi T'ae-jun [ko] "marginally more gifted", however considering North Korean literature of the period "boring and highly politicized propaganda" across the board.

Some aspects of the struggles are baseless, too, as some works by Han include rather sympathetic depictions of Japanese soldiers, while it was many of his rivals who were purged because of their "pro-Japanese" tendencies.

[14] Yearn Hong Choi assess that "Han is not a typical North Korean writer" but an extremely political one in his attempt at pleasing Kim Il Sung.

While in Han's works Kim Il Sung embodies traditional Korean virtues of innocence and naivety having "mastered Marxism–Leninism with his heart, not his brain",[47] in Cho's he exemplifies particular traits of the rather early cult of personality built upon Soviet Marxism–Leninism and bloc conformity.

[48] The style of Han based on Korean ethnic nationalism ultimately established itself as the standard of propaganda over Cho's.

[50] History (MR: Ryŏksa) was the first long North Korean work to deal with Kim Il Sung during the Anti-Japanese struggle.

Since then they had turned it into a scenic summer retreat, on which Reverend Yi and one or two newly-rich families had recently erected neat brick houses.

[59] Called "the country's most enduring work of fiction",[61] it is still influential in North Korea where the word "jackals" has become a synonym for "Americans", and papers like Rodong Sinmun regularly invoke the language of the novella.

[56] After the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack of 2014, North Korean media employed similar rhetoric against Secretary of State John Kerry.