Alexei Ivanovich Hegai (Russian: Алексей Иванович Хегай; 18 March 1908 – 2 July 1953), also known as Ho Ka-i (Korean: 허가이), was a Soviet political operative in North Korea (DPRK) and leader of the Soviet Korean faction within the early political structure of North Korea.

[1] He allegedly killed himself in Pyongyang[1] and was replaced as leader by Pak Chang-ok. Aleksei Ivanovich Hegai, also known as Ho Ka-i, was born on 18 March 1908 in Khabarovsk in Russia.

Ho Ka-i and his younger brother were raised by their uncle, who worked as a digger in gold fields in Khabarovsk.

In 1920, at the age of twelve, Ho Ka-i began working at a tobacco factory in Khabarovsk to bring in some money to help support the family.

At the age of nineteen, he married a Soviet Korean, Anna Innokentevna Li, and they would eventually have five children, forcing him to abandon his studies in order to support his family.

The purges took place mainly because Stalin took the elites "relative independence and freedom of mind" as a threat to his own power.

During the years leading up to his departure to Korea, Ho Ka-i took his family to Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, while he was being cleared to be reinstated to full Party membership, after his and many others' expulsion due to the purges.

[10] At a Second Party Congress Session from March 27 to 30, 1948, Ho Ka-i delivered an unscheduled speech, condemning some officials, who had previously apologized, for not admitting their mistakes.

[14] The Soviet authorities thought Ho Ka-i to be an expert in organization, causing him to move up in party ranks.

Nina Tsoi was the daughter of Piotr Invanovich (Ch'oe Pyo-dok), a Korean officer in the Red Army who "survived the mass terror of 1937-9.

Numbers from North Korea suggest that Ho Ka-i expelled and punished over 450,000 of the party's 600,000 members during the war.