The Gulag (Russian: ГУЛаг, tr. GULag; IPA: [ɡʊˈlak] ( listen)) was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of extrajudicial punishment. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union.

GULag is the acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies (Russian: Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний, tr. Glavnoye upravlyeniye ispravityel'no-trudovih lagyeryey i koloniy) of the NKVD. It was officially created on April 25, 1930 and dissolved on January 13, 1960.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, introduced the term to the Western world with the 1973 publication of his The Gulag Archipelago. The book likened the scattered camps to "a chain of islands" and depicted the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Some scholars^[quantify] concur with this view, whereas others^[quantify] argue that the Gulag was neither as large nor as deadly as it is often presented, and it did not have death camps, although during some periods of its history, mortality was high in the labor camps.

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn ( /soʊlʒəˈniːtsɨn/;Russian: Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын, pronounced [ɐlʲɪˈksandr ɪˈsaɪvʲɪtɕ səlʐɨˈnʲitsɨn]; 11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a writer, who, through his often-suppressed writings, helped to raise global awareness of the gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 but returned to Russia in 1994 after the Soviet system had collapsed.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR (now in Stavropol Krai, Russia). His mother, Taisiya Solzhenitsyna (née Shcherbak) was Ukrainian. Her father had apparently risen from humble beginnings, as something of a self-made man. Eventually, he acquired a large estate in the Kuban region in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. During World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn, a young officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origins and fellow native of the Caucasus region. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the opening chapters of August 1914, and in the later Red Wheel novels.

Kim Jong-un also romanised as Kim Jong-eun or Kim Jung-eun, (born 8 January 1983 or 1984), is the current supreme leader of North Korea. He has held the titles of the First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, First Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and also a presidium member of the Central Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea. He was officially declared the supreme leader following the state funeral for his father, Kim Jong-il on 28 December 2011. He is the third and youngest son of his deceased predecessor Kim Jong-il and his consort Ko Young-hee. From late 2010, Kim Jong-un was viewed as heir apparent to the leadership of the nation, and following his father's death, he was announced as the "Great Successor" by North Korean state television. At Kim Jong-il's memorial service, North Korean Chairman of Congress Kim Yong-nam declared that "Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage". On 30 December 2011 the Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea formally appointed Kim as the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army. On 11 April 2012, the 4th Party Conference elected him to the newly-created post of First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.