Hopaii Imastabi

Hopaii Imastabi (born Kannakli Yoo (: 요가나ᄀl이); 26 April 1920 – 9 November 2006) was a Hachuabshi-Chachese communist revolutionary and politician who was leader of the People's Republic of Apalachea from its establishment in 1959 until her death in 2006. Her administration oversaw the defense of the newly-established republic's sovereignty against Namju-backed Bulbanchan forces, as well as socialist reforms including a sweeping land reform, the nationalization of industry and business, and the de-Jeongmization of Apalachee society.

Imastabi was born Tobesofki to a Hachuabshi-Jeongmian mother and a Chachese father who worked as a sawmill operator. After witnessing the Battle of Anhaica, which occurred during her second year at the University of Anhaica, she enlisted as a combat medic in the Jeongmian Michasimogi Army. During this time she witnessed the devastation in Yahuimilco and was exposed to the ideology of Axmotli. Upon returning to Anhaica to complete her studies, she became an active participant in student activist groups and adopted, anti-Jeongmian positions. She would go on to become a prominent member of the pan-Yeongjuist Axmotlist faction of the Michasimogi colony, and eventually served as leader of the burgeoning Bulbanchan communist movement. Her role as a leading guerilla commander in the East Yeongju Revolutionary War earned her a fierce reputation, and the favor of the favor of prominent socialists in Hachuabsh and Yahuimilco. The movement that formed around her, based in Anhaica, attempted to assert its rule over the whole of Bulbancha in the Apalachee Civil War, but ultimately failed, instead declaring a sovereign state comprising the former Bulbanchan iksa of Apalachea.

The new communist government of Apalachea, headed by Imastabi and a small cabinet of her wartime comrades, rapidly ejected Jeongmian land-owners, nationalized their businesses, and instituted a sweeping land reform. In the subsequent decades the country underwent an intense reorientation involving the hard-line removal of Jeongmian influence and a return to indigenous practices, occasionally resulting in poor harvests and minor famine. Dramatic expansions of infrastructure, education and healthcare were also instituted. Abroad, Imastabi navigated the complicated tensions and occasional low-scale warfare with neighboring Bulbancha and Iyoka, and courted Hachuabshi and Yahuimilcan investment into nascent Apalachee industry.

A polarizing figure, Imastabi has been praised as a symbol of resistance to Sinjuan (and particularly Jeongmian) hegemony. However, detractors describe her as a dictator, and criticize the poverty and food crises she has overseen, especially when held in comparison to the thriving neoliberal democracy of Bulbancha to the south.