Kim Il-sung

This is a Korean name; the family name is Kim.

His Excellency Generallisimo Kim Il-sung 김일성
Official portrait (posthumous, issued 1994)
Eternal President of the Republic (Appellation)
Incumbent
Assumed office 8 July 1994
Supreme Leader of North Korea
In office 9 September 1948 – 8 July 1994
Succeeded by	Kim Jong-il
President of North Korea
In office 28 December 1972 – 8 July 1994
Preceded by	Position created Choi Yong-kun, Head of State as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly
Succeeded by	Position abolished (Proclaimed Eternal President of the Republic after his death)
Prime Minister of North Korea
In office 9 September 1948 – 28 December 1972
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Kim Il (Premier)
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea
In office 11 October 1966 – 8 July 1994
Preceded by	Himself as Chairman
Succeeded by	Kim Jong-il
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea
In office 30 June 1949 – 11 October 1966
Preceded by	Kim Tu-bong
Succeeded by	Himself as General Secretary
Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of North Korea
In office 28 August 1946 – 30 June 1949
Chairman	Kim Tu-bong
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Chairman of the North Korea Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea
In office 17 December 1945 – 28 August 1946
General Secretary	Pak Hon-yong
Preceded by	Kim Yong-bom
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Personal details
Born	Kim Sŏng-ju (1912-04-15)15 April 1912 Mangyŏngdae, Heian-nandō, Japanese Korea
Died	8 July 1994(1994-07-08) (aged 82) Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Resting place	Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Nationality	North Korean
Political party	Workers’ Party of Korea
Spouse(s)	Kim Jong-suk (d. 1949) Kim Song-ae
Children	Kim Jong-il Kim Man-il Kim Kyong-hui Kim Kyong-jin Kim Pyong-il Kim Yong-il
Residence	Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Occupation	Eternal President of the Republic
Profession	President of North Korea
Religion	None (Atheist) (formerly Presbyterian)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Soviet Union Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Service/branch	Soviet Armed Forces Korean People's Army
Years of service	1941–1945 1948–1994
Rank	Dae wonsu (Grand Marshal)
Commands	All (supreme commander)
Battles/wars	World War II Korean War

Kim Il-sung Korean pronunciation: [ki.mil.s͈ɔŋ], also romanised as Kim Il Sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as North Korea, from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994 (titled as chairman from 1949 to 1966 and as general secretary after 1966). He invaded South Korea in 1950, and almost succeeded in overrunning the entire peninsula but for UN intervention. The Korean War, sometimes referred to as the Korean Civil War, was stopped with a cease-fire signed on 27 July 1953. As of now, the Korean War has technically not ended.

His tenure as leader of North Korea has often been described as, and he established an all-pervasive cult of personality. From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of socialist organisation, which later replaced Marxism–Leninism as the ideology of the state in 1972. In the Library of Congress Country Study on North Korea in 2009, he was described as "one of the most intriguing figures of the twentieth century". He outlived Joseph Stalin by four decades, Mao Zedong by two, and remained in power during the terms of office of six South Korean presidents, seven Soviet leaders, Boris Yeltsin, ten U.S. presidents, ten UK Prime Ministers, twenty-one Japanese prime ministers, five popes of the Roman Catholic Church and coincided with the entire apartheid era of South Africa.

His son Kim Jong-il became his formal successor at the 6th WPK Congress, and he succeeded him in 1994. The North Korean government refers to Kim Il-sung as "The Great Leader" (위대한 수령, widaehan suryŏng) and he is designated in the North Korean constitution as the country's "Eternal President". His birthday is a public holiday in North Korea and is called the Day of the Sun.

Early life

Kim Hyong-jik

Kim Il-sung's birthplace1

Kim Il-sung's birthplace2

Kang Pan-sok

Young Kim Il-sung, age c. 13

Many of the early records of his life come from his own personal accounts and official North Korean government publications, which often conflict with external sources. Nevertheless, there is some consensus on at least the basic story of his early life, corroborated by witnesses from the period.

Kim was born in the small village of Mangyungbong on 15 April 1912. Mangyungbong sits on a peak in the Rangrim Range of mountains near Pyongyang, Korea. Indeed, the name "Mangyungbong" means "All Seeing Peak." From Mangyungbong there is a panoramic view of the Daidong River far below, where small steamers can be seen carrying trade from the Western Sea to Pyongyang and back again. Born to Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju; Kim also had two younger brothers, Ch’ŏl-chu (or Kim Chul Joo) and Yŏng-ju.

The exact history of Kim's family is somewhat obscure. According to Kim himself the family was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was always a step away from poverty. Kim claims he was raised in a Presbyterian family, that his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister, that his father had gone to a missionary school and was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and that his parents were very active in the religious community. According to the official version, Kim's family participated in anti-Japanese activities and in 1920 they fled to Manchuria. Like most Korean families, they resented the Japanese occupation of the entire Korean peninsula, which began on August 29, 1910. Another view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kim's parents, especially Kim's mother (Kang Ban Suk) played a role in some of the activist anti-Japanese struggle that was sweeping the peninsula. But, their exact involvement - whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both - is unclear. Still, Japanese repression of any and all opposition was brutal, resulting in the arrest and detention of more than 52,000 Korean citizens in 1912 alone. The repression forced many Korean families to flee Korea and settle in Manchuria. The whole Kim family fled to Manchuria in 1920.

Communist and guerrilla activities

There is much controversy about Kim's political career before the founding of North Korea, with some sources indicating he was an imposter. Several sources indicate that the Kim Il-sung name had previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean resistance, Kim Kyung-cheon(김경천). Grigory Mekler, who is to have prepared Kim to lead North Korea, says that Kim assumed this name while in the Soviet Union in the early 1940s from a former commander who had died. According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially "created from zero." For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he'd only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech the MVD prepared for him at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived.

However, historian Andrei Lankov has stated that the claim that the name Kim Il-sung was switched with the name of the “original” Kim is unlikely to be true. Several witnesses knew Kim before and after his time in the Soviet Union, including his superior, Zhou Baozhong, who dismissed the claim of a “second” Kim in his diaries. Historian Bruce Cumings argues that the assertion Kim was an imposter parallels the North's propaganda that he singlehandedly defeated the Japanese. The official version of Kim's guerrilla life is believed to be heavily embellished as a part of the subsequent personality cult, particularly his portrayal as a boy-conspirator who joined the resistance at 14 and had founded a battle-ready army at 19.

The following details of his career are therefore disputed.

In October 1926, Kim founded the Down-With-Imperialism Union.^{[citation needed]} Kim attended Whasung Military Academy in 1926, but when later finding the academy's training methods outdated, he quit in 1927. From that time, he attended Yuwen Middle School in Jilin up to 1930, where he rejected the feudal traditions of older generation Koreans and became interested in Communist ideologies; his formal education ended when he was arrested and jailed for his subversive activities. At seventeen, Kim had become the youngest member of an underground Marxist organization with fewer than twenty members, led by Hŏ So, who belonged to the South Manchurian Communist Youth Association. The police discovered the group three weeks after it was formed in 1929, and jailed Kim for several months.

In 1931, Kim joined the Communist Party of China. (The Communist Party of Korea had been founded in 1925, but had been thrown out of the Comintern in the early 1930s for being too nationalist.) He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China. Feelings against the Japanese ran high in Manchuria, but as of May 1930 Manchuria was not occupied by the Japanese. On 30 May 1930 a spontaneous violent uprising in eastern Manchuria arose in which peasants attacked some local villages in the name of resisting "Japanese aggression." This unplanned reckless and unfocused uprising was easily put down by the authorities. Because of the attack, the Japanese began to plan an occupation of Manchuria. In a speech before a meeting of Young Communist League delegates meeting on 20 May 1931 in Yenchi County in Manchuria, Kim warned the delegates against such unplanned uprisings as the May 30, 1930 uprising in eastern Manchuria.

Four months later, on 18 September 1931, the "Mukden Incident" occurred in which a relatively weak dynamite explosive charge went off near a Japanese railroad in the town of Mukden in Manchuria. Although no damage occurred, the Japanese used the incident to send armed forces into Manchuria and appoint a new puppet government.

Kim Il Sung's birthplace in Mangyongdae-guyok

Kim Il-sung in 1946

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945. The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945).

Kim developed the policy and ideology of Juche (self-reliance 주체 사상) and turned North Korea into a powerful and prosperous nation.

In 1980, he decided that his son Kim Jong-il would succeed him, and increasingly delegated the running of the government to him. The Kim family was supported by the army, due to Kim Il-sung's revolutionary record and the support of the veteran defense minister, O Chin-u. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim publicly designated his son as his successor.

Works

Main article: Kim Il-sung bibliography

Kim Il-sung was the author of many works which are published by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House, such as the 100-volume Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works (김일성전집) and his Selected Works. These include new year speeches, and other speeches delivered on different occasions. Shortly before his death, he also published an autobiography entitled "With the Century" in 8 volumes.

According to official North Korean sources, Kim Il-sung was also the original writer of The Flower Girl, a revolutionary theatrical opera, which was made into a film adaptation in 1972.

Kim Il-sung also broadcast a radio broadcast called, "Go All Out For Victory in the War."

See also

• Cold War
• Kimilsungia
• Song of General Kim Il-sung
• Kim Tu-bong

Further reading

• Blair, Clay, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, Naval Institute Press (2003)
• Goncharov, Sergei N., Lewis, John W. and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (1993)
• Kim Il-sung (1993). With the Century. Korean Friendship Association. http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/202.pdf. 
• Lee Chong-sik. "Kim Il-Song of North Korea." Asian Survey. University of California Press. Vol. 7, No. 6, June 1967. DOI 10.2307/2642612. Available at Jstor.
• Mansourov, Aleksandr Y., Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China's Decision to Enter the Korean War, 16 September – 15 October 1950: New Evidence from the Russian Archives, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issues 6–7 (Winter 1995/1996)
• Martin, Bradley (2004). Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty. St. Martins. 
• Sudoplatov, Pavel Anatoli, Schecter, Jerrold L., and Schecter, Leona P., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster, Little Brown, Boston (1994)
• Suh Dae-Sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press (1988)
• Weathersby, Kathryn, The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 2, no. 4 (Winter 1993)
• Christian Kracht, Eva Munz, Lukas Nikol, The Ministry Of Truth: Kim Jong Il's North Korea, Feral House, October 2007, 132 pages, 88 color photographs, ISBN 978-1-932595-27-7
• NKIDP: Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968–1969, A Critical Oral History
• Baik Bong, "From Birth to Triumphant Return to Homeland," "From Building Democratic Korea to Chollima Flight," and "From Independent National Economy to 10-Point Political Programme"

External links

• Nicolae Ceausescu's visit to Pyongyang, North Korea in 1971.
• "Conversations with Kim Il Sung," Wilson Center Digital Archive.
• Kumsusan Memorial Palace – Kim Il-Sungs Mausoleum
• Kim's resting place
• North Korea Uncovered, (North Korea Google Earth)
• Korean Unification Studies
• North Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP)
• A State of Mind, a documentary movie by Daniel Gordon, chronicles everyday life in North Korea in 2003
• Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, a book by Barbara Demick