Everything about Kim Il Sung totally explained
Kim Il-sung (
15 April 1912 –
8 July 1994) was the leader of
North Korea from its founding in early 1948 until his death, when he was succeeded by his son
Kim Jong-il. He held the posts of
Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and
President from 1972 to his death. He was also the
General Secretary of the
Workers Party of Korea where he exercised
autocratic power. As leader of North Korea, he ended up switching from a
Marxist-Leninist ideology to his self-developed
Juche idea and established a
personality cult. North Korea officially refers to him as the "Great Leader" and he's designated in the constitution as the country's "
Eternal President". His birthday and the day of his death are
public holidays in North Korea.
Early years
Much of the early records of his life come from his own personal accounts and official North Korean government publications, which often conflict with independent sources. Nevertheless, there's some consensus on at least the basic story of his early life, corroborated by witnesses from the period.
Kim was born to
Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju, and had two younger brothers, Ch’ŏl-chu and Yŏng-ju. He was born in Nam-ri, Kophyŏng District, Taedong County,
South P'yŏngan Province (currently the Mangyŏngdae area of
P'yŏngyang), then under Japanese occupation. The ancestral seat (
pon’gwan) of Kim's family is
Chŏnju,
North Chŏlla Province, and what little that's known about the family contends that sometime around the time of the Korean-Japanese war of 1592-98, a direct ancestor moved north. The claim may be understood in light of the fact that the early Chosŏn government's policy of populating the north resulted in mass resettlement of southern farmers in Phyŏngan and Hamgyŏng regions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At any rate, the majority of the Chŏnju Kim, today live in North Korea, and extant Chŏnju Kim genealogies provide spotty records. Moreover, a persistent rumour alleges that during the North Korean occupation of Seoul in the
Korean War, the North Koreans collected all the available Chŏnju Kim genealogies and took them to the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The exact history of Kim's family is somewhat obscure. The family was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was always a step away from poverty. Kim was raised in a Protestant Christian family with strong ties to the church: his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister, his father had gone to a missionary school, and both his parents were reportedly very active in the religious community. According to the official version, Kim's family participated in Japanese opposition activities and in 1920 they fled to Manchuria, where he became fluent in Chinese. The more objective view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kim’s parents apparently did play a minor role in some activist groups, though whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both is unclear.
Kim’s father died in 1926, when Kim was fourteen years old. Kim attended Yulin Middle School in
Jilin, 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 subversive activities. At seventeen, Kim had become the youngest member of an underground Marxist organization with less 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.
He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of the
Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the
Communist Party of China. Kim was appointed the same year to serve as political commissar for the 3rd detachment of the second division, around 160 soldiers.
Also in 1935 Kim took the name Kim Il-sung, meaning "become the sun." By the end of the war, this name would be legendary in Korea, and some historians have claimed that it wasn't Kim Sŏng-ju who originally made the name famous. Soviet propagandist Grigory Mekler, who claims 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.
On the other hand, some Koreans simply didn't believe that someone as young as Kim could have anything to do with the legend. Historian
Andrei Lankov has claimed that the rumor Kim Il Sung was somehow switched with 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.
Kim was appointed commander of the 6th division in 1937, at the age of 24, controlling a few hundred men in a group that came to be known as “Kim Il Sung’s division.” It was while he was in command of this division that he executed a raid on
Poch’onbo, on
June 4. Although Kim’s division only captured a small Japanese-held town just across the Korean border for a few hours, it was nonetheless considered a military success at this time, when the guerrilla units had experienced difficulty in capturing any enemy territory. This accomplishment would grant Kim some measure of fame among Chinese guerrillas, and North Korean biographies would later exploit as a great victory for Korea. Kim was appointed commander of the 2nd operational region for the 1st Army, but by the end of 1940, he was the only 1st Army leader still alive. Pursued by Japanese troops, Kim and what remained of his army escaped by crossing the
Amur river into the
Soviet Union. Kim was sent to a camp near
Khabarovsk, where the Korean Communist guerrillas were retrained by the Soviets. Kim became a
Captain in the Soviet
Red Army and served in it until the end of World War II.
The
Communist Party of Korea had been founded in 1925, but had soon been disbanded due to internal strife. In 1931, Kim had joined the
Communist Party of China. When he returned to Korea, in September 1945, with the Soviet forces, he was installed by the Soviets as head of the Provisional People's Committee. He was not, at this time, the head of the Communist Party, whose headquarters were in
Seoul in the
U.S.-occupied south. During his early years as leader, he assumed a position of influence largely due to the backing of the Korean population which was supportive of his fight against Japanese occupation.
One of Kim's most enduring accomplishments was his establishment of a professional army, the
North Korean People's Army (NKPA), formed from a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later
Nationalist Chinese troops. From their ranks, using Soviet advisers and equipment, Kim constructed a large army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare. Before the outbreak of the Korean War,
Joseph Stalin equipped the NKPA with modern heavy tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms (at the time, the South Korean Army had nothing remotely comparable either in numbers of troops or equipment). Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with ex-Soviet propeller-driven fighter and attack aircraft. Later, North Korean pilot candidates were sent to the Soviet Union and China to train in
MiG-15 jet aircraft at secret bases.
Korean War
By 1948, it was apparent that, due to political and ideological polarization between the two emerging Korean governments, immediate peaceful re-unification wouldn't be possible. After the South formally declared independence as the
Republic of Korea, the people of northern Korea chose Kim Il Sung as the prime minister of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), forming a new country that would henceforth be commonly known as "North Korea". The Communist Party merged with the
New People's Party to form the
Workers Party of North Korea (of which Kim was vice-chairman). In 1949, the Workers Party of North Korea merged with its
southern counterpart to become the
Workers Party of Korea (WPK) with Kim as party chairman.
U.S. occupied South Korea (ROK) usurped power from locally controlled "People's Committees" and reinstalled many of the former land owners and police that had held office when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule. These moves were met with heavy resistance and open rebellion in some parts of South Korea such as the southern islands.. After several altercations at the border (allegedly instigated in part by the U.S. command), it appeared that civil war might be inevitable. North Korean troops crossed the border on
25 June 1950 intending to unify the country under a communist government. Evidence suggests that the North's bid to reunify the country was met with a wide range of popular support across the south. Archival material suggests that the decision was Kim's own initiative rather than a Soviet one. Evidence suggests that Soviet intelligence, through its espionage sources in the U.S. government and British
SIS, had obtained information on the limitations of U.S. atomic bomb stockpiles as well as defence program cuts, leading Stalin to conclude that the
Truman administration wouldn't intervene in Korea.
The
People's Republic of China acquiesced only reluctantly to the idea of Korean reunification after being told by Kim that Stalin had approved the action, After a period of vacillation, Kim instituted a purge, executing some found guilty of treason and forcing the rest into exile.
In 1994, Kim began investing in nuclear power to offset energy issues brought on by economic problems. This was the first of many "nuclear crises", although the U.S. had nuclear weapons in South Korea as early as 1953, and threatened to use them during the Korean War. On
19 May 1994, Kim ordered spent fuel to be unloaded from the already disputed nuclear research facility in Yongbyon. Despite repeated chiding from Western nations, Kim continued to conduct nuclear research and carry on with the uranium enrichment program. In June 1994, former President
Jimmy Carter travelled to Pyongyang for talks with Kim. To the astonishment of the United States and the
International Atomic Energy Agency, Kim agreed to stop his nuclear research program and seemed to be embarking upon a new opening to the West.
Death
By the 1990s, North Korea was nearly isolated from the outside world, except for limited contacts with China. Its economy was virtually bankrupt, crippled by huge expenditure on armaments and sanctions, with an agricultural sector unable to feed its population due to a lack of arable land, but North Korean media continued to lionize Kim. Kim Il-sung died suddenly of a heart attack in Pyongyang on
July 8,
1994, bequeathing the country's mounting crisis to
Kim Jong-il. His funeral in Pyongyang was attended by hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were weeping and crying Kim Il-sung's name during the funeral procession. Kim Il-sung's body was placed in a public
mausoleum at the
Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Now his preserved and embalmed body lies under a glass coffin. His head rests on a pillow and he's covered by a red flag acting as a blanket. Video of the funeral at Pyongyang was broadcast on several networks, and can now be found on various internet sites.
Family life
Kim Il-sung married twice. His first wife,
Kim Jong-suk, bore him two sons and a daughter.
Kim Jong-il is his oldest son, and the other son (Kim Man-il, or Shura Kim) died in 1947 in a swimming accident. Kim Jong-suk died at the age of 31 while giving birth to a stillborn baby girl. Kim married
Kim Sŏng-ae in 1962, and it's believed he'd three or four children with her:
Kim Yŏng-il,
Kim Kyŏng-il and
Kim Pyong-il. Kim Pyong-il was prominent in Korean politics until he became ambassador to
Hungary.
Kim was reported to have other illegitimate children, as he was well known for cheating on his wife. They included
Kim Hyŏn-nam (born 1972, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party since 2002) and
Chang-hyŏn (born 1971, adopted by Kim Jong-il's sister Kim Kyŏng-hŭi).
Kim's name and image
There are roughly 800 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea . The most prominent are at:
Kim Il-sung University,
Kim Il-sung Stadium,
Kim Il-sung Square,
Kim Il-sung Bridge and the
Immortal Statue of Kim Il-sung.
Kim Il-sung's image is prominent in places associated with public transportation, hanging at every North Korean train station and airport. It is also placed prominently at the border crossings between China and North Korea.
Works
Kim Il-sung was the author of many works and they're published in books. His works are published by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House and among them are "
Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works" and "
Collection of Kim Il Sung's Selected Works". These include new year speeches, and speeches from different occasions.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Kim Il Sung'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://kim_il-sung.totallyexplained.com">Kim Il-sung Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
