Kim Il Sung

Kim Il-sung
General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea
In office 1946–1994
Succeeded by	Kim Jong-il
President of North Korea (Eternal President of the Republic since 1994)
In office 1972–present
Premier of North Korea
In office 1948–1972
Succeeded by	Kim Il
Personal details
Born	(1912-04-15)April 15, 1912 Pyongyang, Japanese occupied Korea
Died	July 8, 1994(1994-07-08) (aged 82) Pyongyang, North Korea
Nationality	North Korean

Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl	김일성
Hancha	金日成
Revised Romanization	Gim Il-seong
McCune–Reischauer	Kim Ilsŏng

Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean Communist leader 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 is 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 is 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 is 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 rumor 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 North.

The exact history of Kim's family is obscure, due ironically to the deification of all things related to Kim in North Korea. 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. It was here that Kim met the man who would become his mentor as a communist, Wei Zhengmin, Kim’s immediate superior officer, who was serving at the time as chairman of the Political Committee of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Wei reported directly to Kang Sheng, a high-ranking party member close to Mao Zedong in Yan'an, until Wei's death on March 8, 1941.

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 was not 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 did not 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 consolidated his power through purges, including assassination and execution of dissident elements within the Party.

One of Kim's most lasting accomplishments was his establishment of a professional army, the North Korean People's Army (NKPA), formed from a cadre of guerillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later Nationalist Chinese troops. From their ranks, using Soviet advisors 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

Main article: Korean War

By 1948, it was apparent that, due to political and ideological polarization between the two emerging Korean governments, immediate peaceful re-unification would not be possible. The Soviets responded by appointing Kim Prime Minister of the new Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), forming a new country that would henceforth be commonly known as "North Korea". Following the standard pattern in the Soviet allies, the Communist Party merged with the New People's Party to form the Workers Party of North Korea (in 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.

On June 25, 1950, North Korea launched an attack on the anti-communist South Korea with the stated intent being unification of the country under a communist government. At the time, leaders of the United States and its allies believed that Joseph Stalin had ordered this attack. Archival material suggests the decision was Kim's own initiative. However, the fact that Stalin had provided military advisors to Kim and extensively armed North Korean army and air forces just prior to the invasion (far in excess of any conceivable defensive need) makes it clear that Stalin was perfectly aware of and was instrumental in facilitating Kim's military aggression. Moreover, it is now also known 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 defense program cuts, leading Stalin to conclude that the Truman administration would not intervene in Korea.

In contrast, the People's Republic of China acquiesced only reluctantly to the invasion after being told by Kim that Stalin had approved the action, and did not provide direct military support (other than logistics channels) until United Nations forces had nearly reached the Yalu River late in 1950. North Korean forces captured Seoul and occupied most of the South, but were soon driven back by U.N. forces led by the U.S. By October, the U.N. forces had retaken Seoul and on October 19 captured P’yŏngyang, forcing Kim and his government to flee to China.

On October 25, 1950, after sending various warnings of their intent to intervene if UN forces did not halt their advance, Chinese troops in the thousands crossed the Yalu River and entered the war as allies of the NKPA. The UN troops were forced to withdraw; Chinese troops retook P’yŏngyang in December and Seoul in January 1951. In March U.N. forces began a new offensive, retaking Seoul. After a series of offensives and counter-offensives by both sides, followed by a grueling period of largely static trench warfare, the front was stabilized along what eventually became the permanent "Armistice Line" of July 27, 1953.

Leader of North Korea

Restored as leader of North Korea, Kim continued purging his rivals, particularly the former southern Korean Communist leadership, and embarked on the reconstruction of the country devastated by the war. He launched a five-year national economic plan to establish a Soviet-style command economy, with all industry owned by the state and all agriculture collectivised. The economy was based on heavy industry, particularly arms production. North Korea retained huge armed forces to defend the 1953 ceasefire line.

File:DRPK Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.jpg

Kim Il-sung (right) with son Kim Jong-il

During the 1950s, Kim was seen as an orthodox Communist leader. He rejected the USSR's destalinization and began to distance himself from his sponsor, including the removal of any mention of his Red Army career from official history. In 1956, anti-Kim elements encouraged by de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union emerged within the Party to criticize Kim and demand reforms. After a period of vacillation, Kim instituted a brutal purge, executing some opponents and forcing the rest into exile. When the Sino-Soviet split developed in the 1960s, Kim initially sided with the Chinese but never severed his relations with the Soviets. When the Cultural Revolution broke out in China after 1966, Kim veered back to the Soviet side. At the same time, he established an extensive personality cult, and all North Koreans were required to address him as "Great Leader" (widaehan suryŏng 위대한 수령). Kim developed the policy and ideology of Juche (self-reliance), and North Korea became increasingly isolated from the rest of the world.

In the mid-1960s, Kim became impressed with the efforts of Hồ Chí Minh to reunify Vietnam through guerrilla warfare and thought something similar might be possible in Korea. Infiltration and subversion efforts were thus greatly stepped up, efforts that culminated in an attempt to storm the Blue House and assassinate President Park Chung-hee. North Korean troops thus took a much more aggressive stance toward U.S. forces in and around South Korea, engaging U.S. Army troops in firefights along the Demilitarized Zone. The 1968 capture of the crew of the USS Pueblo was a part of this campaign.

A new constitution was proclaimed in December 1972, under which Kim became President of North Korea. By this time, he had 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 defence minister, O Chin-u. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim publicly designated his son as his successor.

Later years

From about this time, however, North Korea encountered increasing economic difficulties. The practical effect of Juche was to cut the country off from virtually all foreign trade. The economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping in China from 1979 onward meant that trade with the backward economy of North Korea held decreasing interest for China. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, during 1989–1991, completed North Korea's virtual isolation. These events, added to the continuing high level of military expenditure, led to a mounting economic crisis. The contrast between North Korea's poverty and the booming economy of South Korea became increasingly glaring, but the residents of North Korea were (and still are) shut off from news of the outside world.

During the 1970s, Kim's personality cult grew more extensive. The state propaganda claimed that Kim personally supervised virtually every aspect of life in North Korea, and almost supernatural powers were attributed to him. Citizens believed hostile to the Kim regime were either executed or deported to special dictatorship target areas, where they were imprisoned in labor camps and worked in conditions similar to Soviet gulags.

North Korea repeatedly predicted that Korea would be re-united before Kim's 70th birthday in 1982, and there were fears in the West that Kim would launch a new Korean War. But, by this time, the disparity in economic and military power between the North and the South (where the U.S. military presence continues) made such a venture impossible. Instead, Kim placed his son in charge of developing nuclear weapons.

As he aged, Kim developed a large growth on the back of his neck - a calcium deposit, or hok in Korean, usually resulting from childhood malnutrition. Its location near his brain and spinal cord made it inoperable. Because of its unappealing nature, North Korean photographers always shot from the same slight-left angle, which became a difficult task as the growth reached the size of a baseball.

In 1994, Kim launched the first of many nuclear crises (the rest of which would be conducted by his son) with the Western world. On May 19, 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, former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Pyongyang for talks with Kim. To the astonishment of the United States and the IAEA, 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, with an agricultural sector unable to feed its population, but North Korean media continued to lionize Kim. Kim died suddenly of a heart attack in P’yŏngyang 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'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 is covered by a red flag acting as a blanket, possibly a symbol of communism. A three-year period of "official mourning" took place after his death; during this time, North Koreans could be punished for not expressing enough grief at the loss of their leader. Video of the funeral at Pyongyang was broadcast on several networks, and can now be found on various internet sites.

Family life

File:Kim-il-sung Kim-jong-suk Kim-jong-il.jpg

Kim Il-sung with his wife Kim Jŏng-suk and son Kim Jong-il.

Kim Il-sung married twice. His first wife, Kim Jŏng-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 in 1949 while giving birth to a stillborn baby. Kim married Kim Sŏng-ae in 1962, and it is believed he had three or four children with her: Kim Yŏng-il, Kim Kyŏng-il and Kim P’yŏng-il. Kim P’yŏng-il was prominent in Korean politics until he became ambassador to Hungary.

Kim was reported to have other illegitimate children, including 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).

After his death, his son Kim Jong-Il replaced the Gregorian calendar in North Korea and put in place a calendar in which the years begin with the birth of Kim Il-sung.

Kim's name and image

There are roughly 800 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea and there are more places named after him than any other communist leader. The most prominent are: 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.

See also

• Cold War
• Dictatorship
• Gulag
• History of Soviet espionage in the United States
• List of Korea-related topics
• Song of General Kim Il-sung
• Stalinism
• Juche

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 (2003). With the Century (PDF). Korean Friendship Association.
• Lankov, Andrei N., Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956. Honolulu:Hawaii University Press (2004)
• Mansourov, Aleksandr Y., Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China's Decision to Enter the Korean War, September 16-October 15, 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. ISBN.
• 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)

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