Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung (
15 April 1912 "
8 July 1994) was the leader of
North Korea from its founding in
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, although his real power came from his position as
General Secretary of the
Korean Workers' Party where he had dictatorial power. 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.
Much of the early records of his life come from his own personal accounts, or 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, the eldest of the three sons of
Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, was born Kim Sŏng-ju, in Nam-ri, Kop'yŏng 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 P'yŏngan and Hamgyŏng regions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At any rate, the majority, if not most, 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. According to the official version, Kim's family was active in opposition to the Japanese, and in 1920 they escaped to China. The more objective view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans at the time to escape famine. Kim attended 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. He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, eventually becoming a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the
Communist Party of China.
While in Manchuria 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 from a former commander who had died.
[Vladivostok News, Soviets groomed Kim Il Sung for leadership. January 10, 2003] On the other hand, some Koreans simply did not believe that someone as young as Kim could have anything to do with the legend.
[National Security Archive, Interview with Hong An. February 5, 1997] Kim stayed in this unit from about 1935, rising in the ranks and becoming a commander in 1941, when the Japanese drove the guerrillas from northern China. Kim had to escape to the
Soviet Union and 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 Korean Communist Party had been founded in 1925, but soon was disbanded due to internal strife. In 1931 Kim had joined the Chinese Communist Party. 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. (See also
Korean Workers' Party.) During his early years as leader he consolidated his power through purges and pursued social and economic programs in the
Stalinist model.
By 1948 it was apparent that, due to political and ideological polarization between the two emerging Korean governments, immediate 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 several smaller groups to form the
North Korean Workers' Party which, in 1949, merged with its southern counterpart to become the
Korean Workers Party (KWP) with Kim as party chairman.
On
June 25,
1950, North Korea launched an attack on the anti-communist, capitalist
Republic of Korea (see
Korean War) with the stated intent being the "liberation" of southern Korea and the 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 now suggests the decision was Kim's own initiative, to which the Soviets and the
People's Republic of China acquiesced only reluctantly. North Korean forces captured Seoul and occupied most of the South, but were soon driven back by
United Nations 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, however, Chinese forces entered the war and threw the U.N. forces back, retaking P'yŏngyang in December and Seoul in January 1951. In March U.N. forces retook Seoul, and the front was stabilized along what eventually became the permanent "Armistice Line" of
July 27,
1953.
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.
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. When the
Sino-Soviet split developed in the 1960s, he 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 in which he was called the "Great Leader" (widaehan suryŏng 위대한 수령). Kim developed the policy and ideology of
Juche (self-reliance), and North Korea became increasingly independent from the rest of the world.
In the mid-1960's, Kim became impressed with the efforts of
Ho Chi Minh to forcibly reunite 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
Chung Hee Park in 1968. 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.
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 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. 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.
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 Kŭmsusan Memorial Palace. 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.
Kim Il-sung married twice. His first wife,
Kim Jong-suk, bore him two sons and a daughter.
Kim Jong-il is his eldest 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)[
1] and Chang-hyŏn (born 1971, adopted by Kim Jong-il's sister Kim Kyŏng-hŭi).[
2]
After his death his son Kim Jong-Il replaced the christian calendar in North Korea and place a calendar where the years begin with the birth of Kim Il-sung.
*
Song of General Kim Il-sung*
List of Korea-related topics* Kim Il-sung,
With the Century.
Korean Friendship Association, 2003.
* Suh, Dae-Sook. (1988). Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press.
* Bradley Martin,
Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty, St. Martins (October, 2004), hardcover, 868 pages, ISBN 0312322216
