Kim Il-sung was a Korean communist politician who led North Korea from its founding 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 General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea. During his tenure as leader of North Korea, he ruled the nation with autocratic power and established an all-pervasive cult of personality. North Korea officially refers to Kim Il-sung as the "Great Leader" and he is designated in the constitution as the country's "Eternal President". His birthday is a public holiday in North Korea.
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. In 1931, Kim had joined the Communist Party of China. 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.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.” 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 it 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.Kim became a Captain in the Soviet Red Army and served in it until the end of World War II.In later years, Kim would heavily embellish his guerrilla feats in order to build up his personality cult. He was portrayed as a boy-conspirator who joined the resistance at 14 and had founded a battle-ready army at 19. North Korean students are taught that this Kim-led army singlehandedly drove the Japanese off the peninsula.
Kim arrived in North Korea on August 22 after 26 years in exile. His Korean was marginal at best; he'd only had eight years of formal education, all of it in chinese. In September 1945, Kim 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.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 accomplishments was his establishment of a professional army, the Korean People's Army (KPA) aligned with the Communists, 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.Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with ex-Soviet propeller-driven fighter and attack aircraft.
In 1948, Kim persuaded the Soviets not to allow the UN north of the 38th parallel, believing he could not possibly win a free election. As a result, a month after the South was granted independence as the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed on September 9, with Kim as premier. On October 12, the Soviet Union declared that Kim's regime was the only lawful government on the peninsula. 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.By 1949, North Korea was a full-fledged Communist dictatorship. All parties and mass organizations were cajoled into the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, ostensibly a popular front but in reality dominated by the Communists. Around this time, Kim built the first of many statues of himself and began calling himself "the Great Leader."
After the Korean War, Kim launched a five-year national economic plan to establish a command economy, with all industry owned by the state and all agriculture collectivised. The nation was founded on egalitarian principles intent on eliminating class differences and the economy was based upon the needs of workers and peasants. The economy was focused on heavy industry and arms production. Both South and North Korea retained huge armed forces to defend the 1953 ceasefire line, although no foreign troops were permanently stationed in North Korea.
Kim's hold on power was rather shaky. To strengthen it, he claimed that the United States deliberately spread diseases among the North Korean population. While Moscow and Beijing later determined that these charges were false, they continued to help spread this rumor for many years to come. He also conducted North Korea's first large-scale purges in part to scare the people into accepting this false account.Victims often simply disappeared into the growing network of prison camps.
During the 1950s, Kim was seen as an orthodox Communist leader, and an enthusiastic satellite of the Soviet Union. His speeches were liberally sprinkled with praises to Stalin. However, he sided with China during the Sino-Soviet split, opposing the reforms brought by Nikita Khrushchev, whom he believed was acting in opposition to Communism. He distanced himself from the Soviet Union, removing mention of his Red Army career from official history, and began reforming the country to his own radical Stalinist tastes.
From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of communist national organisation. The Juche is the official state ideology of North Korea. It teaches that "man is the master of everything and decides everything," and that the Korean people are the masters of Korea's revolution. According to Kim Jong-il's On the Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following:
- The people must have independence in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
- Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
- Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
- The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.
The Juche outlook requires absolute loyalty to the revolutionary party and leader. In North Korea, these are the Workers' Party of Korea and Kim Jong-il, respectively.
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. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim publicly designated his son as his successor.
By the early 1990s, North Korea was nearly completely isolated from the outside world, except for limited trade and contacts with China, Russia, Vietnam, and Cuba. Its economy was virtually bankrupt, crippled by huge expenditures on armaments, with an agricultural sector unable to feed its population, but state-run North Korean media continued to lionize Kim. On July 8, 1994 at age 82, Kim Il-sung collapsed from a sudden heart attack. After the attack Kim Jong-il ordered the team of doctors who always were at his father's side to leave, and insisted that only the best be flown in from Pyongyang. Hours passed as the elder Kim lay near death in a room with his son, when the doctors finally arrived, the elder Kim was too far gone and died despite efforts to save him. Many claim Kim Jong-Il did this to ensure his father's death and his rise to power 3 years later.
There are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea. Some statues have been destroyed by explosions or damaged with graffiti. 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. His portrait is featured on the front of all recent North Korean one banknotes.
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