Kim Il Sung

Chief of state of North Korea (1948-1994)

• Born: April 15, 1912
• Birthplace: Namri, South Pyongan Province, Korea (now Mangyongdae, Pyongyang, North Korea)
• Died: July 8, 1994
• Place of death: Pyongyang, North Korea

As a Soviet puppet ruler, Kim became chief of state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948, effectively becoming the nation’s uncontested dictator as well. Kim’s attempt, with the prodding of the Soviet Union, to unite northern and southern Korea into one Communist nation, led to the beginning of the Korean War. Kim’s popularity and power was carried by a cult of personality that has extended into the twenty-first century with the dictatorship of his son, Kim Jong Il.

Early Life

Korea is a peninsula jutting into the ocean between Manchuria and Japan. The Choson Dynasty ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910 and limited foreign contact. Korea developed a prideful, xenophobic culture, and Westerners called it the Hermit Kingdom. In 1912, Kim Il Sung (kihm ihl-soong) was born Kim Song Ju in the village of Chilgol. Two years later Korea was annexed to Japan through payoffs and a questionable treaty. Anti-Japanese riots lasted a year. Koreans crossed into Manchuria to form anti-Japanese guerrilla bands.

Kim was raised in Mangyongdae, near Pyongyang, which he claimed as his birthplace. His parents were Christians and Korean patriots. His mother, Kang Pan-sok, was the daughter of a schoolmaster and minister. His father, Kim Hyong-jik, who died when his son was just fourteen years old, was a jack-of-all-trades who worked in offices, sold herbal medicine, and taught rural primary school. Despite hard work the family remained poor and moved to Manchuria in 1920 to find work. Kim eventually learned fluent Chinese. Except for two years in Mangyongdae with his grandparents beginning at age eleven, Kim stayed in China the next twenty years. He held great anger toward the Japanese for colonizing Korea.

After his father’s death the family again faced difficult times. Nevertheless, Kim was sent to a private Chinese high school by his mother. At age seventeen Kim joined a communist youth group and was jailed in 1929 for his association with the group. He was soon released and left school to join communist anti-Japanese guerrillas. Propaganda described Kim as the guerrilla leader but he was only a young volunteer. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1931.

Life’s Work

By age twenty, Kim was fighting the Japanese in raids and ambushes. In 1935, after altering the characters of his name to Kim Il Sung, meaning “become the sun,” he was appointed the political commissar of 160 soldiers. By age twenty-four he was commander of a few hundred fighters in the sixth division of communist guerrillas. He was a talented soldier and leader, and he became a resistance hero to Koreans.

The Japanese destroyed Korean guerrilla groups in 1939. Kim, one of a few guerrilla leaders still alive, appeared on wanted posters. He married Kim Jong-suk in 1940, then fled with comrades to the Soviet Union, receiving Soviet military training and becoming a captain in the Russian army. His future heir, Kim Jong Il, was born in 1942 and was given the Russian name Yura; later children were also given Russian names. Kim succeeded as an officer in the Red Army but saw no more action. He had planned a career as a Soviet officer.

In 1945 the Allies partitioned Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel and occupied the southern part of the country for five years. The Soviets would occupy the northern part of Korea, down to the thirty-eighth parallel. Kim was ordered to Pyongyang, the northern capital, with his guerrilla comrades to be deputy commandant of the city. Propaganda claimed that he was sent by Joseph Stalin to be Korea’s leader, but in truth he was a talented and loyal Korean-Soviet soldier who happened to be in the right place at the right time. The Soviets sought a puppet leader to establish communist control that would, in time, absorb Korea in its entirety. Kim was a Korean hero and a committed communist who loved the army. He was talented and personable, and the Soviets used him successfully in several positions.

In 1946, Kim was appointed head of the Korean Communist Party, into which northern parties were absorbed. He went to Moscow to meet Stalin, who made him leader of North Korea, but the Soviets retained real power. North Korean secret police were organized and northern industry was nationalized. Kim also faced an attempt on his life but was saved by a Russian security man.

Stalin okayed a North Korean constitution in 1948, bringing into existence the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and making Kim the premier. Stalin also permitted the formation of an army. Seoul, which is geographically located in South Korea, was declared the capital of the DPRK, as South Korea was not recognized as a legitimate nation.

Kim grossly overestimated southern support for a Communist takeover to reunite the two Koreas. In 1950, Stalin encouraged the DPRK to invade the south, and it did so beginning on June 25, 1950. Seoul fell in three days, and within two months 90 percent of South Korea had been overrun. The Korean War had begun. Leading the U.S. support of South Korea, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Inchon and drove DPRK’s army back to the Korean-Chinese border. This, in turn, led China to enter the war and to take over the majority of the fighting for the north. By late 1950, Kim was in Pyongyang in an underground bunker, his city being bombed by planes of the United Nations.

In the spring of 1951, the thirty-eighth parallel again became the dividing line between North and South Korea. Chinese help weakened Russian influence over Kim, giving him more freedom to rule. Friction between Russia and China in the 1950’s diverted attention from keeping Kim in line, so he purged pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese elements from his government. In 1956 both the Soviet Union and China threatened to depose him but it was too late. Kim had purged all who did not support him. By the 1960’s he was no longer a puppet. He was now the independent, uncontested dictator of North Korea, receiving a constant supply of Soviet military equipment and technology. China and the Soviets gave Korea $2 billion between 1945 and 1970, sold it gas and oil at reduced rates, and guaranteed markets for its often substandard goods. Until the 1970’s, DPRK’s economy was more prosperous than that of South Korea.

In 1955, Kim first used the term chuch’e material independence and political purity through isolation. Chuch’e became policy in the 1960’s, stressing the superiority of Korean thought and culture over foreign ways. Kim also adopted the Taean work system of industrial and agricultural management based upon military models. Workers were divided into detachments and battalions whose discipline was harsh, and they were expected to sacrifice. There was extreme centralized planning and control, and national self-sufficiency was paramount. Consequently, in the 1980’s, economic growth ceased; in the 1990’s it decayed.

The North Korean regime used the term songbun to refer to the sociopolitical backgrounds of its citizens, creating a social hierarchy and class distinctions more defined than in most countries. A person’s songbun, which was inherited, was either one of guilt, blamelessness, or favoritism. Written records indicated this inheritance (or stigma), and a newborn was labeled at birth. Persons inheriting unfavorable songbun were politically and socially suspect and were thus kept from higher education, were drafted as teenagers into the army, and were often sent to work camps.

Despite such draconian policies Kim was deified as the Great Leader. His life was one of a personality cult. In the 1970’s adults were required to carry his image with them at all times, and his birthday remains a national holiday. His exploits as guerrilla leader became overblown myths. North Koreans thought him godlike. “Burning loyalty to the leader” was pronounced as North Koreans’ main creed. It has been noted that it is not unusual for North Koreans to cry when speaking of him.

In 1980, Kim Jong Il was declared his father’s heir by the Korean Worker’s Party. Kim died unexpectedly of a massive heart attack at Mount Myohyang resort at age eighty-two.

Significance

Kim was half Baron Munchhausen and half murderous ideologue. The significance of his social and political accomplishments were magnified by him many times larger than their worth. He fooled North Koreans into adoring him. All good things were said to come from him, all bad things from jealous outsiders. He had the common touch when touring the country and shaking the hands of his people. Simultaneously, he ran horrific gulags, working to death, torturing, executing, and starving millions. His regime persecuted or murdered innocent men, women, and children based on supposed hereditary guilt.

The Kim regime remains the only inherited Communist dictatorship in world history, with an incredible ability to survive debacles. Just before Kim’s death, the DPRK’s industrial and collective farming systems collapsed, but Kim and his son developed a nuclear capacity to extort money and food from the West. Kim’s legacy, like that of his mentor Stalin, is one of justice delayed. Like Stalin, Kim demonstrated that a despot can isolate and control through a cult of personality, a secret police, and a loyal army an entire nation, even after death.

Bibliography

Becker, Jasper. Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Becker paints a disturbing picture of North Korea, led by Kim’s son. The author argues that a cult of personality surrounds Kim Jong Il that is unmatched, even by his father, in modern history.

Breen, Michael. Kim Jong-Il: North Korea’s Dear Leader. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. Breen takes an in-depth look into one of the world’s remaining Communist dictatorships. Explores how the Korean people continue to support the North Korean regime, even in the face of extreme hunger, poverty, and oppression.

Harrold, Michael. Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004. Harrold served seven years as an English translator and adviser to both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. His insights into the leadership and youth of North Korea are impressive.

Hunter, Helen-Louise. Kim Il-song’s North Korea. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999. Originally a U.S. intelligence report on social conditions in DPRK during Kim’s lifetime. Chapters include discussion of the country’s leisure activities, its family life, its teenagers, life in Pyongyang, and the cult of Kim worship.

Lankov, Andrei. From Stalin to Kim Il Sung. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Good short history of Kim that is pieced together from American, Japanese, and Korean research. Readable and well researched.

Martin, Bradley K. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004. Lengthy study of Kim’s life woven from multiple sources, by a journalist specializing in Asia. Martin draws as much as possible from defectors. Rich in detail.