Kim Il-sung

Lore & Background

Kim Il-sung was born Kim Song Ju on 15 April 1912 in the small village of Mangyongdae-guyok (then called Namni) or Chilgol, near Pyongyang, then known as Heijō. His family, part of the Jeonju Kim clan, had settled in the Mangyongdae neighborhood of Pyongyang in 1860. He was raised in a Presbyterian Christian household; his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister and his father was an elder in the church. The family fled to China in May 1919, settling in Badaogou, due to Japanese repression following the March First Movement. As a teenager in northeast China, Kim became a communist, joining the Chinese Communist Party in 1931. He attended Whasung Military Academy in 1926 but left in 1927, later studying at Yuwen Middle School in Jilin until 1930. He was the youngest member of the Korean Communist Youth Association, an underground group of fewer than twenty members. During World War II, he was assigned to the Soviet Red Army in 1942 and remained in the Soviet Union until 1945. After Japan’s surrender, the Soviet Union installed him as leader of North Korea and the Workers’ Party of Korea. He authorized the invasion of South Korea in 1950, triggering the Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire in 1953. Under his rule, North Korea became a totalitarian, socialist, personalist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy. He developed the ideology of Juche, emphasizing independence, self-sustenance, and self-defense, breaking from orthodox Marxism–Leninism. Despite official self-reliance, North Korea relied on Soviet and Eastern Bloc aid until the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, contributing to a famine in 1994. He established a pervasive personality cult, was known as the Great Leader, and was posthumously declared Eternal President. His son Kim Jong Il succeeded him, founding the Kim dynasty.

Reader's Guide

Kim Il Sung's North Korea is categorized in the source as a right-wing dictatorship in Asia, part of a phenomenon that emerged during the early 1930s with military regimes seizing power, and later spreading with Japanese militarist expansion. After World War II, the source states that Asian right-wing dictatorships took on a decidedly anti-communist role in the Cold War, with many backed by the United States. It only mentions his regime as an example of a right-wing dictatorship in the Asian region, with the note that the North Korean regime's evolution under his rule was an exception to the typical civilian-led communist governments.

Did You Know?

• Kim Il Sung's North Korea is listed as a right-wing dictatorship in the source's regional breakdown of Asia.
• The source notes the 'North Korean regime's evolution throughout the rule of Kim Il Sung' as an exception to typical civilian-led communist governments.
• The source groups Kim Il Sung's regime with the Burmese Way to Socialism (Burma, 1966–1988) and the Military Council of National Salvation (People's Republic of Poland, 1981–1983) as rare military-led exceptions in communist countries.
• Asian right-wing dictatorships after World War II, including Kim Il Sung's, are described by the source as taking on a 'decidedly anti-communist role in the Cold War'.

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