Home >> East Asia >> North & South Korea  Email  Print Departure of a Great Soul Sunita Paul - 6/27/2008 Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of Democratic People's Republic of Korea 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. As leader of DPR of Korea, he ended up switching from a Marxist-Leninist ideology to his self-developed Juche idea. DPR of 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.
Kim Il Sung 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 family of President Kim Il Sung was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was always a step away from poverty. 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. Nonetheless, Kim's parents apparently did play importat role in some activist groups.
Kim Il Sung's father died in 1926, when the President was fourteen years old. He 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. At seventeen, Kim Il Sung had become the youngest member of Marxist organization, 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 Il Sung 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 Il Sung 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 he met the man who would become his mentor as a communist, Wei Zhengmin, Kim Il Sung'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.
President Kim Il Sung is the author of the Songun idea. His father Kim Hyong Jik, an indomitable revolutionary fighter, passed away in an alien land with a grudge of a ruined nation on June 5, 1926, leaving two pistols for his son. While leading the anti-Japanese national liberation movement in Korea, he drew a conclusion that one should fight with arms in hands against the armed enemy.
True to his father's instruction, Kim Il Sung made up his mind to win back his lost country through armed struggle.
On October 17, 1926 he formed the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU), a vanguard organization of the revolution for national liberation and class emancipation, under the ideal of anti-imperialism, independence and sovereignty, and put forward its fighting program.
This program presupposed the idea of armed struggle.
As mentioned above, the Songun idea traces its origin back to the two pistols of Kim Hyong Jik and the programme of the DIU. Kim Il Sung held the meeting of the leading cadres of the Young Communist League and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League at Jinmyong School in Kalun, China between late June and early July in 1930 and delivered a report titled "The Path of the Korean Revolution", setting forth the revolutionary line of anti-Japanese armed struggle, an embodiment of the Songun idea.
In the final analysis, the Kalun Meeting can be said to be a historic meeting that proclaimed the creation of the Juche idea and the Songun idea, its embodiment. The Songun idea calls for giving foremost importance to military affairs and placing them before anything else in the revolutionary struggle, and building up the driving force of the revolution with the revolutionary army as the hard core and main force and pushing ahead with the revolutionary movement by relying on the leading role of the revolutionary army. Kim Il Sung led the Korean revolution to victory under the banner of Songun.
He founded the Korean Revolutionary Army, a political and paramilitary organization, on July 6, 1930 as a part of the preparation for armed struggle, and organized the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army (later reorganized into the Korean People's Revolutionary Army) on April 25, 1932.
The founding of the Anti-Japanese People's Guerrilla Army signaled the start of Kim Il Sung's Songun revolutionary leadership.
In those days when the preceding theory on the position and role of the party in the revolutionary struggle was regarded as absolute, it was an established practice to found the party before the army and wage the revolutionary struggle under the guidance of the former.
However, Kim Il Sung organized the anti-Japanese armed ranks in view of the practical requirements of the Korean revolution and achieved Korea's liberation on August 15, 1945 and then founded the Workers' Party of Korea on October 10 in the same year.
He brought up the backbone of a regular armed force at Pyongyang Institute, the Central Security Officers School and the Security Officers Training Centres for training military and political cadres, and reorganized the Korean People's Revolutionary Army into the Korean People's Army in February 1948.
He gave priority to the building of a regular armed force, with the result that the Korean people could successfully push forward the affairs for building a new country as a whole under complicated situation after Korea's liberation and emerged victorious in the three-year-long Fatherland Liberation War by defeating the armed invasion of the US imperialists.
The first ordnance factory was erected in new-born Korea in June 1947 in line with his far-sighted plan of building a self-supporting defense industry. Modern automatic weapons manufactured at this factory took a lion's share in the military equipment of the KPA and made great contributions to the victory in the Fatherland Liberation War.
In the early 1960s modern revisionists that appeared in the international communist movement were raising a clamor about "peaceful co-existence" and "arms reduction", much frightened by the imperialists' moves for provoking a new war.
Kim Il Sung called the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 4th WPK Central Committee, where he laid down a strategic policy of simultaneously carrying on economic and defense construction and saw to it that spurs was given to building up the military capabilities of the country under the slogan of "A rifle in one hand, a hammer or a sickle in the other!" As a result, the self-reliant defense capacity of the DPRK was reinforced and great strides were made in socialist construction.
President Kim Il Sung provided a sure guarantee for carrying forward the revolutionary cause of Juche on the principle of Songun.
He put forth the task of further strengthening the KPA in political and military aspects at the enlarged meeting of the 20th Plenary Meeting of the 6th KPA Party Committee held in December 1979 and stressed the need to firmly establish the system of the WPK's leadership, the system of General Kim Jong Il's leadership, within the KPA. He also made sure that a radical turn was brought about in establishing the system of General Kim Jong Il's leadership over the army in June 1982, in particular.
Later on December 24, 1991, General Kim Jong Il was appointed Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army at the 19th Plenary Meeting of the 6th WPK Central Committee. On April 9, 1993 he was elected Chairman of the National Defence Commission at the 5th Session of the 9th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK.
Indeed, President Kim Il Sung performed immortal exploits for the country and the revolution by consistently administering the Songun revolutionary leadership during the whole period of leading the Korean revolution.
Today the President's Songun idea is being carried forward brilliantly by General Kim Jong Il. It serves as an all-powerful treasured sword for safeguarding the sovereignty of the country and the destiny of socialism and opening up a bright prospect for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation by frustrating every move of the US imperialists to isolate and stifle the DPRK.
The revolutionary cause of Juche, which was pioneered and has been advanced under the banner of Songun, will emerge victorious forever.
The Songun Politics:
In Korea socialist democracy is fully ensured in all fields of social life. This is attributable to Songun politics administered by the national leader Kim Jong Il.
Originally democracy came into being as government for the popular masses.
The exploiting classes have long distorted the character of democracy and massacred democracy. At present the imperialists are abusing it to rationalize their invasion of other countries and interference in their internal affairs.
It is the present reality that the weak cannot protest even if they are swallowed up by the strong. This shows that genuine democracy should be defended only by a revolutionary armed force and that democracy not supported by such an armed force is not democracy.
Songun politics is the one to creditably defend a socialist power, the weapon to ensure socialist democracy and further enhance its function and role.
To defend the power and enhance its function and role is a prerequisite for successfully ensuring democracy in all fields of social life.
Socialist democracy is the basic mode of socialist state activity by which to formulate policies reflecting the demands and opinions of the popular masses, implement them in their interest and provide them with an independent and creative life. The government of a socialist state is a political organization that directly ensures democracy, and socialist democracy is embodied in all fields of social life through its activity.
Songun politics makes it possible to put primary effort in strengthening the People's Army so as to enhance the military power of the country and firmly defend the nation from the imperialists' maneuvers to invade, isolate and stifle and blockade the country. At the same time the politics militarily supports all democratic activities of the government to make policies in accordance with the opinions of the working masses, defend the interest of the people and substantially provide them with genuine liberty and rights and a happy life.
Now, under Songun politics, the socialist government of Korea is being defended creditably and its function and role have improved so that the government has come to act better as the representative of the independent interest of the popular masses, the developer of their creativity and the support of their livelihood.
Songun politics is the government that remarkably ensures socialist democracy in all fields of social life.
Democracy is a socio-political idea for realizing the intrinsic requirement of the popular masses.
When the popular masses, as masters of their own destiny and the world, are possessed of independent ideology and creativity, fully exercise genuine independent rights in political, economic, cultural and all other fields and all enjoy a happy and civilized material and cultural life, it can be said that socialist democracy is ensured.
Songun politics makes sure that the driving force of the revolution is strengthened with the People's Army as the core and example and that the socialist construction as a whole is accelerated with the People's Army as the pillar. This enables the people to lead a happy life exercising independent rights in all fields of social life: By emulating the revolutionary soldier spirit—the spirit of safeguarding the leader at the cost of the life, the spirit of devotedly carrying out the Party's orders and the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice—fully displayed among the soldiers and their way of struggle, all members of the society have qualified politically and mentally as independent people and are fully enjoying political liberty and rights as equal masters of the state and society.
Songun politics makes the People's Army take the lead in accelerating the building of an economic power by making breakthroughs in the difficult and key sectors for the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation, and all the society follows the revolutionary soldier culture so as to establish an assiduous and methodical way of economic life and a noble way of entertainment, thus providing the people with a happy material and cultural life.
The present reality of Korea shows that Songun politics is the one capable of ensuring socialist democracy creditably in any severe and complicated situation.
Army-People unity:
Every victorious revolution relies on a powerful weapon. Today the Workers' Party of Korea is vigorously advancing the building of a great, prosperous and powerful nation on the strength of the army-people unity. The army-people unity is a laudable tradition of the WPK. Every period of time of the arduous revolution and construction in Korea witnessed the WPK emerging victorious by means of the army-people unity. The tradition was created by President Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Party.
He wrote in his reminiscences With the Century:
"We felt one truth intensely during the whole anti-Japanese revolution: if an army does not enjoy the support of the people, it can never be strong and win a battle. During the anti-Japanese armed struggle, we invariably maintained that 'As fish cannot live without water, so guerrillas cannot live without the people.' One slogan encapsulated in a nutshell, 'supporting the army and loving the people.' This means that the people should defend the army and the army should love the people."
With such a tradition achieved in the flames of the anti-Japanese revolution, the Korean revolution was provided with a powerful driving force that did not vacillate in any difficult situation, and, by relying on it, won the 20-year-long anti-Japanese war to achieve a historic cause of national liberation (August 15, 1945).
The united efforts of the army and the people enabled Korea to win the Korean war (1950-1953) unleashed by the United States and defend its sovereignty creditably and to rehabilitate the ruined economy after the war and complete the socialist industrialization in a short time of 14 years, though the imperialists asserted that Korea would never rise again in 100 years. During the following socialist construction, the WPK always resorted to the might of the army and the people in frustrating the threats of aggression from the imperialists and advancing the revolution and construction.
The WPK put the army-people unity onto a higher level through Songun politics. It made sure that the army and the people were firmly united with genuine comradeship by which they share their destiny with their national leader, and realized their unity in ideological and mental traits and fighting spirit.
The leader Kim Jong Il, General Secretary of the WPK, stated that the army-people unity means their unity in ideology and fighting spirit, the one based on the revolutionary soldier spirit. He put forward the army as the pillar of the country and the driving force of revolution and saw to it that the whole society followed the soldiers' lofty ideology and fighting spirit.
Under his guidance, the soldiers' spirit of defending their supreme leader and supporting his idea and leadership at the cost of their lives has become the ethos of the Songun era, and a vigorous campaign to learn from the soldiers took place throughout the society. In the process all the soldiers and the people formed ideological and volitional unity and cohesion by which they follow their leader with absolute trust in him and a harmonious whole centered on the leader.
The spirit of the army and the people devotedly helping and loving each other came to prevail over the whole society. Under the slogan "Let us take both national defense and socialist construction upon ourselves!" the army has made breakthroughs in the difficult fields of socialist construction and stimulated the people to greater efforts for creation and change, while the people spared nothing for the army and for the strengthening of the military power.
The single-hearted unity of all the army and the people based on comradeship whereby they help each other, share the fortune and form complete unity in ideology and fighting spirit enabled the WPK to firmly defend socialism against the anti-socialist maneuvers and economic blockade of the imperialists, create a strong war deterrent and victoriously advance the cause of building a great, prosperous and powerful nation.
In the most difficult period the army and the people completely changed the appearance of their land beyond recognition, built power stations and factories, stockbreeding and poultry farms, all based on up-to-date technology, across the country, and turned a large number of rural villages into socialist fairylands.
A Lao newspaper wrote in an article:
"The single-hearted unity, or the harmonious whole, of the army and the people centered on the national leader is the source of the might and invincibility of the Korean-style socialist system.
"Single-hearted unity is the true image of Songun Korea reflected in the eye of the international community."
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