Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of North Korea from 9 September 1948 to 8 July 1994, preceding Kim Jong-il. Kim Il-sung was a World War II hero, leading Korean communist resistance to the Japanese while fighting alongside the Soviet Red Army. After the war, he became the leader of the Workers' Party of North Korea and the united Workers' Party of Korea, and Kim managed to repel an invasion by the United States, South Korea, and other United Nations forces in the Korean War before negotiating a ceasefire with them in 1953. Kim presided over a country with a high standard of living during the 1960s and 1970s, outperforming the unstable South Korea, and Kim used his alliance with the Soviet Union to supply his people with food and rations. The end of the Cold War in 1991 adversely affected the North Korean economy, as the fall of the USSR meant that supplies stopped coming in; the massively-popular Kim died in 1994.
Biography[]
Early life and resistance[]
Kim as a guerrilla leader
Kim Il-sung was born in Mangyungbong, Japanese Korea in 1912 to a Presbyterian Christian family; his father was a Presbyterian elder. Kim's parents were very active in the religious community, and they were also involved with anti-Japanese activities; they fled to Manchuria in 1920. Kim founded the Down-With-Imperialism Union on 17 October 1926 while attending the Whasung Military Academy, but he quit in 1927 due to the academy's outdated tactics. Kim was disillusioned with old Korean feudalism, and he instead took up an interest in communism. He was jailed in 1929 for being involved with an underground Marxist organization, and he joined the Communist Party of China in 1931. He became involved with various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and he was made a political commissar for a divisional detachment in 1935 during the anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare in Manchuria that preceded the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1937, Kim became a divisional commander, and he led the 4 June 1937 raid on Pochonbo, acquiring him fame among Chinese guerrillas and making him one of the most popular Korean leaders of the time. He destroyed the "Maeda Unit" when it was sent to hunt him down in February 1940, and he was the only surviving unit leader of the 1st Army by 1940. Kim proceeded to cross the Amur River into the Soviet Union, where he was retrained at Vyatskoye near Khabarovsk and made a Major in the Soviet-trained Korean communist guerrillas. On 8 August 1945, the Soviets declared war on Japan, and the Red Army entered Pyongyang on 24 August, liberating North Korea. When asked by Joseph Stalin for a recommended leader of North Korea, Lavrentiy Beria chose Kim after several meetings.
Liberation of Korea[]
Kim Il-sung speaking to the Korean people after liberation
On 19 September 1945, Kim returned to Korea at Wonsan, ending 26 years in exile. Kim had very little knowledge of the Korean language, as he had been raised in China; the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs coached him on reading and speaking Korean to assist him with giving speeches. In December 1945, he was made the chairman of the North Korean branch of the Korean Communist Party, but he was subordinated to Soviet general Terentii Shtykov, the commander of the Soviet Army forces in Korea. Kim created the Korean People's Army to solidify his rule, and he recruited a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had fought against both the Japanese forces during World War II and the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War. Kim was supplied with Soviet advisers and equipment, and the KPA received modern Soviet-built heavy tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms. In addition, North Korean pilots trained at secret bases in the USSR and China.
On 9 September 1948, Kim became President of North Korea when the Soviet occupation ended, and he had consolidated his rule by 1949. He became the center of a cult of personality, with people calling him "Great Leader" and erecting statues of him. Kim claimed that his government ruled all of Korea, while the South Korean dictatorship also laid claim to the entire peninsula. Kim merged the Workers' Party of North Korea with the Workers' Party of South Korea to form a united Workers' Party of Korea, a Marxist-Leninist party that supported the reunification of the peninsula. Due to neither nation's willingness to accept the other's existence, they both headed down the road to war.
Fatherland Liberation War[]
Kim Il-sung as leader of North Korea, c. 1950
Kim Il-sung was the man who devised the plan for the liberation of southern Korea, gaining the support of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. After informing Chinese leader Mao Zedong that Stalin was backing his gambit, Kim obtained the support of China. On 25 June 1950, North Korea launched a massive invasion of South Korea, capturing Seoul and all of South Korea outside of the Pusan Perimeter. However, a US-led United Nations coalition counterattacked at Inchon and drove the KPA back, advancing up to the Yalu River on the Chinese border. It was then that the Chinese intervened, and three more years of fighting would take place. The conflict was halted in July 1953 with a ceasefire between the North and South, and Kim proclaimed the war a victory, as North Korea had survived. Nevertheless, North Korea was heavily damaged, so he set about fixing this problem by establishing a command economy, nationalizing all industry, collectivizing all agriculture, and focusing on heavy industry and arms production. Kim retained a large army to patrol the Korean DMZ on the border with South Korea, while the South Koreans and Americans also sent thousands of troops to guard the area.
Rule over North Korea[]
A mural of Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung established himself as an independent communist leader in the aftermath of the 1956 schism in the communist world; he sided with the anti-revisionists following Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's anti-Stalinist turn, but he also refused to become a Maoist. Kim proceeded to purge leading members of his party such as Pak Hon-yong and Choe Chang-ik to consolidate his control over his party, and he also broke free from Chinese and Soviet influence after resisting efforts by the two countries to depose him and replace him with a puppet. Kim would mend North Korea's relations with the USSR after Leonid Brezhnev became the new Soviet leader, and he also enjoyed friendly relations with most Eastern Bloc states. During the 1960s, Kim - inspired by Ho Chi Minh's tactics in Vietnam - attempted to start a communist guerrilla war in South Korea so that his army could assist the rebels within the opposing country from outside. From 1966 to 1969, there were several bloody clashes between the KPA and the US/South Korean armies around the DMZ, and Kim even attempted to assassinate South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee in an attack on the Blue House in Seoul. In 1968, he also succeeded in capturing the US Navy spy ship USS Pueblo.
In December 1972, Kim created the title President of North Korea after passing a new constitution, and Kim Il became his premier. Kim adopted the metric system in 1975, and he delegated running the government to his son and heir Kim Jong-il starting in 1980, slowly moving towards retirement due to the discovery of a calcium deposit on the back of his neck. During the 1980s, the North Korean economy stagnated, and the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR in 1989-1991 left North Korea isolated. In 1994, Kim died from a sudden heart attack at the age of 82, and he was named "Eternal Leader" by his son, who took over.