Kim Il-sung
(15
April 1912
– 8
July 1994)
was the leader of North
Korea from its founding in 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, although his real power came
from his position as General
Secretary of the Korean
Workers' Party. North 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.
Early years
Much of the early
records of his life come from his own personal accounts, or official
North Korean government publications, which often conflict with
independent sources. Nevertheless, there is some consensus on at
least the basic story of his early life, corroborated by witnesses
from the period.
Kim, the eldest of
the three sons of Kim
Hyong-jik and Kang Pan-sok, was born Kim Sŏng-ju, in Nam-ri,
Gopyung District, Daedong County, South Pyongan Province (currently
the Mangyung-dae area of Pyongyang),
then under Japanese occupation. Kim's family were active in
opposition to the Japanese, and in 1920 they escaped to China. Kim
attended 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 for subversive activities. He joined various anti-Japanese
guerilla groups in northern China, eventually becoming a member of
the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by
the Communist
Party of China.
Kim served in this
unit from about 1935, rising in the ranks and becoming a commander
in 1941, when the Japanese drove the guerillas from northern China.
During this period, he adopted the name Kim Il-sung, the name of a
well-known anti-Japanese fighter who had been killed in battle. He
escaped to the Soviet
Union and was sent to a camp near Khabarovsk,
where the Korean Communist guerillas were retrained by the Soviets.
Kim became a Captain
in the Soviet Red
Army.
The Korean
Communist Party was founded in 1925, but soon was disbanded due to
internal strife. In 1931 Kim joined the Chinese Communist Party.
When Kim returned to Korea in September 1945 with the Soviet forces,
he 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,
whose headquarters were in Seoul
in the U.S.-occupied
south. (See also Korean
Workers' Party.)
Korean War
By 1948 it was
apparent that, due to political and ideological polarization between
the two emerging Korean governments, immediate re-unification would
not be possible. The Soviets responded by appointing Kim Prime
Minister of the new Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), forming a new country that
would henceforth be commonly known as "North Korea."
Following the standard pattern in the Soviet allies, the Communist
Party "merged" with several smaller groups to form the North
Korean Workers' Party which, in 1949, merged with its southern
counterpart to become the Korean
Workers Party (KWP) with Kim as party chairman.
On June
25, 1950,
North Korea launched an attack on the anti-communist, capitalist Republic
of Korea (see Korean
War) with the stated intent being the "liberation" of
southern Korea and the unification of the country under a communist
government. At the time, leaders of the United States and its allies
believed that Joseph
Stalin had ordered this attack. Archival material now suggests
the decision was Kim's own initiative, to which the Soviets and the People's
Republic of China acquiesced only reluctantly. North Korean
forces captured Seoul and occupied most of the South, but were soon
driven back by United
Nations forces led by the U.S. By October, the U.N. forces had
retaken Seoul and on October
19 captured Pyongyang, forcing Kim and his government to flee to
China.
On October
25, however, Chinese forces entered the war and threw the U.N.
forces back, retaking Pyongyang in December and Seoul in January
1951. In March U.N. forces retook Seoul, and the front was
stabilised along what eventually became the permanent "Armistice
Line" of July
27, 1953.
Leader of North
Korea
Restored as leader
of North Korea, Kim purged his political rivals, particularly the
former southern Korean Communist leadership, and embarked on the
reconstruction of the country devastated by the war. He launched a
five-year national economic plan to establish a Soviet-style command
economy, with all industry owned by the state and all
agriculture collectivised.
The economy was based on heavy industry, particularly arms
production. North Korea retained huge armed forces to defend the
1953 ceasefire line.
During the 1950s,
Kim was seen as an orthodox Communist leader, loyal to and
ultimately under the control of the Soviet Union. When the Sino-Soviet
split developed in the 1960s, however, Kim became increasingly
independent. He sided with the Chinese in the early 1960s, but never
severed his relations with the Soviets. When the Cultural
Revolution broke out in China after 1966, Kim veered back to the
Soviet side. At the same time, he established an extensive personality
cult in which he was called the "Great Leader" (위대한
수령). Kim
developed the policy and ideology of Juche
(self-reliance), and North Korea became increasingly independent
from the rest of the world.
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. The Kim family was supported by
the army, due to Kim Il-Sung's revolutionary record and the support
of the veteran defence minister, Oh
Jin-wu. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim
publicly designated his son as his successor.
Later years
From about this
time, however, North Korea encountered increasing economic
difficulties. The practical effect of Juche was to cut the
country off from virtually all foreign trade. The economic reforms
of Deng
Xiaoping in China after 1976 meant that trade with the backward
economy of North Korea held decreasing interest for China. The
collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during
1989 – 1991 completed North Korea's virtual isolation. These
events, added to the continuing high level of military expenditure,
led to a mounting economic crisis. The contrast between North
Korea's poverty and the booming economy of South Korea became
increasingly glaring, but the residents of North Korea were shut off
from news of the outside world.
During the 1970s,
Kim's personality
cult grew more extensive. The state propaganda claimed that Kim
personally supervised virtually every aspect of life in North Korea,
and almost supernatural powers were attributed to him. North Korea
repeatedly predicted that Korea would be re-united before Kim's 70th
birthday in 1982, and there were fears in the West that Kim would
launch a new Korean War. But by this time the disparity in economic
and military power between the North and the South (where the U.S.
military presence continues) made such a venture impossible. Instead,
Kim placed his son in charge of developing nuclear
weapons.
Succession
By the 1990s, North
Korea was nearly isolated from the outside world, except for limited
contacts with China. Its economy was virtually bankrupt, crippled by
huge expenditure on armaments, with an agricultural sector unable to
feed its population, but North Korean media continued to lionize Kim.
Kim died suddenly of a heart attack in Pyongyang on July
8, 1994,
bequeathing the country's mounting crisis to Kim
Jong-il. His funeral in Pyongyang was attended by hundreds of
thousands of people, many of whom were weeping and crying Kim's name
during the funeral procession. Kim Il Sung's body was placed in a
public mausoleum
at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. A three-year period of "official
mourning" took place after his death; during this time, North
Koreans could be punished for not expressing enough grief at the
loss of their leader.
Kim Il-sung married
twice. His first wife, Kim
Jong-suk (aka Kim Chong-suk), bore him two sons and a daughter. Kim
Jong-il is his eldest son, and the other son (Shura Kim, also
known as the first Kim Pyong-il) died in a swimming accident. Kim
Jong-suk died in 1949 while giving birth to a stillborn baby.
Kim married Kim Song-ae in 1962, and it is believed he had four
children with her. One of them, Kim
Pyong-il, was prominent in Korean politics until he became
ambassador to Hungary.
Kim was reported to
have other illegitimate children, including Hyon-nam (born 1972,
head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers'
Party since 2002) and Jang-hyun (born 1971, adopted by Kim Jong-il's
sister Kyung-Hee).
