Kim Il Sung is a Russian name. Kim Il Sung - Eternal President of North Korea
(real name is Kim Soon-joo)
(1912-1994) Korean politician, President of North Korea
Kim Il Sung turned out to be one of the last communist dictators of the 20th century, but the state he created is still the most isolated and ideological country in the world today.
Kim was born into a peasant family in the small village of Man Chong Da, located near Pyongyang, and was the eldest of three sons, so his parents began to teach him to read and write.
In 1925, my father moved the family north to Manchuria and got a job as a worker in a factory in the city of Jilin. Now his eldest son was able to go to school.
In 1929, Kim joined the Komsomol and was engaged in propaganda work. The Japanese authorities soon arrest the young man and sentence him to several months in prison. After his release, Kim goes into hiding. For several months, he hides in the villages, and then joins the Korean Independence Army, where he undergoes initial military training, and soon becomes a fighter in one of the guerrilla groups.
At the end of the thirties, Kim Il Sung illegally crossed into Korea and continued to fight against the Japanese invaders. His actions are distinguished by sophisticated cruelty. He does not leave living witnesses and tortures those who refuse to provide the necessary information. But Kim Il Sung's popularity among the Korean population continues to grow in less than a year, his squad already includes 350 people.
However, the harsh actions of the Japanese authorities lead to the defeat of the partisans. In June 1937, Kim Il Sung was arrested, but he soon managed to escape from prison. In 1941, he became the leader of all partisan forces consisting of ethnic Koreans. After the outbreak of World War II, he withdraws his troops to the north, and they join the People's Liberation Army of China. Kim Il Sung himself, with a small group of twenty-five people, leaves for the territory of the USSR.
The Soviet leadership notices his organizational skills. Under his leadership, a combat-ready detachment is formed, the number of which gradually reaches 200 people. Making armed raids in Manchuria, the detachment then returned to the territory of the USSR.
On August 5, 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, Kim Il Sung was thrown into Korea. With the support of the Soviet army, he achieves the subordination of all partisan forces to him. In 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was created. In accordance with the agreement between the USSR and the USA, it is located in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, above the 37th parallel. After the departure of the Soviet troops, Kim Il Sung became first the military and then the civilian leader of the Republic of Korea. He creates the Korean People's Revolutionary Party, which he also heads.
Striving for sole domination of the Korean Peninsula, Kim Il Sung convinces Stalin to go to war with South Korea. He believed that the partisan detachments would illegally cross into the American zone and help units of the Korean and Soviet armies take power into their own hands.
However, despite military assistance from the USSR and the constant support of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, these plans were thwarted. The war became protracted. The international public opinion. The UN regarded the war as an act of aggression and authorized the dispatch of peacekeeping forces to Korea. After the landing of an international military contingent in the south of the peninsula, the situation changed. Under blows of parts american army North Korean troops were forced to retreat. In 1953, the conflict ended with the division of the Korean Peninsula into two states. The war resulted in huge human losses: four million people died in battles.
After the defeat, Kim Il Sung focused on domestic politics, turning his state into a kind of paramilitary zone by the end of the fifties.
All aspects of life in Korea were subject to the Juche philosophical system, which is based on the transformation of the ideas of Buddhism and Confucianism. According to Juche, the power of Kim Il Sung and his heirs is declared the only possible form of government. All places associated with the life and work of Kim Il Sung become sacred and turn into objects of worship. The main goal of all domestic policy was declared to be "survival in conditions of almost complete isolation."
The Koreans are declared to be the highest people who do not need outside help for development. For several decades, North Korea has developed, separated by an "iron curtain" from the outside world. All material resources were spent mainly on military needs. At the same time, subversive activities against South Korea did not stop.
Repeated military incidents have turned the border between the two states into a zone of constant tension.
By the beginning of the nineties, the economic situation in the country was deteriorating sharply, residents were on the verge of starvation. Then Kim Il Sung decides to relax a little and agrees to accept the help of international organizations. At the same time, he begins negotiations on the possible unification of the two states into a single entity.
In 1992, the seriously ill Kim Il Sung gradually begins to transfer power to his son Kim Jong Il. In early 1994, he officially declares him his heir.
Kim Il Sung (Korean 김일성, according to Kontsevich - Kim Ilson, born Kim Song-ju, April 15, 1912, Mangyongdae - July 8, 1994, Pyongyang) is the founder of the North Korean state and its first ruler from 1948 to 1994 (head of state since 1972). Developed the Korean version of Marxism - Juche.
There is little exact information about Kim Il Sung, and all because of the secrecy surrounding his biography. His name is not what he received at birth. Kim Il Sung was born in 1912 in a suburb of Pyongyang. The family moved to Manchuria in 1925 to escape the Japanese occupation. In Manchuria, Kim Il Sung became a member of the Communist Party in 1931. The military authorities from the Soviet Union drew attention to him. There was a second world war, and Kim Il Sung lived in the USSR. He claimed to have fought in the Red Army. It is most likely that he was engaged in politics, and did not fight. He adopted the pseudonym Kim Il Sung, in honor of the famous Korean patriot who died fighting the Japanese.
World War II ended. US troops occupied the South of Korea, and the USSR - the North. They announced that they would create a single state. Meanwhile, Kim Il Sung and other communists from Korea returned from the USSR to their homeland to lead the country. Many Koreans have heard of Kim Il Sung. They waited for his return, but they saw a young "new Kim" and not a war veteran. It is not known for sure whether this misunderstanding was resolved. In 1948, the Korean occupation of the USSR ended. Kim Il Sung concentrated power over North Korea in his hands. He became the prime minister of North Korea. The US and the USSR were never able to unite Korea peacefully. Kim Il Sung took advantage of the support of the USSR and the opportunity, and therefore invaded South Korea in order to annex it by force to the northern part. Resistance was weak, even after the arrival of additional UN forces. However, Kim Il Sung's army was unable to cope with Douglas MacArthur's army, which landed at Inchon. Kim Il Sung's troops were defeated and retreated. The war in the region of the 38th parallel lasted for another two years.
In 1953, the long-awaited peace was signed. For over forty years now, the troops of the South and the North have been occupying positions opposite each other along the demarcation line, which runs along the 38th parallel. Kim Il Sung after the truce was still able to strengthen his power. In 1956, the last opposition forces inside the country were suppressed. In 1972, he became president, while he retained full military and civilian power. Time passed, and the DPRK moved away from both China and the USSR. Kim Il Sung planted a cult of his personality in the country. His country lagged behind in development from its southern neighbors. Quite often, Kim Il Sung had difficulties in supplying the country with food. In the 1980s, the son of Kim Il Sung became the successor to his father. In 1994, Kim Il Sung died, and power was concentrated in the hands of Kim Jong Il. Kim Il Sung was far from being a great leader and commander, he depended on China and the Soviet Union. However, we must remember that North Korea is hostile towards South Korea, Japan, the United States, and the regime established in the country by Kim Il Sung still exists.
The personality of the ruler always has a considerable influence on the fate of the country - perhaps even the most staunch supporter of historical determinism will not dare to argue with this. This applies to a particular extent to dictatorships, especially those in which the power of the ruler is practically not limited by either tradition or the influence of strong foreign "patrons", or some, albeit weak, public opinion. One example of such a dictatorship is North Korea - a state headed by the same person for 46 (and in fact - 49) years - "The Great Leader, the Sun of the Nation, Marshal of the Mighty Republic" Kim Il Sung. He led this state at the time of its creation, and, apparently, the "Mighty Republic" will not long outlive its permanent leader.
Half a century in the highest state post is a rarity in the modern world, weaned from long monarchical reigns, and this fact alone makes the biography of Kim Il Sung quite worthy of study. But we must remember that North Korea is a unique state in many respects, which cannot but attract even more attention to the personality of its leader. In addition, the biography of Kim Il Sung is almost unknown to the Soviet reader, who until recently had to be content with only brief and very far from the truth information from the TSB Yearbooks and other similar publications.
It is really difficult to speak and write about the biography of the North Korean dictator. As a child, Kim Il Sung - the son of a modest rural intellectual - did not attract anyone's special attention, in his youth he - a partisan commander - did not need to advertise his past at all, and in his mature years, becoming the ruler North Korea and finding himself in an inevitable whirlwind of intrigue, he was also forced, on the one hand, to protect his life from prying eyes, and on the other hand, to create a new biography for himself with his own hands and the hands of his official historiographers, which very often diverged from the real one, but where more in line with the demands of the political situation. This situation often changed - the official version of the biography of the "Great Leader, the Sun of the Nation" also changed. Therefore, what Korean historians wrote about their leader in the 50s. a little like what they write now. Breaking through the rubble of contradictory and, for the most part, very far from the truth statements of official North Korean historiography is very difficult, if not simply impossible, while there are very few reliable documents relating to the biography of Kim Il Sung, especially in his younger years. Thus, the man who in the modern world holds the record for the longest stay in the highest state post remains a mysterious figure to this day in many respects.
The story of Kim Il Sung's life will therefore be full of obscurities, omissions, dubious and unreliable facts. Nevertheless, over the past decades, through the efforts of South Korean, Japanese and American scientists (among the latter, Professor Seo Dae Suk in the USA and Professor Wada Haruki in Japan should be mentioned first of all) managed to establish a lot. Soviet specialists - both scientists and practitioners - were often much more informed than their foreign counterparts, but for obvious reasons they had to remain silent until recently. Nevertheless, the author of this article, in the course of his research, also managed to collect certain material, which, together with the results of the work of foreign researchers, formed the basis of this article. A special role among the collected material is played by records of conversations with those participants in the events under consideration who are currently living in our country.
Little is known about Kim Il Sung's family and his childhood. Although dozens of volumes have been written on this topic by Korean propagandists and official historiographers, it is hardly possible to separate the truth from the later propaganda layers in them. Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912 (the date is sometimes questioned) in Mangyonde, a small village near Pyongyang. It is difficult to say with certainty what his father Kim Hyun-chjik (1894-1926) did, since in his short life Kim Hyun-chjik changed more than one occupation. Most often, in biographical information about Kim Il Sung that appeared from time to time in the Soviet press, his father was called a village teacher. It sounded good (teaching is a noble profession and, from an official point of view, quite "trustworthy"), and it was not without reason - at times Kim Hyun-jik did teach in elementary schools. But in general, the father of the future Great Leader belonged to that grassroots (in fact, marginal) Korean intelligentsia, which either taught, or found some kind of clerical job, or otherwise earned a living. Himself Kim Hyun Jik, in addition to teaching at school, was also engaged in herbal medicine according to the recipes of Far Eastern medicine.
Kim Il Sung's family was Christian. Protestantism, which penetrated Korea at the end of the 19th century, was widely spread in the north of the country. Christianity in Korea was perceived in many ways as an ideology of modernization, and, in part, modern nationalism, so it is not surprising that so many Korean communists. Kim Il Sung's father himself graduated from the school founded by the missionaries, and kept in touch with Christian missions. Of course, now the fact that Kim Il Sung's father (as, indeed, his mother) was not just a believing Protestant, but also a Christian activist, is hushed up in every possible way, and his connections with religious organizations are explained only by the desire to find legal cover for revolutionary activity. Kim Il Sung's mother, Kang Bang Sok (1892-1932), was the daughter of a local Protestant priest. In addition to Kim Il Sung, whose real name was Kim Song-ju, the family had two more sons.
Like most families of the grassroots Korean intelligentsia, Kim Hyun-jik and Kang Bang-suk did not live well, at times simply in need. North Korean historiography claims that Kim Il Sung's parents - especially his father - were notable leaders of the national liberation movement. Subsequently, official propagandists began to declare that Kim Hyun-chjik was generally the main figure in the entire anti-colonial movement. Of course, this is not so, but the attitude towards the Japanese colonial regime in this family was certainly hostile. In particular, according to relatively recently published data from Japanese archives, Kim Hyun-chjik did take part in the activities of a small illegal nationalist group created in the spring of 1917.
North Korean historians claim that Kim Hyun Jik was even arrested for his activities and spent some time in a Japanese prison, but it is not clear how true these claims are.
Apparently, it was the desire to leave the country occupied by the invaders, combined with the desire to get rid of constant poverty, that forced Kim Il Sung's parents, like many other Koreans, to move to Manchuria in 1919 or 1920, where little Kim Song-ju began to study in Chinese school. Already in childhood, Kim Il Sung perfectly mastered Chinese, which he spoke fluently all his life (until old age, according to rumors, classical Chinese novels remained his favorite reading). True, for some time he returned to Korea, to his grandfather's house, but already in 1925 he left his native places in order to return there again two decades later. However, the move to Manchuria did not seem to improve the family's situation too much: in 1926, at the age of 32, Kim Hye n Jik died and 14-year-old Kim Song-ju was orphaned.
Already in Kirin, in high school, Kim Song-ju joins an underground Marxist circle created by a local illegal organization of the Chinese Komsomol. The circle was almost immediately closed by the authorities, and in 1929, 17-year-old Kim Song-ju, who was the youngest of its members, ended up in prison, where he spent several months. The official North Korean historiography, of course, claims that Kim Il Sung was not just a member, but also the leader of the circle, which, however, is completely refuted by documents.
Soon, Kim Song-ju was released, but from that moment on, his life path changed dramatically: without graduating, apparently, even school course, the young man went to one of the many partisan detachments operating in what was then Manchuria to fight the Japanese invaders and their local supporters, to fight for better world, more kind and fair than the one he saw around him. In those years, this was the path followed by many, many young people in China and Korea, those who did not want or could not accommodate the invaders, make a career, serve or speculate.
Early 30s. was the time when a massive anti-Japanese guerrilla movement was unfolding in Manchuria. Both Koreans and Chinese, representatives of all political forces operating there, from communists to extreme nationalists, took part in it. Young Kim Song-ju, who was associated with the Komsomol underground during his school years, quite naturally ended up in one of the partisan detachments created by the Communist Party of China. Little is known about his early life. The official North Korean historiography claims that from the very beginning of his activity, Kim Il Sung led the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, which he created, which acted, although in contact with parts of the Chinese Communists, but in general quite independently. These statements, of course, have nothing to do with reality. No Korean People's Revolutionary Army simply never existed, the myth about it is only a part of the Kimirsen myth that arose by the end of the 1940s. and finally established in North Korean "historiography" a decade later. Korean propaganda has always sought to present Kim Il Sung as primarily a national Korean leader, and therefore tried to hide the links that existed between him and China or the Soviet Union in the past. Therefore, the North Korean press did not mention either Kim Il Sung's membership in the Chinese Communist Party or his service in Soviet army. In reality, Kim Il Sung joined one of the many partisan detachments of the Chinese Communist Party, of which he became a member shortly after 1932. Around the same time, he also adopted the pseudonym under which he was to go down in history - Kim Il Sung.
The young partisan, apparently, showed himself to be a good military man, since he was moving up in the service quite well. When in 1935, shortly after a number of partisan detachments operating near the Korean-Chinese border, was united into the Second separate division, which in turn was part of the United Northeast Anti-Japanese Army, Kim Il Sung was the political commissar of the 3rd detachment (about 160 fighters), and already 2 years later we see a 24-year-old partisan as commander of the 6th division, which is usually so they called it "Kim Il Sung's division." Of course, the name "division" should not be misleading: in this case, this menacing-sounding word meant only a relatively small partisan detachment of several hundred fighters, operating near the Korean-Chinese border. However, it was a success that showed that the young partisan had both some military talent and leadership qualities.
The most famous of the operations of the 6th division was the raid on Pocheonbo, after the successful execution of which the name of Kim Il Sung received a certain international fame. During this raid, about 200 partisans under the command of Kim Il Sung crossed the Korean-Chinese border and on the morning of June 4, 1937, suddenly attacked the border town of Pochonbo, destroying the local gendarmerie post and some Japanese institutions. Although modern North Korean propaganda has inflated the scale and significance of this raid to the point of impossibility, in addition, attributing it to the never-existing Korean People's Revolutionary Army, but in reality this episode was important, because the guerrillas almost never managed to cross the heavily guarded Korean-Manchurian border and penetrate into Korean territory proper. Both communists and nationalists operated on Chinese territory. After the raid on Pochonbo, rumors about which spread throughout Korea, the "commander Kim Il Sung" was seriously talked about. Newspapers began to write about the raid and its organizer, and the Japanese police included him among the most dangerous "communist bandits."
At the end of the 30s. Kim Il Sung met his wife, Kim Jong Suk, the daughter of a farm laborer from North Korea, who at the age of 16 joined a partisan detachment. True, it seems that Kim Jong Suk was not the first, but the second wife of Kim Il Sung. His first wife, Kim Hyo Sun, also fought in his detachment, but in 1940 she was captured by the Japanese. Subsequently, she lived in the DPRK and held various middle-level positions of responsibility. It is difficult to say whether these rumors are true, but be that as it may, the official North Korean historiography claims that Kim Jong Suk, the mother of the current "Crown Prince" Kim Jong Il, was Kim Il Sung's first wife. Judging by the recollections of those who met with her in the 40s. she was a quiet woman of short stature, not very literate, not fluent in foreign languages, but friendly and cheerful. With her, Kim Il Sung had a chance to live the most turbulent decade of his life, during which he turned from the commander of a small partisan detachment into the ruler of North Korea.
By the end of the 30s. the position of the Manchu partisans deteriorated sharply. The Japanese occupation authorities decided to put an end to the partisan movement, and for this purpose in 1939-1940. concentrated significant forces in Manchuria. Under the onslaught of the Japanese, the partisans suffered heavy losses. By that time, Kim Il Sung was already the commander of the 2nd Operational Region of the 1st Army; partisan units in Jiangdao Province were subordinate to him. His fighters more than once managed to strike back at the Japanese, but time worked against him. By the end of 1940, from among the top leaders of the 1st Army (commander, commissar, chief of staff and commanders of 3 operational regions), only one person survived - Kim Il Sung himself, all the rest were killed in battle. Japanese punishers with particular fury unleashed a hunt for Kim Il Sung. The situation was becoming hopeless, the forces were fading before our eyes. Under these conditions, in December 1940, Kim Il Sung, together with a group of his fighters (about 13 people), breaks through to the north, crosses the Amur and ends up in the Soviet Union. The period of his emigrant life in the USSR begins.
It must be said that for a long time, both among Korean scholars and among the Koreans themselves, rumors circulated about the alleged "substitution" of the Leader in the USSR. It was alleged that the real Kim Il Sung, the hero of Pochonbo and the commander of the Anti-Japanese United Army, died or died around 1940, and from that time on, another person acted under the name of Kim Il Sung. These rumors originated in 1945, when Kim Il Sung returned to Korea, and many were amazed at the youth of the former partisan commander. A role was also played by the fact that the pseudonym "Kim Il Sung" from the beginning of the 20s. used by several partisan commanders. The belief in the alleged substitution was so great in the South at that time that this version, without any reservations, even got into American intelligence reports. To combat rumors, the Soviet military authorities even organized a demonstration trip for Kim Il Sung to his native village, in which he was accompanied by correspondents of the local press.
The hypothesis strongly reminiscent of Dumas Père's novels, which, for political and propaganda reasons, is especially supported by some South Korean experts, hardly bears any relation to reality. I had occasion to talk with those who at one time spent years of emigration next to Kim Il Sung, as well as people who were in charge of the partisans who were on Soviet territory and, because of this, often met with the future Great Leader during the war. All of them unanimously reject this version as frivolous and devoid of grounds. The leading experts on the Korean communist movement, Seo Dae Suk and Wada Haruki, are of the same opinion. Finally, the diaries of Chou Bao-chung, recently published in China, also refute most of the arguments used by supporters of the "substitution" theory. Thus, the legend of the Korean "iron mask", which is very reminiscent of adventure novels, can hardly be considered reliable, although, of course, the eternal attachment of people to all sorts of secrets and riddles will inevitably at times contribute to another revival of conversations on this topic and even the appearance of corresponding "sensational "journalistic publications.
By the beginning of the 1940s, quite a few Manchurian partisans had already crossed over to Soviet territory. The first cases of such transitions have been known since the mid-1930s, and after 1939, when the Japanese sharply increased the scope of their punitive operations in Manchuria, the departure of the remnants of defeated partisan detachments to Soviet territory became a normal phenomenon. . Those who crossed over were usually subjected to a short-term check, and then their fates developed in different ways. Some of them joined the Red Army, while others, having taken Soviet citizenship, led the ordinary life of peasants or, more rarely, workers.
Therefore, the passage of Kim Il Sung and his people across the Amur at the end of 1940 was not something unusual or unexpected. Like other defectors, Kim Il Sung was interned for some time in a test camp. But since by that time his name had already enjoyed some fame (at least among "those who were supposed to"), the verification procedure was not delayed and after a few months the twenty-nine-year-old partisan commander became a student of courses at the Khabarovsk Infantry School, where he studied up to spring 1942
Perhaps for the first time after ten years of a dangerous partisan life full of wanderings, hunger, fatigue, Kim Il Sung was able to rest and feel safe. His life was going well. In February 1942 (according to some sources - in February 1941), Kim Jong Suk gave birth to a son, who was named by the Russian name Yura and who in decades was destined to become Kim Jong Il's "Beloved Leader, Great Continuer of the Immortal Juche Revolutionary Cause".
In the summer of 1942, the Soviet command decided to form a special unit from the Manchurian partisans who had crossed over to Soviet territory - the 88th separate rifle brigade, which was located in the village of Vyatsk (Vyatskoye) near Khabarovsk. It was to this brigade in the summer of 1942 that the young captain of the Soviet Army Kim Il Sung was assigned, who, however, was then more often called by the Chinese reading of his personal hieroglyphs - Jin Zhicheng. The well-known Manchurian partisan Zhou Baozhong became the commander of the brigade, who received the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army. Most of the fighters of the brigade were Chinese, so the main language of combat training was Chinese. The brigade consisted of four battalions, and its strength, according to various estimates, ranged from 1,000 to 1,700 people, of which approximately 200-300 were Soviet soldiers sent to the brigade as instructors and controllers. Korean partisans, most of whom fought under the command of Kim Il Sung or with him back in the 30s, were part of the first battalion, of which Kim Il Sung became the commander. These Koreans were few, according to Wada Haruki, from 140 to 180 people.
The usual monotonous and rather difficult life of the unit located in the rear during the war flowed, a life well known to many, many Soviet peers of Kim Il Sung. As is clear from the stories of people who at that time served with Kim Il Sung or had access to the materials of the 88th brigade, despite its specific composition, it was not at all part of the special forces in the modern sense. Neither in its armament, nor in organization, nor in combat training, did it fundamentally differ from ordinary units of the Soviet Army. True, at times some brigade fighters were selected to carry out reconnaissance and sabotage operations in Manchuria and Japan.
Soviet literature of those years spoke a lot about the actions of Japanese saboteurs in the Soviet Far East: explosions of trains, dams, power plants. It must be said that Soviet side responded with Japanese complete reciprocity and, judging by the memoirs of veterans of the 88th brigade, not only reconnaissance, but also sabotage raids into Manchuria were commonplace. However, preparations for these raids were carried out not in Vyatsk, but in other places, and the fighters selected for participation in these actions left the 88th brigade. During the war, Kim Il Sung himself never left the location of his brigade and did not visit either Manchuria, or, even more so, Korea itself.
Kim Il Sung, who had to fight from the age of seventeen, seemed to enjoy the difficult but orderly life of a career officer that he led during these years. Some of those who served with him in the 88th brigade now recall that even then the future dictator gave the impression of a power-hungry person and "on his mind", but it is quite possible that this perception was dictated by subsequent events, which did not add to many Soviet colleagues Kim Il Sung sympathy for the former battalion commander. Be that as it may, Kim Il Sung was very pleased with the service, and the authorities did not complain about the young captain. During their life in Vyatsk, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk had two more children: son Shura and daughter. Children were called by Russian names, and this, perhaps, suggests that in those years for Kim Il Sung, returning to his homeland seemed at least problematic.
According to the memoirs, Kim Il Sung at that time clearly sees his future life: military service, academy, command of a regiment or division. And who knows, if history had turned out a little differently, it could very well be that somewhere in Moscow an elderly retired colonel or even Major General of the Soviet Army Kim Il Sung would now live, and his son Yuri would work in some Moscow research institute and in at the end of the eighties, like most of the capital's intellectuals, most likely, he would have enthusiastically participated in the crowded processions of "Democratic Russia" and similar organizations (and then, one might assume, he would have rushed into business, but he would hardly have succeeded there). At that moment, no one could predict what fate awaited the commander of the first battalion, so this option, perhaps, seemed the most likely. However, life and history took a different turn.
The 88th brigade did not take any part in the fleeting war with Japan, so the assertion of modern official North Korean historiography that Kim Il Sung and his fighters fought in the battles for the liberation of the country is one hundred percent fiction. Shortly after the end of hostilities, the 88th brigade was disbanded, and its soldiers and officers received new assignments. For the most part, they had to go to the liberated cities of Manchuria and Korea in order to become assistants to the Soviet commandants there and ensure reliable interaction between the Soviet military authorities and the local population and authorities.
The largest employed Soviet troops cities was Pyongyang, and the highest-ranking of the Korean officers of the 88th brigade was Kim Il Sung, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that it was he who was appointed assistant commandant of the future North Korean capital and, together with a number of soldiers from his battalion, went there. The first attempt to reach Korea by land failed because the Andong railway bridge on the border between China and Korea was blown up. Therefore, Kim Il Sung arrived in Korea at the end of September 1945 on the Pugachev steamer via Vladivostok and Wonsan.
Recently, there have been claims in the South Korean press that Kim Il Sung's role as a future leader was predetermined even before he left for Korea (they even talk about his secret meeting with Stalin, allegedly in September 1945). These statements look rather dubious, although I would not dismiss them without further verification. In particular, they completely contradict what the participants in the events told me during the interview - V.V. Kavyzhenko and I.G. Loboda. Therefore, it is still more likely that when Kim Il Sung arrived in Pyongyang, neither he himself, nor his entourage, nor the Soviet command had any special plans for his future.
However, the appearance of Kim Il Sung came in very handy. By the end of September, the Soviet command realized that its attempts to rely on local right-wing nationalist groups led by Cho Man Sik to carry out its policy in North Korea were failing. By the beginning of October, the Soviet military-political leadership was just beginning to look for that figure who could stand at the head of the emerging regime. Due to the weakness of the communist movement in the north of Korea, it was impossible to rely on local communists: among them there were no figures who enjoyed the least popularity in the country. The leader of the Communist Party of Korea, Pak Hong Yong, who acted in the South, also did not arouse much sympathy among the Soviet generals: he seemed incomprehensible and too independent, and, in addition, not closely connected with the Soviet Union.
Under these conditions, the appearance of Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang seemed very timely to the Soviet military authorities. The young Soviet Army officer, whose guerrilla background was notorious in North Korea, was, in their opinion, a better candidate for the vacant post of "leader of the progressive forces of Korea" than the quiet underground intellectual Pak Hong Yong or anyone else.
Therefore, just a few days after his arrival in Korea, it was Kim Il Sung who was invited (or, more precisely, ordered) by the Soviet military authorities to appear at a solemn rally, which was held on October 14 at the Pyongyang stadium in honor of the liberator army, and utter a short welcoming speech. General I.M. Chistyakov, commander of the 25th Army, spoke at the rally and introduced Kim Il Sung to the audience as a "national hero" and "famous partisan leader." After that, Kim Il Sung appeared on the podium in a civilian suit just borrowed from one of his acquaintances and delivered a corresponding speech in honor of the Soviet Army. The appearance of Kim Il Sung in public was the first sign of his incipient ascent to the heights of power. A few days earlier, Kim Il Sung was included in the North Korean Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea, which was then led by Kim Yong-beom (a figure who subsequently did not glorify himself in any way).
The next step on the path to power was the appointment of Kim Il Sung in December 1945 as chairman of the North Korean Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea. In February, by decision of the Soviet military authorities, Kim Il Sung headed the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea, a kind of provisional government for the country. Thus, already at the turn of 1945 and 1946. Kim Il Sung formally became the supreme leader of North Korea. Although Kim Il Sung is now being talked about in hindsight about the lust for power and cunning, according to people who often met with him at the end of 1945, he was dejected by this turn of fate and accepted his appointment without much enthusiasm. At this time, Kim Il Sung preferred the simple and understandable career of an officer in the Soviet army to the strange and complicated life of a politician. For example, V.V. Kavyzhenko, who at that time was the head of the 7th department of the political department of the 25th army and often met with Kim Il Sung, recalls:
"I remember well how I went to Kim Il Sung just after he was offered to become the head of the people's committees. He was very upset and told me:" I want a regiment, then a division, but why is this? I don't understand anything, and I don't want to do it."
A reflection of the well-known military predilections of Kim Il Sung is the fact that in March 1946 Soviet authorities considered him as a candidate for the post of Minister of War of the united Korea. At that time, difficult negotiations were still going on with the Americans on the creation of a unified Korean government. It is not known how seriously the Soviet side took the negotiations, but on the eve of them a list of a possible all-Korean government was compiled. Kim Il Sung was assigned a prominent, but not paramount, position as Minister of War (a well-known South Korean politician of the left wing was to become the head of government).
Thus, at the pinnacle of power in North Korea, Kim Il Sung was, most likely, quite by accident and almost against his will. If he had ended up in Pyongyang a little later, or if he had ended up in some other large city instead of Pyongyang, his fate would have turned out quite differently. However, it is hardly possible to call Kim Il Sung in 1946 and even in 1949 the ruler of Korea in the exact sense of the word.
The decisive influence on the life of the country was then exerted by the Soviet military authorities and the apparatus of advisers. It was they who made the most important decisions and drafted the most important documents. Suffice it to say that until the mid-1950s. all appointments of officers to positions higher than the regiment commander were necessarily coordinated with the Soviet embassy. As already mentioned, even many of the early speeches of Kim Il Sung himself were written in the political department of the 25th Army, and then translated into Korean. Kim Il Sung was only a nominal head of the country. This situation was partly preserved after 1948, when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was officially proclaimed in the north of the Korean Peninsula. Nevertheless, over time, Kim Il Sung, apparently, began to slowly get a taste of power, as well as acquire the skills necessary for a ruler.
Like most of the top leaders of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, along with his wife and children, settled in the center of Pyongyang, in one of the small mansions that used to belong to high-ranking Japanese officers and officials. However, Kim Il Sung's life in this house in the first years after his return to Korea could hardly be called happy, for it was overshadowed by two tragedies: in the summer of 1947, his second son Shura drowned while swimming in a pond in the courtyard of the house, and in September 1949 During childbirth, his wife Kim Jong-sook died, with whom he lived the ten most difficult years of his life and with whom he retained a warm relationship forever. According to the recollections of those who then met with Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, he painfully experienced both misfortunes.
However, the tumultuous events unfolding around Kim Il Sung did not leave much time for mourning. The main problems that he had to face in those early years of the DPRK were the split of the country and factional conflicts in the North Korean leadership itself.
As you know, by decision of the Potsdam Conference, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel into the Soviet and American zones of occupation, and while the Soviet military authorities did everything to bring to power in the North a grouping advantageous to them, the Americans who controlled the South with no less did the same with energy.
The result of their efforts was the rise to power in the South of the government of Syngman Rhee. Both Pyongyang and Seoul made claims that it was their regime that was the only legitimate authority on the peninsula and were not going to compromise. Tensions increased, armed clashes on the 38th parallel, the sending of reconnaissance and sabotage groups to each other's territory became by 1948-1949. commonplace, it was clearly going to war.
According to Yu Sung-chul, who since 1948 was the head of the Operations Department of the North Korean General Staff, the preparation of a plan to attack the South began in the North even before the official proclamation of the DPRK. However, the fact that the North Korean General Staff prepared this plan means little in itself: since time immemorial, the headquarters of all armies have been busy making both plans for defense against a potential enemy and plans for attacking him, such is a routine practice. Therefore, the question of when, how and why a political decision to start a war is made is much more important.
In the case of the Korean War, the final decision was apparently made in April 1950, during Kim Il Sung's secret visit to Moscow and his conversations with Stalin. However, this visit was preceded by lengthy discussions of the situation, which were going on both in Moscow and in Pyongyang.
Kim Il Sung was not the only supporter of a military solution to the Korean problem. Representatives of the South Korean underground, led by Pak Hong Yong, were very active, they overestimated the left sympathies of the South Korean population and assured that after the first military strike in the South, a general uprising would begin and the regime of Lee Syngman would fall.
This conviction was so deep that even the prepared plan for attacking the South, according to one of its authors, the former Chief of the Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the DPRK Yoo Sung-chul, did not provide for military operations after the fall of Seoul: it was believed that the general uprising caused by the occupation of Seoul would instantly put an end to Lisynman's rule. Among the Soviet leaders, T. F. Shtykov, the first Soviet ambassador in Pyongyang, was an active supporter of a military solution to the problem, and he periodically sent messages of the appropriate content to Moscow.
At first, Moscow treated these proposals without any enthusiasm, but the stubbornness of Kim Il Sung and Shtykov, as well as changes in the global strategic situation (the victory of the Communists in China, the appearance of atomic weapons in the USSR) did their job: in the spring of 1950, Stalin agreed with the proposals of Pyongyang .
Of course, Kim Il Sung himself not only did not object to the planned attack. From the very beginning of his activity as the leader of the DPRK, he paid much attention to the army, arguing that the powerful North Korean army could become the main instrument of unification. In general, Kim Il Sung's guerrilla and military past could not but lead to the fact that he began to overestimate the role of military methods of solving political problems. Therefore, he took an active part in preparing plans for the war with the South, which began with a sudden attack by North Korean troops in the early morning of June 25, 1950. The next day, June 26, Kim Il Sung addressed the people on the radio. In it, he accused the South Korean government of aggression, called for a rebuff, and reported that North Korean forces had launched a successful counteroffensive.
As you know, at first the situation favored the North. Although the general uprising in the South, which was so hoped for in Pyongyang, still did not happen, the Syngman Li army fought reluctantly and ineptly. Already on the third day of the war, Seoul fell, and by the end of August 1950, more than 90% of the country's territory was under the control of the North. However, a sudden American landing deep in the rear of the northerners dramatically changed the balance of power. The retreat of the North Korean troops began and by November the situation had become exactly the opposite: now the southerners and the Americans controlled more than 90% of the country's territory. Kim Il Sung, along with his headquarters and the remnants of the armed forces, was pressed to the Korean-Chinese border. However, the situation changed after the country was entered Chinese troops sent there at the urgent request of Kim Il Sung and with the blessing of the Soviet leadership. The Chinese units quickly pushed the Americans back to the 38th parallel, and the positions that the troops of the opposing sides had occupied since the spring of 1951 turned out to be almost the same as those from which they started the war.
Thus, although external assistance saved the DPRK from complete defeat, the results of the war were discouraging, and Kim Il Sung, as the country's supreme leader, could not help but see this as a threat to his position. There had to be some way to protect yourself. Under the conditions of a successfully developing counteroffensive, in December 1950, in a small village near the Chinese border, the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the WPK of the second convocation was held. At this plenum, Kim Il Sung managed to solve an important task - to explain the causes of the September military catastrophe and, moreover, to do it in such a way as to completely relieve himself of responsibility for it. As is always done in such cases, a scapegoat was found. It turned out to be the former commander of the 2nd Army, Mu Jeong (Kim Mu Jeong), a hero of the civil wars in China, who was declared guilty of all military failures, demoted and soon emigrated to China.
At the end of 1950, Kim Il Sung returned to the destroyed capital. American aircraft constantly bombed Pyongyang, so the government of the DPRK and its military command settled in bunkers, a bizarre network of which was carved into the rocky soil of Moranbong Hill, at a depth of several tens of meters underground. Although the heavy positional war dragged on for another two and a half years, the role of the North Korean troops in it was very modest, they acted only in secondary directions and provided rear protection. The Chinese took the brunt of the fighting, and in fact, from the winter of 1950/51. The war took on the character of an American-Chinese conflict on Korean territory. At the same time, the Chinese did not interfere in the internal affairs of Korea and did not try to impose a line of conduct on Kim Il Sung. To a certain extent, the war even untied Kim Il Sung's hands, as it significantly weakened Soviet influence.
By that time, Kim Il Sung had already, apparently, fully mastered his new role and gradually turned into an experienced and extremely ambitious politician. Speaking about the peculiarities of Kim Il Sung's individual political style, it should be noted that he repeatedly demonstrated his ability to maneuver, to use the contradictions of both opponents and allies. Kim Il Sung has repeatedly shown himself to be a master of political intrigue, a very good tactician. Kim Il Sung's weaknesses are associated primarily with his insufficient general training, because he not only never studied at a university, but also did not have the opportunity to educate himself, and he had to draw all the basic ideas about social and economic life partly from the traditional views of the Korean society, partly from the materials of political studies in partisan detachments and the 88th brigade. As a result, it turned out that Kim Il Sung knew how to seize and strengthen his power, but did not know how to take advantage of the opportunities received.
However, the task facing Kim Il Sung at the beginning of the 1950s just required the art of maneuvering, which he possessed to the fullest. We are talking about the elimination of factions that have existed since the founding of the DPRK in the North Korean leadership. The fact is that the North Korean elite was not originally united, it included 4 groups that were very different from each other both in their history and in composition. These were:
1) the "Soviet group", which consisted of Soviet Koreans sent to work in the state, party and military bodies of the DPRK by the Soviet authorities;
2) "internal group", which included former underground workers operating on the territory of Korea even before the Liberation;
3) the "Yan'an group", whose members were Korean communists who returned from emigration to China;
4) "guerrilla group", which included Kim Il Sung himself and other participants partisan movement in Manchuria in the 1930s.
From the very beginning, these groupings treated each other without much sympathy, although under the conditions of strict Soviet control, factional struggle could not openly manifest itself. The only path to absolute power for Kim Il Sung lay through the destruction of all groups except his own, the partisans, and getting rid of total Soviet and Chinese control. He devoted his main efforts to the solution of this problem in the 1950s.
The destruction of factions in Korea is dealt with in another part of the book, and here it makes no sense to dwell again in detail on all the vicissitudes of this struggle. In its course, Kim Il Sung showed considerable skill and cunning, deftly pushing his rivals with their foreheads. The first victims were former underground workers from the internal group, the massacre of which took place in 1953-1955. with the active support or benevolent neutrality of the other two factions. Further, in 1957-1958, a blow was dealt to the Yan'an people, but they turned out to be a tougher nut to crack. When Kim Il Sung returned from a trip abroad in August 1956, at the plenum of the Central Committee, he was sharply criticized by several representatives of the "Yan'an group", who accused Kim Il Sung of planting a personality cult in Korea.
Although the troublemakers were immediately expelled from the meeting and placed under house arrest, they managed to escape to China and soon a joint Soviet-Chinese delegation headed by Mikoyan and Peng Dehuai arrived from there. This delegation not only demanded that the repressed Yananese be reinstated in the party, but even threatened with the possibility of removing Kim Il Sung himself from the leadership of the country. Judging by the available data, this was not an empty threat - the plan to remove Kim Il Sung was indeed proposed by the Chinese side and was seriously discussed.
Although all the concessions that Kim Il Sung made under this pressure were temporary, this episode itself remained in his memory for a long time, and to this day he often talks about this to foreign delegations visiting Pyongyang. The lesson was clear. Kim Il Sung was not at all satisfied with the position of a puppet, which the almighty puppeteers could remove from the stage at any moment, and therefore, from the mid-50s. he begins to cautiously, but more and more insistently, distance himself from his recent patrons. The global purge of the party leadership from 1958-1962, although not as bloody as the Stalinist purges (victims were often allowed to leave the country), led to the complete elimination of the once powerful "Soviet" and "Yan'an" factions and made Kim Il Sung the absolute master of North Korea .
The first years after the signing of the truce were marked by serious successes for the North Korean economy, which not only quickly eliminated the damage caused by the war, but also began to rapidly move forward. The decisive role in this was played by the help of the USSR and China, which was very impressive.
According to South Korean data, in 1945-1970, Soviet assistance to the DPRK amounted to 1.146 million US dollars (364 million dollars - loans on extremely favorable terms, 782 million dollars - gratuitous assistance). According to the same data, Chinese aid was equal to 541 million dollars (436 million - loans, 105 million - free of charge). These figures can be disputed, but the fact that the assistance was very, very serious is indisputable. Relying on this massive support, the northern economy developed rapidly and successfully, for some time leaving the South far behind. Only by the end of the 1960s did South Korea manage to close its economic gap with the North.
However, the foreign policy situation in which Kim Il Sung had to act has seriously changed due to the outbreak of the Soviet-Chinese conflict. This conflict played a double role in the political biography of Kim Il Sung and the history of the DPRK. On the one hand, he created a number of problems for the North Korean leadership, which was heavily dependent on economic and military assistance coming from the USSR and China, and on the other hand, he helped Kim Il Sung and his entourage a lot in solving the most difficult task they faced - in liberating from Soviet and Chinese control. If it were not for the strife that broke out between Moscow and Beijing in the late 50s, Kim Il Sung would hardly have been able to establish his own sole power in the country, eliminate factions and become an absolute and uncontrolled dictator.
However, one should not forget that economically North Korea was extremely dependent on both the Soviet Union and China. This dependence, contrary to the insistent assurances of North Korean propaganda, has not been overcome throughout North Korean history. Therefore, Kim Il Sung faced a difficult task. On the one hand, by maneuvering between Moscow and Beijing and playing on their contradictions, he had to create opportunities for pursuing an independent political course, and on the other hand, he had to do it in such a way that neither Moscow nor Beijing stopped the economic and military help.
This task could be solved only with the most skillful maneuvering between the two great neighbors. And it must be admitted that Kim Il Sung and his entourage were very successful in this. At first, Kim Il Sung leaned towards an alliance with China. There were a number of explanations for this: the cultural closeness of the two countries, and the closer ties of the Korean revolutionaries with the Chinese leadership in the past, and Kim Il Sung's dissatisfaction with the criticism of Stalin and his methods of government that unfolded in the USSR. By the end of the 1950s, it became clear that the economic policy of the DPRK was increasingly oriented towards the Chinese. Following the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" in the DPRK, the "Chhollima" movement began, which, of course, was only a Korean copy of the Chinese model. In the late 1950s came to North Korea and became the main economic slogan there, the Chinese principle of "reliance on one's own strength" (in the Korean pronunciation "charek kensen", in Chinese "zili gensheng", the characters are the same), as well as many principles of ideological work and cultural policy.
At first, these shifts generally did not go beyond the policy of neutrality. The press of the DPRK did not mention the Soviet-Chinese conflict, the Korean delegations, including high level, equally visited both Moscow and Beijing, developed economic ties with both countries. In July 1961, in Beijing, Kim Il Sung and Zhou Enlai signed the "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the DPRK and the PRC", which is still in force today, which consolidated the allied ties of both countries. However, only a week earlier, a similar treaty was concluded with the Soviet Union, and both treaties generally entered into force simultaneously, so that the neutrality of the DPRK manifested itself here as well. At the same time, the DPRK was mentioned less and less in the domestic press. Soviet Union less and less was said about the need to learn from him. Gradually curtailed the activities of the Korean-Soviet Friendship Society, which at one time was one of the most influential organizations in the DPRK.
After the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, which not only criticized the Chinese leaders, but also launched a new attack on Stalin, there was a sharp rapprochement between the PRC and the DPRK. In 1962-1965. Korea fully sided with China's position on all major issues. The main points of disagreement between the Soviet Union and Korea were the new ideological guidelines of the CPSU, adopted after the 20th Congress and not received support and understanding in the WPK: the condemnation of Stalin, the principle of collective leadership, the thesis of the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
The concept of peaceful coexistence was perceived by Kim Il Sung as a manifestation of capitulation, and in the deployment of criticism of Stalin, he, not without reason, saw a threat to his own unlimited power. During these years, Rodong Sinmun repeatedly published articles expressing support for China's position on many issues. Thus, a sharp criticism of the position of the USSR in the Sino-Soviet conflict was contained in the editorial "Let's Defend the Socialist Camp", which attracted the attention of foreign observers, published in Rodong Sinmun on October 28, 1963 (and reprinted by all major Korean newspapers and magazines). The Soviet Union was accused of using its economic and military assistance as a means of political pressure on the DPRK. On January 27, 1964, "Rodong Sinmun" condemned "one person" (i.e. N.S. Khrushchev - A.L.), advocating for peaceful coexistence, on August 15 of the same year, an editorial article of this newspaper expressed solidarity with the objections The CPC opposed the then-planned convening of a world conference of communist and workers' parties. For the first time, this article contained a direct, without the previously usual allegories ("one country", "one of the communist parties", etc.), condemnation of the actions of the USSR and the CPSU.
The leadership of the DPRK unconditionally supported China during the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1962, and also condemned the "surrender" of the USSR during the Caribbean crisis. Thus, in 1962-1964. The DPRK, together with Albania, has become one of the few closest allies of China, almost completely in solidarity with its position on all major international problems.
This line caused serious complications: the Soviet Union, in response, sharply reduced the aid sent to the DPRK, which brought some sectors of the North Korean economy to the brink of collapse, and also made the Korean aviation practically incapacitated. In addition, the "cultural revolution" that began in China also forced the North Korean leadership to reconsider its positions. The "cultural revolution" was accompanied by chaos, which could not but alert the North Korean leadership gravitating toward stability.
In addition, in those years many Chinese Red Guard publications attacked Korean domestic and foreign policy, and Kim Il Sung personally. As early as December 1964, Rodong Sinmun for the first time criticized "dogmatism", and on September 15, 1966, it condemned the "cultural revolution" in China as a manifestation of "left opportunism" and "the Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution." Since then, the North Korean press has occasionally criticized both "revisionism" (read: the Soviet version of Marxism-Leninism) and "dogmatism" (read: Chinese Maoism) and presented the North Korean approach as a kind of "golden mean" between these two extremes. .
The arrival in Pyongyang of the Soviet party and government delegation headed by A.N. Kosygin in February 1965 marked the final refusal of the DPRK from the one-sided pro-Beijing orientation, and from the mid-60s. The leadership of the DPRK began to pursue a policy of consistent neutrality in the Soviet-Chinese conflict. At times, Pyongyang's incessant maneuvering caused considerable irritation both in Moscow and in Beijing, but Kim Il Sung managed to conduct business in such a way that this discontent never led to the cessation of economic and military assistance.
The final consolidation of the new status of Korean-Chinese relations, which could be assessed as the development of allied relations while maintaining the neutrality of the DPRK in the Soviet-Chinese conflict, occurred during a visit to the DPRK in April 1970 by Zhou Enlai. It is significant that the then Premier of the State Council of the PRC chose North Korea for his first trip abroad after the turbulent years of the "cultural revolution". During 1970-1990. China was the second most important (after the USSR) trade partner of the DPRK, and in 1984 the PRC accounted for approximately 1/5 of the entire trade turnover of North Korea.
By this time, all the highest posts in the country were in the hands of Kim Il Sung's old associates in the guerrilla struggle, whom he trusted, if not completely, then much more than people from other factions, and Kim Il Sung himself finally gained full power. Finally, he achieved what he wanted since the beginning of the 50s: from now on he could rule completely alone, without looking back either at internal opposition or at the opinion of powerful allies-patrons.
Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that just from the turn of the 50s and 60s. Significant changes are taking place in the life of North Korea, the direct copying of Soviet models that was carried out earlier is being replaced by the assertion of its methods of organizing production, cultural and moral values. The propaganda of the Juche idea begins, emphasizing the superiority of everything Korean over everything foreign.
The term "Juche" was first used in Kim Il Sung's speech "On the Eradication of Dogmatism and Formalism in Ideological Work and the Establishment of Juche", delivered on December 28, 1955, although later, already in the early 1970s. North Korean official historiography began to assert that, they say, the Juche theory itself was put forward by the Leader back in the late twenties. Documents confirming this theory were not long in coming: after 1968, several speeches were published allegedly delivered by Kim Il Sung in his youth and, of course, containing the word "Juche". As for the later speeches of the Leader, actually delivered by him and previously published, they were simply corrected and became printed in a "supplemented" form.
Although more than one hundred volumes have already been devoted to explaining the term "Juche", for any North Korean everything is quite clear: "Juche" is what the Great Leader and his heir wrote. From the 60s. North Korean propaganda does not tire of emphasizing the superiority of the truly Korean ideas of "Juche" (sometimes they are also called "Kimirsenism") over Marxism and in general any foreign ideologies. In practice, however, the promotion of the Juche ideology was primarily of practical importance for Kim Il Sung, since it provided grounds for freeing himself from foreign (Soviet and Chinese) influence in the field of ideology. However, it can be assumed that the ambitious Kim Il Sung also took considerable pleasure in being aware of himself as an international theoretician. However, towards the end of Kim Il Sung's life, the universalist component of Juche became less tangible, and traditional Korean nationalism began to play an increasingly important role in it. Sometimes this nationalism took on rather comical forms - suffice it to recall the hype around the "discovery" in the early 1990s of the grave of the mythical founder of the Korean state, Tangun. As expected, the grave of the son of a heavenly deity and a bear was discovered in Pyongyang!
At first, a departure from the pro-Soviet orientation in the early 60s. was accompanied by a sharp tightening of policy towards South Korea. Apparently, on Kim Il Sung and his entourage in the mid-1960s. The successes of the South Vietnamese rebels made a big impression, therefore, having freed themselves from Soviet control to a large extent, they decided to try to develop an active anti-government guerrilla movement in the South along the South Vietnamese model. Until the beginning of the 60s. such intentions, if they arose, were suppressed by Moscow, but now its position was declared "revisionist".
At the same time, neither Kim Il Sung nor his advisers took into account that the political situation in South Korea is completely different from that in Vietnam, and that the population of the South is by no means ready to take up arms against their government. The major unrest in South Korea in the early 60s, which took place under general democratic and, in part, nationalist-anti-Japanese slogans, seems to have been perceived by Pyongyang and personally by Kim Il Sung almost as a sign of the South Koreans' readiness for a communist revolution. Again, as in the late 1940s, when planning an attack on the South, the North Korean elite took wishful thinking.
In March 1967, considerable changes took place in the Korean leadership. Many figures who led intelligence operations in the South were removed from their posts and repressed. This meant a major change in strategy towards the South. From routine intelligence activities, the North Korean intelligence services have moved on to an active campaign to destabilize the Seoul government. Again, just like two decades earlier, "guerrilla" groups trained in the North began to be thrown into South Korean territory.
The most famous incident of this kind occurred on January 21, 1968, when a trained group of 32 North Korean special forces tried to storm the Blue House - the residence of the South Korean president in Seoul, but failed and was almost all killed (only two of its fighters managed to escape, and one hit captured).
At the same time, Kim Il Sung, apparently not without the influence of the then crackling anti-American rhetoric of Beijing, went to a sharp aggravation of relations with the United States. Just two days after the unsuccessful raid on the Blue House, on January 23, 1968, Korean guards captured the American intelligence vessel Pueblo in neutral waters. As soon as American diplomacy managed to resolve this incident and achieve the release of the captured crew members (it took almost a year to negotiate), a new incident of the same kind followed: on April 15, 1969 (by the way, just on the birthday of the Great Leader) North Korean fighters shot down over the Sea of Japan, an American reconnaissance aircraft EC-121, its entire crew (31 people) died.
Somewhat earlier, in October-November 1968, real battles took place in the South of the Korean Peninsula between the South Korean army and the North Korean special forces, which then organized the largest invasion of the territory of the South in the entire post-war period (about 120 people participated in the raids from the North). It is possible that Kim Il Sung took seriously the then Beijing militant demagoguery (in the spirit of: "The third world war will be the end of world imperialism!") and was going to use a possible major international conflict in order to resolve the Korean issue by military means.
However, by the early 1970s. it became clear that North Korean policy did not find any serious support in South Korean society, and that there was no reason to count on any communist uprising there. The realization of this fact led to secret negotiations with the South and the signing of the famous Joint Statement of 1972, which marked the beginning of certain contacts between the leadership of both Korean states. This, however, did not mean that the leadership of the DPRK had abandoned the use of military and quasi-military methods in relations with its southern neighbor and main enemy.
For the North Korean special services, and subsequently remained characteristic that they combined the routine and understandable activity of collecting information with terrorist actions aimed at destabilizing the situation in the South. The most famous actions of this kind include the "Rangoon Incident", when on October 9, 1983, three North Korean officers who illegally entered the capital of Burma tried to blow up a South Korean government delegation led by then President Chung Doo-hwan. Chung Doo-hwan himself survived, but 17 members of the South Korean delegation (including the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade) were killed and 15 were wounded. The attackers tried to escape, but were detained.
Somewhat later, in November 1987, North Korean agents blew up a South Korean airliner over the Andaman Sea (again, near Burma). One of the agents managed to commit suicide, but his partner Kim Young Hee was detained. The purpose of this action was unexpectedly simple - with its help, the North Korean authorities hoped to divert foreign tourists from traveling to Seoul for the upcoming Olympic Games. Of course, these actions did not bring any results. Moreover, the rapid economic development of the South, which by that time had left the North far behind, turned into a serious problem for the North Korean leadership.
The contrast between the two Koreas both in the standard of living and in the degree of political freedom was grandiose by the end of Kim Il Sung's reign and continued to grow. Under these conditions, one of the most important tasks of the regime became the struggle to maintain informational isolation, and the North Korean authorities did everything in their power to hide the truth about the South from their population. It is possible, however, that not only ordinary North Koreans, but also the country's leadership was deprived of access to objective information about the life of South Korea.
By 1990, South Korea was a classic example of successful economic development, while the North was becoming the epitome of setbacks and failures. The gap in the level of GNP per capita by that time was about tenfold and continued to grow. However, we can only speculate about how aware Kim Il Sung himself was of the extent to which his inheritance lagged behind.
1960s were marked by serious changes in the North Korean economy. Since the beginning of this time, the "tean system of work" has been established in industry, completely denying even the most timid forms of cost accounting and material interest. The economy is being militarized, central planning is becoming pervasive, entire industries are being reorganized along military lines (for example, miners are even divided into platoons, companies and battalions, and ranks similar to military ones are established).
Similar reforms are taking place in agriculture, where they are usually referred to as the "Cheonsanli method". This name is given in honor of a small village near Pyongyang, in which Kim Il Sung spent 15 days in February 1960, "supervising on the spot" the work of the local cooperative. Household plots, as well as market trade, are declared "bourgeois-feudal remnants" and liquidated. The basis of economic policy is declared to be autarky, "the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance", and the ideal is a completely self-sufficient and tightly controlled production unit.
However, all these measures did not lead to an improvement in the economic situation. On the contrary, to replace the economic successes of the first post-war years, achieved largely due to not only Soviet and Chinese economic assistance, but also copying the economic experience of the USSR, failures and failures came.
The system that was established in the DPRK after Kim Il Sung received the coveted fullness of power ended up being significantly less effective than the old one, imposed from outside in the late 1940s. This manifested one of the most important properties of Kim Il Sung, which has already been mentioned here: he was always strong in tactics, but not in strategy, in the struggle for power, but not in governing the country. His victories often, too often, turned into defeats.
Since the 1970s, the DPRK economy has been in a state of stagnation, growth has stopped, and the standard of living of the majority of the population, already quite modest, begins to decline rapidly. The total secrecy that envelops all economic statistics in the DPRK does not allow one to judge the dynamics of the development of the Korean economy. Most South Korean experts believed that although in the 70s. pace economic development declined markedly, but in general it continued until the mid-1980s, when the decline in GNP began.
At the same time, a number of informed Soviet experts in private conversations with the author expressed the opinion that economic growth in North Korea had completely stopped by 1980. In the late 1980s. the decline in industrial production assumed such proportions that even the North Korean leadership was forced to admit this circumstance.
Under these conditions, the stability of North Korean society is ensured only by tight control over the population, combined with massive indoctrination. Both in terms of the scope of the activities of the repressive organs, and in terms of the massiveness of the ideological influence, Kim Il Sung's regime, perhaps, has no equal in the world.
Consolidation of the regime sole power Kim Il Sung accompanied an intense campaign of self-praise. After 1962, the North Korean authorities began to always report that 100% of registered voters took part in the next elections, and all 100% voted in support of the nominated candidates. Since that time, the cult of Kim Il Sung in Korea has taken on forms that make an overwhelming impression on an unprepared person.
With particular force, the praise of the "Great Leader, the Sun of the Nation, the Iron All-Conquering Commander, the Marshal of the Mighty Republic" begins in 1972, when his sixtieth birthday was celebrated with extreme pomp. If before that the propaganda of the personality of Kim Il Sung in general did not go beyond the framework in which the praise of I.V. Stalin in the USSR or Mao Zedong in China, then after 1972 Kim Il Sung became, by far, the most celebrated leader modern world. All Koreans who have reached the age of majority were required to wear badges with a portrait of Kim Il Sung, the same portraits are placed in every residential and office space, in subway and train cars. The slopes of the beautiful Korean mountains are streaked with toasts in honor of the Leader, which are carved into the rocks with multi-meter letters. Throughout the country, monuments were erected only to Kim Il Sung and his family, and these huge statues often became the object of religious worship. On the birthday of Kim Il Sung (and this day since 1974 has become the main public holiday countries) all Koreans are obliged to lay a bouquet of flowers at the foot of one of these monuments. The study of Kim Il Sung's biography begins in kindergarten and continues in schools and universities, and Koreans learn his works by heart at special meetings. Forms of cultivating love for the Leader are extremely diverse, and even listing them would take too much time. I will only mention that all the places that Kim Il Sung visited are marked with special memorial plaques, that even the bench on which he somehow sat down in the park is a national relic and is carefully guarded, that children in kindergartens are obliged to to thank Kim Il Sung in chorus for my happy childhood. The name of Kim Il Sung is mentioned in almost every Korean song, and the heroes of the films perform incredible feats inspired by their love for him.
"Fire-like loyalty to the Leader" is, according to official propaganda, the main advantage of any citizen of the DPRK. Pyongyang social scientists have even developed a special philosophical discipline - "surengwang" (in a somewhat loose translation - "leadership"), which specializes precisely in studying the special role of the leader in the world-historical process. Here is how this role is formulated in one of the North Korean university textbooks: “The masses, who do not have a leader and are deprived of his leadership, are not able to become a true subject of the historical process and play a creative role in history ... the highest expression is precisely in love and loyalty to the leader. To be loyal to the leader means: to be imbued with the understanding that it is the leader who has an absolutely decisive role, to strengthen the leader’s importance, in any trials to believe only the leader and follow the leader without hesitation.
Unfortunately, we know little about how Kim Il Sung's personal life has evolved since the late fifties. As time went on, he increasingly isolated himself from foreigners, and indeed from most Koreans. The times when Kim Il Sung could easily go to the Soviet embassy to play billiards are long gone.
Of course, the top of the North Korean elite knows something about the personal life of the Great Leader, but for obvious reasons, these people did not seek to share the information that they possessed with correspondents or scientists. In addition, South Korean propaganda constantly spread information that was supposed to portray the leader of North Korea in the most unfavorable light. Very often this information was true, but it still has to be treated with considerable caution. However, some reports, apparently, can be considered fair. Among the most piquant is, for example, information (repeatedly confirmed by high-ranking defectors) that the Leader and his son have a special group of female servants, in which only young, beautiful and unmarried women are selected. This group is called quite appropriately and meaningfully - "Joy".
Often, Kim Il Sung's detractors tried to present these women as a kind of harem of the Leader and his heir (a famous female lover). In part, this could be true, but on the whole, the Joy group is a completely traditional institution. During the Li Dynasty, hundreds of young women were selected to work in the royal palaces. The requirements for candidates for palace servants in those days were about the same as now - for the notorious group "Joy": applicants must be virgin, beautiful, young, of good origin. Both the maids of the royal palace centuries ago and the maids of the palaces of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il today were forbidden to marry. However, in the old days, this did not mean that all the palace maids were the king's concubines. The more informed (and less prejudiced) defectors say the same about Kim Il Sung's maids. The selection to the "Joy" group is carried out by local authorities, all of its members officially have the rank of officers of the Ministry of State Protection - the North Korean political police.
Despite increased isolation after 1960, the Great Leader continued to appear before the people from time to time almost until his death. Although he had a pompous palace on the outskirts of the capital, before which the palaces of Arab sheikhs paled, as well as many magnificent residences throughout the country, Kim Il Sung preferred not to lock himself in their magnificent walls. A characteristic feature of his activities were frequent trips around the country. The luxurious train of the Great Leader (Kim Il Sung organically did not tolerate aircraft and preferred railway even when traveling abroad), accompanied, of course, by numerous and reliable guards, appeared here and there, Kim Il Sung often came to enterprises, villages, visited institutions, military units, and schools.
These trips did not stop until the death of Kim Il Sung, even when the Leader was already over 80. However, this is not surprising: after all, a whole research institute worked specifically to maintain his health - the so-called Institute of Longevity, located in Pyongyang and dealing exclusively with the well-being of the Great Chief and his family, as well as a special group responsible for purchasing high-quality products for them from abroad.
In the seventies and eighties the main proxies Kim Il Sung, his first assistants in governing the country, were former partisans who had once fought with him against the Japanese in Manchuria. This gave the Japanese historian Wada Haruki reason to call North Korea "the state of the former guerrillas." Indeed, he was elected to the Central Committee of the WPK, elected at the last congress of the WPK in 1980 (Kim Il Sung, like Stalin, did not bother to regularly convene party congresses, and even after his death his son was "elected" head of the party without convening a congress or conference ) included 28 former partisans and only one representative of three once powerful groups - Soviet, Yan'an and internal. There were 12 former partisans in the Politburo, that is, the majority.
However, time took its toll, and by the early 1990s. few of the former partisans were still alive. However, their children often began to replace them more often, which gave the North Korean elite a closed, almost caste-aristocratic character.
This character was strengthened by the fact that since the sixties Kim Il Sung began to actively promote his relatives through the ranks. This may have been the result of Kim's decision at the time to transfer power by inheritance to his eldest son. As a result, North Korea increasingly resembled the personal dictatorship of the Kim Il Sung family.
Suffice it to say that in September 1990, 11 out of 35 members of the country's top political leadership belonged to the Kim Il Sung clan. In addition to Kim Il Sung himself and Kim Jong Il, then this clan included; Kang Song San (Premier of the Administrative Council, Secretary of the Central Committee), Park Song Chul (Vice President of the DPRK), Hwang Chang Yup (Secretary of the Central Committee for Ideology, and the actual creator of the Juche idea, later, in 1997, fled to South Korea), Kim Chun Rin (Secretary of the WPK Central Committee, Head of the Department of Public Organizations), Kim Yong Sun (Secretary of the Central Committee, Head of the International Department), Kang Hee Won (Secretary of the Pyongyang City Committee, Vice Premier of the Administrative Council), Kim Tal Hyun (Minister of Foreign Trade) , Kim Chang Joo (Minister of Agriculture, Vice Premier of the Administrative Council) Yang Hyun Seop (President of the Academy of Social Sciences, Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly) .
This list clearly shows that Kim Il Sung's relatives occupy a significant part of the key positions in the North Korean leadership. These people have come to the fore solely because of their personal connections with the Great Leader and can expect to maintain their position only as long as Kim Il Sung or his son is in power. To them we must add the children, grandchildren and other relatives of the former Manchurian partisans, whose share in the leadership is also very large and who are also closely connected with the Kim family. In fact, the upper echelon of power in North Korea is occupied by representatives of several dozen families, among which the Kim family is by far the most important. By the end of the nineties, representatives of the second, and even the third generation of these families were in power. Their whole life was spent in conditions of gigantic privileges, and in almost complete isolation from the main mass of the country's population.
In fact, by the end of Kim Il Sung's reign, North Korea had become an aristocratic state in which the "nobility" of origin played an almost decisive role in access to positions and wealth.
However, belonging to the clan of relatives of Kim Il Sung does not mean a guarantee of immunity. Many of the members of this clan have already been expelled from their posts and plunged into political non-existence. So, in the summer of 1975, Kim Yong-ju, the only surviving brother of the Great Leader, who had been one of the most influential leaders of the country for almost a decade and a half, and at the time of his disappearance was the secretary of the Central Committee, a member of the Politburo and Vice-President Prime Minister of the Administrative Council.
According to rumors, the reason for his sudden fall was that he did not approve of the beginning rise of his nephew Kim Jong Il. However, Kim Yong-ju's life was spared. In the early 1990s, the aged and apparently safe Kim Yong-ju reappeared on the North Korean political Olympus and soon re-entered the top leadership of the country. Somewhat later, in 1984, another high-ranking relative of Kim Il Sung, Kim Pyon Ha, who had long been the head of the Ministry of Political Protection of the state, that is, he occupied the most important post of chief of the security service under the conditions of any dictatorship, disappeared in the same way.
Back in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Kim Il Sung remarried. His wife was Kim Sun-ae, about whose biography almost nothing is known, even the date of their marriage is not clear. Apparently, based on the fact that their eldest son Kim Pyong Il - now a prominent diplomat - was born around 1954, Kim Il Sung's second marriage took place around this time, but some sources indicate significantly later dates.
According to rumors, at one time Kim Sun-ae was the secretary of the head of personal protection Kim Il Sung. However, the first lady of North Korea hardly appeared before the public, and her influence on political life seemed minimal. Although the Koreans knew that the Leader had a new wife (this was briefly mentioned in the press), but in propaganda and in the mass consciousness, she does not even remotely occupy such a place as Kim Jong Suk, who, long after her death remained a fighting friend of the Leader, his main comrade-in-arms. This is partly due, apparently, to the personal feelings of Kim Il Sung himself, and partly to the role that, in his opinion, was destined for the only surviving son of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk, who was born in 1942 in Khabarovsk Yuri, who received the Korean name Kim Jong Il, and who, by the way, did not like his stepmother and his half-brothers too much.
Of course, the rumors constantly appearing in the Western and South Korean press about discord in the Kim Il Sung family should be treated with caution, it is too obvious that their spread is beneficial to the South Korean side. However, reports of tension that has long existed between Kim Jong Il and his stepmother come from sources so diverse that they have to be trusted. The author of these lines also had to hear about conflicts of this kind during his frank conversations with the North Koreans.
Around the end of the 60s. Kim Il Sung had the idea to make his son his heir, establishing something like a monarchy in the DPRK. In addition to understandable personal preferences, this decision could also be dictated by a sober political calculation. The posthumous fate of Stalin and, to a lesser extent, Mao taught Kim Il Sung that for the new leadership, criticizing a dead dictator is one of the best ways to gain popularity. By passing power by inheritance, Kim Il Sung created a situation in which the subsequent regime would be interested in strengthening the prestige of the Founding Father in every possible way (in the most literal sense of the word).
Around 1970, Kim Jong Il began his rapid rise through the ranks. After the appointment of Kim Jong Il, who was then only 31 years old, in 1973 as head of the propaganda department of the WPK Central Committee and his introduction to the Politburo in February 1974, the intentions of the Leader-father to transfer power by inheritance became clear. As Kon Thak Ho, who then occupied a prominent post in the North Korean security service and then defected to the South, testified back in 1976, by that time there was already almost complete confidence in the North Korean political elite that it was Kim Jong who would become Kim Il Sung's successor. Ir. Weak protests against this, heard in the beginning and in the middle of the 70s among the highest officials, ended, as was to be expected, in the disappearance or disgrace of the discontented.
In 1980, at the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of China, Kim Jong Il was proclaimed his father's heir, "the successor to the great Juche revolutionary cause," and propaganda began to praise his superhuman wisdom with the force with which it had previously glorified only the deeds of his father. During the 1980s there was a gradual transfer of control over the most important areas of the country's life into the hands of Kim Jong Il and his people (or those who are still considered to be such). Finally, in 1992, Kim Jong Il was appointed Supreme Commander of the North Korean armed forces and received the title of Marshal (at the same time, Kim Il Sung himself became Generalissimo).
However, towards the end of his life, Kim Il Sung had to operate in a difficult environment. The collapse of the socialist community and the collapse of the USSR, the coup became a heavy blow to the North Korean economy. Even though relations between Moscow and Pyongyang were by no means particularly cordial in the past, strategic considerations and the presence of a common adversary in the person of the United States, as a rule, made one forget about mutual hostility.
However, the ending cold war meant that the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, ceased to consider the DPRK their ideological and military-political ally in the struggle against "American imperialism." On the contrary, a prosperous South Korea seemed an increasingly attractive trade and economic partner. The result of this was the official establishment of diplomatic relations between Moscow and Seoul in 1990.
With the disappearance of the USSR, it became clear that Soviet aid played a far greater role in the North Korean economy than Pyongyang propaganda was willing to admit. "Reliance on one's own strength" turned out to be a myth that did not survive the termination of preferential supplies of Soviet raw materials and equipment. The new government in Moscow was not going to spend any significant resources on supporting Pyongyang. Aid came to a halt around 1990, and the results were very quick. The recession that began in 1989-1990 in the DPRK economy was so significant and obvious that it could not even be hidden. For the first time in the entire post-war history, the North Korean authorities announced that the GNP of the DPRK in 1990-1991. decreased. China, although it remained formally socialist and even provided limited assistance to the DPRK, also normalized relations with South Korea in 1992.
In a desperate attempt to find some sources of foreign income, Kim Il Sung tried to use the "nuclear card". Work on nuclear weapons has been going on in North Korea since at least the 1980s, and in 1993-1994, Kim Il Sung tried to resort to nuclear blackmail. Political intrigue has always been the native element of the Great Leader. He succeeded in this, the last time for himself. North Korea managed to get its age-old enemies, the "American imperialists," to agree to provide economic assistance to the DPRK in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program. The blackmail succeeded.
This diplomatic victory proved, however, to be the last success of the old master. On July 8, 1994, shortly before the scheduled meeting with the South Korean president (it was supposed to be the first ever meeting of the heads of two Korean states), Kim Il Sung died suddenly in his luxurious palace in Pyongyang. The cause of his death was a heart attack. As expected, his son, Kim Jong Il, became the new head of the North Korean state. Thanks to the efforts of Kim Il Sung, North Korea not only survived the years of the general crisis of socialism, but also became the first communist regime with hereditary power.
Kim Il Sung lived a long and extraordinary life: the son of a Christian activist, a partisan and partisan commander, an officer in the Soviet Army, a puppet ruler of North Korea, and finally, the Great Leader, the unrestricted dictator of the North. The very fact that with such a biography he managed to survive and, in the end, die a natural death at a very advanced age, shows that Kim Il Sung was not only a lucky man, but also an extraordinary one. Although the consequences of his rule for Korea were, to put it bluntly, deplorable, one should hardly demonize the late dictator. His ambition, cruelty, ruthlessness are obvious.
However, it is also indisputable that he was capable of both idealism and selfless deeds - at least in his youth, until he was finally drawn into its millstones by the power machine. Most likely, in many cases, he sincerely believed that his actions were aimed at the benefit of the people, for the prosperity of Korea. However, alas, a person is judged not so much by his intentions as by the results of his actions, and for Kim Il Sung, these results turned out to be deplorable, if not catastrophic: millions killed in the war and those killed in prisons, a devastated economy, crippled generations.
Kim Il Sung (kor. 김일성, April 15, 1912, Mangyongdae - July 8, 1994, Pyongyang) - a member of the international communist and labor movement, founder and ruler of the DPRK from 1948 to , generalissimo. The founder of the Korean version of Marxism -.
early years
There are different versions of how Kim Il Sung's life began. According to the official version, he was born in the village of Namni (now Mangyongde) near Pyongyang in the family of a village teacher Kim Hyun-chjik. According to another version, Kim Il Sung was born Chinjong, in a family of hereditary Protestant priests. He had two siblings. Kim's family, if not living in poverty, was one step away from poverty. Kim Il Sung received a Protestant upbringing because many of his ancestors were Protestant priests. In , Kim Il Sung and his family fled to Manchuria in connection with the Japanese invasion of Korea, against which Kim's parents took part. In , Kim Il Sung's father died.
Start of political activity
In October of the same year, Kim took part in the activities of the Union for the Overthrow of Imperialism. From 1927 to attended high school in Jilin. Then he became interested in communist ideology. He joined an underground communist youth organization operating in southern Manchuria. Stopped attending school after being arrested for political activities. He spent several months behind bars. C began to participate in numerous anti-Japanese uprisings. , stood at the head of an armed detachment of participants in the anti-Japanese partisan movement.
military activity
C was in the United Northeast Anti-Japanese Army. AT . was appointed commander of the sixth division, known as the Kim Il Sung Division. He made raids on enemy territories. Once he won a major victory, for which he was appointed to a higher post. Once Kim Il Sung's detachment fell into disgrace to the Japanese troops and he had to flee across the Amur, to the USSR, to Khabarovsk. Where he was trained in the camp of the Red Army. Was in the Soviet Union until the end of World War II. The Red Army entered Pyongyang without encountering almost any resistance. Kim Il Sung personally met with Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. After he was appointed leader of the country on the advice of Beria and the order of Stalin.
Creation of the KPA
Kim arrived in Korea after twenty-six years of exile. In September, he paid a visit to the USSR in the person of the head of the interim government. One of the indisputable achievements of Kim Il Sung is the creation of the Korean People's Army(). Consisting mainly of Korean communists and anti-Japanese resistance guerrillas. Which have already gained combat experience in battles not only with the Japanese invaders, but also with the Kuomintang troops. After the creation of the KPA, Kim Il Sung taught the warriors the special tactics of guerrilla warfare. The army was supplied with heavy Soviet tanks, trucks, small arms. The KPA Air Force was created in Korea but equipped with some Soviet parts. The Soviet jet aircraft MiG-15 was put into service.
Beginning of the reign (1948 - 1953)
In May, the Korean Peninsula was divided into North and South Korea. was officially proclaimed. Kim Il Sung was appointed prime minister. The USSR recognized the new government of socialist Korea. The Communist Party of Korea merged with the New People's Party to form . And Kim Il Sung was appointed chairman. In , the ruling coalition "United Democratic Patriotic Front" was formed.
Further reign
After the devastating war, Kim Il Sung made a lot of efforts to restore the country. A national economic plan was adopted for the country's transition to a planned economy. The industry was nationalized, the collectivization of agriculture was carried out. Kim Il Sung pursued a policy of eliminating class differences, the economy was built for the benefit of the needs of workers and peasants, the production of weapons. After the XX Congress of the CPSU, he condemned "the exposure of Stalin's personality cult." After that, Kim Il Sung began to build relations with Eastern European socialist countries and leaders such as (SRR), (NSRA),
Death and funeral
He died of a sudden heart attack, despite the efforts of doctors to save him. Death was announced thirty hours later. The funeral commission was headed by Kim Jong Il. The body was embalmed and placed in the mausoleum on 17 July. Where he rests in a glass coffin, covered with the flag of the Korean Labor Party.
Personal life
The first wife is Kim Jong Suk. From her, Kim Il Sung had two children: Kim Jong Il and Kim Pyong Il. Kim Jong Suk died in 1947. In 1951, Kim Il Sung married a second time by his second wife and had three children.
perpetuation of memory
Currently, there are more than 500 statues of Kim Il Sung in the DPRK. The most famous are located: near the stadium, the university and the square in Pyongyang named after him. Kim Il Sung is depicted in places connected with public transport (railway stations, airports). Kim is also depicted on North Korean banknotes.
International Friendship Exhibition
On August 26, 1978, the International Friendship Exhibition Museum was built in the DPRK. The total area of which is 70 square kilometers. Includes 150 rooms. It contains gifts that were given to Kim Il Sung at different times by the heads of other states - a total of 220 thousand. Among them:
Honorary Doctorate from Quaid-e-Azam University in Pakistan
Proceedings
- Kim Il Sung. Works. B 46 vol., Pyongyang: Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, 1980-2007
- Kim Il Sung. About Juche in our revolution. B 3 vol., Pyongyang: Publishing House of Literature in Foreign Languages, 1980-1982
Literature about Kim Il Sung
- A Brief History of Comrade Kim Il Sung's Revolutionary Activities, Pyongyang: Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, 1969
- Lankov, A.. An informal history of North Korea. Moscow: East-West, 2004
- Comrade Kim Il Sung is a brilliant thinker and theorist. Pyongyang: Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, 1975
Kim Il Sung
(b. 1912 - d. 1994)
Dictator, permanent leader of the DPRK, creator of the Juche doctrine.
The long-lived dictator who led North Korea for half a century, the “Great Leader, the Sun of the Nation, the Marshal of the Mighty Republic” is Kim Il Sung. Biographical data about him are rather contradictory, and there are practically no records of many years of his life.
The future leader was born in the village of Mangende near Pyongyang on April 15, 1912. His father, a representative of the grassroots Korean intelligentsia, was a believing Protestant, a Christian activist associated with religious organizations. At times he taught in elementary schools. Mother was the daughter of a village teacher. In addition to Kim Il Sung, who was called Kim Song-ju in childhood, the family had two more sons. They were poor, they were in need. Need forced parents in the early 20s. to move from Japanese-occupied Korea to Manchuria, where little Kim Il Sung was educated in a Chinese school and mastered the Chinese language perfectly. The study was rather tightly controlled by the father. For several years the boy returned home, but already in 1925 he left his native place. The following year, my father died.
While studying in China, in Kirin, Kim Il Sung joined an underground Marxist circle created by Chinese Komsomol members. In 1929, the circle was opened by the authorities, and its members ended up in prison. Six months later, the 17-year-old boy, having been released from prison and never finished school, joined a guerrilla unit, one of many created by the CCP to fight the Japanese invaders. Already in 1932, Kim Il Sung joined the Chinese Communist Party. He fought well and quickly advanced in the service: in 1934 he was a platoon commander in the Second Partisan Army, which fought against the Japanese near the Korean-Chinese border, and after 2 years he commanded the 6th division. The name of Kim Il Sung gained fame after a successful raid on Pochonbo, when a gendarme post and some Japanese institutions were destroyed. Rumors about "commander Kim Il Sung" then spread throughout Korea, and the authorities promised a reward for any information about his whereabouts. At the end of the 30s. he was already the commander of the 2nd operational region, and all partisan units in Jiangdao province were subordinate to him. However, at this time, the position of the Manchu partisans deteriorated sharply: in battles with the Japanese, they suffered heavy losses. Of the senior leaders of the 2nd Army, only Kim Il Sung survived, whom the Japanese hunted with particular fury. In this situation, in December 1940, together with 13 fighters, he broke through to the north and, crossing the Amur ice, ended up on the territory of the USSR. Having passed the required test, after a few months the 28-year-old partisan commander became a student of courses at the Khabarovsk Infantry School.
Kim Il Sung's personal life was generally successful. True, the first wife of Kim Hyo Sunn, who fought in his detachment, was captured by the Japanese, which they reported as a great triumph. Her further fate is unknown. At the end of the 30s. Kim Il Sung married Kim Choch-sung, the daughter of a North Korean farm laborer who had been fighting in a guerrilla unit since the age of 16. In 1941, their son was born on Soviet territory, who was named by the Russian name Yura (today he is the leader of the DPRK, known to the whole world as Kim Jong Il). Then they had two more children.
In 1942, in the village of Vyatsk near Khabarovsk, the 88th Rifle Brigade was formed from the Korean partisans who crossed over to Soviet territory, in which the young captain of the Red Army Kim Il Sung was appointed commander of the battalion. It was the brigade special purpose. Some of its fighters participated in reconnaissance and sabotage operations in Manchuria. True, Kim Il Sung himself did not participate in any operations during the war. But he really liked the life of a career officer, and he did not see his future outside the army: the academy, the command of a regiment, a division. Many even then began to note the lust for power of the young officer. The 88th brigade did not take part in the fleeting war with Japan. After the war, it was disbanded, and its soldiers and officers were sent to the liberated cities of Manchuria and Korea as assistants to the Soviet military commandants and to ensure communication between the military authorities and the local population. Kim Il Sung was appointed assistant commandant of Pyongyang, the future capital of North Korea. He arrived in Korea in October 1945 on the Pugachev steamship. His arrival turned out to be just in time, since the attempt of the Soviet command to rely on nationalist groups failed, and the local communist movement was not so strong, but was too striving for independence. Therefore, a young officer of the Soviet Army with a heroic partisan biography turned out to be the best figure for the role of "leader of the progressive forces of Korea." On October 14, the commander of the 25th Army, I. M. Chistyakov, presented Kim Il Sung at a rally as a "national hero" and "famous partisan leader." From this began his ascent to the heights of power.
In December 1945, Kim Il Sung was appointed chairman of the North Korean Organizing Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea, and in February of the following year, by decision of the Soviet military authorities, he headed the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea, the country's provisional government. This was a formal position, since even after the proclamation of the DPRK in 1948, the Soviet military authorities and the apparatus of advisers, who compiled the most important documents and made decisions, had a decisive influence on the life of the country. Even the appointment of officers to a position higher than the regiment commander until the mid-50s. it was necessary to coordinate with the Soviet embassy.
The first years of Kim Il Sung's stay in his homeland were overshadowed by two tragedies: in 1947, his son drowned, and in 1949, his wife died during childbirth. During this period, an acute confrontation emerged in the country, divided by the decision of the Potsdam Conference into zones of occupation - the Soviet North and the American South. Both regimes claimed to be the sole legitimate unifier of the country. Things were moving towards war, but Kim Il Sung was not the most resolute supporter of resolving the Korean problem by military means. The decision to start a war was made in the spring of 1950 in Moscow during the visit of Kim Il Sung and his conversations with Stalin.
During the war 1950–1951 The leadership of the DPRK is located in bunkers carved into the rocky ground at a depth of several tens of meters. The main burden of the fighting fell on the Chinese troops sent to Korea at the request of Kim Il Sung and with the blessing of the Soviet government. The Koreans, on the other hand, acted in secondary directions and provided protection for the rear. During the war, there was a weakening of Soviet influence and an increase in the independence of Kim Il Sung, who began to get a taste of power. He showed himself to be a master of political intrigue, showed the ability to maneuver and use the contradictions of both opponents and allies. The only thing he sorely lacked was education, and he did not have time to engage in self-education.
The beginning was marked by the struggle of Kim Il Sung for sovereignty in the country. All his efforts were aimed at destroying the North Korean elite - four groups that were at war with each other. Their destruction gave Kim Il Sung the opportunity to get rid of Soviet and Chinese control. However, the massacre of them led to the fact that delegations headed by A.I. arrived from the USSR and China. Mikoyan and Peng Dehuai, who threatened to remove Kim Il Sung himself from the leadership of the country. He was forced to make concessions, but the role of a puppet imposed on him forced him from the mid-50s. persistently and cautiously distance themselves from their patrons. The DPRK then was very dependent on the economic and military assistance of the USSR and China, therefore, skillfully maneuvering, Kim Il Sung managed to ensure that this assistance did not stop. At first, he was more inclined towards the PRC, which was facilitated by cultural closeness, the joint struggle and criticism of Stalin that unfolded in the USSR. This caused dissatisfaction with the Soviet leadership and a reduction in aid, which brought a number of sectors of the economy to the brink of collapse. In connection with the conflict between the USSR and the PRC and the “cultural revolution” that began in China, Kim Il Sung began to distance himself from China, taking a neutral position in the conflict. This, of course, caused discontent in both Moscow and Beijing, but never led to a reduction in aid.
By the end of the 50s. Kim Il Sung, having destroyed (physically or expelled from the country) the opposing, mostly pro-Soviet groups, gained full power. Only old comrades-in-arms in the partisan struggle, whom he trusted, were appointed to the highest posts. Then there was a refusal to copy Soviet models and their methods of organizing production, their cultural and moral values based on the ideas of "Juche", propaganda of the superiority of everything Korean over foreign ones were established. Hard planning began, the militarization of the economy, "labor armies" were created, where workers were divided into military units (platoons, companies, etc.) and submitted to commanders. Household plots and market trade were forbidden. The basis of the economy was declared "self-reliance", and the ideal - a completely self-sufficient, tightly controlled production unit. But all this led to a sharp reduction in economic growth and to an even greater decline in the living standards of the population than before. Kim Il Sung was strong in the struggle for power, but not in governing the country. From the 70s. stability in the state was ensured only by strict control over the population, combined with massive indoctrination. The population of the country was divided into groups into several families living in the same block or house. They were bound by mutual responsibility. The head of the group had a lot of power. Even going to visit was impossible without his consent. And there was no free movement around the country without the consent of the security service. There were camps for political prisoners. The practice included public executions - executions in stadiums. Since 1972, with the celebration of Kim Il Sung's 60th birthday, a campaign began to praise him as the most illustrious leader of the modern world: "Great Leader, Sun of the Nation, Iron All-Conquering Commander, Marshal of the Mighty Republic, Pledge of the Liberation of Mankind." All adult Koreans were required to wear badges with a portrait of Kim Il Sung. In general, his portraits hung everywhere. On the slopes of the mountains, toasts were carved in his honor with multi-meter letters. Across the country, monuments were erected only to Kim Il Sung and his family. The birthday of the Great Leader became a public holiday; biography has been studied since kindergarten; works were learned by heart; the places he visited were marked with memorial plaques; children in kindergartens were obliged to thank the leader in chorus before dinner for a happy childhood; songs were composed in his honor; the heroes of the films performed feats inspired by love for him. Universities began to teach a special philosophical discipline suryeongwang - driving science.
A pompous palace was built for Kim Il Sung on the outskirts of Pyongyang, and many luxurious residences were built throughout the country. However, the leader preferred to travel a lot (he did not like planes) around the country, accompanied by reliable numerous guards, visiting villages, enterprises, and institutions. In 1965, he married Kim Song-ae, a young secretary of one of his bodyguards. They had two sons and a daughter.
In the early 70s. Kim Il Sung had the idea to make his son his heir. Weak protests among the highest officials ended in the disappearance of the dissatisfied. In 1980, Kim Jong Il was officially proclaimed the heir of his father, the "Great Carrier of the World Juche Revolutionary Cause." After the death of Kim Il Sung in 1994, he concentrated all power in the country in his hands, pursuing a policy of tyranny and political "isolation of the DPRK on the basis of the doctrine of the Chukchi."
This text is an introductory piece.