Kim Il Sung

Born April 15, 1912
Man'gyondae, Korea
Died July 8, 1994
P'yongyang, North Korea

Premier of North Korea

K im Il Sung was a communist dictator who ruled North Korea throughout the Cold War. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1945 to 1991. Asserting his rule with an iron hand, Kim Il Sung was the longest-serving leader of a communist government in the twentieth century. He created an almost mythical cult status for himself within North Korea, but he was little known elsewhere because he purposely kept North Korea isolated from the outside world.

Early years

Kim Il Sung was born Kim Sung Ju in April 1912 to a middle-class Korean family in the village of Man'gyondae, located in northwestern Korea. He was the oldest of three sons. His father, Kim Hyung-jik, was a schoolteacher. Korea had long been isolated from outside influences, but it was annexed by Japan shortly before Kim Sung Ju's birth. The family moved to Chinese-controlled Manchuria in 1919 to escape the harsh Japanese rule. In Manchuria, young Kim attended Chinese primary and secondary schools. In 1931, he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League and began leading small Chinese guerrilla forces on raids against remote Japanese outposts in northern Korea along the Manchurian border.

By 1939, the Japanese forces had gained the upper hand, and Kim fled from Manchuria to the far eastern part of Siberia in the Soviet Union. The Soviets gave Kim military and political training in Khabarovsk, and he served in the Soviet army during World War II (1939–45). At this time, he married a fellow revolutionary. In mid-1945, the Soviets attacked Japanese forces and captured northern Korea. The United States gained control of southern Korea. Kim was reportedly a Soviet army officer at the time. Japan surrendered to the United States and the Soviet Union in August 1945.

North Korean leader

U.S. president Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53; see entry) recommended to the Soviets that Korea be temporarily divided into northern and southern regions along the thirty-eighth parallel; later, the Koreans could hold elections to determine what type of government the unified nation should have. Most Korean political leaders were in Seoul, the traditional capital of Korea, which was located in South Korea and controlled by the United States. Therefore, the Soviets turned to Kim to be the provisional North Korean leader. With Soviet assistance, he built up a large military. He also changed his name to Kim Il Sung, the name of a legendary Korean hero, a guerrilla fighter who fought the Japanese.

To stabilize the new North Korean government, the Soviets quieted Kim's potential political rivals through intimidation and other means. Only one political party was allowed, the Korean Workers' Party. By 1947, the new political structure was taking shape; operating under communist economic principles, all businesses and farms were either owned by the state or assigned to groups of workers. The legislative body was called the Supreme People's Assembly; the executive branch, which Kim headed, was known as the Central People's Committee.

From 1945 through 1947, the United States sent various government officials to Korea, including General George C. Marshall (1880–1959; see entry), to negotiate for the reunification of Korea. After failure to make any diplomatic progress, the United States turned to the United Nations (UN), an international organization composed of most of the nations of the world, created to preserve world peace and security. The UN proposed national elections throughout Korea to establish a new unified government. However, Kim balked at the proposal. South Korea proceeded with elections in May 1948 and formed the Republic of Korea. In August, North Korea held elections for the Supreme People's Assembly and proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with Kim as premier. Kim would hold that position for the next forty-six years. Kim claimed authority over all of Korea. However, in December 1948 the UN recognized the Republic of Korea as the only legitimate government of Korea.

Korean War

From the beginning, Kim was committed to reunifying Korea by militarily gaining control of the southern part of the country. The Soviet Union continued to supply North Korea with weapons. In June 1950, Kim's North Korean forces swept into South Korea. Within only three days, he had captured Seoul and pushed South Korean forces southward down the peninsula. In immediate response, the UN passed a resolution condemning the attack. The UN also approved the launch of a counterattack by an international coalition force primarily made up of U.S. soldiers commanded by General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964; see entry). UN forces pushed North Korean troops back northward across the thirty-eighth parallel, all the way to the Korean border with China. In response, Stalin withdrew his support of Kim, and Kim's political career appeared over.

In 1949, a year before North Korea's forced retreat, communist Chinese forces led by Mao Zedong (1893–1976; see entry) had captured the Chinese government and formed the People's Republic of China (PRC). Mao felt threatened by the U.S. forces on his border. Therefore, in October 1950, the PRC launched a massive attack involving three hundred thousand

troops. These troops pushed U.S. forces south, back across the thirty-eighth parallel. Continued fighting led to a stalemate.

After over two years of negotiations, a cease-fire agreement was finally reached on July 25, 1953. The agreement formalized the split between North and South Korea. The United States would continue supporting South Korea; North Korea would be backed by the Soviet Union and the PRC. No peace treaty was ever signed. The 155-mile-long (250-kilometer-long) boundary between North and South Korea became known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). However, despite the name, there was an unusually high concentration of military forces stationed along the boundary on both sides.

Building a cult of personality

The war left North Korea's economy in shambles. Kim focused on rebuilding the economy and firming up his control. He closed North Korea to most outside contacts and purged all his internal enemies. No foreign newspapers were allowed, and radios could only receive state-owned stations. By 1959, all private land holdings had been abolished, and all agricultural land was collectivized, or placed under control of a group of local farmers. The state owned 90 percent of industry, and cooperatives, an organization of workers who share in the ownership and operation of a factory for their own benefit, owned the remainder. Using Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's "cult of personality" as a guide, Kim began creating a mythology around himself (he sought to make himself more important than the communist movement). He used fear, ignorance, and isolation to further establish his control. He promoted a doctrine of national self-sufficiency, known as Juche, and proclaimed himself the absolute ruler and leader of the North Korean people. In reality, however, North Korea remained highly reliant on the Soviets and the PRC for support. North Korea's economic recovery proceeded well through the 1960s. Through a combination of heavy industry and collective farming, North Korea surpassed South Korea in its economic achievements. For a time, North Korea was a model of state-controlled economic development.

North Korea also became the most regimented society in the world. Kim's government classified each of North Korea's twenty-two million citizens into categories based on their allegiance to Kim. People placed in the top category received better education and better jobs. People in the lowest category were sent to hard labor camps in remote areas. By some estimates, this category included tens of thousands of citizens. Some were executed in the labor camps, but no one knows how many. Kim also personally controlled the secret police, known as the Protection and Security Bureau, which tracked the movements of all individuals, even within each village. Each person had an identification card and needed a travel permit before leaving a residential or work area.

A confrontational foreign policy

Through the 1950s and 1960s, Kim had a difficult time balancing his relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC, because those two major communist nations had increasingly strained relations with each other. Kim would favor one and then the other. Finally in the late 1960s, Kim was targeted in the PRC's Cultural Revolution, a campaign launched by Mao Zedong to purge thousands of communist government leaders and others. He turned to the Soviets for protection, and they would be his primary arms supplier thereafter. However, Kim became increasingly independent overall.

To build North Korea's international standing, Kim successfully established ties with Third World countries. The term Third World refers to poor underdeveloped or economically developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the 1960s and 1970s, many Third World countries were seeking independence from the political control of Western European nations. In all, Kim established diplomatic relations with over 130 nations. North Korea became a major arms supplier to governments and revolutionaries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the 1980s, Kim supplied Iran with weapons during Iran's war with Iraq. He also provided arms to Libya and Syria.

Kim's relations with the United States and other Western countries were strained. His political positions, economic policies, and overall style of government conflicted with Western political goals and ideals. To make matters worse, in 1968, North Korea captured a U.S. spy ship, the USS Pueblo, in international waters; North Korea claimed the U.S. ship was in North Korean waters. North Korea held the crew for eleven months before the United States finally apologized for spying. In 1976, North Korean soldiers killed two American officers, and in July 1977 North Korea shot down an unarmed U.S. Army helicopter.

Since the late 1960s, Kim had been promoting international terrorism, primarily aimed at South Korea. Kim supported spy rings and underground organizations and arranged for assassination attempts against South Korean leaders. Attacks against South Korea continued through the 1980s. In October 1983, North Korean terrorists led a bombing attack against South Korean officials. In May 1984, United Nations personnel in charge of the demilitarized zone discovered tunnels under the boundary between North and South Korea. The tunnels were designed to allow spies and assassins to infiltrate to the south. North Korea was suspected in the bombing of a South Korean airliner in November 1987 that killed 115 people.

Kim's last years

By the 1970s, North Korea's military spending reached 25 percent of the national budget and was undermining the nation's economy. Much of the budget also went to constructing grand monuments to honor Kim. Statues of Kim sprang up everywhere. The focus on heavy industry and high military expenditures led to severe shortages in domestic goods. The standard of living declined rapidly as harvests and industrial productivity decreased. The North Korean population tripled between 1954 and 1994, putting a further strain on national resources.

Relations between North and South Korea began to improve by 1990. For the first time since the Korean War (1950–53), the prime ministers from North and South Korea met. In 1991, both Korean governments were recognized in the United Nations. However, in 1993, it was discovered that Kim was developing North Korean nuclear capabilities, in violation of the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Kim threatened to withdraw from the treaty. In August 1994, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter (1924–; served 1977–81; see entry) traveled to North Korea to strike a deal and ease tensions. The controversial agreement he reached with Kim's representatives promised U.S. aid to North Korea.

Kim had groomed his son Kim Jong Il (1942–) to take over North Korea's leadership. By the late 1980s, Kim Jong Il assumed control over most daily operations. Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack on July 8, 1994. Informants provided striking information on the extreme efforts used to try to sustain Kim's life. Apparently, a clinic of two thousand specialists had been created by Kim simply for himself and his son. The clinic experimented with drugs and diets to keep the elder Kim alive through his later years. Kim Jong Il became the de facto leader upon his father's death and officially took leadership of the country in 1997.

For More Information

Books

Armstrong, Charles K. The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Bridges, Brian. Korea and the West. New York: Routledge, 1986.

Buzo, Adrian. The Making of Modern Korea. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Mazarr, Michael J. North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Suh, Dae-sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Tennant, Roger. A History of Korea. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

A Closed Communist Society

In the early twenty-first century, North Korea remained one of the world's most isolated nations in terms of international relations. The North Korean communist government exerted almost complete control over its citizens' lives, and individual liberties continued to be severely restricted.

North Korea's sole political party, called the Korean Workers' Party, runs the government. In 1996, only about 11 percent of the twenty-six million people in North Korea belonged to this party. Nonetheless, the party makes all the nation's laws and decides who the candidates for office should be. The most powerful governmental body is the Central People's Committee, headed by the president of the nation. The committee is usually composed of forty-five members. The legislative body, the Supreme People's Assembly, has 687 members; the assembly elects people to the Central People's Committee but otherwise has little power.

North Korea is divided into nine provinces governed by local communist committees. North Korea maintains one of the largest militaries in the world, composed of seven hundred thousand in 1990. All North Korean men must serve in the military for five years, between ages twenty and twenty-five. Children are required to attend school for eleven years. The only university in North Korea is Kim Il Sung University.