Kim Il-Sung

Kim Il Sung was the founder of North Korea, who with help of highly effective propaganda system enabled him to rule unchallenged for 46 years over one of the world’s most isolated and repressive societies.

Kim Sung-Ju (his real name) was born in 1912 in Pyongyang but shortly after his birth his parents decided to move to Manchuria in order to escape the Japanese rule of Korea. While still being a student, Kim joined a communist youth organization and for his activities with the group in 1929-1930, he was arrested. After the Japanese invasion on Manchuria in 1931, Kim joined a guerrilla faction run by the Chinese communists called “ The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army”. At that time he decided to change his name from Kim Sung-ju to Kim Il Sung.

During the World War II when China was losing to Japan many Koreans had to escape to the USSR. The Soviets retrained and formed them into a division of the Red Army. Kim Il-Sung was promoted to the rank of major and fought for the Soviet Army for the rest of the war. When Japan surrendered, Korea was divided between a U.S- supported southern half and a Soviet-occupied northern half with Kim as a premier.

He quickly began to build his personality cult in North Korea and develop the military with Soviet help and in 1950, hoping to reunify Korea, Kim launched an invasion of South Korea, supported by U.S. and UN forces. Only Chinese support saved Kim’s neck and after three years of bloody battles (over 5 million deaths), both sides decide to make a truce.

As head of state, Kim crushed the remaining domestic opposition and eliminated his last rivals for power within the Korean Workers’ Party and created a country in which all information and misinformation came from the state e.g that the UN had deliberately spread disease among North Koreans.

Kim introduced a philosophy of Juche, or “self-reliance,” under which North Korea tried to develop its economy with little or no help from foreign countries. North Korea’s state-run economy grew rapidly in the 1950s and ’60s but eventually stagnated, with shortages of food occurring by the early ’90s. Kim Il-sung attempted to overcome these difficulties through improving North-South relations. Although he went as far as pursuing a summit meeting between the two Koreas but he died of a heart attack on July 8, 1994.

After his son, Kim Jong-il, took power (was appointed as his successor in 1980) Kim did not formally take the title of "president"—instead, he declared Kim Il-Sung as the "Eternal President" of North Korea. 









https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kim-Il-Sung

https://www.thoughtco.com/kim-il-sung-195634

history.com/topics/korea/korean-war

Komentarze

  1. englishdiary20 marca 2022 11:33

    Albert, stick to the word limit we established - 150 words. You can keep the info you have gleaned from these sources on your disc, for further reference, instead of putting it all here.
    Are you sure what you wrote is correct? - "Kim launched an invasion of South Korea, supported by U.S. and UN forces"?

    OdpowiedzUsuń

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