Kim Sung Joo was born on April 15, 1912 in the village of Namni. In 1920, he and his family live in China, where he enters a secret Marxist circle.
In the late 1930s, he commanded a partisan detachment in Manchuria, which was soon defeated, and Kim Il Sung himself fled to the USSR, where he was recruited into the Soviet army.
In 1942 he was awarded the rank of captain of the Red Army, and he leads a battalion of the 88th Khabarovsk rifle brigade. Then he marries, and in 1942 his son, Yuri, is born.
In 1948, with the active support of the Soviet Union, he became the Prime Minister of the established DPRK and the head of the Communist Workers' Party of Korea, in 1953 he was declared Marshal and Hero of the Korean State.
Since 1972 he has been the President of North Korea. Since the late 1950s, all leading posts in the country have fallen into the hands of Kim Il Sung's guerrilla warriors. Relying on the economic assistance of the USSR and China, Kim Il Sung in the 1950s carried out a number of measures, thanks to which the country's economy developed rapidly and successfully.
At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, significant ideological changes took place in the life of North Korea - the government of Kim Il Sung began to propagate the Juche ideas, emphasizing the superiority of everything Korean over everything foreign. A system is being established in industry that completely denies any form of cost accounting and material interest. Household plots and market trade are declared a bourgeois-feudal remnant and are liquidated. The economy is being militarized, central planning becomes pervasive.
The leader's foreign policy was primarily aimed at capturing South Korea, so large funds were required to maintain a huge army, and almost the entire country worked for it. As Kim's actions were criticized by the Soviet Union, the DPRK reduced contacts with the USSR and moved to a policy of "self-reliance." All this led to a deterioration of the economic situation in the country, and the people - to an almost state of poverty. Despite this, North Korean propaganda continued to assert that North Koreans live the best in the world, and that their belief in this is not shaken, Kim almost completely isolated the country from the outside world, and ensured the stability of society by tight control over the population, combined with massive indoctrination. ...
In terms of the scope of the activities of the repressive organs and the massiveness of the ideological influence, the regime of Kim Il Sung was, perhaps, comparable to the regime of Stalin in the USSR. In addition, he constantly pursued a policy of self-praise in the country. The official title of Kim Il Sung, both during life and after death: "Great Leader, Marshal, Comrade Kim Il Sung."
He was awarded the Orders of Lenin, Karl Marx, Victory of Socialism, "For Contribution to Victory" and other awards.
In 1994, on July 8, Kim Il Sung died in the capital of the DPRK - Pyongyang. On September 5, 1998, the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly declared him Eternal President.
The body of the leader is now in the Kumsuan mausoleum, where he rests in a special sarcophagus.
North Korea is a young state that appeared on the map only 70 years ago. Tragic events in history led to his formation, and the recognizable appearance of a reclusive country and a stronghold of victorious communism would not exist without Kim Il Sung, the founder and eternal president of the state. In the DPRK, it is called the Sun of the Nation and is literally deified, and the birthday, which falls on April 15, is considered the country's main holiday.
Rise to fame
It is not always easy to separate the truthful and fictional facts in the biography of Kim Il Sung - they have changed so many times for the sake of ideology that they remained accessible only in general terms. It is known that Kim Il Sung was born into a poor family of a school teacher and the daughter of a Protestant priest in 1912. His parents are officially believed to have been leaders of a small detachment during the anti-Japanese movement, but surviving documents say that their contributions to the guerrilla war were negligible.
When Kim Il Sung (who was actually named Kim Sung Joo) was eight years old, the family moved to China. There he mastered a new language, received an education - including an ideological one - and became interested in the struggle against the Japanese who occupied his homeland.
At the age of twenty, he became the leader of a small partisan detachment that operated on the border between China and Korea.
In 1937, a detachment led by Kim defeated a Japanese gendarme post in the city of Pochhonbo. The attack was sudden, not very brilliant, but still historical: the small victory was the first in the anti-Japanese struggle won in the territory of occupied Korea. She glorified Kim Il Sung as a military leader and opened the way for him to the military career ladder.
In 1940, representatives of the partisan movement were invited to the Soviet Union to discuss further joint actions. So Kim Il Sung ended up in the Far East of Russia, with which significant events in his life will be associated. One of them was service in the Red Army, which opened the way for political activity.
A good reputation allowed him to lead military operations in Manchuria and Korea. Gradually he became the most influential person in the communist branch of the country.
In the Soviet Union, a plan was developed to combat Japan, but it did not have to be implemented: the country surrendered a week after the fall of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The liberated Korea did not enjoy independence for long: it stung the fate of defeated Germany and the division into two parts.
Kim Il Sung, who has earned a reputation for being a reliable and ideological person, came to power with the support of the Soviet Union and China. He headed the newly formed state, and in 1950 the Korean War was unleashed under his command.
Despite the huge losses, neither side changed their positions much, and three years later the countries signed an armistice (which has not since turned into a full-fledged peace).
North Korea, Chieftain and Juche
Until the early 60s, the DPRK made economic and industrial successes - it was supported and sponsored by the powerful powers of the communist system. However, after the outbreak of the Soviet-Chinese conflict, the country led by Kim Il Sung found itself in a difficult position. The leader needed to choose a course that would keep the relationship with both parties. However, it was difficult to maintain balance.
Gradually, Kim Il Sung inclined towards cooperation with China: the countries shared common cultural roots and a long history.
In addition, de-Stalinization began in the Soviet Union, which the DPRK government strongly condemned. Later, a similar situation developed with the "cultural revolution" in China, and disagreements led to a cooling of relations between the countries. And along with it came the depletion of financial flows coming from abroad.
To keep the shaken economy afloat, Kim Il Sung took a tough course of government. A wave of repressions and arrests swept across the country, market relations and private economy were banned as a relic of the feudal past. This led to a stagnation in the economy and industry, while the country confidently set itself on a totalitarian track.
To justify the need for such harsh measures, Kim Il Sung developed the Juche ideology - the national Korean version of communism, which sought to get rid of the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The government made the main idea of self-reliance - without the support of other countries, there was simply no choice. By the early 70s, the state was already plunging into a stagnant economic policy and entering an era of crisis.
At the same time, Kim Il Sung is promoting the idea of handing over power to his son, Km Jong Il. A number of politicians opposed the establishment of a communist monarchy in the country, but dissatisfaction was quickly stifled - and by far from democratic methods.
Cult of personality
To maintain power in the face of unpopular politics, Kim Il Sung chose the method of self-glorification, tested in China and the USSR. With the help of widespread propaganda, the ruler was turned from an ordinary person into a chosen one, a messenger of heaven and a savior of the nation.
The extent to which Kim Il Sung's praises reached can be judged by the titles that were attributed to him: the Sun of the Nation, the Great All-Conquering Commander, the Pledge of the Liberation of Mankind.
Statues were erected in the country, which portrayed the leader, in films, literature and songs, the mention and glorification of the name of Kim Il Sung became mandatory. Public holidays were not complete without honorary marches and the laying of flowers at the monuments. Since the 70s, every adult resident of the country was obliged to wear a badge with a portrait of the Leader.
Kim Il Sung died in 1994 from a sudden heart attack. Like leaders in other communist countries, he was not buried, but his body was embalmed and placed in the Geumsuan Memorial Palace, which was the seat of the government during his lifetime. Visiting the mausoleum is not only the duty of every Pyongyang resident, but also a stage of an excursion tour for foreigners, no exceptions.
Personal life
According to one version, Kim Il Sung was married twice, according to another - three times. There are discrepancies in relation to the first wife even during the partisan movement. According to one version, a girl named Kim Hye Sun was not only a wife, but also a fighting comrade of Kim Il Sung.... She was captured by the Japanese, interrogated and executed. However, biographers have disagreements on this score.
The second (or first) official wife of Kim Il Sung was Kim Jong Suk, who together with him participated in political and military affairs.
She accompanied her husband and resignedly endured all the hardships of partisan life. For this, in ideology, she was made a role model for every woman in North Korea.
Three children were born in the marriage - the first was a son and later heir Kim Il Sung, then two daughters were born. During her third birth, Kim Jong Suk died at the age of 31. It is believed that Kim Il Sung loved her all his life and the last thing he did before he died was looking out of the window of the Geumsuan Palace at her grave. 15 years after the death of Kim Jong Suk, he remarried. Little is known about this woman: according to one version, she was a secretary in the headquarters of the head.
The personality of the ruler always exerts a considerable influence on the fate of the country - with this, perhaps, even the most convinced supporter of historical determinism will not dare to argue. This is especially true for dictatorships, especially those in which the power of the ruler is practically not limited either by tradition, or by the influence of strong foreign "patrons", or by some, albeit weak, public opinion. One example of such a dictatorship is North Korea - a state headed by the same person for 46 (and actually 49) years - "Great Leader, Sun of the nation, Marshal of the Mighty Republic" Kim Il Sung. He headed this state at the time of its creation, and, apparently, the "Mighty Republic" will briefly outlast its permanent leader.
Half a century of being in the highest government office 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 draw 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 was forced 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 any special attention to himself, in his youth, he, a partisan commander, had absolutely no reason to advertise his past, and in his mature years, becoming the ruler of 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 views, and on the other, to create a new biography for himself with his own hands and the hands of his official historiographers, which quite often differed from the real one, but much more in line with the requirements 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. little like what they are writing now. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to break through the rubble of contradictory and for the most part very far from the truth statements of the official North Korean historiography; very few reliable documents concerning the biography of Kim Il Sung, especially in his younger years, have survived. Thus, the person who in the modern world holds the record for the duration of his tenure at the highest government post remains a mysterious figure to this day.
Because of this, the story of Kim Il Sung's life will be full of ambiguities, omissions, dubious and unreliable facts. Nevertheless, over the past decades, the efforts of South Korean, Japanese and American scientists (among the latter, one should name first of all Professor Seo Dae Suk in the USA and Professor Wada Haruki in Japan) has succeeded in establishing a lot. Soviet specialists, both scientists and practical workers, 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 recordings 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 childhood. Although Korean propagandists and official historiographers have written dozens of volumes on this topic, 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 Mangyongdae, a small village near Pyongyang. What his father Kim Hyun Jik (1894-1926) did is hard to say with certainty, since during his short life, Kim Hyun Jik changed more than one occupation. Most often, in the biographical information about Kim Il Sung that appeared from time to time in the Soviet press, his father was called a village teacher. This sounded good (teacher is a noble profession and, from the official point of view, quite "trustworthy"), and it was not without reason - at times, Kim Hyun Jik really taught in elementary schools. But on the whole, the father of the future Great Leader belonged to that grassroots (in fact, marginal) Korean intelligentsia, which either taught, then found some kind of office job, or otherwise earned a living. Kim Hyun Jik himself, 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, became widespread in the north of the country. Christianity in Korea was perceived in many ways as an ideology of modernization, and, in part, of modern nationalism, therefore it is not surprising that there are so many Korean communists. Kim Il Sung's father himself graduated from the missionary school, 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 ties with religious organizations are explained only by the desire to find a legal cover for revolutionary activity. Kim Il Sung's mother, Kang Bang Suk (1892 -1932), was the daughter of a local Protestant priest. In addition to Kim Il Sung, whose real name was Kim Sung Joo, the family had two more sons.
Like most of the families of grassroots Korean intellectuals, Kim Hyun Jik and Kang Bang Suk did not live well, at times just needy. North Korean historiography claims that Kim Il Sung's parents - especially his father - were prominent leaders of the national liberation movement. Subsequently, official propagandists began to claim that Kim Hyun Jik 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, of course, hostile. In particular, according to relatively recently published data from the Japanese archives, Kim Hyun Jik really took 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 to what extent these statements are true.
Apparently, it was the desire to leave the occupied country, 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 Sung-chu 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, his favorite reading remained classical Chinese novels). True, for some time he returned to Korea, to his grandfather's house, but already in 1925 he left his native place 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 Hyo n Jik died and 14-year-old Kim Sung Joo was orphaned.
Already in Jirin, in high school, Kim Sung-chu joined an underground Marxist circle created by the local illegal organization of the Chinese Komsomol. The circle was almost immediately disclosed by the authorities, and in 1929, 17-year-old Kim Sung Joo, who was the youngest of its members, was imprisoned for several months. Official North Korean historiography, of course, claims that Kim Il Sung was not just a member, but also the head of the circle, which, however, is completely refuted by the documents.
Soon, Kim Sung Joo was released, but from that moment on his life path changed abruptly: without completing, apparently, even a school course, the young man went to one of the many partisan detachments operating in the then Manchuria to fight the Japanese invaders and their local supporters, to fight for a better world, kinder and more just 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.
The beginning of the 30s. was the time when a massive anti-Japanese guerrilla movement was developing in Manchuria. Both Koreans and Chinese, representatives of all political forces operating there, from communists to extreme nationalists, took part in it. Young Kim Sung Joo, who during his school years was associated with the Komsomol underground, quite naturally ended up in one of the partisan detachments created by the Chinese Communist Party. Little is known about his early years. Official North Korean historiography claims that from the very beginning of his activity, Kim Il Sung headed the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, which he created, which acted, although in contact with parts of the Chinese communists, but generally quite independently. These statements, of course, have nothing to do with reality. No Korean People's Revolutionary Army has ever existed; the myth about it is only part of the Kimirsen myth that arose in the late 1940s. and finally established in North Korean "historiography" a decade later. Korean propaganda has always sought to portray Kim Il Sung primarily as the national Korean leader, and therefore tried to hide the ties that existed in the past between him and China or the Soviet Union. Therefore, the North Korean press did not mention either Kim Il Sung's membership in the Chinese Communist Party or his service in the Soviet Army. In reality, Kim Il Sung joined one of the many guerrilla units of the Chinese Communist Party, of which he became a member shortly after 1932. Around the same time, he adopted the pseudonym under which he will go down in history - Kim Il Sung.
The young partisan, apparently, showed himself to be a good military man, since he was progressing well in the service. When in 1935, shortly after a number of guerrilla groups operating near the Korean-Chinese border were combined 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 guerrilla at the post of the commander of the 6th division, which was usually called "the division of Kim Il Sung." Of course, the name “division” should not be misleading: in this case, this ominous-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 guerrilla had both some military talent and leadership qualities.
The most famous of the operations of the 6th Division was the raid on Pochonbo, after which the name of Kim Il Sung gained some international fame. During this raid, about 200 guerrillas 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 gendarme post and some Japanese institutions. Although modern North Korean propaganda 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, this episode was in fact important, because the guerrillas almost never managed to cross the carefully guarded Korean-Manchu border and penetrate into Korean territory proper. Both communists and nationalists operated on Chinese territory. After the raid on Pochhonbo, rumors of which spread throughout Korea, the "commander Kim Il Sung" got serious talk. 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 North Korean farm laborer who joined a guerrilla unit at the age of 16. True, it seems that Kim Jong Suk was not the first, but the second wife of Kim Il Suk. His first wife, Kim Hyo Sun, also fought in his squadron, but in 1940 she was captured by the Japanese. Subsequently, she lived in the DPRK and held various senior positions at the middle level. Whether these rumors are fair is difficult to say, but, be that as it may, the official North Korean historiography claims that the first wife of Kim Il Suk was Kim Jong Suk, the mother of the current "crown prince" Kim Jong Il. Judging by the memoirs of those who met with her in the 40s. she was a quiet woman of short stature, not very literate, not speaking foreign languages, but friendly and cheerful. With her, Kim Il Sung had 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 end 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 area of the 1st army, he was subordinate to the guerrilla units in the Jiangdao province. His fighters managed to retaliate against the Japanese more than once, 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 areas), only one person remained alive - Kim Il Sung himself, all the rest were killed in battles. Japanese punishers with particular fury launched a hunt for Kim Il Sung. The situation was becoming hopeless, forces were melting before our eyes. Under these conditions, in December 1940, Kim Il Sung, together with a group of his fighters (about 13 people), broke through to the north, crossed the Amur and ended up in the Soviet Union. The period of his emigre life in the USSR begins.
It must be said that for a long time both among the Korean scholars and among the Koreans themselves, rumors circulated about the alleged "replacement" of the Leader in the USSR. It was argued that the real Kim Il Sung, the hero Pochhonbo and the divisional 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. The fact that the pseudonym "Kim Il Sung" from the beginning of the 20-ies also played its role. used by several partisan commanders. The conviction of 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 home village, in which he was accompanied by correspondents from the local press.
The hypothesis that strongly resembles the novels of Dumas-father, which for political and propaganda reasons is especially supported by some South Korean experts, is hardly relevant to reality. I had to talk with those who at one time spent the years of emigration next to Kim Il Sung, as well as people who were responsible for the partisans who were on Soviet territory and, therefore, often met with the future Great Leader even during the war. All of them unanimously reject this version as frivolous and unfounded. The same opinion is shared by the leading experts on the Korean communist movement Seo Dae Suk and Wada Haruki. Finally, the diaries of Zhou Bao-chung, recently published in China, also refute most of the arguments used by proponents 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 kinds of secrets and riddles will inevitably from time to time contribute to the next revival of conversations on this topic and even the appearance of the corresponding "sensational "journalistic publications.
By the beginning of the 40s, many Manchu partisans had already crossed into 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 withdrawal of the remnants of defeated partisan detachments to Soviet territory became a normal phenomenon. ... Those who crossed were usually subjected to a short-term check, and then their fates developed in different ways. Some of them entered the service in the Red Army, while others, having adopted Soviet citizenship, led the ordinary life of peasants or, less often, workers.
Therefore, the passage of Kim Il Sung and his people across the Amur at the end of 1940 was not unusual or unexpected. Like other defectors, Kim Il Sung ended up interned in a check camp for a while. But since by that time his name already enjoyed a certain fame (at least among "those who should be"), the verification procedure did not drag out 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 before 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, decades later, was destined to become Kim Jong Il, "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 Manchu 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 that in the summer of 1942 the young captain of the Soviet Army Kim Il Sung was appointed, who, however, was then more often called by the Chinese reading of his nominal hieroglyphs - Jin Richeng. The brigade commander was the famous Manchu partisan Zhou Baozhong, who was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army. Most of the brigade's fighters 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 1000 to 1.700 people, of which about 200-300 were Soviet soldiers sent to the brigade as instructors and controllers. The Korean partisans, most of whom fought under the command of Kim Il Sung or together with him in the 1930s, were part of the first battalion, of which Kim Il Sung became the commander. These Koreans were few, according to Wada Haruka's estimates, from 140 to 180 people.
The usual monotonous and rather difficult life of the unit, which was in the deep rear during the war, began to flow, a life well known to many and many Soviet peers of Kim Il Sung. As it 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 purpose in the modern sense. Neither in its armament, nor in organization, nor in combat training, it did not fundamentally differ from the usual units of the Soviet Army. True, at times some of the brigade's fighters were selected to carry out reconnaissance and sabotage operations in Manchuria and Japan.
Soviet literature of those years talked a lot about the actions of Japanese saboteurs in the Soviet Far East: explosions of trains, dams, power plants. I must say that the Soviet side responded with Japanese complete reciprocity and, judging by the recollections of veterans of the 88th brigade, not only reconnaissance, but also sabotage raids into Manchuria were commonplace. However, preparations for these raids were not conducted 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, moreover, Korea itself.
Kim Il Sung, who had fought since he was seventeen, seemed to enjoy the hard but orderly life of a career officer he led during those 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 man and "on his own 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, and Kim Il Sung was very pleased with the service, and the authorities did not complain about the young captain. During their lives in Vyatsk, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk had two more children: a son, Shura, and a daughter. The 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 this time quite clearly sees his future life: service in the army, academy, command of a regiment or division. And who knows, if history turned a little differently, it may very well be that somewhere in Moscow an elderly retired colonel or even Major General of the Soviet Army Kim Il Sung would live, and his son Yuri would work in some Moscow research institute and in In the late 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 turned out differently.
In the fleeting war with Japan, the 88th Brigade did not take any part, 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. Soon after the end of hostilities, the 88th Brigade was disbanded, and its soldiers and officers were assigned 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 of the Soviet military authorities with the local population and authorities.
The largest of the cities occupied by Soviet troops was Pyongyang, and the highest-ranking Korean officer of the 88th brigade was Kim Il Sung, so it is not surprising that it was he who was appointed assistant commandant of the future North Korean capital and, along with a number of soldiers of his battalion went there. The first attempt to get to Korea by land was unsuccessful, as the Andong railway bridge on the border of 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, allegations have appeared in the South Korean press that the role of Kim Il Sung as a future leader was predetermined even before his departure to Korea (they even talk about his secret meeting with Stalin, allegedly in September 1945). These statements look rather dubious, although I would not sweep them aside without additional 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, nor his entourage, nor the Soviet command had any special plans for his future.
However, the appearance of Kim Il Sung came in 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 in the conduct of its policy in North Korea were failing. By the beginning of October, the Soviet military-political leadership had just begun to look for a 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 the local communists: there were no figures among them who enjoyed the slightest popularity in the country. The leader of the Korean Communist Party, Park Hong Yong, operating in the South, also did not arouse any special 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 to the Soviet military authorities very timely. A young Soviet Army officer, whose guerrilla past enjoyed some prominence 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 Park Hong Young or anyone else.
Therefore, just a few days after his arrival in Korea, it was Kim Il Sung who was invited by the Soviet military authorities (or, more precisely, ordered) to appear at the ceremonial rally, which was held on October 14 at the Pyongyang stadium in honor of the liberating army, and deliver a short greeting there. speech. General IM Chistyakov, the commander of the 25th Army, spoke at the meeting and introduced Kim Il Sung to the audience as a "national hero" and "a famous partisan leader." After that, Kim Il Sung appeared on the podium in a civilian suit just borrowed from one of his acquaintances and made a speech in honor of the Soviet Army. Kim Il Sung's public appearance was the first sign of his beginning 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 Bum (a figure who later did not particularly glorify himself).
The next step on the road to power was the appointment of Kim Il Sung in December 1945 as chairman of the North Korean Bureau of the Korean Communist Party. In February, by decision of the Soviet military authorities, Kim Il Sung headed the Interim People's Committee of North Korea - a kind of interim government of the country. Thus, already at the turn of 1945 and 1946. Kim Il Sung formally became the top leader of North Korea. Although many are now talking in hindsight about Kim Il Sung's lust for power and deceit, according to the opinions of people who often met with him at the end of 1945, he was depressed 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 confusing 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 see Kim Il Sung just after he was offered to become the head of the people's committees. He was very upset and said to me:“ I want a regiment, then a division, but why? I don’t understand anything, and I don’t want to do this. "
A reflection of Kim Il Sung's well-known military leanings is the fact that in March 1946 the Soviet authorities considered him as a candidate for the post of Minister of War for a 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 drawn up. Kim Il Sung was assigned a prominent, but not the primary, war minister (a well-known South Korean left-wing politician 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. Had he been 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 completely differently. However, it is unlikely that Kim Il Sung in 1946 and even in 1949 can be called 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 above the regiment commander were obligatory agreed 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 the figurehead 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. However, over time, Kim Il Sung seems to have begun to slowly develop a taste for power, as well as acquire the skills necessary for a ruler.
Like most of North Korea's top leaders, Kim Il Sung, along with his wife and children, settled in the center of Pyongyang, in one of the small mansions that used to be owned by high-ranking Japanese officers and officials. However, Kim Il Sung's life in this house in the first years after returning 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 Suk died, with whom he lived the ten most difficult years of his life and with whom he retained a warm attitude forever. According to the recollections of those who met then with Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, he suffered painfully through 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 first years of the DPRK's existence were the split of the country and factional conflicts in the North Korean leadership itself.
As you know, by the 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 group favorable to them, the Americans controlled the South with no less energy did the same.
The result of their efforts was the rise to power in the South of the government of Rhee Seung Man. Both Pyongyang and Seoul made claims that their regime is the only legitimate authority on the peninsula and were not going to compromise. Tension increased, armed clashes on the 38th parallel, sending reconnaissance and sabotage groups to each other's territory by 1948-1949. a common occurrence, it was clearly heading towards war.
According to Yu Song Chol, who since 1948 was the head of the Operations Department of the North Korean General Staff, the preparation of a plan for an attack on the South began in the North even before the official proclamation of the DPRK. However, the fact of the preparation of this plan in the North Korean General Staff does not mean much in itself: from time immemorial, the headquarters of all armies have been busy making both plans for defense against a potential enemy and plans for an attack on him, this is a routine practice. Therefore, much more important is the question of when, how and why a political decision to start a war is made.
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 long discussions of the situation, which took place 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 Park Hong Yong, were very active, overestimating 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 Rhee Seung Man regime would fall.
This conviction was so deep that even the prepared plan of attack on the South, according to one of its authors - the former chief of the Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the DPRK, Yu Song Chol, 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 Lisinman's board. Among the Soviet leaders, an active supporter of a military solution to the problem was T.F. Shtykov, the first Soviet ambassador to Pyongyang, who 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 nuclear weapons in the USSR) did their job: in the spring of 1950, Stalin agreed with Pyongyang's proposals ...
Of course, Kim Il Sung himself not only did not mind 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 a 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 solutions to political problems. Therefore, he took an active part in the preparation of plans for the war with the South, which began with a surprise attack by North Korean troops in the early morning of June 25, 1950. The next day, June 26, Kim Il Sung spoke on the radio with an address to the people. In it, he accused the South Korean government of aggression, called for a rebuff and said that North Korean troops 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 Lisinman army fought reluctantly and ineptly. Seoul fell on the third day of the war, 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 forces. The retreat of the North Korean troops began, and by November the situation became 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 pushed to the Korean-Chinese border. However, the situation changed after the Chinese troops entered the country, 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. It was necessary to somehow protect yourself. In the context 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 reasons for the September military catastrophe and, moreover, to do it in such a way as to completely remove himself from responsibility for it. As always in such cases and is done, found a scapegoat. It turned out to be the former commander of the 2nd Army Mu Jong (Kim Mu Jong), a hero of the civil wars in China, who was declared guilty of all military failures, was demoted and soon emigrated to China.
At the end of 1950, Kim Il Sung returned to the ruined capital. American aviation constantly bombed Pyongyang, so the DPRK government and its military command settled in bunkers, a bizarre network of which was knocked out in the rocky ground of Moranbong Hill, at a depth of several tens of meters underground. Although the heavy trench warfare 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 a US-China 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 apparently completely mastered his new role and had 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 manifested his ability to maneuver and 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. The weaknesses of Kim Il Sung are primarily associated with his insufficient general training, because he not only never studied at a university, but also did not have the opportunity to engage in self-education, and he had to draw all the basic ideas about social and economic life from the traditional views of 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.
However, the challenge facing Kim Il Sung in the early 1950s required just the art of maneuvering that 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 initially 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) an "internal group", which included former underground workers who operated on the territory of Korea even before the Liberation;
3) "Yanang group", whose members were Korean communists who returned from emigration to China;
4) "partisan group", which included Kim Il Sung himself and other members of the partisan movement in Manchuria in the 1930s.
From the very beginning, these groups treated each other without much sympathy, although under the conditions of strict Soviet control, the factional struggle could not openly manifest itself. The only path to sovereignty for Kim Il Sung lay through the destruction of all groups, except for his own, partisan, and in getting rid of total Soviet and Chinese control. He devoted his main efforts to the solution of this problem in the 50s.
The destruction of factions in Korea is discussed 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 his foreheads. The first victims were the former underground members of 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, 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 Yan'ans be reinstated in the party, but even threatened to remove Kim Il Sung himself from the country's leadership. 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 omnipotent puppeteers can remove from the stage at any time, and therefore, since the mid-50s. he begins to cautiously but increasingly insistently distance himself from his recent patrons. The global purge of the party leadership in 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 sovereign master of North Korea ...
The first years after the signing of the armistice were marked by serious successes for the North Korean economy, which not only quickly repaired the damage caused by the war, but also began to rapidly move forward. The decisive role in this was played by the assistance of the USSR and China, which was very impressive.
According to South Korean data, in 1945-1970, Soviet aid to the DPRK amounted to $ 1.146 million ($ 364 million in loans on extremely concessional terms, $ 782 million in gratuitous aid). According to the same data, the 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. With this massive support, the northern economy developed rapidly and successfully, leaving the South far behind for a while. Only by the end of the sixties did South Korea manage to close the 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 the economic and military assistance received from the USSR and China, and on the other, he helped Kim Il Sung and his entourage a lot in solving the most difficult of the tasks they faced - in liberation. from Soviet and Chinese control. If 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, liquidate factions and become an absolute dictator out of control.
However, it should not be forgotten that economically North Korea was extremely dependent on both the Soviet Union and China. This dependence, despite 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, he had to, by maneuvering between Moscow and Beijing and playing on their contradictions, create opportunities for pursuing an independent political course, and on the other, to do it in such a way that neither Moscow nor Beijing would end the economic and military help.
This task could be solved only with the most skillful maneuvering between two great neighbors. And I must admit: in this, Kim Il Sung and his entourage were very successful. At first, Kim Il Sung was inclined towards an alliance with China. There were a number of explanations for this: both 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 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 China. Following the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" in the DPRK, the Chollima movement began, which, of course, was only a Korean copy of the Chinese model. In the late 1950s. ended up in North Korea and became the main economic slogan there for the Chinese principle of "self-reliance" (in the Korean pronunciation "charyok kensen", in the Chinese "zili gengsheng", the hieroglyphs 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 DPRK press did not mention the Soviet-Chinese conflict, Korean delegations, including those of the highest level, equally visited Moscow and Beijing, and economic ties with both countries developed. 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, 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 came into effect at the same time, so that the DPRK's neutrality manifested itself here as well. At the same time, the Soviet Union was mentioned less and less in the internal press of the DPRK, and less and less was said about the need to learn from it. The activities of the Korean-Soviet Friendship Society, which at one time was one of the most influential organizations in the DPRK, was gradually curtailed.
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 has fully aligned itself 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 XX Congress and did not receive support and understanding in the WPK: the condemnation of Stalin, the principle of collective leadership, the thesis about the possibility of peaceful coexistence.
The concept of peaceful coexistence was perceived by Kim Il Sung as a manifestation of surrender, and in the deployment of criticism of Stalin, he saw, not without reason, a threat to his own unlimited power. During these years, "Nodong Sinmun" has repeatedly appeared with articles, which expressed support for China's position on many issues. Thus, sharp criticism of the USSR's position in the Soviet-Chinese conflict was contained in the editorial "Defend the Socialist Camp", which attracted the attention of foreign observers, published in Nodong 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, "Nodong Sinmun" condemned "one person" (ie NS Khrushchev - AL), who advocated peaceful coexistence, on August 15 of the same year, the editorial of this newspaper expressed solidarity with the objections The CPC opposed the then planned convocation of a world conference of communist and workers' parties. This article for the first time 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 DPRK leadership unconditionally supported China during the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1962, and also condemned the "surrender" of the USSR during the Cuban missile crisis. Thus, in 1962-1964. The DPRK, together with Albania, became one of the few closest allies of China, almost completely solidarized with its position on all major international problems.
This line caused serious complications: the Soviet Union, in response, sharply reduced aid sent to the DPRK, which put some sectors of the North Korean economy on the brink of collapse, and also made Korean aircraft practically ineffective. 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 towards stability.
In addition, in those years, many Chinese Hongwei publications attacked Korean domestic and foreign policy and Kim Il Sung personally. As early as December 1964, Nodong Sinmun first 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 the two extremes. ...
The arrival in Pyongyang of the Soviet party and government delegation headed by AN Kosygin in February 1965 marked the final rejection of the DPRK's one-sided pro-Beijing orientation. the DPRK leadership began to pursue a policy of consistent neutrality in the Soviet-Chinese conflict. At times, Pyongyang's continuous maneuvering caused considerable irritation in both Moscow and Beijing, but Kim Il Sung managed to conduct business in such a way that this discontent never once led to the termination 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 Zhou Enlai's visit to the DPRK in April 1970. It is significant that the then Premier of the State Council of the PRC chose North Korea for his first trip abroad after the tumultuous years of the "Cultural Revolution." During 1970-1990. China was the second largest (after the USSR) trade partner of the DPRK, and in 1984 the PRC accounted for about 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 guerrilla warfare, whom he trusted, if not completely, then much more than those from other factions, and Kim Il Sung himself finally gained full power. Finally, he achieved what he had wanted since the beginning of the 50s: from now on he could rule completely alone, without looking back either at the internal opposition or at the opinion of his powerful allies-patrons.
Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that just from the turn of the 50s and 60s. In the life of North Korea, considerable changes are taking place, in place of the previously carried out direct copying of Soviet models, the approval of its methods of organizing production, cultural and moral values comes. The propaganda of the "Juche" ideas began, emphasizing the superiority of everything Korean over everything foreign.
For the first time the term "Juche" was sounded in the speech of Kim Il Sung "On the eradication of dogmatism and formalism in ideological work and on the establishment of the Juche", pronounced on December 28, 1955, although later, already in the early 1970s. North Korean government historiography began to assert that, they say, the very theory of "Juche" 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 issued, allegedly made 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 printed in a "supplemented" form.
Although more than one hundred volumes have already been devoted to the explanation of the term "Juche", for any North Korean everything is quite unambiguous: "Juche" is what the Great Leader and his successor wrote. Since 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, the advancement of the Juche ideology was primarily of practical importance for Kim Il Sung, since it gave him grounds to free himself from foreign (Soviet and Chinese) influence in the field of ideology. However, it can be assumed that the ambitious Kim Il Sung also enjoyed a great deal of pleasure in recognizing himself as an international theorist. However, by the end of Kim Il Sung's life, the universalist Juche component became less tangible, and traditional Korean nationalism began to play an increasing role in it. At times, this nationalism took rather comic forms - suffice it to recall the hype surrounding the "discovery" in the early 1990s of the grave of the mythical founder of the Korean state, Tangun. As you might expect, the grave of the son of a heavenly deity and a bear was discovered in Pyongyang!
At first, the departure from the pro-Soviet orientation in the early 60s. 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 great impression, therefore, freed from the largely restraining Soviet control, they seem to have decided to try to deploy an active anti-government guerrilla movement in the South along the South Vietnamese model. Until the early 60s. such intentions, if any, 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 oppose their government with arms in hand. The major unrest in South Korea in the early 60s, which took place under general democratic and, in part, nationalist-anti-Japanese slogans, seemed to have been perceived by Pyongyang and personally by Kim Il Sung almost as a sign of South Koreans' readiness for the communist revolution. Again, as in the late 1940s, when the attack on the South was being planned, the North Korean elite took wishful thinking.
In March 1967, considerable changes took place in the Korean leadership. Many leaders of intelligence operations in the South were removed from their posts and repressed. This meant a major shift 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, like two decades earlier, "partisan" groups trained in the North began to pour 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 completely 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 exacerbation of relations with the United States. Just two days after the unsuccessful raid on the Blue House, on January 23, 1968, Korean patrolmen captured the American reconnaissance ship Pueblo in neutral waters. As soon as American diplomacy had time to resolve this incident and secure 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 were shot down over the Sea of Japan, an American reconnaissance aircraft EC-121, its entire crew (31 people) was killed.
Somewhat earlier, in October-November 1968, in the South of the Korean Peninsula, there were real battles between the South Korean army and North Korean special forces, which then organized the largest invasion of the South in the entire post-war period (about 120 people took part in the raids from the North). It is possible that Kim Il Sung took the then Beijing militant demagogy (in the spirit of "World War III will be the end of world imperialism!") Seriously 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 the North Korean policy did not find any serious support in South Korean society, and that one could not count on any communist uprising there. Realization of this fact led to the beginning of secret negotiations with the South and the signing of the famous Joint Statement of 1972, which marked the beginning of certain contacts between the leaderships of both Korean states. This, however, did not mean that the DPRK leadership abandoned the use of military and quasi-military methods in relations with its southern neighbor and main enemy.
It remained characteristic of the North Korean special services even later that they combined routine and understandable information gathering activities with terrorist acts aimed at destabilizing the situation in the South. The most famous of these actions is 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 Chon Doo Hwan. Jung Doo Hwan himself survived, but 17 people from the South Korean delegation (including the foreign minister and deputy foreign trade minister) were killed and 15 were injured. The assailants 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 discourage 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 living standards and in the degree of political freedoms, was enormous towards the end of Kim Il Sung's reign and continued to grow. Under these conditions, one of the most important tasks of the regime was the struggle to maintain information 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 the epitome of failure and failure. The gap in the level of GNP per capita by that time was approximately tenfold and continued to grow. However, we can only guess how much Kim Il Sung himself was aware of the degree of lagging behind his lot.
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, which completely denies even the most timid forms of cost accounting and material interest. The economy becomes militarized, central planning becomes all-pervading, entire industries are reorganized according to the military model (for example, miners are even divided into platoons, companies and battalions, and ranks similar to those of the military are established).
Similar reforms are taking place in agriculture, where they are usually referred to as the Cheongsanli method. The 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 a local cooperative. Household plots, as well as market trade, are declared a "bourgeois-feudal remnant" and are liquidated. Autarchy, the "revolutionary spirit of self-reliance," is declared the basis of economic policy, and the ideal is a completely self-sustaining and tightly controlled production unit.
However, all these measures did not lead to an improvement in the economic situation. On the contrary, the economic successes of the first post-war years, achieved largely due to not only Soviet and Chinese economic aid, but also the copying of the economic experience of the USSR, were replaced by failures and setbacks.
The system that was established in the DPRK after Kim Il Sung gained the longed-for fullness of power, turned out to be 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 was already 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 70s, the DPRK economy has been in a state of stagnation, growth has stopped, the living standards of the majority of the population, which are already quite modest, begin to decline rapidly. The total secrecy that envelops all economic statistics in the DPRK does not allow judging the dynamics of the development of the Korean economy. Most South Korean experts believed that although in the 70s. the pace of economic development slowed down markedly, but in general it continued until the mid-1980s, when GNP began to decline.
At the same time, a number of well-informed Soviet specialists in private conversations with the author expressed the opinion that economic growth in North Korea had completely stopped by the 1980s. the decline in industrial production took on such proportions that even the North Korean leadership had to admit this circumstance.
Under these conditions, the stability of North Korean society is ensured only by strict control over the population, combined with massive indoctrination. Both in the scope of the activities of the repressive organs and in the massiveness of the ideological influence, the regime of Kim Il Sung, perhaps, has no equal in the world.
Kim Il Sung accompanied the consolidation of his one-man rule with an intense campaign of self-praise. After 1962, the North Korean authorities always began to report that 100% of registered voters took part in the next elections, and 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.
The praise of the "Great Leader, Sun of the Nation, Iron All-Conquering General, Marshal of the Mighty Republic" begins with special force since 1972, when his sixtieth birthday was celebrated with extraordinary fanfare. If before that, the propaganda of Kim Il Sung's personality generally 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 undoubtedly the most celebrated leader of the modern world. All Koreans who came of age were required to wear badges with a portrait of Kim Il Sung, the same portraits are placed in every living and office space, in subway and train cars. The slopes of the beautiful Korean mountains are lined with toasts in honor of the Leader, which are carved into the rocks in multi-meter letters. All over the country, only Kim Il Sung and his family have erected monuments, and these huge statues have often become the object of religious worship. On the birthday of Kim Il Sung (and this day since 1974 has become the country's main public holiday), 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 memorize his works at special meetings. The forms of upbringing love for the Leader are extremely diverse and even listing them would take too much time. I will only mention that all the places visited by Kim Il Sung are marked with special memorial plaques, that even the bench on which he once sat down in the park is a national relic and is carefully guarded that children in kindergartens are obliged before lunch in unison to thank Kim Il Sung for her happy childhood. Kim Il Sung's name 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 virtue of any citizen of the DPRK. Pyongyang social scientists have even developed a special philosophical discipline - "Suryongwan" (in a somewhat loose translation - "Leadership"), which specializes precisely in the study of the special role of the leader in the world historical process. This is how this role is formulated in one of the North Korean university textbooks: “The masses of the people 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 faithful to the leader means: to be imbued with the understanding that it is the leader who has an absolutely decisive role, to strengthen the importance of the leader, to believe only in the leader in any trials and to follow the leader without hesitation. "
Unfortunately, we don't know much about how Kim Il Sung's personal life has evolved since the late fifties. Over time, he increasingly fenced himself off from foreigners, and from most Koreans. The days 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 they possessed with correspondents or scientists. In addition, South Korean propaganda constantly disseminated information that was supposed to present 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) about the presence of a special group of female servants in the Leader and his son, to which only young, beautiful and unmarried women are selected. This group is called quite appropriately and meaningfully - "Joy".
Often, detractors of Kim Il Sung tried to portray these women as a kind of harem of the Chief and his heir (a famous female lover). This could be partly true, but on the whole the "Joy" group is a quite traditional institution. During the Li Dynasty, hundreds of young women were selected to work in the royal palaces. The requirements for candidates for palace maids in those days were about the same as they are now for the notorious group "Joy": applicants must be virginal, 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 were forbidden to marry today. However, in the old days, this did not mean that all the palace maids were concubines of the king. The more informed (and less prejudiced) defectors say the same about Kim Il Sung's maids. The selection for the "Joy" group is carried out by local authorities, all its members officially have the ranks of officers of the Ministry of State Protection - the North Korean political police.
Despite the increased isolation after 1960, the Great Leader continued to appear before the people from time to time almost until his death. Although he also had a pompous palace on the outskirts of the capital, before which the palaces of Arab sheikhs, as well as many magnificent residences throughout the country, paled, Kim Il Sung preferred not to lock himself in their magnificent walls. Frequent trips around the country were a characteristic feature of his work. The luxurious train of the Great Leader (Kim Il Sung organically did not tolerate airplanes and preferred the railroad even when traveling abroad), accompanied, of course, by numerous and reliable guards, appeared here and there, Kim Il Sung often came to factories, villages, visited institutions, military units, 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 The leader and his family, as well as a special group responsible for purchasing high-quality products for them abroad.
In the seventies and eighties, the main confidants of Kim Il Sung, his first assistants in governing the country, were former partisans who once fought with him against the Japanese in Manchuria. This gave the Japanese historian Wada Haruki reason to call North Korea "a state of ex-guerrillas." Indeed, 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" as the 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, they often began to be replaced by their children, 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 in the career ladder. This may have been the result of Kim's then decision 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 was included; Kang Sung Sang (Prime Minister of the Administrative Council, Secretary of the Central Committee), Park Sung Chol (Vice President of the DPRK), Hwang Chang Yup (Secretary of the Central Committee for ideology, and the actual creator of the Juche ideas, later, in 1997, fled to South Korea), Kim Chun Rin (Secretary of the Central Committee of the WPK, head of the department of public organizations), Kim Yong-sung (secretary of the Central Committee, head of the international department), Kang Hee Won (secretary of the Pyongyang City Committee, Deputy Prime Minister of the Administrative Council), Kim Tal Hyun (Minister of Foreign Trade) , Kim Chang Joo (Minister of Agriculture, Deputy Prime Minister of the Governing Body) Yang Hyun Sup (President of the Academy of Social Sciences, Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly).
This list clearly shows that Kim Il Sung's relatives hold a significant part of key positions in the North Korean leadership. These people were promoted solely due to their personal ties with the Great Leader and can count on maintaining their position only as long as Kim Il Sung or his son is in power. To these we must add the children, grandchildren and other relatives of the former Manchu 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, of course, the most important. By the end of the nineties, representatives of the second or 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 bulk 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 "nobility" of origin played an almost decisive role in access to positions and wealth.
However, belonging to the clan of Kim Il Sung's relatives does not mean a guarantee of immunity. Already many of the members of this clan were expelled from their posts and plunged into political oblivion. Thus, in the summer of 1975, Kim Yong-chu, 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, suddenly and without a trace disappeared without a trace. Prime Minister of the Administrative Council.
According to rumors, the reason for his sudden fall was the fact that he was not too approving of the incipient rise of his nephew Kim Jong Il. However, Kim Young Joo's life was spared. In the early 1990s, aged and apparently safe, Kim Yong Joo reappeared on the North Korean political Olympus and soon became a member of the country's top leadership. Somewhat later, in 1984, another high-ranking relative of Kim Il Sung, Kim Pyong Ha, who had been the head of the Ministry of Political Protection of the state for a long time, that is, occupied the most important post of chief of the security service under any dictatorship, disappeared in the same way.
Back in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Kim Il Sung remarried. His wife was Kim Sung 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 Sung Ae was the secretary of the head of Kim Il Sung's personal security. However, the first lady of North Korea hardly appeared in front of 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), she does not even remotely occupy the same place in propaganda and in the mass consciousness as Kim Jong Suk, who even long after her death remained a military friend of the Leader, his main ally. This is partly connected, apparently, with the personal feelings of Kim Il Sung himself, and partly with the role that, in his opinion, was prepared 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 stepbrothers too much.
Of course, rumors of discord in the Kim Il Sung family that are constantly appearing in the Western and South Korean press should be treated with caution, it is all too obvious that their dissemination is beneficial to the South Korean side. However, reports of the long-standing tension between Kim Jong Il and his stepmother come from sources so different that they have to be trusted. The author of these lines also heard about conflicts of this kind during his frank conversations with the North Koreans.
From about the end of the 60s. Kim Il Sung had the idea of making his son his heir, establishing something like a monarchy in the DPRK. In addition to understandable personal preferences, this decision could be dictated by sober political calculation. The posthumous fate of Stalin and, to a lesser extent, Mao taught Kim Il Sung that criticizing a dead dictator is one of the best ways to gain popularity for the new leadership. Passing power by inheritance, Kim Il Sung created a situation in which the subsequent regime would be interested in every possible strengthening of the prestige of the Founding Father (in the most literal sense of the word).
Around 1970, Kim Jong Il began to move rapidly up the career ladder. After the appointment of Kim Jong Il, who was then only 31 years old, in 1973 as the head of the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the WPK and his introduction in February 1974 into the Politburo, the Leader-Father's intentions to transfer power by inheritance became clear. As back in 1976, Kon Thak Ho, who then held a prominent post in the North Korean security service and then moved to the South, testified, by that time there was almost complete confidence in the North Korean political elite that Kim Il Sung would be Kim Jong. Ir. Weak protests against this, which were heard in the early and mid-70s among the high officials, ended, as one would expect, with the disappearance or disgrace of the disaffected.
In 1980, at the 6th Congress of the CPC, Kim Jong Il was proclaimed heir to his father, "the successor of 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 in 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 was promoted to Marshal (at the same time, Kim Il Sung himself became Generalissimo).
However, by the end of his life, Kim Il Sung had to act in a difficult environment. The collapse of the socialist community and the collapse of the USSR, the coup d'etat were a heavy blow to the North Korean economy. Although earlier relations between Moscow and Pyongyang were by no means particularly cordial, strategic considerations and the presence of a common enemy in the person of the United States, as a rule, made one forget about mutual hostility.
However, the end of the Cold War meant that the Soviet Union, and later the Russian Federation, ceased to regard the DPRK as their ideological and military-political ally in the struggle against "American imperialism." On the contrary, prosperous South Korea appeared to be an increasingly tempting trade and economic partner. This resulted in 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 much greater role in the North Korean economy than Pyongyang propaganda was ready to admit. "Self-reliance" 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. The aid flow stopped around 1990, and the results were immediate. The decline in the DPRK economy that began in 1989-1990 was so significant and obvious that it was not even possible to hide it. 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 external revenue, 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 a native element of the Great Leader. He also succeeded in this, the last for himself, time. North Korea managed to achieve that its eternal enemies - "American imperialists" agreed, in exchange for curtailing the nuclear program, to provide North Korea with economic assistance. The blackmail was successful.
This diplomatic victory was, however, 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 the 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 has lived a long and extraordinary life: the son of a Christian activist, a partisan and partisan commander, an officer of the Soviet Army, a puppet ruler of North Korea, and finally the Great Leader, the unlimited 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 old age, shows that Kim Il Sung was not only lucky, but also extraordinary. Although the consequences of his rule for Korea were, frankly, dire, the late dictator should hardly be demonized. 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 dragged into its millstones by the power machine. Most likely, in many cases he sincerely believed that his actions were aimed at the welfare of the people, at 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 were deplorable, if not catastrophic: millions killed in war and died in prisons, ruined economy, crippled generations.
North Korea is devastation, Mordor and executions from an anti-aircraft dog cannon, and South Korea is a paradise with Samsung, K-Pop and democracy. Most modern people, taught by a long tradition of anti-North Korean propaganda, think approximately so. Meanwhile, the real story is much more complicated and interesting. The well-known Russian Koreanist Konstantin Asmolov wrote a series of articles on the history of the Korean Peninsula and the two states that are located on it especially for Lenta.ru. Last time we talked about the unprecedented in its brutality suppression of the communist uprising in the South, and before that - about the beginning of the difficult path and partisan life of the first North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. The fourth article in our series is devoted to the story of how he, from a partisan leader, paved the way to become the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, and what does the Soviet Union have to do with it.
After crossing the border with the USSR, Kim Il Sung's misadventures did not end. Like all defectors, he was subjected to intense interrogations and checks for espionage. But since his name by this time already enjoyed a certain fame thanks to numerous rumors and "revelatory" articles of the Japanese, the verification procedure in the internment camp was not long, and soon Kim Il Sung became a student of courses at the Khabarovsk Infantry School, where he studied until spring 1942 year.
In addition, in January 1941, under the name Jin Richeng (the Chinese reading of the characters that make up his name), together with other defectors, Kim prepared a report for the Soviet authorities on the state of affairs among the Manchu partisans.
This report and a number of other documents unequivocally confirm the fact that a partisan commander with that name really existed and is the same person as the leader of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung. Another thing is that the documents also debunk the North Korean state myth about a large partisan army led by Comrade Kim Il Sung and never left the Korean Peninsula.
In addition, we note that in all documents of that time, Kim does not pass as Kim, but as Jin. This also applies to other Koreans as part of the Manchu partisans, in particular, in V. Ivanov's memoirs "In the rear of the Kwantung Army", we see there a fairly large number of people with the surnames Jin (Kim), Pu (Pak) or Cui (Choi / Choi ). These are all Koreans whose names are written in Chinese.
In the spring and summer of 1942, the 88th separate rifle brigade, stationed in the village of Vyatskoye near Khabarovsk, was formed from the Manchu partisans who had crossed into Soviet territory. The brigade had a special status and was directly subordinate to the military command of the Far Eastern Military District, but did not take part in the war with Japan in the Far East and was disbanded after the victory in World War II.
After graduating from college, Kim Il Sung was appointed commander of one of the four battalions of this brigade, consisting mainly of Korean partisans, and by 1945 he rose to the rank of captain of the Red Army and assistant chief of the political department of the division for the Komsomol.
Those who encountered Kim during this period note his diligence and communication skills. Being the most senior in military rank among the Koreans of the 88th Brigade, Kim Il Sung became a kind of center around which the rest of the Korean officers were grouped. He was repeatedly noted in orders for his successes in mastering the Russian language, and the only known gripe was related to the complaint of one of the officers that the soldiers did not follow his orders without the approval of Kim Il Sung.
The Soviet period in the biography of Kim in the DPRK was covered in different ways. If in his biography of the 1970s until 1945, Kim was in a secret camp in the area of Mount Pektusan (so secret that they even found him only a couple of decades later), then in his memoirs that Kim wrote in the 90s, he writes that visited the USSR. And even in the Pyongyang Museum of the Revolution there is a photo of Kim Il Sung and his wife Kim Jong Suk, which is considered a wedding photo. In the photo - they are in uniform without insignia, the photo is dated March 1, 1941, on the back - the famous poem by Kim Il Sung, beginning with the phrase "Meeting spring in a foreign land." When asked what kind of "foreign land" it was, they honestly answered that these were temporary bases on the territory of the USSR.
On August 29, 1945, 10 officers of the brigade were awarded the Orders of the Red Banner, including three Koreans: the commander of the 1st battalion, Captain Kim Il Sung, the political officer of the 2nd battalion Captain Kim Chhaek, political commander of the 3rd battalion, Captain An Gil.
In the order, however, they all went under their Chinese names. This suggests that at that time, Kim Il Sung himself and the Soviet authorities perceived him not as the leader of the Korean partisans, but as an ethnic Korean fighting in the ranks of the Chinese anti-Japanese resistance and the commander of a detachment consisting of representatives of the same nationality. Kim did not take part in the liberation of Korea by the Soviet army and ended up in the country later.
And here we will again talk about the general environment in which Kim turned out to be "our son of a bitch." By the time the Cold War began, several groups could be distinguished in the Korean communist movement. At the suggestion of A. Lankov, there are usually four of them:
Local or the so-called "internal grouping", which includes all the Communists who were inside the country at the time of liberation - both "who originally sat there" and those who were abandoned there through the Comintern.
The Yan'an grouping, which can be conditionally called the "Chinese faction" and which consisted of those communists who were at the headquarters of Mao Zedong in Yan'an - hence the name.
Kim Il Sung's entourage or the so-called "partisan faction", which includes his old associates in the partisan struggle or / and the 88th brigade, and his relatives.
Soviet Koreans, who, unlike the partisans, were born in the USSR, belonged to the second or third generation of "kyopho" (foreign Koreans) and were sent to the country to strengthen the regime with cadres.
However, this classification appears to be somewhat inaccurate. First, it reflects the initial alignment as of 1945, while later the composition of the groupings changed, and many were actively moving from one clique to another. Secondly, names like "local" or "Soviet" were as conventional as "Easterners", "Northmen" or "young" of the Li dynasty. One should not think that, for example, the “local” faction was more nationalistic than the others. Ideological differences, as in the Korean tradition, were largely used as a formal pretext for political struggle.
And judging by formal criteria, many representatives of one faction should be attributed to another. A typical example is Park Hong Young, who is considered the leader of the Local Faction and in theory could have become the leader instead of Kim. In 1921, Pak joined the Irkutsk faction of the Communist Party while in the USSR. The following year, Park returned to Korea, where he was arrested and imprisoned in a Pyongyang prison. Released in 1924, he went to work at the Tonga Ilbo Publishing House, but was soon fired for leading a solidarity strike, after which he moved to the Joseon Ilbo Publishing House, but he was also fired from there under pressure from the Governor-General. In 1925-1926, during the mass arrests of members of the Communist Party, he was captured, but released after imitating madness.
In 1928, Pak emigrated to the USSR and, unlike Kim Il Sung, who was in the Far East, studied in Moscow, where he received a much more complete humanitarian and applied education, wrote articles for newspapers, and took a certain part in factional battles in the Korean section of the Comintern. and had a sufficient number of influential friends who supported him afterwards. Such were, for example, the Russian diplomat and intelligence officer Kulikov and his wife F. I. Shabshina, who later became a prominent specialist in the history of Korea.
In February 1929, Pak joined the CPSU (b), and at the end of 1930 he became a member of the troika on Korean issues under the Comintern. In January 1932, he was sent to Shanghai for preparatory work to re-establish the Communist Party, where in July 1933 he was arrested and imprisoned until 1939, and after his release he took over as head of the hypothetical (which existed only according to his statements) Seoul Communist Group (according to in fact, the Communist Party). So, if we approach the attribution of people to one or another faction from the point of view of their political orientation, Pak looks more like a “pro-Soviet element”.
We traditionally believe that Kim Il Sung was chosen as the most pro-Soviet, and there is even a legend that Stalin personally marked his name with a colored pencil; among them were Cho Man Sik, who was immediately rejected by Stalin, and Park Hong Yong, who did not like Joseph Vissarionovich as a former representative of the Comintern. Kim Il Sung was allegedly chosen because of his youth and his military rank as captain of the Red Army.
But it is not so. If you read the extracts from the personal files of the Korean leaders, compiled by the head of the North Korean administration, Nikolai Lebedev, one might get the impression that the faction that is more firmly oriented towards the USSR was considered to be the Pak Hong Yong group. Thus, Lebedev notes that Pak “is theoretically well-trained, one of the most prepared Marxists in Korea, works systematically to improve personal knowledge in the field of Marxist-Leninist theory”, that he “firmly focuses on the USSR” and “enjoys great personal authority among broad the masses and the leaders of the left and even the centrist parties. " At the same time, the text omits the fact that for a long time Pak worked as a journalist in bourgeois newspapers.
Lenin's banner / Wikimedia
Much more interesting is the characterization that Lebedev gave to Kim Il Sung at the end of 1948. It states that Kim is "modest and hardworking", knows how to bring people closer to him, but is "proud and self-confident", and also "theoretically prepared, but does not systematically work on himself to raise the Marxist-Leninist level."
Kim Il Sung's attitude to the Soviet Union is also described quite amusingly. “Kim Il Sung is committed to the communist movement - he is an ardent supporter of introducing Korea to Soviet science, culture and art. He knows very well that without the political and economic assistance of the Soviet Union, the Korean people will not be able to create a single independent democratic state, therefore, the Labor Party, the leadership of the people's power bodies and the Korean people are oriented towards close friendship with the Soviet state and are themselves oriented towards the USSR. " In fact, Lebedev emphasizes a kind of forced position of Kim in relation to the Soviet Union: since we cannot create our own state without his help, we are forced to demonstrate our loyalty to him.
As the author noted in the previous text, many Korean communists, especially the likes of Kim, are easier to regard as ultra-left nationalists. Another important feature of this group is dreams of true independence. Many Korean politicians talked about the country's bright future, but this always presupposed a suzerain to be guided by. Actually, in one of the articles we mentioned the Society of Independence and how, instead of one gate, symbolizing an orientation towards a big brother, it simply built others. Kim, as a person who was almost repressed twice in China and in the USSR, wanted to see Korea as a truly independent country.
Since Kim Il Sung had the highest rank among Korean officers, he was naturally appointed assistant commandant of Pyongyang and planned for the post of defense minister in the government of Cho Man Sik, a Protestant and moderately left-wing nationalist. According to A. N. Lankov, then Kim did not have a particularly strong desire to engage in politics: “I want a regiment, then a division, but why? I don’t understand anything and I don’t want to do it ”. That is why a "political strategist" (more precisely, a special propaganda officer) Grigory Mekler was assigned to him, who made a lot of efforts to educate Kim Il Sung as a public politician.
On October 14, 1945, Kim Il Sung was introduced to the people at a mass rally in Pyongyang as "that legendary guerrilla leader," although he was not the only speaker. There are two interesting points associated with this event. Firstly, Kim Il Sung had a Soviet order on his jacket, which later, after the personality cult was formed, they began to retouch: if the order is visible in the early photographs of Kim at the rally, in the photo in later North Korean publications, it is not.
Secondly, the first presentation to the public of the great partisan caused, as they say, some surprise on the part of those who did not expect the hero to be so young. The general was expected to be a man of more advanced age. In addition, since Kim Il Sung's speech was written by Soviet officers and translated into Korean, the translation was of insufficient quality and sounded clumsy, which generated a certain murmur at the rally itself and a new round of rumors that Kim Il Sung was "fake."
On January 4, 1946, after a meeting of the People's Committee aimed at making decisions at the Moscow conference of December 31, 1945 (according to their terms, the joint US commission of Great Britain and the USSR was instructed to take "custody" of Korea and its people), moderately left Cho Man, unwilling to obey Moscow Sik resigned. The next day, he was placed under house arrest - and although the exact date of his death is not known, he was most likely shot in prison before North Korean forces left Pyongyang during the Korean War.
Administrative work was shifted to Kim, but something else is more important. An unambiguous protege of Moscow in any country of the socialist camp first of all moved along the party line, but here it was more difficult with Kim Il Sung. On October 13, 1945, the Soviet authorities authorized the creation of "anti-Japanese democratic parties." On the same day, the North Korean Organizing Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea was created from scattered groups of communists in the North (the name shows its subordinate position in relation to the center in Seoul, which was commanded by Park Hong Young).
Kim Yong Bum, who was sent to Korea by the Comintern back in the 1930s, was elected the Chairman of the Organizing Bureau, and the Soviet Korean Ho Gai was the secretary for organizational issues. On December 18, 1945, after the death of Kim Yong Bum, Kim Il Sung became the head of this structure, but the governing bodies were still considered southern under the leadership of Park Hong Yong and his Seoul Communist Group.
However, the "Chinese faction" headed by Kim Du Bon did not enter the Communist Party, and on February 16, 1946, it formed the New People's Party. On July 29, the two parties unite and the new party is called the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK). The choice of the name was due to the fact that in conditions when any organization that openly called itself communist could be immediately destroyed, the word "Trudovaya" in the name of the party allowed the left forces in the South to continue their activities.
Nevertheless, the WPK was formally considered an organization operating in both the North and the South, and due to the sharp opposition of the Chinese faction, not Kim Il Sung, but their leader Kim Du Bon, becomes the chairman of the North Korean Labor Party. The south wing remained under Park Hong Young even when he moved north on October 11, 1946. And only on June 30, 1949, after the formation of the DPRK and repressions against the communists in the south, Kim Il Sung became the leader of the united party.
Communist Party of Korea / Wikimedia
Anti-communist historians, including Seo Dae Suk, believe that Kim was able to achieve power only as a "fed leader" due to the absence of "his Josip Broz Tito" in Korea, and his way up is connected solely with his natural intrigue and support for the Soviets, thanks to which he destroyed more worthy rivals. As a leader of the communist movement, Kim Il Sung had significantly less merit compared to other "old communists" like Park Hong Young, who formally headed the communists of both the North and the South before leaving for the North. As a guerrilla commander, he was not the number one figure in the guerrilla movement, especially considering the "Chinese faction", many of whose members had experience in commanding large military formations.
But Kim was the only active and lively partisan commander. Those who, in addition to him, waged an armed struggle against the Japanese, were either already dead, or old, or retired, or, as we said above, themselves supported his candidacy. Those who were alive, be they nationalists or communists, did not wage an armed anti-Japanese struggle. They were representatives of the liberal intelligentsia, which did not have the support of the broad masses. Their merit consisted of individual valor or the organization of passive resistance.
In addition, by the time the country was liberated, Moscow had reasonable grounds to treat with a certain prejudice the stratum of “old communists” who were known not so much for their real merits in the field of anti-Japanese activities as for their internal party intrigues. Moscow could really assume that after the liberation of the country, these factions could begin a struggle for power and settle old scores, against which it is necessary to take certain measures.
Finally entering Korea, the Soviet Union had no definite plans for the compulsory construction of a Soviet-style regime there. According to the accepted postulates, confirmed by archival documents, the Korean events were perceived not as a socialist, but as a people's democratic revolution: on the basis of a united front, a people's democratic power was established and a certain set of democratic reforms was carried out (a series of which added legitimacy to Kim Il Sung and strengthened his popularity) , and only then the transition to socialism is carried out.
Korean Central News Agency / Korea News Service / AP
The forced creation of the communist regime took place only after the failure of the "trusteeship plan" and against the backdrop of the beginning of the Cold War. In this context, despite the years spent in the USSR, Kim Il Sung is much more like a "Korean Tito" than a "ruler from the baggage car", especially since early American intelligence reports compared Kim Il Sung with Tito, and not with direct pro-Soviet leaders, originally nourished within the USSR.
Against this background, the author suggests that Kim's rise was connected not so much with his loyalty to the USSR as with the need to nominate a compromise figure to the post of the country's leader in order to avoid an outburst of factionalism.
Until the early 1950s, Kim was by no means an autocratic leader and was forced to take into account the opinion of older and influential figures. Both Stalin in 1930 and Kim Il Sung in 1945 were only "the first among equals", they acted surrounded by much more authoritative political figures and were forced to constantly take into account the presence of opposition both inside and outside the party.
The latter is important enough to understand exactly when the absolute power of Kim Il Sung took shape as the leader of the country whom he was remembered for in the 1970s and 1990s. Until the end of the Korean War in 1953, and especially before it began in 1950, Kim Il Sung was forced to reckon with the opinions of other factions and leaders. Only in 1956-57 did Kim begin his path to sole power, eliminating his opponents - but how this happened, you will read in the next text.
(real name - Kim Sung Joo)
(1912-1994) Korean politician, President of the DPRK
Kim Il Sung turned out to be one of the last communist dictators of the 20th century, but the state he created today is the most isolated and ideologized country in the world.
Kim was born into a peasant family in the small village of Man Chzhong Da, located near Pyongyang, and was the eldest of three sons, so his parents began to teach him to read and write.
In 1925, his father moved his family north to Manchuria and got a job as a worker in a factory in Jilin City. 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 arrested the young man and sentenced him to several months in prison. After his release, Kim goes into an illegal position. For several months he hides in the villages, and then enters 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 was illegally smuggled into Korea and continued to fight 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 tough actions of the Japanese authorities lead to the defeat of the guerrillas. In June 1937, Kim Il Sung was arrested but soon escaped from prison. In 1941, he became the leader of all ethnic Korean guerrilla forces. After the outbreak of World War II, he withdraws his troops to the north, and they join the People's Liberation Army of China. Himself Kim Il Sung 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 across 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 is 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 United States, 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 a military and then a civilian leader of the Republic of Korea. He creates the Korean People's Revolutionary Party, which he also leads.
Striving for sole dominance on the Korean Peninsula, Kim Il Sung convinces Stalin to start a war with South Korea. He believed that the guerrilla groups would illegally enter the American zone and help parts of the Korean and Soviet armies to 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. International public opinion was also opposed. The UN regarded the war as an act of aggression and sanctioned 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 the blows of units of the American army, the 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 casualties: four million people died in the battles.
After the defeat, Kim Il Sung focused on domestic politics, turning his state by the end of the fifties into a kind of paramilitary zone.
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 the Juche, the power of Kim Il Sung and his heirs is declared to be the only possible form of government. All places associated with the life and work of Kim Il Sung become sacred and become objects of worship. The main goal of all domestic policy was declared "survival in conditions of almost complete isolation."
Koreans are declared to be the supreme people who do not need outside help for development. For several decades, North Korea has developed, separated by the 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 sharply deteriorating, 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 whole.
In 1992, the seriously ill Kim Il Sung gradually began to transfer power to his son, Kim Jong Il. In early 1994, he officially declares him his heir.