The history of modern Korea is inexorably linked to the contributions of legendary leader Kim Il Sung. At every decisive moment in its history, Kim Il Sung provided leadership and ensured that the necessary organisation was put in place to carry out the tasks required.
Kim Il Sung was born into a revolutionary peasant family in 1912, in the midst of the military occupation of Korea by the Japanese imperialists (1905-1945). In his early years his family moved between Korea and China. In June 1926, he was admitted to Hwasong Uisuk School, in Huadian, China, where he organised the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) and was acclaimed its leader on October 17 the same year. Later, while studying at the Jilin Yuwen Middle School, he reorganised the DIU into a more mass-based organisation the Anti-Imperialist Youth League on August 27, 1927, and founded the Young Communist League of Korea on August 28. By the time he was 18 years of age, he had already formed various mass organisations of the Korean people and was leading the anti-Japanese struggle.
At a historic meeting in Kalun, China June 30 to July 2, 1930, Kim Il Sung summed up the revolutionary movement’s experience, specifically the necessity for the revolution to be carried out on the basis of the Korean people’s social responsibility to one another, in accordance with their own needs, experience and thought material. He pointed out that all the problems arising in the revolution should be solved independently and creatively by the Korean people themselves. Thus, the Juche idea of self-reliance was first crystallised. The summation given by Kim Il Sung at this meeting is also where the Songun or military-first idea of national self-defence originated – that the revolution is pioneered, advances and wins victory by strength of arms.
Kim Il Sung formed the first Party organisation – the Society for Rallying Comrades – on July 3, 1930 in Kalun and organised the Korean Revolutionary Army, a political and paramilitary organisation to make preparations for an anti-Japanese armed struggle in Guyushu, Yitong County, China on July 6 the same year.
He formed the Anti-Japanese People’s Guerrilla Army (later reorganised into the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army), a standing revolutionary army on April 25, 1932 and led the anti-Japanese armed struggle, employing guerrilla tactics that put the Japanese on the run and ultimately defeated them, thus making a great contribution to the defeat of the Axis powers in World War Two. The country was liberated on August 15, 1945.
Shortly thereafter, Kim Il Sung and his fellow revolutionaries formed the Central Organising Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea and proclaimed the founding of the Party on October 10, 1945. The Workers’ Party of North Korea would later emerge from the union of the Communist Party and the New Democratic Party in August 1946.
After he returned to Korea, Kim Il Sung was elected Chairman of the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea on February 8, 1946. At that time People’s Committees were present all over Korea with the aim of reuniting the country, which had been divided at the 38th parallel as a decision of the Moscow Conference of 1945 when the Soviet Union and the US agreed to receive the Japanese surrender and hold Korea in “trusteeship” for five years and pave the way for Korea to be handed back to the Koreans. This was resented by the majority of Koreans who felt that they were quite capable of running their own affairs. From 1945 to 1948, Kim Il Sung was active in leading the fight for Korean independence in the face of the brutal campaign of terror the US was waging to suppress the Korean independence movement and establish a permanent military presence in south Korea to launch its wars of aggression. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans perished or were imprisoned during this period. Fraudulent “elections” were organised to install the Syngman Rhee puppet regime in the south – all against the wishes of the Korean people.
The period following the US partition of Korea at the 38th parallel was a time of grave danger for the Korean people. The US was using the UN to organise a bogus election in south Korea to entrench the division of Korea. To oppose these aims, Kim Il Sung called a historic conference in Pyongyang April 19-23, 1948, which was attended by political parties and organisations from the north and south including many prominent political personalities from the south. At that Joint Conference of Representatives of Political Parties and Public Organisations in North and South Korea, he called on the entire Korean people in the south to rise up as one to thwart the US imperialists’ plans to use the UN to orchestrate a fraudulent election to establish a pro-US government in the south and divide Korea into “two Koreas” permanently.
At this conference Kim Il Sung reminded the delegates that the Korean people have a proud 5,000-year history, that they liberated their country from Japanese imperialism through their own efforts and that it is their sovereign right to establish a unified, democratic Korea, by their own efforts, uniting under the banner of the nation, setting aside political differences in order to secure the reunification and independence of their divided country.
He organised another conference of the Korean people in June that year to denounce the UN elections that were carried out illegally against the will of the Korean people on May 10, 1948, in the south and which installed the reactionary anti-communist Syngman Rhee as President of the Republic of Korea (ROK), which was declared in August 15, 1948. At this second conference, plans were made to carry out elections to the Supreme People’s Assembly of a united democratic Korea in September 1948 in which close to 80 per cent of the electors from the south and 99 per cent from the north voted.
The US refused to recognise the sovereignty of the Korean people and undertook a campaign of mass terror and violence against the patriotic forces in the south who had taken up arms to liberate south Korea from US domination. It was Kim Il Sung who worked tirelessly to inspire and lead the Korean reunification movement at this critical juncture.
On June 25 1950, President Kim Il Sung and the Korean people were forced by the US imperialists into the Korean War. The US was overconfident about a quick victory over the nascent DPRK. Despite the US military attack across the 38th parallel at dawn June 25, 1950 which began the war, Kim Il Sung and the KPA were prepared and able to go on the counter-offensive moving steadily south. In a little over a month, the KPA liberated 90 per cent of the territory of south Korea and 92 per cent of its population.
The United States, attempting to “encircle and annihilate” the KPA units, called the troops of 15 other countries including Britain to the Korean front, as part of an infamous and illegitimate UN “police action”. In response, President Kim Il Sung ordered the KPA to make a strategic and temporary retreat, thus keeping the initiative.
The KPA, taking advantage of the mountainous terrain of the country, developed tunnel warfare and employed a wide range of tactics to frustrate and weaken the enemy forces. As Supreme Commander, Kim Il Sung adapted to the ever-changing situation, ultimately leading to the defeat of the US aggressors in July 1953, after three years of bloody warfare in which an estimated four million Koreans were killed – the vast majority civilians – by military massacres, napalm attacks, carpet bombing, germ-warfare and other crimes. General Mark Clark, commander of the US/UN forces, admitted in a surrender document that the KPA had emerged victorious thanks to General Kim Il Sung’s command.
The US imperialists’ spirit of revanchism and striving for global domination has meant that ever since the end of the Korean War, the US has refused to sign a peace treaty while it has continuously violated the Armistice Agreement. This means that technically there is still a state of war on the Korean Peninsula which requires the DPRK to expend great efforts to maintain the peace and make sure that never again will the US be able to rain death and destruction by occupying all of Korea as it attempted to do in the 1950s’ war. Meanwhile, the US has maintained a brutal economic blockade, continued to garrison troops in south Korea as well as various weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons. It has committed innumerable acts of espionage, military provocations and war games which continue to the present.
In the early 1960s, when the situation worsened owing to US schemes to ignite a new war, President Kim Il Sung made sure that the US did not achieve its aim of keeping Korea vulnerable. He led the people to simultaneously push ahead with economic construction and ensure that defence building projects were put in place while looking after the people’s well-being. The military was further strengthened and modernised and defence training provided to all citizens, thus turning the whole country into a veritable fortress against foreign aggression.
From the time that Korea was divided against the will and aspirations of the Korean people following their defeat of the Japanese military occupiers of their country, Kim Il Sung provided consistent, timely and decisive leadership, including advancing the three principles of national reunification (May 1972), the Five Point Policy for National Reunification (June 1973), the plan for founding a Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo (October 1980) and the 10-Point Programme of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation for the Reunification of the Country (April 1993).
The 10-Point Programme for National Reunification was elaborated by President Kim Il Sung at the Supreme People’s Assembly on April 6, 1993:
“1. A unified state, independent, peaceful and neutral, should be founded through the great unity of the whole nation.
“2. Unity should be based on patriotism and the spirit of national independence.
“3. Unity should be achieved on the principle of promoting co-existence, co-prosperity and common interests and subordinating everything to the cause of national reunification.
“4. All political disputes that foment division and confrontation between fellow countrymen should be ended and unity should be achieved.
“5. The fear of invasion from both south and north, and the ideas of prevailing over communism and communisation should be dispelled, and north and south should believe in each other and unite.
“6. The north and south should value democracy and join hands on the road to national reunification, without rejecting each other because of differences in ideals and principles.
“7. The north and south should protect the material and spiritual wealth of individuals and organisations and encourage their use for the promotion of great national unity.
“8. Understanding, trust and unity should be built up across the nation through contact, exchange visits and dialogue.
“9. The whole nation, north, south and overseas, should strengthen its solidarity for the sake of national reunification.
“10. Those who have contributed to the great unity of the nation and to the cause of national reunification should be honoured.”
The Three Charters for national reunification consist of the three principles of national reunification, the ten-point Programme of the great unity of the whole nation and the proposal of establishing the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo.
The Three Charters have reflected the actual conditions of the country and the nation’s unanimous aspiration and demand for reunification and comprehensively covered and systematised in an integral manner all the issues in realising national reunification, i.e. the charters have defined the fundamental principles and the driving forces for national reunification, clarified the mode and method of the reunification and even gave a complete picture of the reunified state including the ways of running the federal state and its administrative policy. It makes the Three Charters a perfect charter for reunification in the true sense of the word.
These principles and proposals created the conditions for the signing in Pyongyang of the historic June 15, 2000, North-South Joint Declaration between Kim Jong Il, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of the DPRK, and President Kim Dae Jung of the ROK.
The north-south joint declaration opened a new era of national reunification movement by affirming the core of the three principles for national reunification-the spirit of national independence, the idea of by our nation itself and by achieving national consensus, for the first time in history, at the summit-level on the federal system as the way to achieve national reunification.
In the June 15 joint declaration, the north and south recognised that the proposal by the north for a low-stage federal formula and the one by the south for a confederal formula had points in common and agreed to navigate the moves for reunification in this direction.
This is the first method for reunification common to the nation that was agreed between the north and south in the history of national division marked with the traces of the vicious cycle of mistrust and confrontation.
This historical agreement on building a reunified state in the confederal formula is a great and historic national asset that opened a prospect for achieving the grand national unity, overcoming differences in the ideology, doctrine and systems and is the practical proof of the righteousness and vitality of the Three Charters.
The joint declaration on the development of the north-south relations, peace and prosperity issued at the north-south summit on October 4, 2007 is a practical programme for national unity since it is a comprehensive agreement reached at the summit level on the development of the north-south relations, peace and common prosperity of the nation embodying the idea of grand national unity of the Three Charters for national reunification.
This practical programme gives answers to all practical and immediate issues arising in achieving the great national unity including the facilitation of the legal and institutional mechanism to develop the north-south relations towards the reunification, ending the military hostility, easing tension and maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula, terminating the cease-fire state and establishing a durable peace regime, developing the national economy in a balanced way, economic cooperation for the common prosperity, consolidating national culture, broadening humanitarian cooperation, securing the rights of the overseas compatriots and so on.
In his 2015 New Year address, Comrade Kim Jong Un stated that the north and the south should refrain from seeking system confrontation while absolutising their ideology and system and satisfactorily resolve the reunification issue in the common interests of the nation transcending the differences in ideology as they had already agreed. He has upheld that in order to achieve national reunification in line with the desires and intentions of the nation, the Korean people have to reject foreign interference and firmly maintain the stand of “By Our Nation Itself”.
For these contributions to building a modern Korea and leading and inspiring the Korean reunification movement, and thus contributing to the independence of all nations, self-determination of all peoples and peace, Kim Il Sung is owed a debt by the Korean people and all humanity, a debt that will be paid when Korea is reunited as a modern democratic state.
On the front of international relations, far from permitting the DPRK to be isolated by the US imperialists, President Kim Il Sung did his utmost to build links with the peoples of the world on behalf of the Korean people. He met more than 70,000 foreign guests including heads of state and government and party leaders, and paid official or unofficial visits to 87 countries. In June 1994, he met former US President Jimmy Carter in Pyongyang and created favourable conditions for the opening of DPRK-US negotiations about the nuclear issue and for a north-south summit. His life-long efforts lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations with most countries of the world with the exception of the countries which committed aggression against the DPRK during the Korean War. To date, the aggressor states refuse to right historical wrongs or normalise relations on the basis of upholding the principle of the right to self-determination.
In recognition of his achievements, Kim Il Sung received more than 180 top decorations from more than 70 countries and international organisations, titles of honorary citizenship from more than 30 cities and honorary academic degrees from 20 foreign universities.
Kim Il Sung worked tirelessly for the Party and the revolution, for the country and the people, for global peace until the last moment of his life. Kim Il Sung died on July 8, 1994.
The great achievements of President Kim Il Sung are reflected in the revolutionary spirit of the people of the DPRK today in the work to build a bright future themselves, safeguard their independence and reunify their country. At a time when the peoples of the world are striving to defeat imperialism around the world, a great debt is owed to President Kim Il Sung and the Korean people for the incalculable sacrifices made to establish the DPRK which has been an implacable bulwark against US imperialism, and to reunify Korea so as to guarantee peace on the Korean peninsula, thereby contributing greatly to the peace and security of the region and the entire globe.
We salute the immortal memory of President Kim Il Sung!