Kim il sung official biography states

He ruled under the name "Great Leader," and placed himself in a position to be revered almost as a god by his people. Kim admired Stalin's methods and his bearing, and worked to develop his own status as an absolute ruler. As the "Great Leader" of the DPRK, he had a very energetic personal presence and was an impressive speaker who regularly made unexpected "tours" all over the country.

The New York Times reported that citizens were encouraged to devote two to four hours daily to "Kim Study," during which they would reflect on their leaders' teachings. Throughout the streets of Pyongyang, there are thirty thousand statues of Kim. His birthday was celebrated as the most important of national holidays. Kim developed and advanced a doctrine of nationalist self-sufficiency, known as "juche," which proclaims that the Korean people are masters of their own destiny.

Juche was Kim's attempt to apply the ideas behind German philosopher Karl Marx 's communism to the unique Korean society. Kim repeatedly proved that he held the country in a tight control. For some time, his vision of the future worked. From until the s, Kim emphasized heavy industry and collective farming, and he was able to push people to work long hours.

During this period, North Korea was a model of state-controlled development, and was economically better off. Yet North Korea under Kim was a true dictatorship that did not permit disagreement with the government of any kind. Each of the country's twenty-two million people was classified according to their degree of loyalty to Kim.

The "core class" 25 percent lived in the big cities and received the best jobs, education, and food. The "wavering class" 50 percent had second-rate jobs and homes, and their loyalty was monitored by internal security forces. The people in the "hostile class" were assigned to hard labor and most lived in remote villages. Dissent did not exist in North Korea, at least not out loud; according to Amnesty Internationalthere were tens of thousands of dissidents and political enemies in concentration camps during Kim's reign, and untold numbers had been executed.

As an economic program juche began to decline in the s. Kim's military spending reached 25 percent of the entire national budget in South Korea, it was 4 percent ; harvests declined; the Soviets no longer wanted to import North Korea's tractors and trucks; and public works spending increased greatly, most of it on monuments to Kim. For his sixtieth birthday inKim erected a huge bronze statue, among other things; for his seventieth, it was an Arch of Triumph taller than the original in Paris, France, and the Tower of the Juche Idea, which consisted of 25, white granite blocks, one for each day of Kim's first seventy years.

North Korea remained isolated from capitalism and the West longer than any other communist nation. Capitalism, the economic system of the United States and most Western powers, is based on the idea that individuals, rather than the state, own property and businesses, and the cost and distribution of goods are determined by the free market.

Capitalism is fundamentally at odds with communism, in which goods are owned by the community as a whole rather than by specific individuals and are available to all as needed. The country has been involved in several terrorist attacks, including one against South Korea's president in A blown-up South Korean airliner has also been credited to North Korean terrorists.

When, inthe American ship the U. Pueblo was intercepted on a spying mission in North Korean waters, Kim managed to embarrass the United States by imprisoning the crew for eleven months. Inwith nuclear materiel in his country, possibly a bomb or even two, Kim announced that North Korea would withdraw from the longstanding international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

On a visit to North Korea, former U. President Jimmy Carter managed to ease tensions, and new United Nations talks had begun when Kim died on July 8,in North Korea, of an apparent heart attack. The depth and character of North Korea's mourning for Kim was difficult for Westerners to comprehend. A member committee, chaired by his son, Kim Jong Il, organized the funeral in Pyongyang.

An estimated two million North Koreans attended the three-and-a-half hour procession. After the mourning period, Kim was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Il, who had been placed in many key positions in the government as far back as and was already groomed for the public as the "Dear Leader. New York Times, July 10, ; July 11, Suh Dae-sook. New York: Columbia University Press, The Korean Communist Movement, — Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, Communism: a system of government in which one party usually the Communist Party controls all property and goods and the means to produce and distribute them.

Cult of personality is the elevation of a leader to the level of godlike infallibility, an object of adoration and veneration to the people of his nation. This is achieved through constantly bombarding the people with praise for the leader's virtues and achievements through every form of communication and art available. Some communist ideology the philosophy behind the system revolves around the concept of a personality cult.

In order for people to work together for the communal good, the theory goes, they must be motivated by a deep adoration and unquestioning enthusiasm for their one absolute leader. Stalin was a pioneer in developing the cult of personality. His predecessor, Vladimir Lenin —had utterly opposed the idea. Lenin believed that the masses should be elevated, not the leader.

But when Stalin was trying to stabilize his own power base after Lenin's death, he pursued the kind of religious adoration from the Russian people that had in the past been devoted to the Russian czar or monarch. Stalin had his picture posted all over the Soviet Union. He rewrote history to take credit for Soviet achievements and to firmly associate himself with the beloved Lenin.

Poems written at that time often sounded like hymns to Stalin, as the savior and father of the nation. The cult of personality allowed no dissent disagreement. If artists or journalists did not worship him, they were often deported sent out of the countryarrested, or even executed. In his later years, Mao Zedong promoted himself as an almost religious figure in China.

Some people began and ended their days praying to him. Every home had a picture or statue of Mao in it. His posters were all prepared to make him godlike, radiating light. Although Mao actively—and successfully—pursued the personality cult, the Chinese government functioned with input from many people. Mao's later periods of absolute rule alienated many people around him.

In the Soviet Union and China, the idea of the cult of personality was rejected after Stalin's deadly purges elimination, often by murder of enemies and Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution — InSoviet premier Nikita Khrushchev — delivered a scathing speech against the cult of personality and Stalin's use of it, saying that "Stalin had so elevated himself above the party and above the nation that he ceased to consider either the central committee [government] or the [Communist] party.

As has been noted by many historians and journalists, in many ways Kim Il Sung surpassed both Stalin and Mao with his own cult of personality campaign. This is particularly notable since the cult lasted after his death and well into the twenty-first century. People bowed to these images morning and night. His books—twenty-seven volumes of his teachings—provided the center of education in the nation.

He was often called the "eternal" leader of North Korea, in effect, still ruling along with his son, the "Great Leader. Source: Modern History Sourcebook. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. January 8, Retrieved January 08, from Encyclopedia. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Premier of North Korea. The Cold War was an intense political and economic rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union that kim il sung official biography states from to Asserting his rule with an iron hand, Kim Il Sung was the longest-serving leader of a communist government in the twentieth century.

He created an almost mythical cult status for himself within North Korea, but he was little known elsewhere because he purposely kept North Korea isolated from the outside world. He was the oldest of three sons. For 46 years, Kim established himself firmly in power. He positioned himself as one who would undo Korea's long past as victims of history.

One of his first acts as Premier was to convince his Soviet military supporters that he could sweep across the 38th parallel, conquer South Korea in three weeks, and re-unify the country. By telegrams and in person, he convinced Stalin as well. Kim invaded South Korea in June,armed by the Soviets. The cease-fire seven months later found the opposing Korean forces near the war's starting point, the 38th parallel and Kim's re-unification dreams wrecked.

The Korean Warwhich lasted until July 25,was, in part, a manifestation of Kim's ambition to unify the Korean peninsula through military means. Despite his treatment by Stalin, Kim continued to admire the Soviet dictator's methods, his bearing, and his cult of personality, and Kim worked to develop his own status as a ruler. By the early s, he had finally expelled the last of the Soviets from North Korea, had purged all his enemies, and had elevated his parents, uncles, grandparents and even a great-grandparent to revolutionary hero status.

His rule became based on fear, ignorance, and isolation from the rest of the world. Capitalizing on the latter, Kim developed and propagated a doctrine of nationalist self-sufficiency, known as Jouche: the Korean people are masters of their own destiny, and since Kim Il-sung was absolute ruler, he was master of their destiny. And for some time, his vision of the future worked.

From until the s, Kim emphasized heavy industry and collective farming, and he was able to push people to work long hours. During this period, North Korea was a model of state-controlled development, economically better off than South Korea. As for fear, each of the state's 22 million people was classified according to their degree of loyalty to Kim.

The "hostile class" were assigned to hard labor and most lived in remote villages. Dissent did not exist in North Korea, at least not out loud; according to Amnesty Internationalthere were "tens of thousands" of dissidents and political enemies in concentration camps, and "untold numbers" had been executed. As for ignorance, those born after the Korean War know the world Kim wanted them to know: they saw no foreign newspapers or foreign kim il sings official biography states, and radios received only government stations.

As an economic program Jouche began to decline in the s. Kim's military spending reached 25 percent of the entire national budget in South Korea, it was four percent ; harvests declined; North Korea's tractors and trucks were no longer attractive purchases in Moscow; and public works spending ballooned, most of it on monuments to Kim Il-sung.

For his 60th birthday inKim erected a huge bronze statue, among other things; for his 70th, it was an Arch of Triumph taller than the original in Paris, and the Tower of the Jouche Idea which was three feet taller than the Washington Monument and consisted of 25, white granite blocks, one for each day of Kim's first seventy years. North Korea has been involved in several terrorist attacks, including one against South Korea's president in Another attack was made in Rangoon alleged by the Burmese against a different South Korean president.

A blown-up South Korean airliner has also been credited to North Korean terrorists. Although they have never been acknowledged as terrorists, or of sheltering terrorists, South Korea was always the target. Kim reviled the United States as well, for its role in dividing Korea into two. When in the U. Pueblo was intercepted on a spying mission in North Korean waters, Kim managed to embarrass the United States by imprisoning the crew for 11 months.

Stalin had almost come to the point of despair and ordered Kim to evacuate to China, but Mao made an independent decision to provide massive manpower assistance to Kim, not only to prevent UN troops from possibly entering Chinese territory, but to preserve the gains of communism in Asia.

Kim il sung official biography states

On October 25,seasoned Chinese troops "people's volunteers" in the tens and later hundreds of thousands crossed the Yalu in "human wave" attacks. UN troops were compelled to hastily retreat with heavy losses; Chinese troops retook Pyongyang in December and Seoul in January In March, UN forces began a counter-offensive, permanently retaking Seoul.

After a series of offensives and counter-offensives by both sides, followed by a grueling period of trench warfare, the front stabilized generally along the 38th parallel. Upon Stalin's death in Marchthe Soviet Politburo immediately pursued serious truce negotiations through the Chinese, arriving at the Armistice Agreement on July 27,which is still in effect today.

Kim Il-sung survived the war, and with Soviet and Chinese assistance, rebuilt his devastated country. After the Korean War, Kim Il-sung consolidated his power against Koreans aligned with either the Soviet Union or China, or with South Korean communists, using his followers from his anti-Japanese guerrilla days as his base of support.

He purged all of his rivals, real or potential, embarking on the reconstruction of the country which had been flattened through both aerial bombing and ground combat. He launched a five-year national economic plan to establish a Soviet-style command economy, with all industry owned by the state and agriculture collectivized. With the economy based on heavy industry, and with significant Soviet subsidies, North Korea retained an armed force far in excess of its defense needs.

Most analysts believe Kim sought additional opportunities to reunify the Korean peninsula through force until the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet state in During the s, Kim maintained the posture of an orthodox Communist leader. He rejected the USSR's de-Stalinization and began to distance himself from his patron, including the removal of any mention of his Red Army career from official history.

Inanti-Kim elements encouraged by de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union emerged within the Korean Workers Party to criticize Kim and demand reforms. When the Sino-Soviet split developed in the s, Kim initially sided with the Chinese but prudently never severed his relations with the Soviets. Kim developed the nationalistic ideology of Juche self-reliancethat maintains that man is the master of his fate, which defied the materialistic determinism of Marxism-Leninism.

He thought something similar might be possible in Korea. He ordered an intense program of Infiltration and subversion efforts culminating in an attempt to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee by unsuccessfully storming the presidential Blue House. Kim promoted an aggressive stance toward U. North Korean troops frequently provoked U.

Navy intelligence vessel and its crew in international waters, intentionally heightening the tension between the North and South. He also announced that his son, Kim Jong-ilwould succeed him and up until Kim Il-sung's death, he increasingly delegated the running of the government to his son. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union, during —, cut off the DPRK from most of it fraternal communist allies, and Russia refused to continue the subsidies of the former USSR; China, as well, reduced its assistance to Kim.

The consequence was North Korea's severe political and economic isolation. Those events, added to North Korea's continued high level of military investment, led to a mounting economic crisis. As the Cold War ended, the contrast between North Korea's poverty and the booming economy of South Korea became increasingly glaring, but North Korea's totalitarian control of information, nearly completely cut North Koreans off from news inside and outside Korea.

During the s, Kim's personality cult grew more extensive. The state claimed that Kim personally kim il sung official biography states nearly every aspect of life in North Korea, attributing almost supernatural powers to him; Kim was deified in quasi-religious terms. The North Korean regime executed or sent to concentration camps any North Korean suspected of opposing Kim in any way; even a failure to show enthusiastic worship of Kim could lead to arrest.

Kim repeatedly proclaimed internally that he would reunite Korea before his 70th birthday in That winter some analysts maintain Kim was prepared to invade the South, but U. President Richard Nixon 's dramatic trip to China in February to create a strategic alliance against the Soviet Unionforced Kim to abandon his plan. Instead, he began a brief inter-Korean dialogue, which led to a significant joint declaration in July.

In he was named party chairman. He purged and executed a number of high-ranking officials in subsequent years. He also has moved forward aggressively to develop the country's nuclear weapons and missile technologies and encouraged economic growth through the tolerance of limited market-oriented changes.