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Kim Il Sung and the Founding of North Korea

© John Walsh

Introduction

North Korea remains one of the most mysterious countries in the world, one which has been identified as part of a so-called 'axis of evil' apparently devoted to terrorizing the rest of the world. It continues to try to be as isolated and independent from the remainder of the world as it can be - quite different from the trends in the rest of the world which are for greater interdependence and globalisation. To understand how this has happened - and why - requires some understanding of the founder of North Korea, Kim Il Sung.

The Korean Peninsula

The Korean peninsula was dominated by a single unified state for more than one thousand years. Its people consider that Koreans are among the most ethnically homogeneous peoples in the world. For most of its history, it adopted an isolationist approach to the outside world, with barriers being placed to prevent anyone from entering or leaving the kingdom without express permission. This policy, which earned Korea the name of The Hermit Kingdom, was initiated partly in response to constant attempts to invade the peninsula, by Chinese or Japanese or nomad horsepeople such as the Jurchens or Mongols. Koreans have been invaded hundreds of times but have never themselves ever attempted to invade an overseas state. Peace is of great importance to Korean society and this is reflected in language and thinking at many levels. Most terribly, the Japanese finally attempted to colonise Korea from 1910 and made significant efforts to wipe out any sense of Korean nationalism or self-identity. Meanwhile, huge social and economic inequities in neighbouring Russia and China were giving rise to the growth of communism as an ideology that might provide an alternative to sterile monarchic authoritarianism or the colonialism still professed by most western thinkers.

In this context, the potential leaders of Korea were forged by the need to expel the Japanese and to ensure national self-determination. Since political and organisational education for Koreans in Korea was strongly controlled by the colonizing Japanese, potential leaders and aspiring intelligentsia had to escape overseas. This was the fate of Kim Il Song (born Kim Song Ju in 1912). He fled Korea for Manchuria with his parents in 1925 to escape persecution and, after a period in jail for political activism, from about 1930 had become active in Korean guerrilla forces dedicated to removing the Japanese.

Kim Il Sung's Career

The Korean resistance had only mixed success in fighting the technologically superior Japanese and it was the events of the Second World War that were more influential in finally ending Japanese occupation. The advance of the Soviet army towards Japan allowed it to occupy the northern half of the Korean peninsula; it was only the surrender of Japan in response to the dropping of atomic bombs by American forces that led to the division of the peninsula on a more permanent basis. The enmity between the US-occupied south and the Russian-occupied north was immediately intense and vitriolic. War seemed inevitable and eventually broke out at the beginning of the 1950s. Three years of intense warfare resulted in a stalemate and a ceasefire that has never been resolved into a peace agreement.