On April 15th known as ’Day of the Sun’ to the Korean people mass celebrations will Take place in Pyongyang and other cities in the DPRK.These will be colourful and vibrant.Throughout the world from Lima to Tokyo meetings,seminar and events will take place
Why is Kim Il Sung known as the sun of Korea because is is deeply respected and seen as the guiding light and inspiration.Comrade Kim Il Sung is deeply revered not only by the Korean people but the world people.You can see this clearly by visiting the International Friendship Exhibition in the scenic Myohang mountains in the north west of Korea.Here exhibited are some 36,000 gifts sent to the great Leader comrade Kim Il Sung by different people throughout the world,everyone from humble workers To state and party leaders has gifts exhibited there.You will see the train sent by Chairman Mao Zedong of Peoples China and the bullet proof car sent by Stalin as well gifts from the likes of Fidel Castro,Daniel Ortega,Col Qaddafi , Yasser Arafat and many others.Various international revolutionary leaders have praised the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung,for example Comrade Fidel Castro Ruz former president of Cuba said he retrospects Comrade Kim Il Sung, a staunch revolutionary, outstanding leader and great man known to the world who had devoted his all to the liberation of the country, human progress and the peace and welfare of the world people till the last moments of his life since he embarked on the road of revolution in his early years.
Comrade Kim Il Sung is the father of the Korean nation,the builder of socialist Korea.During a life spanning more than 80 years he created a new history carving out the destiny of the nation and performed immortal exploits which will go down in the annals of the era of independence. Under his superb leadership, the Korean people brightened the 20th century with victory and glory. Comrade Kim Il Sung led two Severe revolutionary wars to victory becoming known as the ever victorious iron willed brilliant commander and gifted military strategist.He led two complex social revolutions and built an independent socialist country with an advanced socialist system centred upon the popular masses which is the cradle of life For the Korean people.He was a great thinker and theoretican,who was the author 10,800 different works over a period of 7 decades ,on annual average he wrote 170 works or 1 work every 2 and half days.About 24 million copies of his works have been published in 60 different languages in a total of 110 countries.
The great leader comrade Kim Il Sung came from a humble but patriotic family.He was born at a straw thatched farmhouse at Mangyondae near Pyongyang.His family were very poor indeed.If you visit Mangyondae you will see the patched earthenware jar.Kim Il Sung’s father Kim Hyong Jik was A staunch Korean nationalist and president of the Korean National Association.His great grandfather Kim Ung U led the struggle to sink the US imperialist pirate ship the General Sherman which had Intruded into Korea in the 1860s.The Korea Kim Il Sung was born into was a colony of Japan.
Kim Il Sung became aware of social and class contradictions,the gap between the rich and the poor at an early age.In later life he recalled several times how he and his friends witnessed a rich capitalist refusing to pay a rickshaw fare.He also witnessed the Japanese imperialists suppression of a big demonstration against Japanese imperialism.
As a young boy in 1925 he made the epic journey from Korea to China on foot .Many Koreans left Korea to live in China because of the oppressive rule of Japanese imperialism,thus north east China became a theatre of struggle for Korean revolutionaries.Comrade Kim Il Sung studied at the Hwasong Uisuk school run by Korean nationalists.However hen became disillusioned with bourgeois nationalism and reformism and turned to revolutionary ideas.He formed the Down With Imperialism Union with revolutionary youth and school students in 1926.Thus aimed at both the independence of Korea and achieving communism.As a 14 year old he organised many revolutionary activities including a school student strike against reactionary teachers..In 1927 he organised the Young Communist League and later the Anti Imperialist-Youth League with members of the DIU.In 1929 he was imprisoned by the Japanese imperialists for his revolutionary activities.
He stressed the need to make a clean break with the factionalism that had plagued the Korean revolution
and disrupted and retarded the revolutionary struggle.He organised the revolutionary movement with youth and students untainted with factionalist ideas .He also believed in working amongst the popular masses rather confined work to debating in upper class circles..
In 1930 he organised the historic Kalun meeting in June.He made the speech “The Path of the Korean
Revolution” in which he defined the nature and tasks of the Korean revolution.He charted a new Juche orientated path for the Korean revolution. declaring that
“The masters of the revolutionary struggle are the masses of people, and only when they are organised and mobilised they win the revolutionary struggle. Therefore, the leaders of the movement must go among the masses and awaken them so that they themselves wage the revolutionary struggle as masters”
Kim Il Sung was a man of action as well as a great theoretician.On the 6th of June 1930 the Korean
Revolutionary Army was founded with revolutionary youth.Later on the 25th of April 1932 in Antu in Manchuria he formed the Anti Japanese People's Guerrilla Army the forerunner of today's Korean Peoples Army.The Anti Japanese People's Guerrilla Army fought many battles against the Japanese imperialists under his expert command such as the battle of Pochonbo in 1937.Mass united front organisations such as Association For the Restoration of the Fatherland and the Korean National Liberation Union were formed in the late 1930s.
Fighting for Korea’s independence and liberation was not easy,it was indeed an ardous struggle.Indeed
the AJPGA fighters under the command of the great leader general Kim Il Sung once had to march through freezing snow in sub zero temperatures with no food,this was known as the arduous march and it pretty much epitomises the nature of the anti Japanese armed struggle.During the course of this struggle comrade Kim Il Sung had to overcome many difficulties and face all kinds of enemies not just the Japanese imperialists.This is well detailed in his own account “With the Century” and also the excellent 5 volume history written by Anti Japanese veterans “20 year long Anti Japanese Revolution Under the Red Sunrays.Korea was liberated in 1945 thanks the 20 year long anti Japanese armed struggle waged by the heroic Korean partisans led by General Kim Il Sung.Japanese imperialist colonial rule was smashed and the Korean people entered a new shining era of independence , liberation and self-reliance.
The great leader comrade Kim Il Sung applied the Juche idea to the building of a new Korea after liberation.Unlike some leaders of national liberation movements he did not simply stop at achieving independence nor did he sell out once in power but carried forward as of the anti Japanese revolutionary struggle.He put forward the line of the anti imperialist,anti feudal democratic revolution which was in opposition to both the Rightists-who wanted to establish a bourgeois republic and the ultra Leftists who wanted to immediately establish socialism.As well as being a practical expression of the Juche idea in state building it was at the same time an embodiment of the concept of continuous revolution(which if I have time I will say more about later.Land reform was carried out in 1946.This Give land to the peasants free of charge And other measures such as the nationalisation of industry and the implementation of a Labour law.He put forward at a very early stage the line of building an independent national Economy.,this was the first time any country had put forward such a line He formed the Workers Party of Korea,the general staff of the Korean revolution and established The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea on the 9th of September 1948
The US imperialists wanted to strangle the young DPRK in its cradle and also halt any progressive advance in Asia and control the Asian continent.Thus in June 1950 the DPRK was attacked by the US imperialist thus starting the Korean war or Fatherland Liberation war as it is known in the DPRK.Comrade Kim Il Sung led with a steel strong will the Korean people against the US imperialist invasion.He defined the war
“anti-US struggle against the allied forces of world reaction headed by US imperialism and a bitter class struggle against the enemies of the people “
Juche was applied in the Fatherland Liberation War.Comrade Kim Il Sung developed Juche orientated tactics and strategy.New forms of warfare such as the use of tunnels were developed.The war ended in July 1953 in defeat for US imperialism with over 400,000 US soldiers,killed,injured or missing.This started the era of decline for US imperialism,indeed Korea was the war before Vietnam in more ways than one..
After the war the establishment of Juche became an even more acute need.The country Needed to be reconstructed after the bombing of the US imperialists and socialist Transformation of production relations.This was effectively blocked by dogmatists and factionalists who insisted on sticking to ready made formulas and failed to find their own solutions.In 1955 comrade Kim Il Sung made the famous speech “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" .a practical struggle was launched to secure independence in all fields Moreover it was around this time that revisionism appeared within the international Revolutionary movement and the socialist countries.The factionalists within the Workers
Party of Korea backed up by the great power chauvinists and revisionists attempted to Overthrow the leadership in 1956 and establish a pro US bourgeois republic.Comrade Kim Il Sung smashed them by relying on the people and rallying them around him and The WPK.
Also at this time the great power chauvinists tried to force the DPRK to join the CMEA Or COMECON.Comrade Kim Il Sung refused and the banner of Juche and the self reliant independent national economy was raised even higher.Comrade Kim Il Sung roused The people to achieve great miracles-during the late 1950s industrial production rose at The rate of 44% per annum and flats were built at the rate of 1 per 14 minutes thus Became known as the Pyongyang speed.A new factory to make fibre from limestone Was built in record time on the east coast of Korea.During the period 1957-1970 Industrial production increased at the annual rate of 19.1 per cent.The DPRK Became a socialist industrial state capable of meeting demands for peoples living And national defence on its own.
However life is not just about production figures and gnp and gdp statistics.The DPRK has provided people with the right to work,housing is provided at a very low cost or even totally free(one could only sigh when you contrast this to the recent headline about house prices in London going up even faster).Education is also free up to all levels which include university and post graduate study.School clothes and other things for children are either free or sold at 50% of cost price.Mothers with more than 3 children can work a 6 hour day but be paid for 8 hours.The retirement age is 60 for men and 55 for women.Free medical care was introduced in 1953 and buttressed by further legalisation in 1960 and 1980.All treatment is including medicine is free and the state even pays travelling expenses to the sanatorium!Taxation including local autonomy tax was abolished in 1974.
Such measures have not been taken in all socialist countries nor in rich countries but have been taken in the DPRK because of the profound concern of the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung for the people and the belief that the country should shoulder full responsibility for the destiny and well-being of the people.President Kim Il Sung made sure that improvement of the peoples living standard was enshrined in the principles of both the WPK and DPRK.
This is continued today in the DPRK.The consumer goods industry is being boosted .More sanatoriums and rest homes have been built in the DPRK.Children are supplied with soya bean milk each day.Even when the DPRK faced its worst trials the soya bean milk vans run regularly.This is the legacy of the great leader
comrade Kim Il Sung.
In the ideological field he has left a great legacy but his ideology and leadership are continued by the great leader comrade Kim Jong Il,a worthy successor to the cause of Juche.I think two things stand amongst comrade Kim Il Sung’s theories .Firstly and most obviously is the Juche idea.The Juche idea is studied on a world scale with Study groups in many corners of the globe.Regrettably it is still not properly understood by the British people due to the propaganda and suppression of the reactionaries.Some people Have a superfical understanding,they say ‘oh the Juche idea,that is something to do with self Reliance isn’t it?’.Yes the application of Juche to the immediate day to day practical concerns does Indeed mean independence in politics,self sufficiency in the economy and self reliance in national Defence.However means more than that,it is a well rounded and profound idea,in fact a total System of thought. Juche is a Korean word consisting of two characters one of which means Body and the other master so quite literally Juche means ’master of one’s own body’ or ’master Of one’s self.The central theme of the Juche idea is that the people are the masters of the revolution and construction and that man is the master who can creatively hew out his own destiny.It Defines the characteristics of man as independence,creativity and consciousness.Essentially Juche is about empowerment. Secondly ,the theory of continuous revolution and the line of the three revolutions.The concept of continuous revolution meant that there a logical progression of the anti imperialist,anti feudal democratic revolution to the socialist revolution and after the socialist revolution the revolution was continued,this is one of the main differences between the DPRK and the former revisionist Soviet Union and East European countries and one of the reasons why DPRK socialism did not fall.The content of the continuing revolution,is the ideological revolution,cultural and technical revolution. The ideological revolution being the most important.Lenin’s dictum was that Soviet power plus electrification equals communism,Kim Il Sung’s was the people’s government plus the three revolutions equals communism.
It is the duty of all progressive people to carry forward and apply the teachings of the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung and defend Juche Korea,the bastion of socialism in today‘s world.
GLORY TO THE GREAT LEADER COMRADE KIM IL SUNG SUN OF HUMANITY
Dermot Hudson
JISGE Chairman
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