Tuesday 12 April 2022

PRESIDENT KIM IL SUNG AND THE JUCHE IDEA -special article by Dr Dermot Hudson




As we mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of the great leader President KIM IL SUNG, we think deeply about his achievements in leading the Korean revolution to victory and carrying out socialist construction  . Undoubtedly , one of his greatest achievements was the creation of the Juche Idea .

  Today the Tower of the Juche Idea stands tall and proud on the banks of the River Taedong . Juche is the guiding ideology of People’s Korea and is known all over the world .

                                               


 

The Korea that President KIM IL SUNG had grown up in was a dark land without independence ruled by the barbarous Japanese imperialists .The people were doubly and triply oppressed by the Japanese imperialists , landlords and capitalists  . President KIM IL SUNG himself was born into a humble and poor peasant family and saw the contradictions of the existing order first hand .


  At an early age and following the example of his father , Kim Hyong Jik , he embarked on the road for the struggle for independence . However as a young man he found that the movement for independence was dominated by hidebound bourgeois nationalists who were divorced from the people . They indulged in bickering among themselves and also advocated all manner of false theories and ‘roads to nowhere ‘ such as trying to win independence with the help of big powers or trying to win independence through petitions etc and even ideas about ‘self-cultivation. The early communist movement in Korea was no better . It was split into warring factions , these were also divorced from the people . Each faction tried to lobby the COMINTERN or Third International .

   President KIM IL SUNG , a true genius of revolution , realised quickly that it was hopeless to conduct the struggle for independence in this way .Instead he thought that the struggle should be conducted on the basis of independence and by going among the people and enlisted their support , not just support but active participation . This was the basis of the great Juche Idea which stipulates that the popular masses are the masters of the revolution and construction .


 The Juche idea was outlined in embryonic form when President KIM IL SUNG addressed a meeting of the leading activists and cadres of the Young Communist League of Korea and the Anti-Imperialist Youth League in Kalun in June and July 1930. . He stressed that the Korean revolution should be carried out independently and by relying on the popular masses.

 In his speech,titled   'The Path of the Korean Revolution  ' he explained his ideas and put forward the Juche -oriented line of the Korean revolution.

In the speech he castigated the factionalists and flunkeys saying that

Experience shows that in order to lead the revolution to victory, one must go among the masses of people and organize them, and solve all problems arising in the course of the revolution independently on one’s own responsibility in accord with the actual conditions, instead of relying on others."

 Drawing on this lesson we regard it as most important to take the firm standpoint that the masters of the Korean revolution are the Korean people and that the Korean revolution should by all means be carried out by the Korean people themselves in a way suited to the actual conditions of their country.”

   This was the basis of the Juche idea and its starting point. The idea that the masses are the masters of the revolution was first voiced at Kalun in 1930 . President KIM IL SUNG stressed that “ The masters of the revolutionary struggle are the masses of the people, and only when they are organized and mobilized can they win the revolutionary struggle.”.

  President KIM IL SUNG also defined the Korean revolution as being an anti-imperialist , anti-feudal democratic revolution rather than as being  a socialist revolution or a bourgeois revolution.

  In the speech, President KIM IL SUNG set forth the revolutionary line of armed struggle,  the original line of the anti-Japanese national united front and the Juche-oriented policy of party founding for the first time in the history of the national liberation struggle in colonial countries, and dynamically led the revolution along the road of Juche.


Thus the Juche Idea was born. It was authored by President KIM IL SUNG  in the fiery days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle . It was thanks to the Juche Idea that under the leadership of President KIM IL SUNG the Korean people were uable to win independence and then build a new independent people’s country .

We will never forget the achievements of President KIM IL SUNG in authoring the Juche Idea.


Dr Dermot Hudson

Chairman British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea 

Chairman Korean Friendship Association UK 

Official Delegate KFA for the UK

President Association for the Study of Songun Politics UK 


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