Huadian, Northeast China, was a hub of the Korean independence movement in the mid-1920s when Korea was under Japanese military occupation (1905-1945).
In Huadian there was Hwasong Uisuk School, a two-year military and political school which independence champions and patriotic activists of enlightenment movement had set up for training cadres for the Independence Army of the Korean people.
In mid-June 1926 Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) entered the school at the recommendation and by good offices of the friends of his father who had died while working for the independence movement of Korea.
When he entered the school, he found there were more than forty students there, most of whom, about 20 years of age, had been enlisted at the recommendation of the Independence Army units. All of them were as old as elder brothers or uncles to him.
However, they all admired him. They came to see him almost every day, some wanting to hear of his experience back in the homeland, others to get help in their studies and still others to discuss political issues with him. In return, they strove to help him in many ways in military drills, which were physically very tough. Soon he was close with them in spite of the difference in age.
He became acquainted from the start with the people who were five to ten years older than him. The students gradually came to realize that he, though young, was an extraordinary kind of man.
He had regarded Hwasong Uisuk School as a short cut to joining the anti-Japanese struggle for independence and pinned great hope on the education provided at the school. His view was that he could defeat the Japanese imperialists only through a military confrontation and that he could stand in the front rank of the independence movement only when he had a military knowledge.
But what was taught at the school was disappointing to him. The patriotic figures who visited the school only spoke vaguely about winning independence as they banged their lectern, but they failed to produce any good methods for achieving it. The same held true with the military training.
The old-fashioned nature of the school made him realize that outdated methods were of no avail. Having become firmly convinced that organizing small armed groups equipped with a few rifles to kill a few Japanese policemen and raising war funds were not the way to achieve national liberation, he started to seek a new path towards national liberation.
He obtained works of Marx and Lenin and read them day and night. While reading them, he considered the principles of revolution contained in the classics in connection with the situation in Korea: How to overthrow Japanese imperialism and win back the country? Who was the enemy and who could be an ally in the struggle for national liberation? What course to take to build socialism and communism after winning national independence?...
During a class seminar, he repudiated the view that when Korea was liberated, feudal society or capitalist society should be built and argued that a society free from exploitation and oppression, a society where the working masses like workers and peasants could live happily, should be built, thus receiving full support of the students.
Many students gathered around him.
One day, he, referring to the need for an organization at a meeting, said to the following effect: We must open up a long and thorny path in order to liberate the country and build a society in which the working people can live happily; if we build up our ranks and fight tenaciously at the cost of our blood, we shall emerge victorious; after forming an organization we should rally the masses behind it and arouse them to liberate the country by relying on their own efforts.
Under his guidance a preliminary meeting for forming an organization was held. The meeting discussed the name of the organization, its character, its fighting programme and its rules and regulations. A week later, on October 17, 1926, the Down-with-Imperialism Union (DIU) was organized with young revolutionaries of Korea.
The immediate task of the DIU was to defeat Japanese imperialism and achieve the liberation and independence of Korea, and its final objective was to build socialism and communism in Korea and, further, destroy all imperialism and build communism throughout the world.
Kim Il Sung was acclaimed as the head of the union with the unanimous approval of the organization members present at the meeting.
At that time he was in his teens.
Looking back, Kim Il Sung’s life was the days when the ambitious plan he had unfolded in his teens was realized.
After he started the Korean revolution in his teens with the formation of the DIU he organized and led the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle to victory for more than 20 years, thus defeating Japanese imperialism and achieving the historic cause of national liberation. Then he built a people’s country, the first of its kind in the 5 000-year history of
Korea, on the liberated land. In the early 1950s he repulsed the armed invasion by allied imperialist forces and safeguarded the sovereignty of the country. He won one victory after another in the showdown with the US imperialists for scores of years.
Besides, he actively supported many countries in their liberation struggle against imperialism and colonialism, contributing greatly to the cause of global independence against imperialism.
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