Saviour of Korean Nation

Saviour of Korean Nation
             In the first half of the last century the Korean people were suffering under the yoke of colonial slavery.  The Japanese imperialists, during the period of their military occupation of Korea from 1905 to 1945, killed a million  Koreans, forcibly drafted 8.4 million of young and middle-aged Korean people to work them like beasts of burden and took 200 000 Korean women to serve as sex slaves for their army. They plundered Korea of its resources and cultural properties, and prohibited Koreans from using their spoken and written language, even forcing them to change their names in a Japanese style. However, the Korean nation was finally liberated by General Kim Il Sung (1912-1994).
In 1925 Kim Il Sung, in his teens, left his country with a firm resolve never to return home before winning national independence. In October the following year he organized the Down- with-Imperialism Union (DIU), which was made up of Korean revolutionaries of a new generation. The formation of the DIU whose immediate task was to overthrow the Japanese imperialists and achieve Korea’s liberation and independence marked a new starting-point for the national liberation struggle in Korea.
In June 1930 Kim Il Sung made a historic speech The Path of the Korean Revolution at a meeting of Korean revolutionaries held in a region of Northeast China. In the speech he clarified the principles of the Juche idea, which is nowadays known worldwide as the guiding ideology of the era of independence, and advanced the line of anti-Japanese armed struggle based on the Songun idea. The line served as an ideological and spiritual banner of the Korean revolutionaries as it indicated that the cause of national liberation could only be accomplished by relying on oneself and waging an armed struggle, not by depending on others or taking a peaceful approach.
On April 25, 1932, he founded the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, the predecessor of the present Korean People’s Army. With the founding of the KPRA the Korean people were able to step up the national liberation struggle on the strength of their own armed force. With a view to rousing the whole nation to the sacred war of their liberation and uniting them into a single force, he formed the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland in May 1936. As a result, all the Korean people who loved their country, regardless of their differences in ideology, political views, social strata and religious beliefs, were united as one under the banner of the ARF, and the national liberation struggle could be conducted on a nationwide scale.
  The anti-Japanese armed struggle in Korea was a do-or-die struggle waged against the Japanese army which tried to dominate the world, hand in glove with fascist Germany. In thelight of both numerical and technical aspects, the Japanese empire was incomparably superior to the Korean guerrilla army, with no state to back it in the rear or support from a regular army, which was likened to being a “drop in the ocean” by the Japanese in those days.
However, Kim Il Sung led the 15-year-long armed struggle against the Japanese to victory. It was his original military idea that the numerical, military and technical superiority of the enemy should be defeated by means of the political and ideological, strategic and tactical ones of the revolutionary army. Thanks to this military idea, the KPRA soldiers were fully prepared into those strong in ideology and faith, with confidence in the justness of their cause and indomitable
fighting spirit, and correct strategies and tactics and many other unique combat methods were created at every stage of the anti-Japanese armed struggle.
His definition of guerrilla warfare as the basic form of the national liberation struggle in colonial countries is of special historic significance. It was a protean strategy that could defeat the enemy with a lesser number of force while maintaining the initiative, though it had no state rear or support from a regular army. His policies of combining large-unit operations properly with small-unit actions and of establishing semi-guerrilla zones in parallel with the guerrilla zones of the liberated-area type were superb strategic and tactical methods that made it possible to actively launch the armed struggle.

Under the superb and adroit command of Kim Il Sung who turned a misfortune into a blessing and adverse conditions into favourable ones, the KPRA dealt a telling blow to the enemy in every battle. The Korean and Japanese people would unanimously say that the KPRA appeared at an unexpected place and disappeared at an unexpected moment and that General Kim Il Sung used the art of shortening distance. The Korean people turned out in the sacred struggle against the Japanese, looking up to him as the Sun of the nation and as the saviour of liberation, who would revive the Korean nation. At last they attained the cause of national liberation on August 15, 1945. Freed from colonial slavery, they set out on building an independent and sovereign state as the masters of their destiny.
The exploits Kim Il Sung performed in liberating Korea will remain for ever in the minds of the progressive mankind as well as the Korean people.