Wednesday, 8 July 2026

Remembering a great leader who created a socialist paradise -special article by Dr Dermot Hudson for the 32nd anniversary of the passing away of President KIM IL SUNG



The date July 8th 1994 is a date clearly engraved on my mind for it was the date that the great leader President KIM IL SUNG passed away ,only a few days after I had returned from my 3rd visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). During the visit we had seen President KIM IL SUNG on the television every night , his presence seemed to permeate everywhere and be ever permanent .


I  could write a lot about President KIM IL SUNG as his life spanned the 20th century . He was the liberator of his people and the builder of a great independent people’s country , the DPRK , or People’s Korea or Juche Korea. He was the ever-victorious iron-willed brilliant commander who defeated two imperialisms US and Japanese within one generation . President KIM IL SUNG was the great thinker and theoretician who created the great Juche idea .


I remember President KIM IL SUNG for his many great and varied achievements  but I think what stands out is that President KIM IL SUNG built a socialist paradise for the people on the ruins of vanquished Japanese colonialism  and did so in a few short decades despite the destruction inflicted on the DPRK by the US imperialists during the Fatherland Liberation War .


President KIM IL SUNG authored the immortal Juche idea which stipulated that the masses of people are the masters of the revolution and construction . He also declared that the “People Are My God “ . After the liberation of Korea from the iron shackles of Japanese imperialist colonial rule  and the eradication of centuries of ossified feudalism , President KIM IL SUNG made sure that a new society serving the interests of the people , a society where the people are the masters of everything was built . He said that "Our socialism is, in short, man-centred socialism, the embodi­ment of the Juche idea. The principal characteristic of our society is that it is a truly people-orientated society of which the popular mass­es are the genuine masters and in which everything serves the mass­es."




 In the 1940s Agrarian reform and the nationalisation of industries were carried out at lightning speed in the new People’s Korea along with the introduction of laws such as the labour law giving workers rights,freeing them from exploitation and oppression, and the law on sexual equality which liberated women from double and triple oppression. 


Despite the fact that the DPRK was almost bombed out of existence by the US imperialists during the Fatherland Liberation War (Korean War) President KIM IL SUNG set about not only rehabilitating and reconstructing the devastated country but completing the socialist transformation of industry , agriculture and trade creating an advanced , people centred socialist system on the land of Korea .


As a result of the creation of the socialist system and the people-orientated measures of President KIM IL SUNG the Korean people came to enjoy beneficial lives with free health care , free education , full employment , low cost food and  low cost public transport.Taxation was abolished in March 1974. In February  1992 President KIM IL SUNG instructed that  pay for workers, technicians and office workers was to be  raised by an average of 43.4 per cent- British workers can only dream of pay rises like that . Social security payments for pensioners to increase by 50.7 per cent and student grants by 33 per cent.



My first two visits to People’s Korea in May 1992 and October 1993 President KIM IL SUNG was still physically alive . I could see with my own eyes the achievements of Juche -based socialism . Only a few years before my visit Kwangbok Street with many high rise blocks of flats had been completed and in 1992 many new homes were completed in the area of the southern gateway of Pyongyang .Kwangbok Street really impressed me by its size and scale (although of course now it has been dwarfed by Hwasong Street and other new streets in the DPRK ) In the DPRK I saw clean streets , no graffiti or vandalism and no one begging . Also I saw no black market currency dealers which I had seen in supposedly socialist Eastern Europe in the 1980s . There were no people wearing jeans . It was a real socialist paradise . Today respected Marshal KIM JONG UN , the great successor to President KIM IL SUNG and Chairman KIM JONG IL is building People’s Korea into an even better socialist paradise !


Let’s remember President KIM IL SUNG as the builder and creator of the  socialist paradise of People’s Korea !


Dr Dermot Hudson

Chairman British Group For the Study of the Juche Idea

Chairman Korean Friendship Association UK

Hon Secretary General Global Farmy Study Group for respected comrade KIM JONG UN’s People-First Policies


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