Prestigious University of DPRK

Kim Il Sung University, a prestigious educational institution of the DPRK, celebrated its 80th founding anniversary.

The establishment of the university on October 1, 1946, was itself unusual.

When Korea was liberated from Japan’s military occupation (1905-1945), the educational situation in the country was unspeakably terrible. There was no college and higher education was almost zero. The same was true for general and secondary education.

It was in such circumstances that the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung initiated the establishment of the university. It was a great challenge for the new Korea at that time. However, Kim Il Sung regarded training talents as an important matter on which the rise or fall of the country hinges and made sure that great efforts were channelled into founding the university. He saw to it that even the rice donated by peasants out of a patriotic mind to contribute to nation building was used for the construction of the university building.

As a result, the university was built in a little over a year after liberation and it was named after Kim Il Sung according to the unanimous desire of all the Korean people.

At the time of its founding, the university had only 68 teachers, seven faculties and 1 500 or so students. With the university as the parent body, many universities and colleges were born to constitute the framework of Korea's education.

Over the past 80 years, Kim Il Sung University has made a great contribution to the development of the country's science and education and the accomplishment of the socialist cause as the parent body in which the training of state’s native cadres began.

Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, paid a congratulatory visit to the university to mark its 80th founding anniversary in late September and made a speech. He said in the speech: By responding to the call of the times for the past 80 years, graduates from this university have strived hard to perform their ennobling duties and responsibilities as main pillars at the Party’s and the state’s leadership organs and in major sectors and units; their role as the state’s loyal and devoted servants has been very active. The university should rise up just like it did to lay the foundations for education and scientific research in its initial days. In this way it can make another event worth mentioning as its re-founding, and lay a solid strategic line for the future.

Today, Kim Il Sung University is enjoying its fame as the DPRK’s number one base for training talented personnel with thousands of educators and more than 10 000 students, the highest institution of science and education that boasts competent teaching force and up-to-date educational facilities and leads the development of the country's science and education while conducting exchanges with famous foreign universities, and a prestigious university which has produced a large number of most talented personnel and leading cadres of the state.