North Korea Exposed – Part 2: Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s first president
Enter the villain.
Kim Il-sung.
North Korea’s first head of state.
The man who started the Korean War and established the Kim family’s dictatorship.
The man who split the Korean Peninsula in two.
Kim Il-sung.
Let’s take a closer look at him.
First, I used the expression “the man who split the Korean Peninsula in two.”
From Kim Il-sung’s perspective, however, that might seem a little unfair.
Why?
Because Korea had already been divided before Kim Il-sung invaded the South.
In other words, the 38th parallel existed before his invasion.
After Japan’s surrender marked the end of its colonial rule over Korea,
Soviet forces occupied the northern part of the Korean Peninsula,
while American forces occupied the southern part.
The 38th parallel was established as the boundary separating their respective occupation zones.
After that,
communist forces backed by the Soviet Union took power in the North.
In the South, meanwhile, the United States provided support,
allowing anti-communist forces to expand their influence in opposition to the North.
In other words, even before the war, the two sides were already political rivals.
Then,
on September 9, 1948,
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established in the North.
By that time, Kim Il-sung had already been a communist for many years.
Even if we set aside North Korean propaganda publications, which may have exaggerated his achievements or pushed the dates further back to strengthen his legitimacy,
historical records show that he was arrested in China in 1929 for communist activities.
Kim Il-sung, who had been involved in communist activities for years, subsequently became premier of the North Korean cabinet.
Before long, he came to believe that the South, devastated after Japan’s withdrawal, could be conquered by force if he acted immediately.
And so, he began taking steps to make it happen.
On March 5 and March 7, 1949,
he met with Stalin and requested approval to invade the South.
But Stalin refused.
American troops were still stationed in the South,
and Stalin judged that North Korean forces were not yet strong enough to overwhelm the South Korean military.
So he rejected the request.
Later, on August 12 and September 3,
Kim Il-sung asked again. These requests are documented in historical records.
Can you feel how convinced he was that it would work, and how desperately he wanted to do it?
Even a kid begging for a toy wouldn’t ask that many times.
So how was Kim Il-sung able to start the war the following year, in 1950?
Hadn’t the Soviet Union already rejected his request?
The reason was this:
In 1950, Stalin suddenly changed his mind.
And the reason was a major event that took place in October 1949.
On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.
Yes.
In the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong’s Communist Party had defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.
For Stalin, this must have looked like the emergence of a powerful new ally capable of providing substantial support.
And so, at 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, 1950,
the North began its invasion of the South, starting with artillery fire on the Ongjin Peninsula and advancing along multiple fronts.
Did anyone realize at the time that this invasion would divide the two sides for more than half a century, and eventually for over 70 years?
After that,
South Korea, which was unprepared for the invasion, lost Seoul in just three days, on June 28.
It must have seemed like a swift and overwhelming victory.
But today, that three-day capture of Seoul has become
a key piece of evidence that undermines Kim Il-sung’s false narrative, which sought to convince the North Korean people that South Korea had invaded the North rather than the other way around.
According to accounts, some North Korean intellectuals familiar with military studies and the nature of modern warfare have begun to question the official narrative.
Wait a minute. They made all the preparations and launched a surprise invasion, yet they were met with resistance and took only three days to capture the capital?
Doesn’t something seem wrong with that story?
From the North Korean regime’s perspective, this is
a pretty serious problem.
Why?
Because this is fundamentally different from the fact that most North Koreans now know that South Korea is economically more developed—something that even the dogs in North Korea might know by now.
People can learn to live with the fact that another country is more developed and wealthier than their own.
After all, for the difference in living standards to feel real, there needs to be someone right beside you who is living better than you are.
But in North Korea, ordinary people struggle just to survive. Many are, quite literally, barely managing to put food on the table.
In such circumstances, people may simply carry on living out of habit and resignation.
The fact that South Korea is better off may seem like nothing more than a distant comparison with another country.
They might live their entire lives feeling that South Korea is a faraway place they could never reach.
But what happens when they realize that their own party has been lying to them?
What happens when the foolish smiles of their grandfathers, fathers, and mothers—who praised the party without knowing the truth and died believing in it—begin to haunt them?
The anger that comes in that moment could easily become a burning spark for something far greater.
“Everything I believed in throughout my life was a lie from the very beginning.
Everything you said and wrote was nothing more than a fabricated story and a lie designed to keep you ruling over us.
My grandfather and father believed those lies until the day they died, like fools, and you betrayed them.
How could I ever forgive you?”
Such a realization would probably be far more than a simple crisis of identity.
The North Korean Communist Party has concealed the truth behind far too many lies for this to be swept under the rug forever.
On the other hand,
I sometimes hope that the people of North Korea will rise up and resist, rather than continue to suffer oppression and simply die.
But,
after generations of indoctrination,
and with little more than sickles and knives at their disposal,
the overwhelming military power of the Communist Party must be the reality standing directly before them.
I, too, would probably just carry on living.
Because I’m afraid to die.
In Part 3,
I’ll summarize the Korean War in a way that’s brief, but not oversimplified,
and examine how Kim Il-sung was portrayed as a war hero.