Mankind’s Praises for Great Man

-President Kim Il Sung’s Life (1)

 S. Harrison, the then senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote: I think it is highly respectable that President Kim Il Sung defended the national sovereignty and independence from foreign domination and added brilliance to it.

Defending National Sovereignty

 When Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) was born, his country was under the Japanese military occupation (1905-1945).

 He embarked on the road of revolution at the tender age of 14 with a determination to win back his country. He founded the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in April 1932 and staged an anti-Japanese struggle for more than ten years, even without state backing or support from a regular army. Under his leadership the Korean people waged an all-people resistance combined with the general offensive of the KPRA, liberating their country in August 1945.

 In June 1950 a war broke out in Korea by the US in an attempt to realize its ambition for world supremacy. The US enlisted huge armed forces, including its 15 satellite countries, ROK troops and the remnants of the former Japanese army, into the Korean front to crush the nascent country. However, the US ended up kneeling down before the Korean people who turned out as one in the resistance to the aggressors, rallied around Kim Il Sung, not to be reduced again to the slaves of the imperialists.

 Kim Il Sung also firmly safeguarded the sovereignty and dignity of his country and people in the fierce military confrontation with the US including the incidents of the armed spy ship Pueblo and the large spy plane EC-121.

 For his part the concept of independence was not confined to the territorial defence from foreign invasion.

 After the country’s liberation he indicated the independent and original road of progressive democracy, built a country where the people are its masters and solved all problems from an independent standpoint. He never tolerated any foreign intervention in the slightest in formulating and implementing the lines of the state. And he consistently adhered to the line of building an independent national economy with a firm belief that economic independence leads to political independence.

Once Kim Il Sung said that although there may be large and small countries, and advanced and underdeveloped nations in the world, there can be no senior and junior countries, nor can there be a people that dominates or is dominated, and that all countries and peoples are fully on an equal footing and independent.

 This precious aphorism of lasting value is for the world people.

-President Kim Il Sung’s Life (2)

 Once former US President Jimmy Carter confessed, after he met President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) of the DPRK, that he was completely fascinated by the Korean leader and that from the moment he saw him, he felt that he was a peace-loving, reasonable, intelligent, efficient and popular leader.

Believing in People As in Heaven

 During a visit to the DPRK in 1994 Carter met President Kim Il Sung.

The two were having a talk on a cruise ship sailing along the lower reaches of the Taedong River. Suddenly, Kim Il Sung asked to slow down the ship. As Carter looked puzzled, Kim Il Sung pointed his finger at the riverside where some were angling, saying that if their ship disturbed the water, it might bother them and that they should sail a bit slower for the anglers’ convenience.

 This anecdote is just an example showing how respectful Kim Il Sung was to the people.

 In the mid-1930s, Pak In Jin, a patriarch of the Chondoist religion, asked Kim Il Sung if he had anything to worship, like they believed in “Heaven.” Then Kim Il Sung replied: Of course there is something I believe in like God: the people. I have been worshipping the people as Heaven, and respecting them as if they were God. My God is none other than the people. Only the masses are omniscient and omnipotent and almighty on earth. Therefore, my lifetime motto is “The people are my God.”

 Every year in the run-up to the birthday of Kim Il Sung (April 15), there take place photo exhibitions on his exploits on the Internet. Almost all of the photos on display are of him among the people. Some of them show him sitting knee to knee with the farmers on a simple straw mat to teach them how to improve their living, and tasting boiled rice at the dining hall of the workers’ hostel on his visit to a factory.

 His policies were all oriented to the people. He found solutions to any difficulties by going among the people and solved all problems by enlisting their strength. And he saw to it that the state enforced policies to educate children across the country and provide houses built at its expense to the people free of charge and take full responsibility of their life. That’s why the Korean people called him “Fatherly leader.”

 Reverend Billy Graham, an American evangelist who had been to the DPRK, said in admiration for the country’s reality where President Kim Il Sung’s politics of believing in the people as in Heaven was administered that even Jesus would find nothing to do in the DPRK even if he descends there from Heaven.

-Great Man’s Name and His Immortality

 President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), the founding father of socialist Korea, remains alive in the hearts of mankind for his extraordinary ideological and revolutionary legacy. For the first time in human history of thought, he created the Juche idea, the idea of independence that illuminates the position and role of man and the way for him to carve out his destiny, and built a genuine people’s society and indicated the path of struggle for the world people aspiring to independence against imperialism.

 The Juche idea is an idea that the masses of the people are masters of the revolution and construction and they are also the motive force of them. In other words, they are the masters of their own destiny and they have the power to shape their own destiny.

On the basis of the idea, Kim Il Sung, by organizing and mobilizing the masses of the people, led the 20-year-long anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle to victory, liberated his country from the Japanese military occupation and built a socialist system whose masters are the people.

 He gave active support and encouragement and unsparing assistance to the struggle of those countries aspiring to independence against imperialism. That’s why the world progressives highly praised him as a paragon of genuine internationalism.

 It is evidenced by the fact that different establishments, organizations, streets, libraries and educational institutions in all parts of the world have been named after him.

 Soon after Korea’s liberation on August 15, 1945, workers belonging to a political party in Costa Rica formed a cell named after Kim Il Sung with deep reverence for him as he was demonstrating an outstanding and seasoned leadership in building a new society where the people are its masters.

 In November 1950, the Chinese party and government ensured that Kim Il Sung class was established at Middle School No. 5 in Beijing, and a few years later, a memorial room dedicated to Kim Il Sung’s reading was set up at Yuwen Middle School in Jilin, which is associated with his early revolutionary activities.

By the 1970s, a large number of organizations bearing his name mushroomed around the world, for instance committee for the study of his works, groups for the study of his works and revolutionary activities, groups for the study of the Juche idea, societies for reading his works and societies for the study of his works.

 In April 1993, prominent figures in the political, social and academic circles of the world gathered in New Delhi, India, to form the International Kim Il Sung Prize Council.

 The desire of the world progressives to hand down his exploits forever remained unabated even after his demise.

 A ceremony of naming a street after Generalissimo Kim Il Sung was held with splendour in a country, and Kim Il Sung Library and Kim Il Sung Class and others came into existence in various other countries.

 According to data available, more than 480 streets, institutions and organizations in over 100 countries were named after Kim Il Sung from immediately after Korea’s liberation to the late 1990s.