Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung founded North Korea, ruled it for forty-six years, and established the only hereditary communist dynasty. Born Kim Song-ju near Pyongyang in 1912 to a Presbyterian family, he moved to Manchuria as a boy after the Japanese annexation of Korea, joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1931, and fought as a guerrilla against the Japanese, taking the name Kim Il-sung. He led a raid on the Japanese-held town of Pochonbo in 1937, a minor action that North Korean historiography made into an epic. Pressed hard by Japanese counter-insurgency, he crossed into the Soviet Union in 1940 and served in a Red Army reconnaissance brigade, reaching the rank of captain. The Soviets installed him in 1945 as head of the northern occupation zone, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed in 1948. He purged rival factions — domestic communists, the Soviet Koreans and the Yanan group — until only his own guerrilla comrades remained. He obtained Stalin's and Mao's consent and invaded the South in June 1950, nearly taking the peninsula before the American landing at Inchon reversed it; Chinese intervention restored the line near the 38th parallel. The war killed some three million people and left the North flattened by bombing. He rebuilt with Soviet and Chinese aid, and the northern economy outperformed the South into the 1970s before stagnating. He developed juche, an ideology of self-reliance, and a personality cult without parallel — statues, birthplace shrines, and a calendar later dated from his birth. He died in 1994, was declared Eternal President, and was succeeded by his son and then his grandson.
- Lived: 1912 CE – 1994 CE
- Nationality: Korean
- Roles: communist_leader, military_leader
