Sixty-three years have elapsed since Kim Jong Suk, passed away (September 22, 1949).
She did not live long (1917-1949), but she still lives in the hearts of the Korean people and progressive humankind.
Kim Jong Suk devoted her all to the safety and good health of President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), founding father of socialist Korea and pioneer of the cause of global independence.
When Korea was under the Japanese military occupation, she joined the revolutionary struggle against Japanese imperialism led by Kim Il Sung, and regarded it as the mission she had assumed for her country and fellow people to defend him at all costs, respecting him as the destiny of her country and as the sun of her nation.
In late June 1940 the guerilla unit commanded by Kim Il Sungwas about to cross a river in the outskirt of Dashahe. There and then, Japanese soldiers, who were pursuing them stealthily occupied a height and suddenly opened fire. The commander ordered his men an immediate charge towards the height. At the risk of his own life, he was commanding the battle on a rock, when some enemy soldiers stole up on him with their rifles aimed at him. At this critical moment, Kim Jong Suk, who was mindful of his personal safety all the time, spotted them, and shielded him with her own body, shooting the enemy soldiers at the same time. This was not the first time she defended Kim Il Sung at the risk of her own life. At the battles she fought alongside him, including those at the Fusong county town (August 1936) and at Hongqihe (March 1940), she defended him with her own body.
Her effort to defend Kim Il Sung did not change even after the country’s liberation. She directed her meticulous concern to reinforcing the unit that was looking after Kim Il Sung’s personal safety, and she herself defended him as a sentry without a relief.
She did her best to support Kim Il Sung’s ideas and lines and carry them out. During the anti-Japanese armed struggle, she once witnessed the head of Qingfeng secret camp finding fault with their Commander’s ideas and liens and neglecting to implement them. Unable to withstand it, she dealt a decisive counterblow at his misguided view there and then.
She performed with credit all the tasks Kim Il Sung had given her, thus contributing greatly to bringing his plans to fruition.
In the autumn of 1939, Kim Il Sung gave her the task of making hundreds of guerilla uniforms within some days. Though the available sewing machine were not worthy of mentioning, she, together with a few woman guerillas, worked tenaciously in a forest, even forgoing sleep, thus implementing the order ahead of schedule.
In the summer of 1937, after rounding off her underground work at a place called Taoquanli, she was to embark on political work in another place under Kim Il Sung’s order. It was not long since she had been released from enemy prison, and her health was not good. Though her colleagues said that she should leave after recuperating or others could go there in her place, she left to perform her task, saying in the following vein: If I were to delay performing a task given by the Commander or push it off onto someone else on the excuse of my poor health, how can I call myself a revolutionary who fight devotedly for the Commander?
Kim Jong Suk’s career was that of a genuine patriot.
Having felt to the marrow of her bones the misery of a ruined nation after her birth, she joined the sacred struggle for her country’s liberation in her teens.
In the days of the arduous anti-Japanese war, she displayed outstanding military wisdom and stratagem, unexcelled courage and bravery and mysterious marksmanship, thus achieving heroic exploits. In appreciation of her extraordinary services in the spring counteroffensive in 1938, Commander Kim Il Sung awarded her a gold ring.
She always stood in the van of her fellow guerillas, training them with her own personal examples to be fighters possessed of ardent love for their motherland and fellow people and unbreakable faith and willpower. During military and political studies, she would become a teacher of recruits, awakening them to the truth of the revolution and teaching them the key to becoming a crackshot. In the days of getting ready for the final offensive for the liberation of the country she parachuted ahead of others during air-borne training, thus encouraging them to learn the art of modern warfare.
The contributions she rendered to the building a country after Korea’s liberation are also great.
She visited the Pothong River improvement project site, textile mills, fishermen’s villages, steel works and railway reconstruction sites, construction site of Kim Il Sung University-the first one of its kind in Korea-and many other places, inspiring the people to the building of a new society. During the four years after country’s liberation till the last day of her life she visited hundreds of units on 700 occasions.
As she was specially concerned with army building, she visited the Pyongyang Institute, military academies, and infantry, tank and air force units, making great services to laying a solid military foundation of a new country by developing the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army into the Korean People’s Army, regular armed forces.
At long last, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, a people’s country she had so wished for, was founded on September 9, 1948.
Kim Jong Suk’s career devoted to the liberation of her motherland and the building of a new country will shine forever together with the DPRK.
