Entering the modern times, Korea with 5 000-year-long history and brilliant culture gradually weakened in national power owing to the policy of sycophancy and dependence on outside forces of the feudal Joson dynasty and was reduced to a theatre of competition of big powers.
Finally it was placed under the Japanese military occupation since 1905.
It was Kim Il Sung who saved the Korean people from the miserable fate of a ruined nation.
Kim Il Sung was born in Mangyongdae, Pyongyang, on April 15, Juche 1 (1912), and embarked on the road of revolutionary struggle for Korea’s liberation in his teens. In the course of groping for the road of the Korean revolution, he authored the Juche idea and the Songun idea and commanded the antiJapanese revolutionary struggle for two decades under the banner of these ideas, finally achieving the historic cause of Korea’s liberation on August 15, Juche 34 (1945).
After his triumphal return to the liberated homeland, he founded the Workers’ Party of Korea without delay, carried out democratic reforms, including the land reform, nationalization of key industries and enforcement of the Law on Sex Equality, and founded a regular armed force. Based on these achievements, he founded the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the first people’s democratic state in the East, on September 9, Juche 37 (1948).
He creditably safeguarded the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK in the Korean war (1950-1953) unleashed by the US in its attempt to stifle the twoyear-old Republic in its cradle. He carried out the postwar rehabilitation and socialist revolution in a short period and led socialist construction of several stages to victory, thus turning the country into a socialist power, independent in politics, self-sufficient in the economy and self-reliant in defence.
He regarded “The people are my god” as his lifetime motto, and his benevolent politics got a people-centred socialist system deeply rooted in the country.
He advanced the fundamental principles and ways to Korea’s reunification, including the three principles of national reunification, the ten-point programme of the great unity of the whole nation for the reunification of the country and the plan for the founding of the Democratic Federal Republic of Koryo, and devoted his all for achieving the cause of national reunification until the last moment of his life.
He defined independence, peace and friendship as the basic ideals of the DPRK’s foreign policy and enhanced its international prestige through his energetic external activities. Working as head of state and veteran of world politics for nearly half a century, he made immortal contributions to developing the socialist and non-aligned movements.
It is not fortuitous that former US President Jimmy Carter said that President Kim Il Sung was greater than the three American Presidents who had represented the nation building and destiny of the United States-George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln-put together.
The DPRK conferred the title of Generalissimo on him on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of his birth. Though he passed away on July 8, Juche 83 (1994), he is always alive in the hearts of the Korean people and the world progressives as the founding father of socialist Korea, pioneer of the cause of independence of mankind, eternal President of the DPRK and the Sun of Juche.