– N. Ribar –
On this day 111 years ago, Kim Il Sung was born in the Mangyongdae quarters of Pyongyang into a poor patriotic family, filled with resentment for the occupiers and their lackeys. It was this spirit which Comrade Kim Il Sung would carry with him throughout his entire life — first, when it was the Japanese; and second, when it was the Americans. Throughout it all, he was first and foremost a man of action. When others were carrying on “expert” theoretical analyses disconnected from the masses and their struggle, President Kim Il Sung was right there in the many events which were stirring up battles, fighting for the national and social liberation of his beloved people.
It was this broad courageous and militant enthusiasm which he was define for even in his very first practical activities. As a man who had lived with the masses, a man who was truly a product of them, he despised those intellectuals of “pure virtue,” those “fathers” of the “nation” who lived in exile from the brutal Japanese fascist occupation and who thought they were everything to the Koreans. No, time was to prove them wrong. The people were to win and these pseudo-patriots were to lose. History itself demanded such a thing. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was exposed of such “experts,” who operated for nearly three decades and did nothing whatsoever to aid the masses in their struggle. One event that proved the cowardly stand of these bourgeois traitors was on March 1, 1919, when the Korean people rose up as one and this “government” did nothing to aid the people, indeed it preached negotiations and reforms with imperialism.
In 1925, six years later, the Communist Party of Korea was founded. But this party also did not have the backing of the masses, was not tried and tested in struggle. In other words, they did not take practice as the criterion of truth, they did not keep this materialist principle in mind when they were concerned with party-building. Instead, allowing dozens of factions over the years, they were concerned about various polemics with other members, and indeed other groups. They were so fixed on finding the “correct” line that they forgot what the main link was — struggle against the occupier. This period is captured in the annals of the books of modern Korean history. All these petty squabbles were intended to win over Comintern support, to prove one “more Soviet” or “more national” than the other. Thus were the calls for setting up soviets in 1920-30s Korea or for tailing the bourgeoisie under the signboard of “the nation.” But President Kim Il Sung stated that they would prove to both the Comintern and the people their merits not by begging, by showing oneself to be obsequious, but by their revolutionary deeds and the struggle which they would be waging in favour of the international communist movement and the good of the nation. And this is exactly what occurred!
On October 17, 1926, President Kim Il Sung founded the Down-with-Imperialism Union as an organization of the unity of the Korean people in revolution against the occupier and imperialism in general. It conducted its work by means of mass meetings and appealing directly to the people to take a stand for their most vital needs. Indeed, the masses of the people did rise up in this battle by forming their own partisan detachments and setting up bases in Manchuria where they could mount an offensive and conduct operations against the enemy.
This revolution was a people’s democratic revolution, i.e. neither a socialist nor a capitalist revolution, but a revolution based on the worker-peasant alliance. But neither did President Kim Il Sung forget that, on the world of scale, it was the working class that was the centre of the epoch, regardless of the backwards state of the Korean economy and society. He, looking ahead to the future, knew that they would need to wage an uninterrupted revolution, not placing a Chinese wall between the people’s democratic and the socialist revolutions. This proves the original and scientific thinking and also the steel will of principle of President Kim Il Sung in applying Marxism-Leninism to Korean conditions, in contradistinction to those who preached the Soviet experience as the only solution to all problems and to those who, hiding under backward conditions, preached an all-class revolution.
This mighty anti-Japanese national-liberation war was crowned with victory by virtue of the struggle of the guerilla units and the Korean people generally on August 15, 1945. At that time President Kim Il Sung travelled around Korea — Pyongyang, Seoul and many other regions — for mass rallies, some of which spontaneously drew attendances as large as 400,000. And while the Provisional People’s Republic of Korea (PRK) had been set up over the entire peninsula by the Korean people themselves, the American imperialists forcibly occupied the south, dissolved the people’s committees and declared the PRK illegal. In particular, they retained the Japanese fascist bureaucracy at the head of the state and imposed one of the most brutal repression campaigns in the history of the world, worse than the Japanese themselves had done. The only Koreans involved in the state were devout nazis and fascists, including Kim Song Su and Syngman Rhee.
Where the people’s committees remained in the north, the Korean people set up the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), with President Kim Il Sung at the head. Knowing the situation and never once falling for the schemes of the imperialists, he knew that bitter struggles would still be in store. In the interim, the revolutionary government expropriated the landlords and gave the land to those who tilled it, nationalized the 90 per cent of industry which formerly belonged to the Japanese imperialists and established socialist relations in the main. This is further proof of the decisive and original thinking of President Kim Il Sung, who never dogmatized the situation by establishing a “national bourgeoisie” where they needn’t be one in Korean conditions. Complete equality was established between men and women in the law, measures were taken to eradicate the plague of illiteracy, a campaign of industrialization was undertaken and the people’s state power was set up whereby the workers had control– not only were these implemented for the first time in Korean history, but indeed the DPRK was the first country in Asia to implement any of them.
That greater challenge to come I mentioned, of course, was the Korean War. That dastardly plan, which the U.S. imperialists had been cooking up in their laboratories since the fall of the Japanese imperialists, was realized when the south Korean Syngman Rhee flunkey army crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950 in line with a premeditated plan set up by Rhee and CIA chief Allen Dulles, among others. On that day they invaded the DPRK — pushing to Haeju, Kumchon and Cholwon. The peaceful policy of President Kim Il Sung was expressed in numerous diplomatic protests before counter-attacking, but it was not easy for these fascist minions to abandon their revanchist dreams of raising the U.S. imperialist flag over the whole of Korea. Bearing this in mind, an emergency meeting was convened and the DPRK government and army decided to counter-attack and to drive the occupiers out once and for all. The American plans failed miserably — they underestimated one key factor, the striving of the Korean people for peace and national reunification. The people rose as one in support of their government, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and President Kim Il Sung, and routed the south Korean puppet army and liberated nearly the whole country in a matter of weeks.
This situation, of course, made Washington panic. They were forced to send in their own army, a grave violation of newly-established international law, under the auspicious of the UN intervention forces after a vote was forced through behind the back of the USSR. What the U.S. imperialist forces did in Korea consisted of crimes much more brutal than the Japanese fascist occupation of Korea, and even many the many crimes of the Hitlerites against the Soviet Union. What they cannot control they destroy — this was the imperialist dictate that precipitated American genocide of the Korean people. Biological and chemical weapons no nazi or fascist ever dared to use in such quantities were dropped down into Korea, simple people were burned alive with gasoline, women and child were suffocated by force, entire regions of people were rounded up and exterminated, millions upon millions of weapons were targetted against civilian populations. And for what? For committing the crime of wanting to be free of imperialist slavery, for following President Kim Il Sung’s precepts of national reunification. I have only mentioned these grave crimes against humanity to show the resounding indignation and hatred the Korean people had for the imperialists and their minions.
But no such crimes could keep down the spirit of the people. The days where the imperialists were to carry out such acts and the people were to submit were over — now they had a national leadership in the DPRK and WPK, with President Kim Il Sung at the head. With the internationalist aid of the Chinese volunteers, the Korean army and people pushed the imperialists and flunkeys back to the approximate region of the 38th parallel and, having worn down down them for three long years, forced them to sign the armistice on July 27, 1953. The day of liberation had finally arrived! The greatest war which the Korean people had ever waged in their history ended in their favour! This was the struggle President Kim Il Sung waged.
And while over half of the country still remained and does remain under imperialist occupation to this day, this peace forced the imperialists to stand down their weapons, to think twice about what they were doing. They have never dared to wage a war like they did on June 25, 1950 because, learning from their resounding defeat, they know that this time that they would wiped out for good. What courage the Korean people have displayed and still display! President Kim Il Sung knew that national reunification would come, and he put forward concrete proposals all throughout his life in this vein, most notably the 10-point program for reunification he authored in the 1990s that guides DPRK state policy to this day.
Around the moments of victory in the Korean War, a deadly plot was being hatched up internationally against Marxism-Leninism. When the events surrounding the death of Stalin changed the political landscape of the world forever, President Kim Il Sung was not to be found among those who bowed down to the modern revisionists as they continued spewing their Black Hundreds propaganda against the history of the Soviet Union, against the peoples of the world in their strivings for national and social liberation, indeed against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea itself and its independent road.
In those days, President Kim Il Sung held his head above his shoulders and declared with the full vigour that always defined him that the great Stalin was not as you, Nikita Khrushchev, say. Nor, President Kim Il Sung declared, is the question of Stalin purely an internal matter of the Soviet Union. It is a question relevant to the whole world — for J.V. Stalin belonged to the whole world proletariat and oppressed peoples, as a theoretician and practitioner of Marxism-Leninism, one who always aided the Korean people in their struggle. Stalin’s works were well-studied by the Korean communists and were an excellent tool in the liberation of the country, and he still holds a place of honour as the great continuator of Lenin. No Khrushchevite gang could ever take that away. Nor could the “lessons” they attempted to impose on the world communist and workers’ movement through the revisionist theses of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union be forced onto Korea. No, President Kim Il Sung and the Korean people would always reject these as grave errors and, if implemented in Korea, would lead to the loss of independence and socialism.
When the Workers’ Party of Korea, with President Kim Il Sung at the head, took this courageous stand of international principle, they were met with a ferocious onslaught in August 1956. Mikoyan, Ponomarev, the Soviet ambassador Ivanov and others, as well as Peng Dehuai from the Chinese party which had just held its 9th Congress endorsing the Soviet line, acted as anti-Marxists and were put into motion to rupture the singular Marxist-Leninist line of the WPK. Together with their internal agents Kim Tu Bong, Yun Kong Hum, Choe Chang Ik, Pak Chang Ok and others, they accused President Kim Il Sung of refusing to destalinize and attempted to use this as grounds to overthrow the party leadership. But President Kim Il Sung, never bowing down to these renegades, went on the attack — with clear principles and arguments he convinced the Plenum to expel these splitters and Trotskyites, and a purge was carried out to clear the organs of the people of enemies. This plot to liquidate Korean independence, hatched up by the Soviet revisionists, failed due to the vigilance and great principles of President Kim Il Sung and the Workers’ Party of Korea.
When the tragedy of 1989-91 took place, President Kim Il Sung pointed out clearly to all the world where the source of the crisis was, where it started — the attack on Stalin and the revisionist theses of the 20th Congress of the CPSU. Such was the principled stand President Kim Il Sung took!
Korea has accomplished incredible feats in the field of socialist construction over the many decades — still today it has the economic law of balanced development, i.e. planned economy, and not anarchy in production, still today it still has the coopertivist peasantry it founded in the 50s, still today it gives priority to heavy industry without neglecting light industry and the foodstuffs of the people, still today Korea expresses its culture in an all-round proletarian content and form, still today the people are the masters of their country. All this in the period of anti-social offensive where the most brazen rights the people had achieved are being taken away in the name of the “free market,” “free speech” and for the benefit of the so-called “free nations.” This is thanks to the correct policy of President Kim Il Sung, to the Juche idea and the scientific thinking he left behind on July 8, 1994.
Today, President Kim Il Sung many volumes of works, reminiscences, memoirs and other books have been published, which the Korean people study to carry forward their revolution and smash the world bourgeoisie, the imperialists and their flunkeys. The day will come when not only will the red sun glow above reunified, free Korea, but when all the countries of the world will rejoice for such a birthday as April 15, the birthday of President Kim Il Sung. NEPH salutes all the Korean communists and patriots fighting for national reunification and socialism in their celebrations on this day!