Life’s Tenet

All his life President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), founder of Korea, kept the tenet “The people are my God” faithfully.

He worked heart and soul to enhance the position and role of the popular masses to the highest level and make the Korean people a nation with a strong independent spirit.

Setting “The people are my God” as his life’s tenet in the early days of his revolutionary struggle to liberate Korea from Japan’s military occupation (1905-1945), he found his way into the people and shared the sweet and bitter with them. In the course of this, he founded the Juche idea that the master of revolution and construction is the popular masses and that the propeller of revolution and construction is also the popular masses. The creation of the Juche idea that is centered on man, or the masses of the people, for the first time in history, provided a new way to free the people from the old ideological and moral fetters of subordination and subjugation. In particular, the Korean people now got able to avoid flunkeyist and dogmatist tendencies securely in an independent spirit and live their life intentionally in their own way.

As is evident to the international community, they are now successfully coping with the hard-line “policy of power” of the imperialist forces headed by the United States that styles itself the world’s “only superpower”. Korea’s harder lines serves as the means to enlarge the stature of its being a socialist nation which is a mighty bulwark of independence.

Kim Il Sung believed in and relied on the people all his life, thus successfully leading the revolution and construction.

He made sure that every line or policy was decided to champion the aspirations and desires of the popular masses and that every factory or town was built in such a way that their interests and convenient living were fully provided for. The historic law on agrarian reform enforced in north Korea after the country was liberated from Japan’s military occupation in August 1945, was initiated by the President who well understood the centuries-old desire of the peasants for land of their own. He was also well informed of the people’s aspirations and desires when he advanced the original policy of socialist agricultural coopertivization after the Korean War (1950-1953). (The policy was to transform the economic form into a socialist one prior to technical reshaping, and it was carried into reality in all the rural communities.) Thanks to his belief in the people as in also incorporated in the names of the landmark structure, like the Grand People’s Study House and the People’s Palace of Culture.

To tide over a difficult situation by relying on the people was a consistent principle the President kept. During the Korean War when Korea fought against the invasion of the imperialist allied forces led by the US, he felt reassured of Korea’s victory when he was told by a Workers’ Party of Korea member, who was a worker at a machine factory, not to worry about the reconstruction project even though the whole land was war debris. In the post-war time when the situation at home and abroad were unprecedentedly complicated and serious, the President found great encouragement from an old country woman’s simple statement that they supported him alone. As there was guidance that was based on the belief in and reliance on the people, the Koreans fulfilled the tasks of postwar rehabilitation and socialist revolution despite of the total destruction in the war, and accomplished miraculous feats in socialist construction, thereby establishing a socialist power, independent in politics, self-reliant in defense and self-sufficient in the economy.

Kim Il Sung’s lifetime was a continuance of great devotion to the people’s welfare. He thought that the revolution, in essence, is an undertaking to take good care of the people. He set out on the road of revolution in his early teens and led the arduous anti-Japanese armed struggle for 15 years because he was more anxious than anybody else about the fate of his suffering nation and was more afire with resolution to free his compatriots from the wretched plight of colonial slavery.

A notable fact that soon after the country was liberated he ordered to blow off an old steel oven, as he was more interested in the workers’ lives and health than steel production when even a ton of steel counted.

His affection for the people is to be felt wherever you go in Korea. Anywhere anytime you can find monuments to his personal (and field) guidance, meet people who benefited from his loving care, and see photos of him among ordinary people.

He paid on-the-spot guidance visits to more than 20,600 places from the national liberation till the end of his life, and the total distance of his travel for local guidance amounts to as many as 578,000 km. Even on his birthdays, national holidays and Sundays, he found himself touring different places of the country.

Therefore, it is far from fortuitous that the Korean people hold him in respect as their father and eternal leader.