S. Harrison, the then senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote: I think it is highly respectable that President Kim Il Sung defended the national sovereignty and independence from foreign domination and added brilliance to it.
Defending National Sovereignty
When Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) was born, his country was under the Japanese military occupation (1905-1945).
He embarked on the road of revolution at the tender age of 14 with a determination to win back his country. He founded the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in April 1932 and staged an anti-Japanese struggle for more than ten years, even without state backing or support from a regular army. Under his leadership the Korean people waged an all-people resistance combined with the general offensive of the KPRA, liberating their country in August 1945.
In June 1950 a war broke out in Korea by the US in an attempt to realize its ambition for world supremacy. The US enlisted huge armed forces, including its 15 satellite countries, ROK troops and the remnants of the former Japanese army, into the Korean front to crush the nascent country. However, the US ended up kneeling down before the Korean people who turned out as one in the resistance to the aggressors, rallied around Kim Il Sung, not to be reduced again to the slaves of the imperialists.
Kim Il Sung also firmly safeguarded the sovereignty and dignity of his country and people in the fierce military confrontation with the US including the incidents of the armed spy ship Pueblo and the large spy plane EC-121.
For his part the concept of independence was not confined to the territorial defence from foreign invasion.
After the country’s liberation he indicated the independent and original road of progressive democracy, built a country where the people are its masters and solved all problems from an independent standpoint. He never tolerated any foreign intervention in the slightest in formulating and implementing the lines of the state. And he consistently adhered to the line of building an independent national economy with a firm belief that economic independence leads to political independence.
Once Kim Il Sung said that although there may be large and small countries, and advanced and underdeveloped nations in the world, there can be no senior and junior countries, nor can there be a people that dominates or is dominated, and that all countries and peoples are fully on an equal footing and independent.
This precious aphorism of lasting value is for the world people.
Once former US President Jimmy Carter confessed, after he met President Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) of the DPRK, that he was completely fascinated by the Korean leader and that from the moment he saw him, he felt that he was a peace-loving, reasonable, intelligent, efficient and popular leader.
Believing in People As in Heaven
During a visit to the DPRK in 1994 Carter met President Kim Il Sung.
The two were having a talk on a cruise ship sailing along the lower reaches of the Taedong River. Suddenly, Kim Il Sung asked to slow down the ship. As Carter looked puzzled, Kim Il Sung pointed his finger at the riverside where some were angling, saying that if their ship disturbed the water, it might bother them and that they should sail a bit slower for the anglers’ convenience.
This anecdote is just an example showing how respectful Kim Il Sung was to the people.
In the mid-1930s, Pak In Jin, a patriarch of the Chondoist religion, asked Kim Il Sung if he had anything to worship, like they believed in “Heaven.” Then Kim Il Sung replied: Of course there is something I believe in like God: the people. I have been worshipping the people as Heaven, and respecting them as if they were God. My God is none other than the people. Only the masses are omniscient and omnipotent and almighty on earth. Therefore, my lifetime motto is “The people are my God.”
Every year in the run-up to the birthday of Kim Il Sung (April 15), there take place photo exhibitions on his exploits on the Internet. Almost all of the photos on display are of him among the people. Some of them show him sitting knee to knee with the farmers on a simple straw mat to teach them how to improve their living, and tasting boiled rice at the dining hall of the workers’ hostel on his visit to a factory.
His policies were all oriented to the people. He found solutions to any difficulties by going among the people and solved all problems by enlisting their strength. And he saw to it that the state enforced policies to educate children across the country and provide houses built at its expense to the people free of charge and take full responsibility of their life. That’s why the Korean people called him “Fatherly leader.”
Reverend Billy Graham, an American evangelist who had been to the DPRK, said in admiration for the country’s reality where President Kim Il Sung’s politics of believing in the people as in Heaven was administered that even Jesus would find nothing to do in the DPRK even if he descends there from Heaven.