Kim IL Sung, the Communist unifier of Korea, made a great impact on the world as a whole. He formed a new nation almost single-handedly and started a communist government that lasts to this day.
On April 15, 1912 Kim IL Sung was born in North Korea, the eldest of three sons by a village couple named Kim Hyonh Jik and Kang Pan Sok. Kim and his family immigrated to Manchuria in the 1920's like many Korean families did at the time. In Manchuria, Kim attended a Chinese school. At the age of fifteen, Kim was arrested and imprisoned for a year by the Chinese authorities for having been a founding member of a Communist Youth League. After his release from jail in 1930, Kim founded the Korean Revolutionary Army, a guerrilla group that fought against the Japanese military. In 1931, Kim left for the hills of eastern Manchuria to join a Chinese Communist guerrilla group fighting the Japanese military in Manchuria.
English: Sculpture Entrance to the Kim Il Sung Sta...
English: Statue of Kim Il Sung in Kaesong, North K...
English: Kim Il-sung in 1946 日本語: 1946年頃...Kim swiftly rose up the ranks of the Chinese Communist Army. Between the years 1932-1941, Kim led a band of Korean guerrillas against Japanese positions and personnel in Manchuria. It was during this time that he
assumed the pseudonym Kim IL Sung, the name of a legendary resistance fighter that caused the Japanese a lot of trouble.
In 1941, Japanese counterinsurgency forces forced Kim to leave Manchuria for the Soviet Union. In February of 1942 Kim Chong Suk, 2nd wife of Kim Il Sung, gives birth to their first son, Kim Jong Il. She joined Kim Il Sung's army in 1935 at the age of 16. She worked as a cook, seamstress, spy, food gatherer, fighter and close comrade of Kim Il Sung. She was captured by the Japanese in 1937 but was released a year later.