Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader
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The author has reviewed much of the output of Naewoe Press’s monthly Vantage Point from its first volume in 1978. I find much of the information presented even decades ago to be consistent with the best information available today. True, some contributors reveal very strong unscholarly biases against the North, strong enough to affect the credibility of their conclusions and in some cases their information. But more often than not the South Korean and Korean-American contributors to Vantage Point appear to have struggled against great difficulties to get the basic information right. This stands to reason. For South Korea, after all, accurate information about the North was a matter of life or death.
Nonetheless, despite such long-ago efforts by South Korean government-affiliated professional analysts to set the record straight, the scenario that casts Kim Il-sung as an impostor still has credibility among some anti-communist zealots and just plain sloppy researchers, not only in South Korea but abroad. Thus it was considered news in 1994 when Naewoe Press published A Bird’s Eye View of North Korea, which implicitly repudiated the theory. See “NK’s Kim Acknowledged as Independence Fighter,” Korea Times, May 1, 1994.
9. Scalapino and Lee (see chap. 2, n. 28), pt. 1, pp. 66–136.
10. For a provocative analysis of this political culture focusing on South Korea, see Gregory Henderson’s classic Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, .Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968).
11. See Scalapino and Lee (see chap. 2, n. 28), pt. I, p. 190.
A high Comintern official explained, “Over the years … factional disputes have taken place in many Parties. There are Parties which have achieved a certain amount of notoriety in this respect such as the American and Polish Parties, but the Korean factions hold the record” (Otto Kuusinen, “O koreiskom kom-munisticheskom dvizhenii,” Revolyusionyyi vostok, nos. 11–12 [1931]: p. 108, translated in Glenn Paige and Dong Jun Lee, “The Post-War Politics of Communist Korea,” in Robert A. Scalapino, ed., North Korea Today [New York: Praeger, 1963], p. 20).
12. Kim, With the Century, vol. 2, p. 69. Outside scholars have long written of Kim’s membership in the CCP, but prior to publication of his memoirs he and his propagandists for decades seem to have tried to disguise the fact by simply ignoring it—presumably for fear that Koreans’ knowledge that the Great Leader had taken orders from a foreign party would detract from his all-important nationalist credentials.
13. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 128. Kim is careful to emphasize that he retained his independence despite having gone on the Soviet payroll. Later he turned down an offer of a Soviet scholarship, he says, because to “eat Russian bread” might make him “pro-Russian” (vol. 2, p. 175).
14. Some biographers suggest that it was his mother’s remarriage or other relationship with a man that caused her to move to Antu instead of going back to Korea, where her relatives and those of her late husband lived. See Lim Un, Founding of a Dynasty (see chap. 2, n. 59), p. 257, where Lim discusses the claims of biographer Yi Myong-yong. Yi is quoted as reporting that Kim himself, around the time of his father’s death, had become the foster son of a Chinese named Moo.
15. Kim, With the Century, vol. 2, p. 252.
16. Kim offers a complicated explanation of why he fought under a Chinese nationalist commander: Chinese units ’were terrorizing and killing Koreans, having branded them as Japan’s agents in .Manchuria. Korean communist guerrilla groups “were small in size; there ’were only a few dozen guerrillas in each county,” says Kim. “They ’were in danger of being annihilated if captured by the Chinese nationalist units, so they could not expand their ranks.” To ensure that his own tiny guerrilla band could survive and grow, Kim offered to subordinate it to a Chinese commander as a “special Korean detachment.” The commander accepted—and promptly appointed Kim propaganda chief of the larger, nationalist unit. The irony of a communist running propaganda for anti-communists is not lost on Kim. “This was a ridiculous development, and not something we had desired, but it was a step up the ladder we had to climb,” he writes (With the Century, vol. 2, p. 294).
17. “Here again Kim [in the official hagiography] emerges as a ready-made leader. … There are reports that after the Manchurian Incident, students from various schools in Kirin [Jilin], including Yuwen Middle School, did form a small guerrilla band of twenty or thirty students, led by a Kirin college student named Chong Su-yong, but no Kim Song-ju (Kim Il-song) was reported. The earliest record of Kim’s military activities is not until early 1935” (Suh, Korean Communist Movement, p. 268).
Suh adds (p. 281), “The earliest record thus far available of Kim Il-song’s military activities in Manchuria … shows that in December 1935 Kim was commander of a small guerrilla company in Weiho, a town midway between Harbin and Chiamussu. Thus it is perhaps safe to assume that he did begin his activities one or two years earlier than 1935. The earliest Japanese police report of the military activities of a person named Kim Il-song (unmistakably the North Korean premier) is in May 1935; the report states that Kim was leader of the Third Detachment, the First Company, the Second Army of the NEPRA [Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army], operating primarily in the Chientao [Jiandao] region. Ch’oe Hyon related that he first met Kim Il-song in September 1933, which coincides with the general rise of the Chinese Communist guerrillas in Manchuria. Im Ch’un-ch’u related that Kim began his guerrilla activities with Yi Yong-pae, Kim Ch’ol-he and others but fought in a company commanded by Yang Song-yong as early as the spring of 1932. Yang Song-yong was a Korean who commanded a small detachment of the Second Company of the Second Division of the Second Army. This generally coincides with the fact that Kim fought under the Second Army, but it also confirms that he was a relatively minor figure if he fought under or with Yang Song-yong.”
18. Kim, With the Century, vol. 2, pp. 324–326.
19. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 358.
20. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 419–424.
21. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 206–212.
22. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 332–334.
23. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 431–435.
24. 24. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 435–436.
25. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 83–92.
26. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 12.
27. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 13.
28. Chung Dong-joo, “Two of Kim Il-sung Unit’s .Members Talk After 50 Years,” Wolgan JoongAng (Seoul) (October 1993): pp. 650–667, this portion translated as “Testimony on Kim Il Sung’s Unit (2),” People’s Korea (Tokyo), January 29, 1994.
29. Kim, With the Century, vol. 2, pp. 436–453.
30. See Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, pp. 160–161.
31. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, pp. 3–8.
32. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 10–13.
33. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 30–31.
34. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 29–57.
35. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 65–66.
36. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 29–57.
37. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 58–83.
38. Ibid., vol. 3, chap. 8, sec. 4, pp. 202–221.
39. Scalapino and Lee, in Communism in Korea, p. 35, quoting a 1928 Japanese report, describe the different styles of the Korean communists in .Manchuria and the Soviet Union’s Irkutsk around 1921: “Manchurian forces adhered to strict military discipline, in the fashion of the Japanese army, but the Irkutsk forces called each other tovarich [comrade] and made ‘no distinction between superior and subordinate.’” This was long before Kim became involved, but the reference at least suggests the tradition in which he would be trained.
40. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, pp. 84–108.
41. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 231–232.
42. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 233–255.
43. Bruce Cumings reports that the fame of Kim’s unit had spread even to the Soviet Union. An adulatory article in the journal Tikhii Okean (Pacific Ocean) in 1937 said, “The men in this detachment are very brave. All the most dangerous operations are carried out by this detachment. Its actions are usually well planned, quick and precise. Two heavy machine guns in the possess
ion of the detachment make it possible to withstand serious encounters with the Japanese troops” (The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947, cited hereinafter as Origins II [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981], p. 37).
44. Haruki Wada, Kin Nissei to Manshu konichi senso (Kim Il-sung and the Manchurian resistance war against Japan) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1992), p. 140, cited in Gavan McCormack, “Kim Country: Hard Times in North Korea,” New Left Review (March–April 1993).
Seiler (Kim Il-song 1941–1948, p. 25 [see chap. 2, n. 18]) writes that Kim’s Chinese Communist mentor, Wei Zhengmin, “attended the 7th Congress of the Communist International in 1935 and reported on the situation in the region, going into detail on armed activities by Koreans in the region, particularly those of Kim. This is believed by some to have been Moscow’s first knowledge of Kim as an anti-Japanese partisan.” Seiler here cites testimony by So Yong-gyu, former high-level cadre of the Workers’ Party of Korea, in the Seoul daily JoongAng Ilbo, August 19, 1991.
45. Chung Dong-joo, “Unit’s .Members Talk,” in Wolgan JoongAng; this portion translated as “Testimony on General Kim’s Unit (3),” People’s Korea (Tokyo), 5 February 1994.
46. “Item 52: Declaration of the Establishment of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army,” translated in Dae-Sook Suh, Documents of Korean Communism 1918–1948 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 441–443.
47. Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (see chap. 2, n. 35), pp. 46, 52.
McCormack, “Kim Country,” relates, based on Wada, Kin Nissei, p. 306, that Kim was known to the Japanese “on their October 1940 ‘wanted’ list as ‘the tiger’ (‘tora), while other guerrilla leaders were known as ‘bear,’ lion,’ bull,’ roe deer,’ ‘cat,’ ‘horse. ”
48. “Item 55: Threatening Notes,” translated in Suh, Documents of Korean Communism, pp. 449–451.
49. Suh (in Kim Il Sung, pp. 38–39) cites such press reports in stating that Kim often provisioned his unit by taking hostages, sometimes by offering to protect opium and ginseng farmers in exchange for portions of their crops.
50. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, p. 386.
51. Chung Dong-joo, “Testimony on General Kim’s Unit (3).”
52. Kim, With the Century, vol. 2, p. 99.
53. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 125–132. Elsewhere Kim describes Han as a hard-working member of the propaganda squad of the communist youth organization he helped to found. “She, as a member of the Ryugil Association of Korean Students, had fallen under our influence during art performances and at the gatherings where impressions on books were swapped. … A pupil of Jilin Girls’ Middle School, she was good-natured but reticent and usually passed unnoticed. However, she carried out every task given her, be it difficult or irksome, for the sake of the revolution. … She was known as a girl orator for the fiery speeches she made in Korean and Chinese to hundreds of people in the streets” (vol. 1, p. 288).
54. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 120–121.
55. “Declaration of the Establishment of the United Army” pp. 441–443.
56. The guerrillas also used weapons captured from the Japanese, so “it was very hard to distinguish a Korean unit from a Japanese one,” Choi Jin-sok said. Chung Dong-joo, “Testimony on Gen. Kim Il Sung’s Unit (2).”
57. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, pp. 170–171.
58. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 188–202.
59. Choi Jin-sok, quoted in “Testimony on Gen. Kim Il Sung’s Unit (2).”
60. Kim Ik Hyon, The Immortal Woman Revolutionary (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1987). An editor’s note says that Kim Jong-suk was “born into a patriotic and revolutionary peasant family on December 24, 1917, in Hoeryong township, Hoeryong County, North Hamgyong Province. … Early in her life she lost her parents and her brothers beneath the bayonets of the Japanese imperialist aggressors. In the early 1930s, as a teenage girl, she embarked upon the road of revolution against the aggressors. She grew up as a member of the Young Communist League. … In the spring of 1935 she met the great General Kim Il Sung, the peerless patriot and national hero, and this marked a milestone of decisive significance in her struggle and her life. Under the leadership of the great General Kim Il Sung she developed into an indomitable revolutionary and joined the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in September 1935. From that time she fought alongside the Comrade Commander and defended the headquarters of the revolution at the risk of her life.”
61. The True Story of Kim Jong Il (Seoul: The Institute for South-North Korean Studies, 1993), pp. 27–28.
62. An official biography of Kim Jong-il tells of his first visit, with his parents, to Kim Il-sung’s ancestral home at Mangyongdae, in the fall of 1945, after liberation: “You two had no wedding ceremony, so today’s banquet is for your honour,” Kim Bo Hyon said as he held his great-grandson on his lap “ (Choe In Su, Kim Jong Il The People’s Leader [Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1983], vol. I, p. 8).
63. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, p. 280.
64. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 107.
65. Suh, Kim Il Sung, p. 51. Suh adds that he found “no record of such a woman partisan in any of the Chinese or Korean sources.”
66. See Lim Un, Founding of a Dynasty, pp. 47–50. See also Yu Song-chol, “Transferred to the Position of Korean People’s Army Operations Bureau Commander in 1948,” Hanguk Ilbo, November 12, 1990 (translated in Seiler, Kim Il-song 1941–1948). Yu, a comrade of Kim’s in the 1940s, places the arrest in 1939.
67. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, p. 297.
68. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 282.
69. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 279–305.
70. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 369–370.
71. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 394.
72. Chung Dong-joo, “Testimony on Gen. Kim Il Sung’s Unit (3).”
73. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, pp. 402–403.
74. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 406–411.
75. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 53.
76. A resolution adopted by Korean partisans of the First Route Army of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army in .March 1940, at one of their last meetings, describes the situation as it was developing in the months before Kim’s flight to the USSR: “The concentration and movement of a big company, as in the past, now provides an easy target for the Japanese punitive force; therefore, as a policy of the army, in the future the army should be divided into small units and should be scattered. Because of the Japanese punitive force’s operation among the masses, the people in the guerrilla districts have since winter become distrustful of our army” See “Item 62: Resolution,” translated in Suh, Documents of Korean Communism, p. 471.
77. Kim, With the Century, vol. 1, preface.
78. Suh, Kim Il Sung, p. 54.
79. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, p. 394.
80. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 451.
81. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 356.
82. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 412–415.
4. Heaven and Earth the Wise Leader Tamed.
1. Since 1970 the 1941–1953 period has been examined in whole or in part by many authors, including: Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee (Communism in Korea [see chap. 2, n. 28], and other works) and Dae-Sook Suh (Kim Il Sung [see chap. 2, n. 35], and other works), who are often categorized as taking an orthodox or traditional approach (or, in some critics’ terms, an anti-communist, Cold War approach; historians’ debates for decades have been fraught with ideology); Bruce Cumings (especially Origins I [see chap. 2, n. 25], and Origins II [see chap. 3, n. 43]) and several contributors to a volume edited by Frank Baldwin, Without Parallel: The American-Korean Relationship Since 1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1973), scholars who have been labeled “left-revisionist” by some of their fellow historians; and Erik van Ree (Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, 1945-1947 [Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd., 1989]), Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis and Xue Litai (Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993]) and Kathr
yn Weathersby (various papers published by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project), who have presented evidence made available from sources in the Soviet Union and China, and have taken stances that might be characterized variously as neo-orthodox or post-revisionist. The version presented in this chapter offers a brief, critical synthesis. For a fuller listing of contending historians and a useful effort to sort out their views, see James I. Matray’s 1998 review essay “Korea’s Partition: Soviet-American Pursuit of Reunification, 1945–1948,” http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intre/korpart.htm. Matray applies the label “right revisionism” to the neo-orthodox works, even as he argues that Korean War scholars should “abandon the outdated analytical dichotomy of traditionalism versus revisionism and use new communist archival materials to provide a better understanding of the reasons for Korea’s division and why two Koreas still exist today.”