Baik Bong () is a

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

n author known for writing the official

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

Kim Il-sung Kim Il-sung (; , ; born Kim Song-ju, ; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of ...

Biography of Kim Il-sung

The first comprehensive

was published in Korean in

in 1968. It was called ''Minjogŭi t'aeyang Kim Il-sŏng changgun'' (''Sun of the People, General Kim Il-sung''). Although it was most likely written by a collective, it appeared under the name of Baik Bong. Before that, hagiography of Kim Il-sung had been identified with Han Sorya, but after he was purged, hagiography conventionally no longer appeared under the name of any one author. Baik's biography was published by the party in two volumes. It covered Kim Il-sung's life up to the end of 1967. That biography was translated into English in three volumes under the title ''Kim Il Sung Biography'' and was published by a Japanese publishing house. The first volume is titled ''From Birth to Triumphant Return to Homeland'', the second volume ''From Building Democratic Korea to Chullima Flight'', and the third volume ''From Independent National Economy to 10-Point Political Programme''. It has since become "the standard DPRK biography" of Kim Il-sung. In 1970, the three volumes were published in French by the Jeune Afrique Edition publishing house in Paris. A new version was Baik's biography was published in August 1972 as ''Ilyu haebang ŭi kusŏng Kim Il-sŏng wŏnsu'' (''Marshal Kim Il-sung, Liberator of Mankind''), prompted by the fact that the nascent ''

Juche ''Juche'' ( ; ), officially the ''Juche'' idea (), is the state ideology of North Korea and the official ideology of the Workers' Party of Korea. North Korean sources attribute its conceptualization to Kim Il-sung, the country's founder and f ...

'' ideology had now been attributed to Kim Il-sung from his youth, which had to be written into the story. During the 1970s, Pyongyang intensified its massive campaign to publish the works and feats of Kim Il-sung in several languages in order to promote its ''Juche'' ideology throughout the world (and in the

Third World The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the " First ...

in particular).

Factual accuracy

Baik devoted much of his work in the official biography to recount Kim Il-sung's struggle against the Japanese occupiers. The factual accuracy of many such anti-Japanese tales has been questioned. Baik also omits any mention of Kim Il-sung's association with the

Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army After the Empire of Japan invaded and occupied the Northeast in 1931, the Chinese Communist Party organized small anti-Japanese guerrilla units, and formed their own Northeastern People's Revolutionary Army, dedicated to social revolution, but th ...

. It has also been suggested that "Baik Bong" is a pseudonym and that the writer lives in Japan.

Works

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References

Works cited

* * * 20th-century biographers Date of birth unknown Kim Il-sung North Korean writers Possibly living people 20th-century North Korean writers {{Korea-writer-stub