Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the
leader of North Korea for 46 years, from its establishment in 1948 until
his death in 1994.
According to North Korean sources, the works of Kim Il-sung amount to approximately 10,800 speeches, reports, books, treatises and other types of works.
, about 60 of them are considered to be particularly important by outside observers.
Kim Il-sung's works are published and republished in countless collections. These include the 100-volume ''Complete Works of Kim Il-sung'' (''chŏnjip(전집)''),
the 50-volume ''Collected Works'' (''chŏjakchip(저작집)'') and the 15-volume ''Selected Works'' (''sŏnjip(선집)'').
In North Korea, his works are published by the
Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House
The Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House (WPKPH, ) is the principal publishing house of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and one of the two main publishers in the country. It publishes magazines and books on politics, such as the works of ...
,
but front organizations in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
publish unofficial Korean-language editions as well. North Korean sources say that publishing houses in 110 countries have published works of Kim Il-sung in translations in some 60 languages.
The earliest work in the Enlarged Edition of ''Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works'' is from October 1926.
By the time of Kim's death, the collections had ballooned to unpractical sizes with even the ''Selected Works'' "too long and costly to be used in group study, the only kind the regime felt safe in encouraging" and the ''Collected Works'' "unfit to any propaganda purpose except to lead awed schoolchildren past". With more electricity and leisure time, too, such enormous collections were no longer popular.
All writings from before the time Kim returned to North Korea (19 September 1945) are considered to be unhistorical. There is no historical record of them from the purported time period and they only began to appear in the 1970s. It is evident from both their contents written to support later viewpoints in North Korean politics, and the style of writing characteristic to Kim in his later years, that they have been written much later, specifically in the late 1960s to early 1970s. For instance, ''
'', dated to December 1931, discusses little-known labor strikes in Korea far away from Kim's whereabouts in
Manchuria that a young and uneducated guerrilla wouldn't have likely known about due to Japanese censorship. Another particularly egregious example dated 1 June 1937, called ''
Proclamation'', stipulates that the Japanese are forcibly drafting Koreans to invade China and ultimately join WWII, when these did not take place until July 1937 and December 1941, respectively. They do, however, bear resemblance to his written style. This is also true of his later works, with only a handful of pieces that appear to have been ghostwritten for him.
Suh Dae-sook
Suh Dae-sook (22 November 1931 – 13 September 2022) was North Korean professor emeritus of political science and a director of the Centre for Korean Studies at the University of Hawaii. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1964 wit ...
attributes the lack of a ghostwriter to an identifiable writing style that has consistently matured and the fact that few of his subordinates have lasted in North Korean politics for such a long period of time without being subject to purges. Occasionally, Kim is given notes on technical subjects, but both the policies and texts are of his own making.
Many of the later writings, too have gone through edition in subsequent publications to match the political situation, typically by removing references to the roles of the
Soviet Union and
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
in early North Korean politics, and by removing names of purged officials.
The English editions, published by the
Foreign Languages Publishing House, as ''Kim Il-sung Works'', ''Kim Il-sung Selected Works'', and ''Kim Il-sung Complete Works'' have reached volume 50, eight, and seven, respectively.
Volume seven of ''Selected Works'' was never published in English.
Kim was most prolific when writing about the
North Korean economy
The economy of North Korea is a centrally planned economy, following ''Juche'', where the role of market allocation schemes is limited, although increasing. , North Korea continues its basic adherence to a centralized command economy. With a t ...
, but his most impactful works tend to be on the management of the
Workers' Party of Korea. He did not write as much on international relations, of the
Korean reunification, save for "constant and perfunctory" references in his many speeches. The
military of North Korea is also underrepresented in his writings, although many additional works pertaining to it might exist but be restricted. Kim's 1967 speech ''
'' in the aftermath of the
Kapsan Faction Incident
The Kapsan Faction Incident was an unsuccessful attempt to undermine the power of Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea, around the year 1967. The "Kapsan faction" was a group of veterans of the anti-Japanese struggle of the 1930s and 1940s t ...
, is considered one of his most important ones, but remains likewise restricted.
According to the official North Korean version, Kim Il-sung laid out his ''
Juche'' ideology in the 1955 speech
''On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing ''Juche'' in Ideological Work''. It is often considered a "watershed moment" in North Korean history. Half of the speech is, however, on matters unrelated to ''Juche'' and praises the Soviets, which is ill-suited to the ideology's stress on self-reliance. For the next ten years Kim failed to elaborate on ''Juche'', even on important occasions such as his speech to mark the tenth anniversary of the North Korean state. The concept had all but completely disappeared from the vocabulary of his works with the exception of a 1960 speech, ''
'', where he passingly mentions it. The next work to deal with ''Juche'' in detail was Kim's ''
'', a lecture he had given when visiting
Indonesia. The formulation of ''Juche'' as it is known today is from a 1972 interview with ''
Mainichi Shimbun'' journalists, entitled
''On Some Problems of Our Party's ''Juche'' Idea and the Government of the Republic's Internal and External Policies''. North Korea scholar
B.R. Myers
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963), usually cited as B. R. Myers, is an American professor of international studies at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea, best known for his writings on North Korean propaganda. He is a contributing editor f ...
thinks that these occasions are too low-profile for introducing major ideological developments, leading him to conclude that the ''Juche'' idea is merely a front.
Different editions of collections have played a significant role in the propagation of ''Juche''. In 1960, the second edition of a collection of Kim Il-sung's speeches was published. It included Kim's ''On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing ''Juche'' in Ideological Work'', which was not considered an important work at the time. After the publication, American scholars translated the speech into English and left the word "''Juche''" untranslated. According to Myers, this marked the begin of the recognition of ''Juche'' as a distinct ideology.
According to Myers,
Kim Il-sung's cult of personality
The North Korean cult of personality surrounding its ruling family, the Kim family, has existed in North Korea for decades and can be found in many examples of North Korean culture. Although not acknowledged by the North Korean government, many ...
was consciously trying to match that of
Mao Zedong. Thus when Mao was renowned for
his poetry, the North Koreans matched this by claiming that Kim Il-sung had written plays during the
anti-Japanese struggle
The Korean independence movement was a military and diplomatic campaign to achieve the independence of Korea from Japan. After the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, Korea's domestic resistance peaked in the March 1st Movement of 1919, which w ...
of the 1930s.
Two plays that were allegedly written by Kim Il-sung are ''
The Sea of Blood
''Sea of Blood'' () is a propagandist North Korean opera credited to Kim Il-sung. It was first produced as an opera by Sea of Blood Theatrical Troupe (''Pibada Guekdan'') in 1971. It was then later adapted into a novel by the Choseon Novelist ...
'' and ''
The Flower Girl
''The Flower Girl'' () is a North Korean revolutionary genre theatrical performance, which was written by the country's sole President Kim Il-sung according to official North Korean sources.2008年03月26日金日成原创《卖花姑娘》5月 ...
''. Nonetheless, Kim Il-sung also wrote poems,
such as one called "Brightest Star", written in 1992 to congratulate
Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il (; ; ; born Yuri Irsenovich Kim;, 16 February 1941 – 17 December 2011) was a North Korean politician who was the second supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He led North Korea from the 1994 death of his father Kim ...
on behalf of the latter's birthday. Kim Il-sung also wrote song lyrics.
Official North Korean history also attributes operas to Kim. Sometimes Kim is attributed with writing the scripts of operas and plays directly, and at other times for providing the actual authors with the plots.
Kim delivered a ''New Year Address'' since 1 January 1946. Although the tradition was likely copied from the Soviet Union, North Korea made one important distinction. In the Soviet Union, the speech was always delivered by the formal
head of state instead of
Stalin who held real power. Since the North Korean state had not been organized by 1946, the task fell on Kim as the head of the
North Korea Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea
The North Korean Branch Bureau (NKBB) of the Communist Party of Korea (CPK) () was established by a CPK conference on 13 October 1945, and was through the merger with New People's Party of Korea replaced by the 1st Central Committee of the Wor ...
. The speech has been delivered by the
supreme leader of North Korea
The supreme leader () of North Korea is the ''de facto'' paramount leader of the Workers' Party of Korea, the state and the Korean People's Army. The title has not been written into the national constitution as a separate office, but it currentl ...
instead of the formal head of state ever since, making it an important policy speech identified with the leader personally.
''
With the Century'', Kim Il-sung's eight-volume autobiography written shortly before his death, is his most popular work among North Korean readership.
Bibliography
Works
Collections
See also
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Kim Jong-il bibliography
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Kim Jong-un bibliography
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Marxist bibliography
References
Works cited
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Further reading
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External links
Works by Kim Il-sungat Publications of the DPRK
at
Korean Friendship Association
The Korean Friendship Association (KFA, es, Asociación de Amistad con Corea) is a Spain-based friendship association with North Korea. The KFA was established in November 2000. It claims to have official representatives in 34 countries. The KFA ...
Audio excerptsat
Voice of Korea
Kim Il-sungat the
Marxists Internet Archive
Documents by Kim Il-sungat
Wilson Center Digital Archive
{{Kim Il-sung
Bibliographies by writer
Communist books