LEADERS

Kim Il-Sung is still revered almost as a deity in North Korea, but his life has become lost in myth

KIM IL-SUNG

DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF KOREA 12 APRIL 1912 - 8 JULY 1994

The life of the North Korean state’s founding father is shrouded in myth. He is alternately vilified in South Korea as an evil dictator and adulated almost as a deity in the North.

Although the narrative of his early life is uncertain, it is known that he was born Kim Jong-su to a middle class, possibly Christian, family in Mangyondae, today a suburb of Pyongyang. In 1920, with the Japanese in control of Korea, the family relocated to Manchuria, north east China, where he became interested in left-wing politics in his teens.

Having been imprisoned by China’s Nationalist government