Kim Il-sung

Park Chung Hee and Kim Il Sung are perhaps the two most influential Koreans of the 20th century. They were leaders of two opposing sides on a divided Korean peninsula. Park was the leader of South Korea, known as The Republic of Korea (ROK), and Kim was the leader of North Korea, known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Since the Korean War, their countries have been in a stalemate characterized by a switch between periods of polarizing tension and times of cooperation and possible reunification. Despite being from rival states, these leaders actually have many similarities. In this essay, I will establish that these similarities exist in their biographical stories, cult personalities and nationalist policies imposed by their…

The Democratic People 's Republic of Korea, more well-known as North Korea, was established under Kim Il-sung in 1948, following the Japanese surrender of control over the peninsula. North Korea is a personalist rule communist regime This is evident through the centralization of power, lack of political contestation, and the presence of a personality cult. The political structure of North Korea greatly impacted the life of individuals and families. People were divided into classes, brainwashed,…

The country has been in a Communist one-man dictatorship since Kim Il Sung established the country with the help of Joseph Stalin on September 9th 1948. Throughout its history, one family, the Kim family, has been the only ones to rule North Korea. The majority political party is the Korean Workers Party and the two minority parties are the Chondoist Chongu Party and the Social Democratic Party; both of which are effectively under control of the Korean Workers Party. Legislation passes through a…

behind is to show national ‘dignity’, especially reflected on the National Day big celebration. Lee (2016) argued that it is self-deception to believe one can prevail in nuclear war through defensive capabilities alone, and North Korea has a strong desire to up the ante by demonstrating its nuclear prowess and defying international norms against testing. Therefore, North Korean strongly believes the country has definitely seized advantage over the South against the military defeat. To…

The Korean War was “fought mutually for unknown and incommensurable(if not incomprehensible) goals “(Cummings.205) by the 2 most important sides, North Korea and the US together with the UN. Kim Il Sung decided to attack the south for several reasons and even though he risked the possibilities of the intervention of the U.S (which occurred), he downplayed its importance because he thought that his allies both Stalin (USSR) and Mao (Communist China) could and would take care of the U.S…

compounded with Korean cultural desires to devise a Korean nationalist version of an ideological paradigm. And so, through the Soviets, the first ruler of the DPRK was Kim Il Sung, or as his people referred to him, “Great Leader.” Kim Il Sung was a pivotal leader in the North Korean revolution in making sure that the country turned left-wing. He was part of the anti-Japanese movement in the 1930’s and fled to the Soviet Union after eight years of resisting the Japanese. He received political…

The Korean War and The Afghanistan War were two major events in the cold war, but both shared some differences and similarities. Each war was placed in a totally different theater around the globe. They both started in different ways, for different causes, in different settings, and with different ending, but still managed to have some similarities in them. We’ll be talking about all the difference and similarities. We will talk about each war in detail and how each started and ended and…

into a northern and a southern region. The southern region was aided by the U.S. whereas the northern region was under Soviet Union control. This boundary was set due to a variety of reasons stemming from the geography of the mountainous north, the location of the different clans, and Washington war officials marking the thirty-eighth parallel as the half-way point of the peninsula. During the first three years, the northern and southern Korean powers consulted on how to establish a unified…

In a personal message conveyed by an ambassador, Kim Il Sung called the poplar tree incident “regretful” and said that future incidents like it ought to be avoided (qtd. in Oberdorfer and Carlin 160). The U.S. and South Korea decided to accept the message, even though it did not apologize, on the grounds that a statement of regret was better than a reignited war (Lee 80). Kim also agreed to an American proposal to formally divide the JSA to prevent future clashes (French 189). The poplar tree…

The capital of North Korea, Pyongyang is a city that went through a series of political, economic and social change over the 20th century. Pyongyang’s first major change was in its urban spatial structure in the 1930s when the city was under Japan’s rule. The city at the time resembled a capitalist city model which promoted commercial and industrial development. However, the city’s model completely transformed in 1953, after the Korean war. The Soviet Union introduced socialist ideals to North…