Kim Il Sung Defeats Two Imperialist Powers

Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), the eternal President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, created a model of national liberation struggle in colonies by defeating two imperialist powers in his generation.

Creating a Model of Guerrilla Warfare

Korea was under Japan’s military occupation from 1905 to 1945.

Having declared an all-out war against Japan, a newly-emerging military power that was hell-bent on overseas expansion, Kim Il Sung advanced the line of armed struggle centred on guerrilla warfare.

There had been recorded many wars, large and small, in the human history, but none, in which guerrillas defeated regular armed forces. This being the case, there had been no theory for national liberation struggle in colonies centred on guerrilla warfare, nor any military commander who had earned fame through guerrilla warfare.

The original military strategic idea of launching an anti-Japanese armed struggle with guerrilla warfare as the major tactic was put forward at a meeting held in Mingyuegou, northeast China, in December 1931.

Until then, regular warfare and guerrilla warfare had been known as two forms of armed struggle; the former had been recognized as the main mode and the latter as a temporary and auxiliary mode.

Proceeding from the concrete reality of his country, in which he could expect no state backing nor assistance from regular armed forces, Kim Il Sung defined guerrilla warfare by a standing revolutionary army as the major form of armed struggle, and organized the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, the first revolutionary armed force of the Korean people, on April 25, 1932, declaring a war against Japan to win back his country.

The major guarantee he regarded in achieving victory in the guerrilla warfare was a skilful application of guerrilla tactics.

In order to annihilate the Korean guerrillas, the Japanese imperialists enlisted huge armed forces, and employed all the experiences and tactics they had applied and accumulated, like violent attack and tenacious pursuit, combing, deployment at vantage points, and encircling and destroying.

Kim Il Sung, on his part, adroitly employed a variety of tactics and art of command, which could not be found in any military manual nor used in any previous wars, always putting the enemy, who had been boasting about their numerical and technical superiority, on the defensive and dealing fatal blows at them.

At last Korea was liberated on August 15, 1945.

Recollecting those days, a policeman of the Longjing Police Station in Yanji County, Jiandao Province of the then Manchukuo, wrote, “At that time we called the guerrillas ‘a drop in the ocean,’ but they were everywhere, be it a mountain or a plain. It was not because they were large in number but because General Kim Il Sung employed such mysterious tactics.”

Creating a Miracle in the History of Modern Wars

The Korean war (1950-1953) was the largest in scale and the fiercest as a modern war fought for the first time after the Second World War.

A miracle was wrought in this war, a miracle noteworthy in the human history of war–the United States, which had never been defeated in its 100-year history of aggression and which had been boasting of being the “strongest” in the world, suffered an ignominious defeat, whereas the DPRK, which had been liberated from Japanese colonial rule five years before and which had its own regular armed forces only two years before, emerged victorious by destroying the allied imperialist forces, who had pounced upon a country as the UN forces for the first time in history.

That a small, newly-independent country could confront the allied imperialist forces led by the United States, a victor in the Second World War, was something that could never be imagined. That was why when the news about the outbreak of the Korean war was reported, many people in the world predicted the “clear end” of the war as they believed the United States’ haughty remarks that the fate of north Korea would “end in 72 hours.”

However, beyond all their expectations, the Korean people defeated them, and their country came to be called heroic Korea.

It was Kim Il Sung who led this heroic Korea. Through brilliant military wisdom, unexcelled pluck and outstanding art of military command, he led all the operations and battles on the overall front.

The war ended in the Korean people’s victory on July 27, 1953.

The human history, spanning thousands of years, has recorded many famous generals who left their names after defeating a strong enemy, but none like Kim Il Sung, who declared in his teens a war against the aggressors, and defeated two imperialist powers in his thirties and then in his early forties.

Source: KCNA