REVIEW
ECHOES
DOWN THE CENTURIES by Kim Il Sung
By
Dermot Hudson
PRESIDENT Kim Il Sung’s life spanned
most of the 20th century and he led the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea for nearly 50 years. He was giant of the international communist movement
and also an international statesman of great renown. During his life he met Stalin.
Mao Zedong, Ché Guevara, Tito, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno as well as
western politicians including former US president Jimmy Carter.
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| Che and Kim Il Sung |
This well
written and lively book provides a fascinating set of memories of these
meetings. They take on an additional significance in the year of the 70th
anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule and the 70th anniversary
of the foundation of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
This short book
is not only informative about the life of great leader President Kim Il Sung but also is
full of information about the international policy of the Workers’ Party of
Korea, which provides some valuable insights into the WPK’s relationship with
the international communist movement and the other socialist countries.
As is known to
many, the Workers’ Party of Korea, led by Kim Il Sung, not only maintained a
policy of independence but consistently upheld the unity of the international
communist movement. Even when the differences in the socialist camp reached an
extreme point near to open armed conflict Kim Il Sung made sure that the DPRK
maintained relations with both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of
China, meeting various Soviet leaders including Yuri Andropov as well as Mao
Zedong and Zhou En Lai of People’s China.
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| with Mao Zedong |
In 1975 Kim Il
Sung met Mao Zedong for the last time as Mao died a year later. During the
meeting Mao told the Korean communist leader that he hoped that Kim Il Sung
would lead the international communist movement and world revolution after he
passed away.
Although the
DPRK maintained good relations with the USSR it maintained a position of
independence and opposed the revisionist stance of the Soviet Union after 1956.
This brought the DPRK into conflict with the revisionist Khruschov leadership
as the DPRK was, as the book says, a strongly anti-imperialist,
counter-revisionist nation with a staunch spirit of independence. The Soviet
revisionists put all kinds of pressure on the DPRK and there were one or two
open attacks on Democratic Korea in the Soviet media (though these were rare
compared to those on China and Albania).
One form of pressure was trying to push the
DPRK into joining the Council For Mutual Economic Assistance, CMEA or Comecon
as it was known in the west. The DPRK, believing in building an independent
national economy under the banner of Juché and self-reliance, resisted this.
Khrushchov not only urged the DPRK to join CMEA but even mobilised the German Democratic
Republic and Czechoslovakia to make the DPRK join CMEA. When this failed the
Soviet leadership sent Yuri Andropov, who later became the leader of the USSR,
to meet Kim Il Sung.
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| Syrian leader Hafez Al Assad in the DPRK |
Andropov used clever arguments for joining
CMEA. President Kim Il Sung rebuttuted them all one by one. He also pointed out
that a Soviet journalist had slandered the DPRK’s slogan of building an
independent national economy and that this was bad manners. Andropov was forced
to concede that it was and apologised.
President Kim Il Sung put matters in the
simplest form saying self-reliance means standing on your own feet. What’s
wrong with our self-reliant stand? Of
course President Kim Il Sung was proved right by history.
Under the leadership
of the Soviet revisionists the CMEA countries sank into stagnation and in the
end the USSR collapsed and the CMEA countries were no more. It was a very wise
decision of the DPRK not to join CMEA!
President Kim Il
Sung met the great Latin American and Cuban revolutionary Major Ernesto Ché
Guevara on the 2nd December 1960. He told Ché that the DPRK and Cuba
were comrades in the same trench and that he could ask for anything. Ché was
very impressed with the internationalism of President Kim Il Sung. He was to
write later that the DPRK was the socialist country he most admired. The
profound and lofty internationalism of President Kim Il Sung greatly inspired
Ché who dedicated himself to liberating Latin America from imperialist
oppression and died a heroic death in Bolivia. Later on President Kim Il Sung
wrote a work on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of Ché’s death
and the DPRK has a kindergarten named after Ché.
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| ...and Marshal Tito |
President Kim Il
Sung was also the friend of Chilean Socialist leader Salvador Allende, whom he
met in 1969. The following year Allende won the Chilean presidential election.
Kim Il Sung later met a delegation from
Allende’s Popular Unity coalition on the 23 February 1972 just 18 months before
the Chilean coup. The book recounts how President Kim Il Sung advised the head of
the Chilean delegation that the question of taking control of the army and
police needed to be dealt with. Sadly, this advice was not heeded and on the 11th
September 1973 General Pinochet mounted a fascist coup on behalf of the US and
murdered Allende.
Finally one
anecdote that caught my eye was the one about Madagascan President Didier Ratsirika
asking about how to solve unemployment. President Kim Il Sung replied that the
DPRK had wiped unemployment out by about 1946.
All in all a
very good book that provides a lively account of the DPRK’s diplomatic
relations and work to further the international communist and world
revolutionary movement.
It is available
online on the Naenara website or can be ordered through the Korean Friendship Association.
