The Great Leader of the Korean People

Kim Il Sung and Che Guevara

The Friends of Korea campaign recently held a hybrid seminar at the John Buckle Centre as part of the global month of solidarity with the Korean people against US imperialism that is held every year in July to mark of the outbreak of the Korean war. Chaired by Andy Brooks speakers included Michael Chant from the RCPB-ML, Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and veteran Korean solidarity campaigner Keith Bennett as well as a diplomat from the DPR Korea embassy in London who joined the panel via a Zoom link. This is Dermot Hudson’s contribution.

by Dermot Hudson

My presentation to the joint seminar on the importance of solidarity with People’s Korea will address the question of the DPR Korea’s internationalism and its role in the global struggle and at the same time recall the great exploits of President Kim Il Sung, who passed away 32 years ago on the 8th July 1994.
I was probably one of the last British visitors in the DPRK when Kim Il Sung was still physically with us. Our delegation departed the DPRK on the 2nd July 1994, only six days before Kim Il Sung passed away. All the time during our visit we felt Kim Il Sung’s presence as we saw him every night on TV giving guidance to co-operative farms and meeting foreign guests such as Ludo Martens, the then head of the Workers Party of Belgium, and a noted anti-revisionist writer.
Kim Il Sung was not only the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and builder of the most durable socialist state but was also a great internationalist who fought not only for the Korean people but for the world revolution, for the liberation of all of humanity from exploitation and oppression. The DPRK actually punched above its weight in the international arena.
When I first came to know the DPRK in the 1980s and began to study the Juche idea, I found the internationalism of the DPRK to be a big eye-opener for me. I came to know of countries such as Equatorial Guinea which I never knew existed. Also that there were attempts to construct socialism in the People’s Republic of Benin, the People’s Republic of the Congo, the Popular Democratic Republic of Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Madagascar and the Revolutionary People’s Republic of Guinea. These countries had been scarcely mentioned if at all by the old Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the British left but reading publications of the DPRK there was news about them. The Democratic Republic of Madagascar actually hosted an international seminar on the Juche idea in 1976.
Throughout his life ,which spanned most of the 20th century Kim Il Sung gave unstinting support for peoples fighting for independence and met many different leaders and fighters from across the globe including very distinguished figures such as Stalin, Mao Zedong, Zhou En Lai, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez al Assad, Salvador Allende, Norodom Sihanouk, Enver Hoxha, Erich Honecker ,Yasser Arafat, George Habash and many others. He even met our very own Harry Pollitt the famous British communist leader.
Right from the start Kim Il Sung stressed internationalism and fought, not just for the interests of the Korean people, but for the interests of the struggling peoples of the whole world ,whilst at the same time stressing independence and self-reliance. Juche does not mean rejecting internationalism – far from it.
As the leader of the Korean revolution pointed out "our adherence to the Juche Idea does not in any way mean that we have become chauvinistic. The Juche Idea we advocate does not conflict with internationalism. Instead it is designed to promote internationalism for it leads to the development of sciences and the building of the economy to suit our particular conditions and thus contributes to increasing the strength of our country and the might of the socialist camp as a whole”,
Kim Il Sung raised the slogan of "Defend the Soviet Union " during the anti-Japanese armed struggle. In 1929 he roused youth, students and other sections of the masses for the fight to defend the Soviet Union in order to hold in check the anti-Soviet machinations of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government and the reactionary warlords who acted at the instigation of the Japanese imperialists. The great Korean communist leader later wrote in his autobiography With the Century that "our activities in connection with the Zhongdong
 railway incident represented an internationalist struggle to defend the Soviet Union politically. At that time we regarded the first socialist system established on Earth as a beacon of hope and considered it our solemn internationalist obligation as communists to fight in its defence".
 Later, in 1938 and 1939, Kim Il Sung led the anti-Japanese guerrillas to defend the Soviet Union, the first workers and peasants state against Japanese aggression.
 The anti-Japanese guerrillas fought shoulder to shoulder with their Chinese comrades against imperialism. After Korea was liberated in 1945 Kim Il Sung made sure that unstinting support was given to the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Chinese communists in their revolutionary war against the Kuomintang reactionaries. He sent his best fighters such as Kang Gon as well as troops and materials to assist in the Chinese PLA and allowed them to use the northern part of Korea as a rear base. 
During those heady days of the 1960s and 1970s Kim Il Sung ensured that the DPRK punched well above its weight, giving support to many liberation movements and newly independent states.
Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara visited the DPRK in 1960 and later said that the DPRK was the socialist country that he liked best. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 the DPRK stood by Cuba when the revisionists and big power chauvinists abandoned it. Kim Il Sung instructed the DPRK embassy staff and their families to arm themselves and fight to the end. The DPRK actually sent a KPA General to Cuba as its ambassador. DPRK students studying in Cuba also armed themselves ready to fight. The DPRK gave political and military assistance, while sending food and tractors as well as a group of technicians to help on the economic front. The DPRK also publicly supported the five-point demands of Premier Fidel Castro which included the US withdrawal from Guantanamo. The DPRK press denounced Nikita Khrushchev for his capitulation, defeatism and cowardice.
President Kim Il Sung called for international volunteers to be sent to Vietnam and sent the best pilots of the DPRK’s air force to Vietnam as well as tunnelling experts to help in the war against American aggression – plus material assistance as well. During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War Kim Il Sung sent a squadron of Korean People’s Army warplanes to the United Arab Republic (as Egypt was then known) to help the Arabs in their fight against Zionist aggression.
Strong support was given to Palestine by the DPRK. People’s Korea established relations with Palestine on the 13th April 1966. There is a Palestinian embassy in the DPRK. Chairman Yasser Arafat visited the DPRK five times and George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also visited the DPRK.
Kim Il Sung said “the just cause of the Palestinian and other Arab people for the restoration of land lost to them and of all the legitimate rights of Palestine, including the establishment of an independent country, must be accomplished. The Israeli Zionists must abandon their policy of expansion and annexation and withdraw from all the occupied Arab land immediately.
The United States must stop giving the Israeli Zionists political and diplomatic support and military and economic aid, take their hands off the Middle East and discard their ambition for dominating this region”.
The Palestinian fight was not the only Arab struggle that Kim Il Sung and the DPR Korea supported. The DPRK maintained good relations with anti-imperialist and socialist oriented Arab states such as Libya, Syria, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (south Yemen) and Iraq (until 1980). Another cause that the DPRK supported was that of the West Saharan people. The DPRK recognised the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic and established relations with Polisario when some other socialist countries did not. Kim Il Sung met with President Mohamed Abdel Aziz of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic and Polisario front in April 1982.
There are three other examples of the DPRK’s internationalist assistance under the leadership of Kim Il Sung. Firstly the DPRK supported the Grenadian revolution led by Maurice Bishop. DPRK construction experts were sent to the small Caribbean island that took the socialist path and the DPRK gave a generous amount of military aid to the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada including 1,000 rifles. In fact in per capita terms the DPRK gave more aid to Grenada than the USSR did.
Secondly, maybe the most dramatic example of the DPRK’s internationalist assistance was when DPRK special forces helped foil a coup, led by French mercenaries, in the People’s Republic of Benin in 1977.
 Lastly but not least the DPRK sent agricultural technicians and engineers to many third world countries such as Madagascar, Tanzania, Togo, Central Africa, Benin, Guinea, Egypt, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ghana and the Seychelles. Agricultural institutes bearing the name of Kim Il Sung were established in Guinea and Tanzania. This was genuine assistance as opposed to the fake aid of the imperialists which aims only to corrupt and enslave newly independent countries.
 Thus the life of Kim Il Sung is associated with lofty and boundless internationalism. It is fitting to both remember this great leader of the Korean people and at the same time step up solidarity with People’s Korea.

The steadfast stand of the Korean people

Kim Il Sung's victory rally in 1945

The Friends of Korea campaign held a hybrid seminar at the John Buckle Centre as part of the global month of solidarity with the Korean people against US imperialism that is held every year in July to mark of the outbreak of the Korean war. Chaired by Andy Brooks speakers included Michael Chant from the RCPB-ML, Dermot Hudson from the Korean Friendship Association and veteran Korean solidarity campaigner Keith Bennett as well as a diplomat from the DPRK embassy in London who joined the panel via a Zoom link. This is Keith Bennett’s contribution.

by Keith Bennett

Given the events in the world at present, with changes unseen in a century unfolding at an accelerating pace, it is surely both necessary and appropriate to address the importance of solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and its people in this situation. 
This in turn cannot be separated from the role played by the DPR Korea in the world. Not simply how the world situation impacts upon the DPRK but at least as importantly how the DPRK, its stands and its internal and external activities, impact upon the world situation.
The DPRK is not a bystander, observer or victim of events in today’s world. From its quantative and qualitative development of its independent, self-defensive nuclear deterrent to its principled support for the special military operation of the Russian Federation, the DPRK is a conscious maker of history, playing a role far greater than its small geographical size or population would reasonably suggest.
For my own remarks, I want to touch on two aspects of the importance of the DPRK’s stand, role and history as a socialist country in today’s international situation and the relationship of this to the anti-imperialist struggle that unites the overwhelming majority of humanity, irrespective of ideology, system, political view or religious belief, but in which the insights provided by scientific socialism are indispensable for the achievement of final victory.
The last time we organised an event such as this by Friends of Korea, in November 2025 – and how quickly the time passes – I had recently returned from the magnificent celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang and we were able to discuss the high-level participation there from China, Vietnam, Laos and Russia, as well as from progressive Latin America. 
Earlier this week, Kim Jong Un, the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and President of the State Affairs of the DPRK, wrote to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, congratulating him on the 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. 
Kim Jong Un wrote “it is the steadfast stand of our Party and government to steadily develop the DPRK-China friendly relations with long and historical roots and with socialism as their core.
“The recent Pyongyang summit was a historic occasion of deepening the comradely friendship and trust between us and reconfirming the unshakable will to more dynamically promote socialist construction in the two countries and their traditional friendly relations”.
The concept of these relations having socialism as their core is one that Kim Jong Un has repeatedly stressed over recent years and he goes on to refer to socialism as “the common cause of the two parties” and the DPRK-China friendly and cooperative relations, as “the common wealth of the peoples of the two countries”.
The reference to the “recent Pyongyang summit” refers to the visit last month by Xi Jinping, his first in seven years and his first foreign trip in 2026.
For his part, writing in Rodong Sinmun, the Korean Daily Worker and the central organ of the Workers’ Party of Korea, on the day he arrived in Pyongyang, Xi Jinping observed that “the shared socialist ideal is the defining character of China-DPRK relations. The Communist Party of China and the Workers’ Party of Korea are both Marxist ruling parties, and China and the DPRK are fellow travellers on the socialist road”.
Putting this into its historical context, he notes that “the older generation of leaders of China and the DPRK knew one another intimately and were as close as can be… the traditional friendship of shared destiny is the deep foundation of China-DPRK relations. In the turbulent years of fighting for national independence and national liberation, the people of China and the DPRK shared weal and woe, depended on each other in life and death, and forged a great fighting friendship with their blood. In the development of each country’s socialist cause, the two peoples have stood shoulder to shoulder, sharing comforts and hardships, vividly embodying the comradely friendship of mutual trust, solidarity, and mutual aid”.
Looking to the future, he adds “we must hold firm to the path and be unchanged in our resolve, support each other in walking the socialist road that suits our own national conditions, and firmly safeguard the political security of both countries. We must uphold and strengthen the Party’s overall leadership, expand exchanges and cooperation between the two parties, deepen the exchange and mutual learning of experience in governing the party and the country, and lead the socialist cause of the two countries to keep moving from one victory to the next”
In its own editorial that day, June 8th 2026, Rodong Sinmun wrote: “The DPRK-China relations are the invincible friendly relations closely united with comradely friendship and bloody ties in the protracted struggle to oppose foreign aggressors and build socialism.
“True to the intention of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung, the Korean revolutionaries helped the Chinese revolution with blood in the arduous anti-Japanese struggle. The Chinese people, too, regarded the Korean revolutionaries fighting for the national liberation as their own flesh and blood and rendered material and moral assistance to the Korean people in their struggle.
“The brilliant victories won by the Chinese people in the arduous revolutionary civil war and by the Korean people in the fierce Fatherland Liberation War would have been unthinkable without the fraternal friendship and class ties which have been steadily carried forward and consolidated between the revolutionaries, service personnel and peoples of the two countries”.
And it concludes: “We will, in the future, too, join hands with the Chinese comrades on the road of advancing the socialist cause and defending peace and security in the region and the rest of the world”.
The Korean Central News Agency, reporting on the talks between the two leaders that day, quotes Comrade Kim Jong Un as affirming that “the WPK and the DPRK government will as ever maintain the DPRK-China friendship as the most important top-priority strategic work and do their utmost to strengthen the bilateral relations into a model of the relationship between socialist states and into an invariably special, genuine and solid strategic relationship and that this is our immutable choice and will”.
As can be seen above, the comradely relationship with socialism as the core has a long tradition created by the previous generations of leaders. And it is in that spirit, as well as for many other reasons, that today we also especially remember Comrade Kim Il Sung, as we approach the anniversary of his passing on July 8th 1994. It scarcely seems possible that already 32 years have gone by. 
Not only did he fight all his days to safeguard and consolidate the unity and solidarity of the socialist countries on the basis of revolutionary principles, he analysed the relationship between the internal and external tasks of the revolution, the role of the socialist countries in the struggle against imperialism, the difficulties arising, and how to deal with them and overcome them, with remarkable insight and extraordinary prescience.
Today, for all those who stand against imperialism and in favour of socialism, there can be few things of greater importance than the defence of the Cuban revolution, with the Trump administration, like its tool the Zionist entity in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere, perpetrating genocidal acts of aggression, in the case of Cuba in the form of a siege that plumbs the depths of medievalism and recalls the Nazi siege of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War. 
This year has also seen the 95th anniversary of the birth of Army General Raul Castro, the 98th birthday of Ernesto Che Guevara and next month will see the 100th anniversary of the birth of Comrade Fidel Castro.
In 1968, Kim Il Sung wrote a profound and far-seeing article on the first anniversary of the death in combat of Che Guevara. It is an article that has lost none of its relevance and importance with the passage of years.
Assessing the world historic importance of the Cuban revolution, he writes: “The triumph of the Cuban Revolution is the first victory of the socialist revolution in Latin America and a continuation of the Great October Revolution in Latin America. With the Cuban Revolution emerging victorious, the red banner of socialism now flies high over Latin America which was regarded as a hereditary estate of US imperialism only until recently, and the socialist camp has extended to the Western Hemisphere and grown in strength a great deal”.
The significance of this is therefore that the “consolidation of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution is not only an important problem which decides the life and death, the rise and fall of the Cuban people but also a key problem which sways the destinies of the general development of the Latin American revolution”.
He goes on to state that “the countries whose proletariat has grasped power in the encirclement of international capitalism are not free from the danger of imperialist aggression and restoration of capitalism during the entire historical period of revolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism. The overthrown exploiting classes always attempt to recover their lost positions and foreign imperialists incessantly engage in armed invasion and intrigues and manoeuvres for political and ideological subversion.
“The US imperialists and the reactionaries of Latin America deeply hate and fear the very existence of the Republic of Cuba and are manoeuvring stubbornly and maliciously to stifle it. They are working hard to get rid of the Cuban Revolution so as to drive out the ‘spectre’ of Communism haunting the Western Hemisphere and check the liberation struggle of the peoples which envelops Latin America like a prairie fire. While scheming to strangle Cuba by directly mobilising their armed forces, the US imperialists are instigating the reactionary Latin American regimes of dictatorship under their domination and subjugation to bring political and economic pressure to bear upon Cuba in order to suffocate her with the policy of blockade”.
Far from losing any of its relevance, does this not describe the situation in 2026 with even greater poignancy and accuracy than it does that of 1968.
Kim Il Sung goes on to explain that “revolutions should take place consecutively in the majority of countries of the world, in several adjacent countries at the least, to replace imperialist encirclement with socialist encirclement, the barriers of imperialism that surround a socialist country should be torn down to open the path of turning the dictatorship of the proletariat into a world-wide system and an end should be put to the isolation of the socialist fortress of one country… only then will it be possible to prevent completely armed intervention by the imperialists and their attempt to restore capitalism and say that the ultimate victory of socialism has been secured”.
The reference to “several adjacent countries at the least” highlights an important difference between the situation facing Cuba and that of the socialist countries in East Asia, whose main historical experience, sometimes difficult countervailing periods notwithstanding, has been characterised by strong and sometimes decisive mutual support and solidarity. 
In Kim Il Sung’s view “the Cuban Revolution is an organic part of the world revolution and, particularly, constitutes the decisive link in the chain of the revolution in Latin America. To defend the Cuban Revolution and to consolidate and follow up its victories is not only the duty of the Cuban people but also the internationalist obligation of the oppressed peoples of Latin America and all the revolutionary peoples of the world. Just as the defence of the gains of the October Revolution in Russia which made the first breach in the world capitalist system was an important question decisive of the fate of the development of the world revolution, so the defence of the gains of the Cuban Revolution which made the first breach in the colonial system of US imperialism in Latin America is an important question decisive of the fate of the Latin American revolution”.
How true this is. For more than six decades, socialist Cuba has been the beacon of hope of the Latin American people. If it were to fall, not only would the Cuban people be plunged into an abyss of suffering, misery and humiliation; the people’s struggle throughout Latin America would suffer its greatest ever setback.
That is why Kim Il Sung explained “it is of great importance for the defence of the Cuban Revolution to advance the revolutionary movement in those Latin American countries neighbouring on Cuba… if the revolution emerges victorious in some other Latin American countries, Cuba will get out of the encircling ring of imperialism with which she is confronted on all sides, there will be opened up a favourable phase in the revolutions of Cuba and Latin America, and the world revolution will be stepped up still more.”
This is in fact a huge part of the importance of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, as well as the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, led by Hugo Chavez and, after his untimely death, by Nicolas Maduro. The success of the revolution in Venezuela, the first new, conscious attempt to build and consolidate socialism in a systematic and all-round way since the counter-revolutions in the former Soviet Union and the European socialist countries, not only transformed the lives of the Venezuelan people, it began that crucial process identified by Kim Il Sung of replacing imperialist encirclement with socialist encirclement, of putting an end to the isolation of the socialist fortress of one country, of consolidating and following up the victories of the Cuban revolution as the important question decisive of the fate of the Latin American revolution.
That is why every step taken by US imperialism in the Latin American region, particularly since the coming to power of the Trump-Rubio regime – from the overt support and encouragement of the most reactionary forces of Milei in Argentina and Bolsonaro in Brazil, the destabilisation and overthrow of the socialist-oriented government in Bolivia, the lawfare coup in Peru, the threats against Mexico, and so on, and above all the outrageous kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro and First Combatant Cilla Flores, and the attempt to turn their proud revolutionary country into a US protectorate, have at their heart US imperialism’s overriding goal of toppling the Cuban revolution – of finally extirpating that spectre which has haunted them since 1959. The stakes could scarcely be higher.
Kim Il Sung wrote, in words that were unmistakably echoed by Kim Jong Un in his speeches to the ninth party congress and the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly earlier this year, that “if there ever is imperialism which is not aggressive, it is no longer imperialism. Imperialism will not change its aggressive nature before it dies. That is why one should dispel all illusions about imperialism and fight it out. Only when a principled stand is maintained against imperialism and a staunch anti-imperialist struggle intensified, can the oppressed nations win freedom and independence and the liberated peoples check imperialist aggression, consolidate national independence and achieve prosperity for their countries and nations”.
This is the legacy and lesson that Kim Il Sung left us. This is the stand taken by the DPRK that enables it to stand firm in the face of all pressures, aggression and threats. This is why it is important to stand by the DPRK, to introduce, explain and defend its stand and to learn from its experience and that of all the socialist countries in whatever we are able to do in the cause of anti-imperialism, independence and socialism.