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.