Much of the early records of his life come from his own personal
accounts and official North Korean government publications, which
often conflict with independent sources. Nevertheless, there is
some consensus on at least the basic story of his early life,
corroborated by witnesses from the period.
Kim was born to Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who
gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju, and had two younger
brothers, Ch’ŏl-chu and Yŏng-ju. The ancestral seat (pon’gwan) of Kim's family is
Chŏnju, North Chŏlla Province, and what little
that is known about the family contends that sometime around the
time of the Korean-Japanese war of 1592–98, a direct ancestor moved
north. The claim may be understood in light of the fact that the
early Chosŏn government’s policy of populating the north resulted
in mass resettlement of southern farmers in Phyŏngan and Hamgyŏng
regions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At any rate, the
majority of the Chŏnju Kim today live in North Korea, and extant
Chŏnju Kim genealogies provide spotty records.
The exact history of Kim's family is somewhat obscure. The
family was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was
always a step away from poverty. Kim was raised in a Presbyterian family; his maternal
grandfather was a Protestant minister, his father had gone to a
missionary school and was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and
both his parents were reportedly very active in the religious
community. Kim was an accomplished church organist.[4][5][6]
According to the official version, Kim’s family participated in
anti-Japanese activities and in 1920 they fled to Manchuria. The more objective view
seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans
at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kim’s parents apparently
did play a minor role in some activist groups, though whether their
cause was missionary, nationalist, or both is unclear.[7][8]
Kim's father died in 1926, when Kim was fourteen years old. Kim
attended Yuwen Middle School in Jilin from 1927 to 1930,[9]
where he rejected the feudal traditions of older generation Koreans
and became interested in Communist ideologies; his formal education
ended when he was arrested and jailed for his subversive
activities. At seventeen, Kim had become the youngest member of an
underground Marxist organization with fewer than twenty members,
led by Hŏ So, who belonged to the South Manchurian Communist Youth
Association. The police discovered the group three weeks after it
was formed in 1929, and jailed Kim for several months.[10][11]
The
Communist Party of Korea had been founded in 1925, but
had been thrown out of the Comintern in the early 1930s for being
too nationalist. In 1931, Kim had joined the
Communist Party of China. He joined various
anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he
became a member of the
Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group
led by the
Communist Party of China. Kim was appointed the same
year to serve as political commissar for the 3rd detachment of the
second division, around 160 soldiers.[7]
It was here that Kim met the man who would become his mentor as a
Communist, Wei Zhengmin,
Kim’s immediate superior officer, who was serving at the time as
chairman of the Political Committee of the Northeast Anti-Japanese
United Army. Wei reported directly to Kang Sheng, a high-ranking party
member close to Mao Zedong in
Yan'an, until Wei’s death on 8 March 1941.[12]
Also in 1935 Kim took the name Kim Il-sung, meaning "become the
sun."[13]
The name had previously been used by a prominent early leader of
the Korean resistance.[8]
Soviet propagandist Grigory Mekler, who claims to have prepared Kim
to lead North Korea, says that Kim assumed this name while in the
Soviet Union in the early 1940s from a former commander who had
died.[14]
On the other hand, some Koreans simply did not believe that someone
as young as Kim could have anything to do with the
legend.[15]
Historian Andrei Lankov has claimed that the
rumor Kim Il-Sung was somehow switched with
the “original” Kim is unlikely to be true. Several witnesses knew
Kim before and after his time in the Soviet Union, including his
superior, Zhou Baozhong, who dismissed the claim
of a “second” Kim in his diaries.[16]
Kim was appointed commander of the 6th division in 1937, at the
age of 24, controlling a few hundred men in a group that came to be
known as “Kim Il Sung’s division.” It was while he was in command
of this division that he executed a raid on Poch’onbo, on 4
June. Although Kim’s division only captured a small Japanese-held
town just across the Korean border for a few hours, it was
nonetheless considered a military success at this time, when the
guerrilla units had experienced difficulty in capturing any enemy
territory. This accomplishment would grant Kim some measure of fame
among Chinese guerrillas, and North Korean biographies would later
exploit it as a great victory for Korea. Kim was appointed
commander of the 2nd operational region for the 1st Army, but by
the end of 1940, he was the only 1st Army leader still alive.
Pursued by Japanese troops, Kim and what remained of his army
escaped by crossing the Amur River into the Soviet Union.[17]
Kim was sent to a camp near Khabarovsk, where the Korean Communist
guerrillas were retrained by the Soviets. Kim became a Captain in the Soviet Red Army and served in it until the
end of World War II.
In later years, Kim would heavily embellish his guerrilla feats
in order to build up his personality cult. He was portrayed as a
boy-conspirator who joined the resistance at 14 and had founded a
battle-ready army at 19. North Korean students are taught that this
Kim-led army singlehandedly drove the Japanese off the
peninsula.[8]
