Kim Il-sung

Kim Il Sung (born Kim Song Ju; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean communist revolutionary, military officer, politician, and dictator who founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea, in 1948, and led it until his death in 1994. He was succeeded by his son Kim Jong Il and posthumously declared Eternal President. He was the third-longest serving non-royal head of state and government in the 20th century, in office for more than 45 years.

Kim was born in Japanese-ruled Korea and grew up in northeast China. During his teenage years, he became a communist and joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups, eventually joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1931, in which year northeast China was occupied by Japan. Kim took part in several groups led by the CCP. In 1942, he was assigned to the Soviet Red Army, leading him to stay in the Soviet Union until 1945. Following the division of Korea after Japan's surrender in World War II, he was put into power by the Soviet Union in North Korea, which also installed him as the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea. Kim Il Sung authorized the invasion of South Korea in 1950, triggering an intervention in defense of South Korea by the United Nations led by the United States. Following the military stalemate in the Korean War, a ceasefire was signed in 1953.

Under Kim's leadership, North Korea was established as a totalitarian, socialist, personalist dictatorship with a centrally planned economy. It had close political and economic relations with the Soviet Union and China. By the 1960s, North Korea had a slightly higher standard of living than the South, which was suffering from political chaos and economic crises. This was reversed in the 1970s, as a newly stable South Korea became an economic powerhouse while North Korea's economy stagnated and then collapsed. Kim also broke off from orthodox Marxism–Leninism by developing the ideology of Juche, which focused on the principles of "independence, self-sustenance and self-defence" and Korean nationalism.