On the occasion of 15th April, 98th Birthday Anniversary of Kim Il Sung

President Kim II Sung (1912-1994), founder of socialist Korea and the Korean People's Army, was a great military strategist and ever-victorious, iron-willed general, who defeated two imperialist powers in his generation.

Legendary hero
During the military occupation of Korea by the Japanese imperialists (1905-1945), President Kim II Sung organized the anti-Japanese armed struggle and led it for 15 years, thus bringing about Korea’s liberation.
Having left his native home in Mangyongdae in his teens with a firm determination that he would not return to Korea without having achieved its independence, he declared an all-out war against Japanese imperialism even though there was no support from a regular army and home front. The adroit guerrilla tactics he employed by means of unusual military wisdom and unique stratagems terrified the one-million-strong Japanese army.
The combat methods and tactics he created during the anti-Japanese' armed struggle were original ones that could be found in no conventional military theories and manuals.
Among them were those of harassing the enemy in their rear, attacking the enemy in the west after making appearance in the east, making the enemy troops fight each other and looking the scene from afar, sometimes concentrating the guerrilla forces and dispersing them when necessary, intensive attack on the enemy by large units and surprise attack by small units, rapid mobile warfare, alluring the enemy troops and then ambushing them, circling operation and so on.

Military genius
President Kim n Sung defeated the US imperialists in the Korean war (June 1950-July 1953). The Korean War, the fiercest of its kind after the Second World War, was a political and ideological confrontation between socialism and capitalism and, at the same time, a test of the art of leadership of the commanders-in-chief of both sides.
Before igniting the Korean War, the United States, which had been boasting of being the "strongest" in the world, ensured absolute superiority over the Korean People's Army in terms of strength, and introduced large amounts of military hardware into South Korea. It vaunted, saying that there had been no time when preparations were as perfect as at this time for a war and that the war would be finished in a few days. Many people were apprehensive of the fate of the young DPRK.
It had been a convention in the world history of war that the side which was surprised by the other side at the start of a war retreat temporarily and then make a counteroffensive after bringing the situation under control however mighty its military strength was. But when the enemy troops made a surprise attack at the dawn of June 25, 1950 (Sunday), President Kim II Sung led his country to frustrate it at a stroke with prompt, full-scale counteroffensive. Under his order, the KPA units checked the enemy's offensive a few hours after the start of the war, switched over to counteroffensive and moved south as they gained momentum as they advanced in this course, they liberated 90% of the territory of south Korea and 92% of its population in a little over one month.
When the United States attempted to "encircle and annihilate" the KPA units by hurling even the troops of its 15 satellite countries to the Korean front, President Kim II Sung ordered them to make a strategic and temporary retreat, thus saving situation. He then turned the tide of the war by ensuring that the KPA units formed the second front, harassed the enemy in their rear and made a new counteroffensive.
The KPA soldiers, in conformity with the terrain features of their mountainous country, dug tunnels and, by relying on those tunnels, employed various combat methods, like sharp shooting and assaulting the enemy troops and hunting enemy aircraft and tanks; they thus frustrated the enemy's offensive and steadily weakened the enemy forces. For example, they shot down over I200 enemy aircraft in one year of 1952. The unique tactics and audacious and adroit operations employed by Supreme Commander Kim II Sung, who always took the initiative, adapting himself to the ever-changing situation, forced the US aggressors to kneel down.

Iron-willed commander
Even after the Korean war, fierce stand-off continued between the DPRK and the US .
In the early 1960s, when the situation was growing aggravated owing to the US schemes to ignite a new war, President Kim II Sung advanced the line of simultaneously pushing ahead with economic construction and defence building, and strengthened the military capabilities of the country to the maximum. And the self-defensive line of making the entire army a cadre army, modernizing it, putting all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress, a line he put forward, strengthened the Korean People's Army into an army, each of whose soldiers is a match for a hundred foes and turned the whole country into an impregnable fortress.
In January 1968, their armed spy ship Pueblo was captured by the KPA Navy after it had intruded into the territorial waters of the DPRK. The US imperialists concentrated their large forces, including a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in the waters near the Korean peninsula, claiming about a "powerful military counteraction" and "retaliation."
President Kim II Sung declared that the DPRK would answer the enemy's "retaliation" with retaliation and their all-out war with an all-out war. Disheartened by his pluck and courage, the US authorities signed a document, in which they apologized for the hostile acts of espionage committed by the Pueblo and promised that no US vessel would intrude into the territorial waters of the DPRK. This was a document of apology, the US authorities signed for the first time in the history of the United States.
He was awarded the title of Generalissimo of the DPRK in April 1992.

National Chairman