Kim Il-sung

Kim Il-sung was the founding leader of North Korea and headed the state from its creation in 1948 until his death in 1994. A former anti-Japanese guerrilla who rose with Soviet support after 1945, he built the Workers’ Party regime around centralised political authority and an extensive personality cult.

Kim launched the invasion of South Korea in June 1950, beginning the Korean War, and remained in power after the armistice. His government developed the ideology later known as Juche, suppressed political opposition and established the dynastic system eventually inherited by his son Kim Jong-il.

Jeff Shaara’s The Frozen Hours places Kim Il-sung’s invasion of South Korea at the beginning of the strategic chain that leads UN forces north, Chinese intervention and the Chosin Reservoir campaign, even though the novel’s principal viewpoints remain with battlefield commanders and soldiers. Max Hastings’ The Korean War treats Kim directly as the North Korean leader whose decision to invade internationalised a civil conflict and whose regime survived a war that ultimately restored a divided peninsula.