When North Korean leader Kim Il sung died on this day in 1994, the country amended its constitution to change his official designation from ‘Great Leader’ to ‘Eternal President’. Even today, the rogue state which recently successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile does not have the post of a president
Under Soviet occupation
The Japanese had occupied the Korean peninsula in 1910. After they were defeated in WW II, the US and the USSR decided to share the administration of the former Japanese colony for an indefinite period. The Soviet Army occupied the northern part of Korea and set about “orchestrating a ‘people’s revolution’ of the kind already underway in much of Eastern Europe,” writes Brian Myers in The Cleanest Race
An accidental leader
But the Soviet plan hit a snag. There were few leftists in North Korea, which was then a bastion of conservatives and Christians. Enter Pyongyang-born Kim Il sung who had attained the rank of captain in the Soviet army
The 33-year-old was the closest thing to a resistance fighter the Koreans had, Myers writes, “Kim is said to have wanted a military career, but the Soviets, finding no more appropriate person to work with, persuaded him to assume leadership of the new state”
The Kim personality cult
The dictator used his country’s propaganda apparatus to develop the Kim personality cult. His son ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong il took over in July 1994. After his death in 2011, he became the ‘Eternal Leader’. North Korea is now ruled by the eternal president’s grandson Kim Jong un