Kim Jong-suk

Kim Jong-suk (1945)
Korean spelling
Chosŏn'gŭl	김정숙
Hancha	金正淑
Revised Romanization	Gim Jeong-suk
McCune- Reischauer	Kim Chŏngsuk
See also : Korean name

Kim Jong-suk (born December 24, 1917 in Osan near Hoeryŏng , Kankyō-hokudo sub -province , Chōsen Province , then the Japanese Empire , now North Korea ; † September 22, 1949 in Pyongyang , North Korea) was a member of the Korean freischar fighting for the Independence of Korea, which was incorporated into the Japanese Empire in 1910, and first wife of Kim Il-sung , mother of Kim Jong-il and grandmother of the North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un .

Life

Kim Jong-suk in 1938 as a member of the independence activists

Kim Jong-suk was born as the daughter of a poor farmer in the north of the Japanese province of Chosen and grew up in a Christian family. This left Chosen in 1922 because of the adverse living conditions and moved to neighboring China . On July 10, 1932, Kim joined the Communist Youth Association of Korea led by Kim Il-sung, who later became head of state of North Korea . On April 25, 1936, she joined a unit of the Korean People's Army under Kim Il-sung's command, and the following year, on January 25, 1937, she became a member of the Communist Party .

Together with Kim Il-sung, whom she met in 1935 and married in 1940, Kim Jong-suk went to the Soviet Union . Their son Kim Jong-il was born there on February 16, 1941 in Vyatskoye near Khabarovsk .

Kim Jong-suk's grave in the Revolutionary Heroes Cemetery

After Japan surrendered , the Kim family returned with the Red Army to the Korean Peninsula , which was now independent from Japan . One year after the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (North Korea) was proclaimed, Kim Jong-suk died on September 22, 1949 in a miscarriage .

meaning

Kim Jong-suk is venerated like a saint in North Korea today as the wife of the "eternal President" Kim Il-sung and as the mother of the "beloved leader" Kim Jong-il. Their membership in the partisan army and their other activities are not of historical significance, although this is blurred by the exaggeration of the North Korean " hagiography ". As "Kim Jong-suk - the heroine of the anti-Japanese revolution" she is part of the triad of father, mother and son ("The three military leaders from the Paektu Mountains ") in the quasi-religious leadership worship of the official North Korean society. On September 21, 1972 she was posthumously awarded the title "Heroine of the Korean People's Democratic Republic". In the propaganda, Kim Jong-suk is portrayed as a woman who recognizes the poverty and suffering of her family and the other poor farmers as a consequence of an unjust social order and who henceforth fights for a communist revolution under the influence of the teachings of Kim Il-sung . At the same time she becomes aware of the importance of Kim Il-sung for the fate of the Korean people and is completely devoted to him.

literature

• Kim Jong Suk. Biography. Publishing house for foreign language literature (Pyongyang) , 2002

Web links

Commons : Kim Jong-suk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• "Kim Jong Suk. Revolutionary comrade of President Kim Il-Sung and an anti-Japanese heroine. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rüdiger Frank : North Korea. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-421-04641-3 .
2. ^ Erecting memorial stones for the three military leaders from the Paektu Mountains. ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kim is the family name here, Jong-suk is the first name.