"Go Among the People!"

by Yom Song Hui
June 6, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1494/go-among-the-people

In his reminiscences With the Century President Kim Il Sung said:

"'Go among the people!'

"From that time on this be­came my motto throughout my life.

"I started my revolutionary activities by going among the people and today, too, I am con­tinuing to make the revolution by mixing with the people. I am also reviewing my life by going among the people. If I had neglected contact with the people just once and forgotten the existence of the people even for a moment, I would not have been able to maintain the pure and genuine love for the people which I formed in my teens and become a true servant of the people ..."

When he was in his teens, the President had already perceived "Going among the people" as a truth. He grew up at the time when Korea was under military occupation by the Japanese im­perialists.

At the age of eleven, he set out on a 250-mile journey for learning so as to get knowledge of his motherland and people. The realities of the motherland he had experienced on his homeward trip were too miserable. Shabby huts of slash-and-burn peasants visible here and there in deep mountains, innocent people being dragged away with their hands bound... Seen and heard everywhere were the fellow Koreans languishing under trials and tribulations and their sighs of deep-seated grudge against the Japanese imperialists.

The situation then prevailing in his homeland caused young Kim Il Sung to confirm his belief that only by putting up a struggle would the Korean nation be able to drive out the Japanese imperialists and restore the country's independence and to feel sure that when the popular masses were organized and mobilized properly they would be fully capable of liberating their country by their own efforts.

Cherishing this confidence, he set out on the road of revolu­tion. Having started his revolu­tionary movement with a student movement, he formed revolution­ary organizations including the Down-with-Imperialism Union and the Young Communist League of Korea and united youth and students into these organizations. He gradually went among workers and peasants and aroused them to turn out in the revolutionary struggle by awakening them politically. In the whole period of the anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle he organized and waged the armed struggle, he himself going among the people and relying on their strength and wisdom. After liberating the country from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, too, he was among the people throughout the period of his giving leadership to the revolution and construction.

Even when laying down a line and a policy and adopting a law he inquired into the opinion of the people, he himself not re­maining in his office room but going out to the spot to provide firsthand guidance. And he saw to it that their demand, interests and desire were exactly reflected in the lines, policies and laws.

When proclaiming the Law on Agrarian Reform right after the country's liberation he went out to many rural areas includ­ing Taedong County in South Phyongan Province and, talking with peasants, fathomed their long-cherished aspiration. Speaking of the line of building an independent national econ­omy and the basic line of socialist economic construction, he made the orientation and ways and means for their implementation more concrete while giving first­hand guidance to farming and fishing communities as well as factories and other enterprises including iron and steel works across the country. As for universal eleven-year compulsory education, he made sure that a law related to its enforcement was adopted only after he went out to the then Pyongyang Taedongmun Primary School and, conversing with the pupils of the tentative class formed one to two years before and acquainting himself with how they were doing their lessons, came to feel certain that six-year-old children were intelligent enough to go to school.

Finding his way into all do­mains of the revolution and con­struction and lending his ears to the voices of people prior to the formulation of lines and policies was an important affair the President had conducted without fail. "If one believes in the people and relies on them at all times, one will always emerge victori­ous"—regarding this as his creed, the President went to any place if it was inhabited by people. Prior to his visit to his native village after the country's liberation, he began the nation-building work with the giving of his on-the-spot guidance.

When the Fatherland Libera­tion War (1950–1953) was over victoriously, he went straight to the workers of a brick works (then known as the Kangnam Ceramic Factory) from the plat- form of a Pyongyang mass meet­ing held in celebration of victory in the war, in order to encourage them to produce bricks necessary for the postwar rehabilitation and construction.

At the time when there arose a chain of bottlenecks and diffi­culties in the carrying out of the Five-Year Plan, he discussed how to find the way out with the workers of the then Kangson Steel Plant.

And at the time when there arose a heavy task to carry out the First Seven-Year National Economic Plan and accomplish socialist industrialization while continuously putting great em­phasis on the increase of national defence capabilities, he seemed to move his office to the then Ry- ongsong Machine Factory and other production units in order to ensure that flames of a new revo­lutionary upsurge flared up fiercely. He was seen meeting lumberjacks at a timber station far from a railway station, talk­ing to fishermen on a wharfside where the flag of big catch was fluttering, conversing with weav­ers at a textile mill and discuss­ing with miners in a deep under­ground workplace where water was dripping from the ceiling. The President who was visible at posts of national defence guarded by soldiers as well as in work­places of labouring people and at schools of their children at all times fathomed the inmost thoughts of old folks and children he had come across while warmly conversing with them.

In this way he visited more than 20 600 places, spending over 8 650 days and covering a long distance of upwards of 578 000 kilometres in all from the imme­diate post-national liberation days to the close of his life.

On July 6, 1994, two days before he died, the President said in the following vein:

I have fought, believing in the people and for their own sake and have lived among the people so far. My whole life is the one devoted to the country and the nation and the one in which I have continued to fight together with the people. In the future, too, I will always be with the people …

What was consistent in the lifetime of the President is that he believed in the people as in heaven.

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