Kim Il Sung and His Old Home

The Sacred Place of the Korean Revolution

About 12 km southwest of central Pyongyang there rises a hill with the Taedong River skirting round its foot. Ancient people called the hill Mangyong-bong (Hill with Kaleidoscopic Views), and the village at its foot Mangyongdae.

There is a small straw-thatched house in the village, where President Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, Juche 1 (1912). At the time Korea was under the Japanese imperialists' military occupation (1905-1945), ruled by the king of Japan. The land of Korea which had boasted a time-honoured history, rich natural resources and beautiful mountains and streams was now trampled underfoot by the Japanese aggressors and overrun by the wheels of their cannon, and the Koreans had to live a miserable life as the ruined people.

The President's family who had been tenant farmers through generations eked out a scanty livelihood although they worked hard day and night. Early in the morning every day when others were still in bed, they were up and went about the village to collect muck. At night they, by candle-light, made straw ropes, straw shoes and straw mats.

In the President's old home there are still preserved chattels and farm implements used by the family—among them the distorted water vat which the family had to buy for use because they were short of money and a water jar whose original material is hardly recognizable because it was repeatedly plastered on many parts.

Though simple and ordinary people, they would give themselves heart and soul to the cause of the nation and the people. From this family came Kim Il Sung who in his childhood nursed love for the country and the people and hatred for the Japanese aggressors. When playing at soldiers, he always became the commander of the "Korean army" to defeat the "Japanese soldiers," and when he learned how to write letters, he first wrote the Korean letters for Independence of Korea.

When he was 13, he heard that his father had been arrested again by the Japanese police, and left his old home with firm determination to destroy the Japanese aggressors and liberate Korea. It was after 20 years from then that he liberated Korea by waging the arduous anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle and returned to his old home. But, of the members of the family who had left the house before liberation, he was the only one who returned—his father, mother, and younger brother did not live to come home: they all had died in the alien land in the struggle for national independence. When Kim Il Sung came back home, his grandmother hugged him and said with bitter grief:

"How is it that you have come back alone? Where did you leave your father and mother? Didn't you want to return with them?"

Dwelling on the time, the President wrote in his reminiscences With the Century:

"With her heart bursting with such deep grief, what was my agony as I walked through the brushwood gate of my old home alone without bringing with me even the bones of my parents who were dead and lying in a far-off foreign land?

"After that, whenever I passed through the gate of someone else's home, I would wonder how many members of the family had gone out through that gate and how many of them had returned."

This was Kim Il Sung, the man who dedicated all his life to the independence and prosperity of the country and the well-being of the people. The Korean people, therefore, preserving his old home as a sacred place of the Korean revolution dear to their hearts, visit it over and over again.

Over the past 60-odd years a hundred and tens of million people have visited the President's old home which, though small and humble, has risen high as a place of note visited by progressive people from all over the world.

The Place Dear to the Hearts of Mankind

Prominent political and public figures from across the world come to visit the President's old home with insatiable yearning for him. Whoever come to Korea, whether diplomats, religious people or businessmen, despite their difference in occupation, social standing, colour, language, ideology and religious belief, visit the old home at Mangyongdae.

"I visited the straw-thatched, low-raftered house at Mangyongdae. I heard there that the President [Kim Il Sung] was born in the house and that he, at the young age of 13, left it to embark on the struggle to liberate the nation. I was then reminded of a legend my grandfather had told me about a holy man. The legend goes: The man, as a guardian of all things, descended on to the earth to punish evils and grew up in the family of a stock breeder resident on a grassland. Widespread among the Indians even today are stories of the holy man thwarting evils and bringing happiness to people and the relevant philosophical aphorisms.

"I thought that President Kim Il Sung was the very guardian of all things who had come down to the earth to punish evils and bring happiness to its people. The President who was born into the poorest, and yet most virtuous family at Mangyongdae founded a universally recognized and supported idea. He punished evils through the anti-Japanese and anti-US wars and provided the people with an earthly paradise." This is a passage from the writing of Director-General Vishwanath of the International Institute of the Juche Idea about his impression on his visit to the President's old home at Mangyongdae.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent people to visit and study the President's old home in detail for more than 20 days before they made a big craftwork entitled "The Old Home at Mangyongdae" with the best and largest ivory, which was presented to the President on the occasion of his 65^th birthday.

Several public figures of a European country gathered 100 plants with blossoms of ten colours and planted them around the President's old home.

The old home of Kim Il Sung has no end of visitors every day.

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