The Identity of Kim Il Sung (1949) [pdf]
cia.gov
cia.gov
I remember when I was in primary school, you will find these propaganda papers on the streets telling South Koreans of how corrupt their government was and urging them to defect to North. Apparently, North Korea would send balloons filled with these propaganda messages. South would do the same to North.
Then there was a TV show once a year where separated families in North & South re-unite for a holiday. They were separated during the Korean War and the two governments allowed these families to be found and meet for a few days, before they were separated again. They hadn't seen each other for ~30 years so were young and only remembered just a few bits of information. These TV shows made EVERYONE cry.
As far as I recall their answer was that a USB drive can store much more. Video, entire books, etc. However leaflets are also done.
Personally I don't know if it's worth the risk knowing that their local OS ("Red Star OS") can fingerprint files. But I guess they know what they're doing.
Most computers in various places like hospitals, veterinarians, shops, gyms and more all have exposed USB ports where it'd be trivial to plug something in when the clerk/assistant is looking the other way, just as another example.
Also, if you can't read Korean, I recommend using https://papago.naver.com/ instead of Google Translator.
From what I've heard, the theory is largely discredited now. (Of course that doesn't mean North Korea's breathless account of Kim's heroic adventures is anywhere near believable, but that's a separate issue.)
https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/decla...
Are there any reliable modern historians that have written about this? Especially the bit that says he was a serial killer in his early years.
I can also recommend Kim Il Sung's own autobiography, With The Century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_the_Century (wiki page has many links to the full book). Because it was written by Kim himself, it's a lot less hagiographic than what you might expect (he didn't have to worry about censorship). Plenty of embellishments sure, but also shows a very human picture of the man.
To give a bit more historical background on the conspiracy theory: Kim's anti-Japanese actions in the 1930s-40s had received some coverage in the Korean press - despite Japanese censorship. He went into hiding in the USSR in the early 40s and was sent back to Pyongyang by the Soviets a couple months after the August 1945 liberation of the peninsula. Dissatisfied with their first choice for a North Korean leader (a man named Cho Man-Sik), the Soviets intended to replace him with Kim (a convinced Stalinist) after some PR efforts to bolster his public image.
At Kim Il Sung's first public appearance at a rally in Pyongyang in late 1945, people were shocked by his young age (there are several testimonies from people present at the event attesting to this). This was exploited by the anti-communist South to discredit him, claiming that someone that young could never have done the resistance deeds that people had heard about during the colonial period. As Suh's book shows, however, there is a good amount of evidence to support the fact that he was indeed a leader in the resistance against Japanese colonization (albeit not the only one) with several feat of arms (albeit not nearly as many as later claimed).
The netsec person in me says we probably shouldn’t be downloading PDFs/epubs from the servers of literal North Korean Government sites…
Nobody said they infect “everyone”, it’s most likely not even in their interest to do so.
besides, the CIA has a lot more to lose. if you get a virus downloading a PDF from North Korean servers, that's The Scorpion and the Frog. you're not gonna get much sympathy. if you get a virus downloading a PDF from CIA servers, that's near enough an international incident
I'm frankly getting tired of all the hysteria. If that is indeed the attack vector just use a sandbox and a pdf viewer with low featureset. Is all we do nowadays mindless hysteria?
EDIT: comical. the response to the advice to use a PDF viewer with low featureset is to list Acrobat exploits. Seems like in the hysteria about how terrible "our enemies" are, all sarcasm and absurdity is lost
EDIT: Comical indeed that MichaelCollins feels the need to come to muruculas rescue. The thread didn't start with murucula, it started with people saying they should not open NK PDF's because they're dangerous. The mindless hysteria could only have been trumped by people accusing one of China and Russia stoogedom in the comments below.
I was merely referring to the memes that were so popular in HN circles just a few years ago about how Kim Jong Un was too stupid to use a computer[1].
I have no skin in the game, but if the HN crowd is not able to read a PDF with basic Opsec to protect itself from malicious Acrobat exploits, we don't really deserve to be called hackers.
[1] http://www.slate.fr/sites/default/files/styles/1200x680/publ...
Anyway, muricula didn't say North Koreans don't know how to use computers, so there was no hypocrisy in his suggestion that North Koreans might have competent computer hackers. You're raging at numerous strawmen at once.
These rewritten heroic-historys are largely worthless.
Kim Il Sung participated in two attacks on the Japanese in the Korean Peninsula confirmed by modern historians (at Hyesan and Pochonbo, the latter of which may have been led by someone else) and other attacks in collaboration with the Chinese communists (see book above for details).
For those wondering why Korean nationalists would have become collaborators: they thought colonozation by an Asian race was less likely to erase Korean culture than colonization from a white race (as the nationalists believed a Japanese defeat in the pacific war would lead to Western colonization of East Asia)
culturally, in many ways it did
The Communists used guerilla tactics, to much success in some cases. Who did more to stifle the Japanese war effort is an impossible question to answer, but both sides of the Chinese Civil war contributed in the fight, each to their own strengths.
Do you happen to have any historical evidence or perspective which supports the theory that right wing people pushed this the false history - or that the right wing conspiracy is widely accepted by the contemporary historical communities? I'd like to read.
Also note that the original article explicitly says "THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION".
> local Korean communists ... were much more enthused about revolution in their countries than Stalin was.
Even if we substitute "Stalin" for "Mao", this statement has low epistemic legibility and low relevance. It could have been 100, 10k, or 1 million Korean communists who were genuinely more "enthused" than Mao was, given that there's likely to be N > 0 people who are more enthused about any kind of political project inside of a large population when their enthusiasm is contrasted to that of a single person. That's a given. It doesn't detract from the fact that an ideology and system was forced onto a sizeable unwilling population with Mao's direct backing.
North Korean troops (and earlier the so-called "Yanan Koreans") were also instrumental in securing the Chinese communist victory during the Civil War through their actions in Northeast China. So in a sense they forced communism on China just as much as the Chinese forced communism onto Korea.
> It was Mao foisting it onto Korea. Stalin was a careful opportunist and thought Korea would be too risky and reckless, so he was hesitant but was eventually persuaded by Mao that it was a good idea.
Your statement refers to the Korean War. As archive records now show, both Stalin and Mao were reluctant and Kim Il Sung only managed to convince Stalin by pretending that Mao was on board for an invasion of the South (and likewise lying to Mao about Stalin being on board).
In any case, North Korea was already socialist before the Korean War. And the South also had a very strong communist movement - the first governments that sprouted in Korea after 1945 were "people's committees".
But the US backed dictator Syngman Rhee (selected for his staunch anti-communism, the man was so reactionary his conservatism shocked even US intelligence) managed to politicide the Southern communists in large numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeosu%E2%80%93Suncheon_rebelli...
Sure, but is it false?
> From what I've heard, the theory is largely discredited now.
If you say so.
The source was a South Korean periodical.
The document has a "THIS IS UNEVALUATED INFORMATION" stamp on it.
The document was published during a political crisis in South Korea.
For anyone experienced with the art of deception, this puts it squarely in the "probably bullshit" bin. Misinformation like this gets published every single day in reputable outlets, and most people don't question it, because it is written to confirm their prior beliefs ("North Korea bad").
This means basically nothing. If it were fake, would a South Korean periodical publish it? Yes, almost certainly. But if it were real, would a South Korean periodical publish it? Yes, almost certainly.
That sort of 'evidence' washes out. All we're left with is unverifiable claims.
I'm very lucky to have been born here and not there.
The only alternative historical path would have completely erased South Korea, now a prosperous country that acts as a positive influence on the region and world. If any outside influence is responsible for North Korea, it is China, any other take beggar’s belief.
This is not a CIA analysis of Kim Il Sung, just a report on a report.
For the easily offended - no, I don't think he was a good guy.
I am trying to follow the logic here. The CIA wanted to smear Kim by using a restricted classified report that wasn't released for 60 years? If I was doing a smear campaign in 1949 I would put it on the radio.
Even without this document there can be this and worse said about him. So why bother?
Many people likely have something that springs to mind, based on their own existing biases, but that differs between people. When naming a particular "fabrication" you'll probably encounter much more resistance. (Russiagate? HIV/AIDS? The moon landing?)
Kim = 12380
Il = 4446
Sung = 3610
Ju = 4871
Kim: 12380
Il: 1
Sung: 4499
https://www.amazon.com/Uedas-Daijiten-Dictionary-Characters-...
It lists the source as "Ibuk T'ongsin," which appears to have been some kind of periodical. Looks like it's just an English translation of open-source intelligence.
Possible title: "Unevaluated information about Kim Il Sung's identity from an old publication in some Korean monthly periodical."
https://www.cia.gov/legacy/headquarters/cia-library/
Luckily, you don't need to be an agency or IC employee to read a lot of it:
Anyone know who the professor is that sourced this? His father was China's "first Minister of Labor" and the professor became an American.
> Despite Communist Party rhetoric regarding the creation of a "classless" society, the professor described, the pre-Cultural Revolution society and leadership compounds in which he and Xi Jinping grew up were, ironically, the "most precisely class-based mini-society ever constructed."
Always an interesting observation. I've read is a constant source of conflict in many modern socialist groups is that ideological purity tests often damages their ability to maintain cohesion, recruit among the actual 'working class' since the party is usually middle class university kids, and infighting over petty details of organization has been satirized to death. While the historical success stories of (obviously authoritarian) socialist parties always had rigid hierarchies, clear leaders, and ruthless pragmatism.
Politics always dilutes ideology, you just can't say that part out loud.
Deng Xiaoping quickly recognized its potential and essentially took credit for this model that allowed China to catapult itself onto the world stage.
I can only imagine his ambitions growing up, he's family suffered under the cultural revolution, he's father was sidelined and others took credit for what essentially transformed China.
He was originally chosen as a candidate to replace Hu, after the March 2012 coup d'etat that led to the imprisonment of Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang. He was picked because he was predicted to be a lame duck but what transpired as you see was the political war launched to remove/reduce Ziang Zemin's grip on power.
The internal struggles of the CCP and Xi's family history is very interesting but what I find even more interesting is how much the American media attacks Xi because Jiang Zemin has lot of friends in this area.
Here's the info on 2012 Coup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSq_TVjw9rQ
Yeah it was probably easy to see Xi as just another party leader but this back story shows how he sees himself as both coming from and representing the very best that China has to offer and a bunch of his friends are very comfortable with such a singular strong man elitist taking over.
He’s got the credentials for such a thing.
It’s just too bad he went ‘redder than red’ in the critical years his father was in jail. But I guess his success was partly because he wasn’t a Deng Xiaoping acolyte that grew up being pro-West.
Jiang Zemin's people are throwing everything they got to hold on to essentially unlimited power and wealth. We can see that they also have their fans in the West who have benefited from this system setup by Deng.
It's unlikely that Xi will compromise, I can see that he was able to hide his ambition very well, enough to fool other CCP princelings that tried to wrestle away control. ie) bo xilai
Maybe I don't follow China closely enough but it's interesting both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are still alive and kicking.
Looking at the list of paramount leaders, having one extend beyond 8yrs isn't necessarily unprecedented... but Xi doing it clearly was to some people.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paramount_leader#/List_of_paramo...
Beyond parody.
https://www.documentcloud.org/app?q=classified is also pretty interesting and has good search tools.
before wikileaks was wikileaks.
something to note.
> Kim is neither brilliant nor adequately educated, but he has proven himself highly acceptable to Stalin.
---
A company I worked for had its own in-house tool for leave management of employees.
The leaves are supposed to get reset on January 1st but that year it didn't happen automatically for whatever reason.
Somebody asked on an internal chat group when the "leaves would be reset".
It had been a long day. I casually replied "mid March".
Everybody panicked, and I panicked because I didn't know why they where panicking.
Later we discovered I thought he was asking about when leaves on trees would reappear after the winter (after they fell down during fall/autumn) :D
This was weird because I was in a torrid region where it's rather hot and humid all year round, there's no such thing as winter, it never snows, and the trees are evergreen — there's never an all-leaves-are-down situation.
(The year prior to that I was in another part of the Earth where the leaves are gone winter. I told you it had been a long day.)
I wonder what they call it in the States.