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…
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.
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
These rewritten heroic-historys are largely worthless.
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.
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
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").
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 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.