North Korean Narrative

on the Second World War:

Why the Change?
Fyodor K. Tertitskiy

Fyodor K. Tertitskiy
Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea
Institute for Korean Studies
Leading Researcher
ORCID: 0000-0002-5414-9500
E-mail: tertitskiyfyodor@gmail.com
Address: Kookmin University, Pugak Hall (N2), 1401 (Institute for Korean Studies)
77 Songbuk-ku, Chongnung-ro, Seoul 02707, Republic of Korea
This research was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the
Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of
the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2019-LAB-1250001).

DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2021-19-4-164-183

Abstract
This paper studies North Korea’s official narrative on the Second World War.
The country is extremely autocratic, meaning that the only allowed vision
is the one prescribed by the state. This vision was initially imprinted by
the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. However, the official narrative on the
Soviet-Japanese War, which led to the establishment of the North Korean
state, has been rewritten: today Pyongyang credits Japan’s defeat to Kim
Il-sung and his “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army”—an organization
which never existed in reality. This article traces the evolution of the North
Korean false narrative and concludes that each of its pages was farther away
from historical truth than the previous one.

Keywords: Second World War, historical memory, Korean People’s

Revolutionary Army, distortion of history, Kim Il-sung, Soviet-Japanese War.

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 North Korean Narrative on the Second World War: Why the Change?

T
he Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) owes its
existence to the Second World War. Before World War II, Korea
was a Japanese colony, and both the North and South Korean
states became independent as a result of Japan’s defeat in the war.
The official narrative on the conflict, and on the events that led to
the emergence of North Korea in particular, is the most important
component of the state ideology. This article studies the evolution of
this narrative in the country from the late 1940s to the early 2020s. The
research focuses on the description of the Japanese Empire’s downfall
in 1945 and on how the North Korean official narrative on these events
eventually lost touch with reality and became an instrument for the
grotesque glorification of the country’s founder—Kim Il-sung.
The study shows that the key component of North Korea’s state
ideology is based on a patently false narrative, which can easily
be proven wrong and is sustained only by the country’s extremely
pervasive censorship. This means that should any liberalization in
North Korea occur, the ideological construct would find itself in a
highly vulnerable position and since the ruling elite understands this,
it is not likely to happen.
The issue of the North Korean vision of WWII may be subdivided
into two important parts. The first one is North Korea’s perception of
the conflict in general, and the second one is Pyongyang’s official stance
on issues related to Korea itself (above all, the events of the Soviet-
Japanese War of August 1945).
Studies of the North Korean official narrative on world history are,
to a certain extent, simplified by the political situation in the country.
North Korea is an extreme form of closed society: academic discussion
in modern history studies is non-existent as all writers are supposed to
unconditionally comply with the state-prescribed dogma. Moreover,
unlike other autocracies, North Korea does not permit publishing any
books on world history other than textbooks and general encyclopedias.
Hence world history plays only a small, or even minute, role in North
Korean humanities as compared to national, Korean history.
Thus, the list of publications on the history of the world outside of
Korea is extremely narrow. In fact, it is limited to encyclopedias and

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 Fyodor K. Tertitskiy

random mention of historical events in the state media and official

speeches of the country’s leaders.
Today, the research on the North Korean vision of the Second
World War is focused almost entirely on Pyongyang’s falsification
of the events of the Soviet-Japanese War, with the victory primarily
attributed to Kim Il-sung since 1967. Of course, the change in the
narrative became evident immediately and South Korean encyclopedias
of the 1970s duly informed their readers about it (Ch'oe Gwang-sŏk,
1976, p. 679).
Academic explanations of this change can be divided into three
groups. The first approach, and assumingly the most popular one, says
that the change was part of Kim Il-sung’s personality cult inherited
from Stalin’s USSR. This suggests that the post-1967 rise of the cult was
the culmination of its natural development (Sŏ Jae-jin, 2003).
According to the second approach, suggested by Brian Reynolds
Myers in his book North Korea’s Juche Myth (2015), North Korea is an
inherently nationalistic state that covers up its rabid xenophobic views
with left-internationalist rhetoric. Accordingly, the changes of 1967
should be seen as primarily and maybe even entirely nationalistic ones,
aimed to glorify the Korean ethnos over all others.
The third approach, which appeared in a recently published thesis
by Zachary Charles Mulrenin (2020), suggests that the change was
largely a response to foreign policy factors, such as the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution in China and the subsequent Sino-North Korean
split. Mulrenin maintains that Kim Il-sung was inspired by Mao’s cult
and modeled his own one after him. According to this thesis, Kim
viewed the cult as a means of counterbalancing the Chinese influence
inside the country.
The explanation offered in this article is built on all the three
approaches. The Stalinist historiography and leader-worshipping were
undoubtedly the key factors in the formation of the personality cult in
North Korea and the official narrative on history. True, North Korea
vacillated from Marxist historiography, yet I believe that the new
narrative should be viewed as personalistic, not nationalistic because
glorifying Kim has always been far more important to Pyongyang than

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extolling the ethnic virtues of the Korean people. Also, I argue here
that, although foreign policy factors pointed out by Mulrenin were
important, the crucial factor was Kim Il-sung’s personal ego: Kim could
have reacted to what was going on in China in a myriad of ways, yet he
chose extreme self-aggrandisement.

Soviet Origins of the NortH Korean Narrative

Modern North Korean historiography originated in 1945 with the
collapse of the Japanese colonial regime. The Soviet authorities started
building humanities in North Korea from scratch with little, if any,
regard for the previous tradition. The new North Korean academia was
shaped in the style of the Soviet one—as was the country’s narrative on
the Second World War (General-mayoru <…>, 1945).
As I will show below, while after the 1960s the events of the Soviet-
Japanese War were totally rewritten in North Korea, the Soviet narrative
concerning other theaters of WWII and the late-Stalin era remained
almost unaltered in North Korea. For example, when speaking about
the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the secret addendum on the division
of Eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of influence is not
mentioned at all (Ssoryŏn-Toich'willandŭ <…>, 2001). The North
Korean narrative normally omits topics that could be considered
problematic in the post-1945 Soviet Union, like the annexation of the
Baltic states in 1940, Stalin’s failure to predict the German invasion
in June 1941, or other events that might portray the Red Army in a
negative light.
The narrative on the Holocaust is very similar to the Soviet one
even in smaller details (for example, the Auschwitz death camp is
referred to by its Polish name Oświęcim) (Osŭbengtchim, 2001). Like
Stalin’s Soviet Union, North Korea recognizes and condemns Hitler’s
genocidal policy against the Jews but does not consider it the central
crime of the Nazi regime.
North Korean alterations to the general narrative on the Second
World War are quite limited. The most significant was perhaps the
vilification of Western Allies—the United States and Great Britain.
Although the USSR tended to downplay Britain and America’s

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contribution to the victory and occasionally blamed them for willing to

make a separate peace treaty with Germany, it generally portrayed them
as nations fighting for the noble cause of defeating Hitler and his allies.
In North Korea, this was only the case before the Korean War of
1950-1953, when Kim Il-sung personally thanked Britain, the United
States, and the Republic of China for the “liberation of Korea” (Kim,
1946, p. 1). After the war, London and Washington’s wartime policy was
portrayed as “murderous” and “imperialist.” Here is a remarkable quote
from a North Korean encyclopedia: “In late 1943, American and British
imperialists expanded their military activities in the Pacific theater.
The American imperialist army of aggression under the command
of the infamous murderous commander MacArthur (1880-1964)
forcibly occupied several islands in the eastern part of the New Guinea
archipelago” (Che2ch'a <…>, 2000).
Another difference between the Stalinist and North Korean narratives
is related to terminology. While in the USSR the war on the Eastern Front
was called “the Great Patriotic War,” Pyongyang called it the “Soviet-
German War” because North Korea has its own Patriotic War—the
Korean War of 1950-1953 (Ssoryŏn Toich'willandŭ <…>, 2001).
Meanwhile, the North Korean view of the European theatre of
WWII was largely defined by Brezhnev-era Soviet films. A multitude
of them were procured by Pyongyang, dubbed to Korean and shown
in the country, with the authorities choosing pictures with a simpler
patriotic narrative on the Red Army defeating the Hitlerite invaders.
Incidentally, this shows that assertions claiming that Pyongyang
allegedly sympathized with Hitler (New Focus <…>, 2013), voiced by
various sources, are unfounded.
Such consistent Soviet-style portrayal of the WWII events sharply
contrasts with the North Korean official view of the Soviet-Japanese
War of 1945, as is shown in the section below.

The myth of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army

As this section discusses the manipulation of the historical narrative, it
would make sense to recall the actual events that took place in North
Korea starting from 1945 and Kim Il-sung’s role in them.

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In the 1930s, Kim Il-sung, a Manchurian Korean from a family of a

teacher, was a middle-to-high ranking commander in the anti-Japanese
resistance in Manchukuo. The resistance movement, organized and
led by the Communist Party of China, was crushed by the Japanese
at the end of the 1930s. To save his life, Kim Il-sung fled to the USSR
(Lichnoe delo <…>, 1941). Due to extreme manpower shortage in the
Red Army’s Far Eastern Front, Kim and his comrades were admitted
to the ranks of the Red Army in 1942. Kim Il-sung was commissioned
as captain and appointed commanding officer of the First Independent
Battalion of the 88th Independent Infantry Brigade (Frontovoi prikaz
10/n, 1945). Neither Kim nor his unit participated in the war against
Japan, which was launched by the USSR soon after midnight of
August 9, 1945 (Chzhou, 1945; Sovetskiye koreitsy <…>, 1945; Spisok
lichnogo <…>, 1945). The war lasted merely a week, as the combined
effect of the Soviet attack and nuclear bombings of Japanese cities by
the U.S. Air Force made Tokyo surrender on conditions laid down by
the Allies.
Yet North Korea attributes the defeat of Japan to Kim Il-sung and
the military force he allegedly created and led—the Korean People’s
Revolutionary Army (KPRA, Chosŏn inmin hyŏngmyŏnggun in
Korean). The origins and the evolution of this remarkable falsification
are discussed below.

Stage 1 (1945—1952)
In late 1945, when Kim Il-sung was chosen to lead North Korea, a
group of Soviet officers was tasked with crafting a proper biography
for the new national leader. The ultimate goal was to pose Kim as a
prominent organizer of the anti-Japanese resistance worthy to lead the
nascent nation (Smirnov, 1992). Another goal was to cover up Kim’s
links with the Soviets, specifically the fact that he served in the Red
Army (Zhurin, 2011). Thus, the Soviets set two trends regarding Kim:
his glorification and presentation as a figure independent of the Soviet
Union.
The results were made evident in the first edition of the North
Korean Central Yearbook (Chosŏn chungang <…>, 1949), an official

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document that portrayed Kim Il-sung as the leader of the entire

resistance movement in Manchukuo and made first mention of the
KPRA. At the time, all of the KPRA’s alleged operations were limited to
Manchuria, and no claims of this “army” fighting in Korea were made.
It is not known who suggested the name “Korean People’s
Revolutionary Army.” Presumably, it could be Kim Il-sung himself: he
could coin it after the Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army (founded
in 1933 by the Communist Party of China) as he served in one of
its regiments (Dongbei diqu <…>, 1989, p. 247). Or, alternatively,
the KPRA could be coined by someone in the USSR, as a replica of
the People’s Revolutionary Armies of pre-war Soviet satellite states in
Asia—Mongolia, Tuva, and the Far Eastern Republic.

Stage 2 (1952—1967)
The next stage of the falsification took place in 1952, during the Korean
War, when North Korea celebrated Kim Il-sung’s 40th birthday. By that
time, Pyongyang had secured a certain political independence from
Moscow, as Stalin, remembering the legacy of the war with Germany,
wanted Kim to act on his own and not to coordinate every decision
with his Soviet supervisors (Telegramma <…>, 1951).
As a consequence, North Korea started to claim that Kim Il-sung’s
KPRA participated in the Soviet-Japanese War, and so Japan’s defeat in
Korea could partially be credited to Kim. This narrative appeared for
the first time in 1952 (Kim Il-sŏng changgun <…>, 1952, p. 32) and was
duly reiterated in later years (Chosŏn ryŏksa <…>, 1955, pp. 115, 117).
Neither de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union nor subsequent
events which made Kim Il-sung independent from Moscow’s control
immediately produced changes in the official narrative. A 1964 book
on the Party history still contained only one sentence on the alleged
role of the KPRA in the war: “The People’s Revolutionary Army, after
completing all preparations, participated in the battle to completely
destroy Japanese imperialism” (Chosŏn Rodongdang <…>, 1964,
pp. 111-112). In August 1966, the country’s main newspaper Rodong
shinmun still stated: “Our people do not forget that the Soviet people and
its great armed forces vanquished the Japanese imperialism and liberated

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our people” (Ch'angjo-wa <…>, 1966, p. 1). It was not until 1967 that
North Korea adopted a completely new view of the events of 1945.

Stage 3 (1967—late 1980s)

The most important change in the North Korean historical narrative
occurred in 1967, as from that year on the KPRA was presented as the
main force that fought against Japan, while the Soviet Army’s role was
reduced to an auxiliary one.
The year 1967 saw a significant political shift in North Korea, as
the country became much more closed and repressive. The key event
that triggered the process was the 15th Plenum of the 4th Central
Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea held on May 4, 1967. It
introduced the Singular Thought System (yuil sasang ch'egye) that
called for total and unconditional loyalty to Kim.
The full text of the decisions introduced at the Plenum remains
classified, yet the text was evidently obtained by the South Korean
intelligence service, as a book published in 1969 by the chief of Seoul’s
Institute for Studies of the Communist Bloc contains a summary of
the Plenum’s decisions. One of them read: “We should obtain a clear
understanding of who liberated us from the Japanese imperialism”
(Han Jae-dŏk 1969, p. 176). The Plenum had an enormous impact on
North Korean society, politics, the personality cult, and the official
interpretation of history.
The reasons why this change occurred in 1967 and not earlier or
later are still understudied. In his innovative thesis, Zachary Charles
Mulrenin (2020) argues that the rise of the cult was impacted by the
beginning of the Sino-North Korean split and the purge of a group
of top-level officials known as the Kapsan faction. He suggests that
these people were linked to China and the extreme amplification
of the cult may have been at least partially caused by Kim Il-sung’s
desire to subvert the Chinese influence, while the glorification of
Mao during the Cultural Revolution may have given him some ideas
about how to do it.
While this seems to be a reasonable explanation, evidence suggests
that the new step was planned well in advance, at least since 1965. In

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that year, the publication of the Pyongyang-controlled Association of

North Korean Residents in Japan already hailed Kim Il-sung with the
intensity that became commonplace in North Korea after 1967 (Chosŏn
minjok-ui <…> 1965, p. 118). This happened before Mao proclaimed
the Cultural Revolution and before relations between Beijing and
Pyongyang became strained, which shows, at the very least, that China
was not the only factor that triggered the change.
Another ideological development was the Juche thought (chuch'e
sasang). In 1966, this sobriquet, which reportedly had been coined
by Kim Il-sung’s deputy Kim Ch'ang-man (Torbenkov, 1960), began
to be promoted as North Korea’s own ideology. While the Juche
thought lacked actual content apart from a few slogans (Myers,
2015, pp. 108-109), it signaled the DPRK’s departure from classical
Marxism-Leninism and attempt to present itself as the leader of
a “third way” in the Communist Bloc, as an alternative to both
Moscow and Beijing.
Both these developments were consistent with the new version of
the cult. Unlike Marxism-Leninism, which taught that the economy
is the sole meaningful driving force of history, North Korea started to
claim that history was primarily driven by great individuals—such as
Kim Il-sung. The North Korean ideological advance in the Third World
(Wŏn, 2016) was mostly promoting Kim Il-sung as such an individual
and his new, greatly amplified, cult was an asset in these efforts.
Another consideration was linked to changes in state governance.
Dramatic amplification of state control (Kim Chin-gye, 1990, p. 79)
was destined to be unpopular and the cult could serve as a method to
pacify the people: if Kim Il-sung is just that great, all his policies are
bound to be beneficial to the nation in the long run.
To summarize the above, the changes of 1967 were caused by both
foreign and internal policy considerations, as well as by Kim Il-sung’s
growing ego. I would argue that the last one was the most important
factor: there were many ways to deal with the challenges the country
was facing, but Kim Il-sung chose the most self-flattering one.
The consequences of the new policy became evident soon after it
was approved by the Plenum. On August 15, 1967, Rodong shinmun

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credited the victory over Japan to Korean “anti-Japanese partisans”

while mentioning the Soviet Army only in passing (T'ujaeng-gwa <…>,
1967, p. 1).
Naturally, the dramatic change in the historical narrative was noted
by the Soviet Embassy in Pyongyang, which sent multiple reports to
Moscow regarding the issue. For example, a 1975 report stated that on
the 30th anniversary of North Korean independence, the DPRK press
“did not publish any materials at all on the Soviet Union or on the
Soviet Army that liberated the country,” and that North Korean films
“stress that Korea was liberated by the Korean People’s Revolutionary
Army led by Kim Il-sung” (Kriulin, 1975, pp. 102-113).
The new official narrative faced an unusual problem: by the time it
was introduced North Korea had a number of monuments erected in
honor of fallen Soviet soldiers. While the main Liberation Monument
in Pyongyang remained untouched for diplomatic reasons, the fate of
the others was sad.
In 1970, all monuments to Soviet soldiers in Chongjin were
reported to have been moved to a faraway district of the city which
the diplomats suspected could be off limits to civilians. The diplomats
noted that North Koreans had removed the inscription “The Korean
people will never forget the Soviet soldiers who fell in the struggle
against the Japanese imperialism.” According to the report, the mass
grave of Soviet soldiers was “in a completely unacceptable state” due
to the negligent policy of the local authorities. Finally, in neighboring
Rajin, a monument to the Soviet naval landing party during the
war was replaced with a monument saying that the landing was
conducted by Kim Il-sung-led guerrillas (Kurbatov and Chernikov,
1970, pp. 158-162).
In 1974, the North Korean authorities informed the Soviet Embassy
they had moved the mass grave of Soviet soldiers in Wonsan to another
location, but that was a post-factum announcement, and the diplomats
suspected that the monument had been demolished and a new one
had been erected in a less populated area without actually moving the
soldiers’ remains (Bykov, 1974, pp. 225-227). Another report informed
about the demolition of the statue of the Soviet soldier near Pyongyang

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Station, with a North Korean official stating that the monument could
be possibly restored (Dudoladov, 1976, pp. 108-109).
Not all people in North Korea accepted the new narrative, and
as other reports from the Soviet Embassy said, some North Koreans
disagreed and tried to find out how the events of 1945 had really
unfolded (Velichko, 1976, pp. 240-246). However, the Soviet Embassy
was strictly forbidden from voicing a protest or from doing anything
that might upset Pyongyang. It was the time of the Sino-Soviet split,
and Moscow’s major goal in its North Korea policy was to prevent the
DPRK from siding with China. In fact, Nikolai Sudarikov, the Soviet
Ambassador to the DPRK in 1967-1974, was explicitly instructed
by Prime Minister Kosygin to not antagonize “our flawed friends”
(Kapustin, 2020).
The only Soviet reaction to the falsification (Vanin, 2004, pp. 155-
212) was to continue publishing memoirs about the Soviet-Japanese
War (Uspensky, 1964; Vo imya <…>, 1965; Na vostochnom <…>,
1969 Osvobozhdenie <…>, 1976). Although these memoirs still had
to comply with Soviet state ideology, they were much closer to the
historical truth than the grotesque North Korean narrative. Later, the
USSR even declassified some documents and published them as a
separate book (Otnosheniya <…>, 1981).
Naturally, Pyongyang ignored these Soviet publications, and all
new books and media in North Korea reiterated the new version of
history. Among the North Korean publications were Kim Il-sung’s
official biography (Kim Il-sŏng tongji <…>, 1972, pp. 289-291), the
Concise History of the Workers’ Party of Korea (Chosŏn Rodongdang
ryaksa, 1979, pp. 184-188), Complete History of Korea (Chosŏn chŏnsa
1981, 118-133), General Encyclopedia (Chosŏn inmin <…>, 1983,
pp. 600-601), and the Synoptic History of Korea (Chosŏn t'ongsa, 1987,
pp. 275-279).
As for Moscow, it made no new attempts to stop Pyongyang from
further distorting history even after the USSR’s conflict with China was
over. Presumably, the Soviets understood that this would be a futile
endeavor, since by that time the new narrative had become firmly
embedded in the North Korean state ideology.

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Stage 4 (1990s—2010s)
In his later years, Kim Il-sung spent a lot of time reflecting on his
past, as is evidenced by the recollections of people who met him at
the time (Kim Yŏng-hwan, 2019). This resulted in the publication of
Kim Il-sung’s official memoirs—an eight-volume book titled With the
Century (Kim Il-sŏng tongji <…>, 1998). The narrative presented in the
memoirs was even further from the historical truth than the previous
North Korean publications.
The book credited the defeat of the Japanese forces in Korea to a
“United International Army” composed of the KPRA and its Soviet
and Chinese allies, in which Kim Il-sung’s troops played the leading
role while the Soviet and the Chinese troops provided some limited
insignificant assistance.
The book claimed that Kim Il-sung’s leading role was well
understood by all the parties involved. As an illustration, the memoirs
“quoted” Marshal Kirill Meretskov (commanding office of the First
Far Eastern Front): “In a war against the Japanese imperialism, Korean
comrades are our seniors. The role of Korean comrades in military
operations against the Japanese is very important; we have high hopes
for you” (Kim Il-sŏng tongji <…>, 1998, p. 450). Moreover, according
to the book, before the war, Kim also visited Moscow where Politburo
member Andrei Zhdanov informed him that Stalin had told him many
things about Korean partisan Kim Il-sung. With the Century claims that
Zhdanov was thrilled to hear from Kim that Koreans did not need any
aid in reconstructing their country after the war with Japan (p. 451).
The military operations during the war are also described in a way
which is even more flattering to Kim. With the Century says that Kim
Il-sung instructed the command of the Soviet First Far Eastern Front
on the tactics of war, and that the KPRA not only fought in Korea, but
also participated in the war against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
The memoirs name Jinchang, Dongning, Muling and Mudanjiang
among the Manchurian cities that were “liberated by the KPRA.” Soviet
soldiers were apparently overwhelmed with admiration and ecstatically
happy to tell Kim that “Korean guerrillas are the greatest.” The story
of the war ends with the following statement: “The liberation of our

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country was thus achieved by the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army,

which delivered strong blows against the Japanese imperialists over 15
years and shook their very foundation by mobilizing all the population
to the war of resistance. The Soviet operations against Japan ended so
quickly only thanks to the long struggle of our army and our people
during all those years” (Kim Il-sŏng tongji <…>, 1998, p. 466).
The narrative of With the Century was further substantiated with
forged texts. In 1992, North Korea started publishing the Complete
Collection of Kim Il-sung’s Works, the first volume of which was
supposed to contain works that Kim “wrote” before 1945. Arguably,
the most interesting forgery in the Vol.1 was Kim Il-sung’s “Order on
the commencement of the general offensive to liberate the motherland,”
which allegedly started the KPRA’s final offensive (Kim Il-sŏng, 1995,
pp. 572-573). Like the rest of the first volume, this order was fabricated.
Thus, it should not come as a surprise to the readers that the first
volume came out only after Volumes 2-12 were published: it evidently
took quite some time for North Korean officials to compose all these
fake speeches.

Stage 5 (2010s—present)
Although Kim Il-sung died in 1994 and Kim Jong-il, his son, heir, and
chief architect of his personality cult, died in 2011, the DPRK’s myth
about the KPRA’s “Final Offensive” continues to evolve. Under Kim
Jong-un, North Korea started publishing a new, enlarged edition of
the Complete Collection of Kim Il-sung’s Works. Here, not one, but three
volumes are dedicated to the pre-1945 period and, like the original
edition, they did not contain a single authentic document.
One may suppose that the purpose of this falsification is to make
the DPRK’s claim regarding Kim Il-sung’s victory over the Japanese
more credible—previously it looked as if the KPRA crushed them with
little to no preparation. Of course, these “speeches” bear absolutely
no resemblance to Kim Il-sung’s actual experience in the 1940s. The
most vivid example is the speech “given” by Kim on June 22, 1941—the
day when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. According to this
narrative, instead of speaking about this extremely important event,

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Kim Il-sung stressed the need to protect the “Paektu Mountain secret
camp” (Kim Il-sŏng, 2018c, pp. 394-396). The “camp” itself is another
North Korean fabrication—the story tells that it was located on the
Korean side of the Paektu Mountain, and that it is the place of Kim Jong-
il’s birth (while in reality Kim Jong-il was born in the Soviet Union).
Another peculiar document is the “speech” Kim Il-sung allegedly
gave on June 20, 1941—just before the German invasion began.
The speech implies that Kim knew about the impending launch of
Operation Barbarossa, as it mentions German troops amassing at
the Soviet border—the fact which at that time was known only to a
handful of people in the Soviet Union. The subject of his speech is
the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact of 1941; Kim Il-sung says that
Korean revolutionaries should not be concerned about it as the Soviet
assistance is unnecessary for defeating Japan (Kim Il-sŏng, 2018b,
pp. 389-393).
Finally, Volume 3 contains the speech Kim Il-sung allegedly gave on
August 15, 1945—the day when Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s
surrender (Kim Il-sŏng, 2018a, pp. 535-537). Remarkably, the speech
does not give a single reference to the Soviet Army (or, naturally, to
any other member of the anti-Japanese coalition). Instead, the victory
is credited solely to the Korean resistance. Kim Il-sung is quoted as
saying: “During the entire period of the armed struggle, we held fast
to the view that we must believe in the strength of our people, mobilize
the immeasurable strength of our people and thus fulfil the Korean
revolution.”
Naturally, the book does not contain any explanation as to why
these speeches were neither published nor ever mentioned in the
seventy-three years that passed between 1945 and 2018. Like in the
previous decades, North Korea has not engaged in any academic
discussion; instead, it has doubled down on the false narrative aimed
at glorifying the country’s first ruler.

* * *
The North Korean narrative on the Second World War originated from
the Soviet narrative on the immediate post-War period, which was

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 Fyodor K. Tertitskiy

implanted into the DPRK by Soviet overseers in the late 1940s. In later
years it was altered by the North Korean authorities to fit the changes
in the state ideology.
Changes to the general narrative were mostly limited to portraying
Britain and the U.S. as villainous states as opposed to “flawed allies”—
the way these countries were perceived in the Soviet Union.
Changes to the interpretation of the events related to the Soviet-
Japanese War were overarching. The myth of Kim Il-sung as the
commander of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army, relatively
modest at first, evolved through several stages and ripened in 1967.
Since then, the North Korean narrative regarding the events of 1945
and the DPRK’s legitimacy has been amplified by flagrant lies and
alleged sources invented decades after the events.
Such historical falsification became possible due to an extremely
closed nature of the North Korean state. Understandably, even a small
degree of academic freedom would have made the state mythology
vulnerable to criticism, and any political liberalization would have
posed a great threat to the stability of the North Korean statehood.

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