President Kim Il Sung made a 250-mile journey alone from Badaogou in Changbai County of China to Mangyongdae of Korea in his early teens.

It happened one day early in Juche 12 (1923) when he was nearing his graduation from a primary school. At that time he was living together with his parents in alien Badaogou of China.

His father Kim Hyong Jik, an outstanding leader of the anti-Japanese national liberation movement in Korea, told him that he should go to Korea and continue to study there. He said: A man born in Korea must have a good knowledge of Korea; if you get to understand clearly while you are in Korea why it has been ruined, that will be a great achievement; share the fate of the people in your home town and experience how miserable they are; then you will see what you should do.

Kim Il Sung answered that he would do as the father told him to do. He, in his school uniform and a Korean overcoat, left Badaogou on March 16, with a small bundle and insufficient traveling expenses.

The road he had to follow was long and arduous; deep valleys and primeval forests amid raging cold wind and snowstorm, endless chains of steep and craggy mountains, uninhabited northern woods where beasts of prey prowl about even in full daylight, snow-covered Mt Oga and high passes which even a hunter with strong legs dares to climb.

What broke his heart bitterly on this trek was not his own physical exhaustion but the miserable plight of his fellow countrymen suffering from poverty and starvation under the Japanese military occupation (1905-1945). Witnessing their difficult situation, he felt a surge of burning hatred against the Japanese imperialists plundering the treasures of Korea in different parts of the country.

On March 29, 14 days after his departure from Badaogou, he entered the courtyard of his old home in Mangyongdae. Several days later, he began to study at Changdok School, staying in his mother’s maiden home in Chilgol. In the course of this, he cherished deep in his mind the faith that only when the Korean people drove out the Japanese imperialists through struggle could they live happily in the liberated country.

Recollecting those days in deep emotion, he wrote as follows in his Reminiscences With the Century: The 250-mile journey was, for me, a journey of learning about my homeland and my fellow countrymen.

As he made the journey for the revolution to have a clear awareness of struggle, he could form the Down-With-Imperialism-Union, a Juche-oriented revolutionary vanguard organization, in the first period of his revolutionary struggle and carve out a new road ahead of the Korean revolution by creating the immortal Juche idea. And he organized the historic cause of national-liberation revolution and the socialist construction and led it to victory, braving the trials and difficulties unprecedented in history, and finally built the people-centred socialism on this land.

Today, his 250-mile journey for learning is steadily being carried forward by the pupils and students across the country.