President Kim Il Sung in his reminiscences With the Century wrote as follows:

“The popular masses should rise up with arms in hand and fight the enemy to win back the country and establish a new society free from exploitation and oppression. This is the conclusion my father had drawn after all his hard work. This was the policy of the proletarian revolution.”

The Korean people made life-and-death efforts to win back their national sovereignty and independence after their country was deprived of by the Japanese imperialists. But they were met with bitter failure due to the brutal suppression of aggressors.

There were not many clandestine anti-Japanese organizations in Korea and ordinary people dared not to think of joining in the anti-Japanese activities.

Such a period of ordeals was eagerly waiting for the advent of a right guideline for leading all the Koreans to the struggle.

The indomitable revolutionary fighter Kim Hyong Jik (July 1894-June 1926), father of President Kim Il Sung, who witnessed the gloomy realities of the country and experienced the miserable plights of compatriots, embarked on the road of revolution to save the destiny of his nation.

Based on the idea of “Jiwon (Aim High)”, he pushed ahead with the work of rallying comrades who would share the idea in the revolutionary struggle and enlightening the broad sections of the masses.

On March 23, Juche 6 (1917), he formed the Korean National Association (KNA) in Haktanggol, Pyongyang. It was an anti-Japanese underground revolutionary organization the aim of which was to achieve national independence and establish a truly civilized state through the united efforts of the Korean people. He expanded the networks of its organization at home and abroad.

With the March First Popular Uprising in 1919 as a momentum, the Korean people’s struggle against the military rule of the Japanese imperialists swept across the country. In this period, Kim Hyong Jik formulated his ideology and resolved to make a proletarian revolution.

At the Chongsudong Meeting held in July 1919 he proved the historical necessity for a proletarian revolution. On the basis of this, he convened, in August of that year, a meeting of the heads of various districts under the KNA, liaison agents and chiefs of the organizations of independence movement in Kuandian County, China. At the meeting, he proclaimed the policy of proletarian revolution, the task of building a new society which would ensure the rights and interests of the unpropertied masses and the revolutionary policy of armed activities.

This was one of the great exploits he performed in his life.

He used to explain his idea of the proletarian revolution plainly as the building of a new society which would provide rice to those who had no food and supply clothes to those who had no clothing and, through his practical activities he awakened the workers, peasants and other working masses to a progressive idea and united them into one revolutionary force.

He composed a poem, Green Pine on Nam Hill. The poem expressed his firm resolve to stand up to the brutal repression of the Japanese imperialists and bring a new spring of independence to the silk-embroidered land of three thousand ri by fighting on generation after generation even if he were to be torn to pieces.

Even in the last moment of his life, he worried about the revolution rather than his own health. He called his sons to his bedside and gave them his last injunction that they should win back the country at all costs even if their bones were broken and their bodies were torn apart.