January 22 is the day when President Kim Il Sung in his teens embarked on the 250-mile journey for national liberation with an ambition to win back his country lost to the Japanese imperialists.
Nearly one century has passed since then. But, still today, the Korean people significantly commemorate the day.
One day in January Juche 14 (1925), some months before graduation from Changdok School in Korea, Kim Il Sung was told that his father Kim Hyong Jik, an indomitable revolutionary fighter, was arrested by the Japanese police.
With a firm determination to take his revenge on the enemy of his father, his family and his nation and win back his country, he left his native home at Mangyongdae for Badaogou in Changbai County in northeast China and embarked on the road of the 250-mile journey for national liberation.
It was on January 22, Juche 14 (1925).
The thirteenth day after his departure from Mangyongdae, he arrived at a ferry of the Amnok River in Phophyong. Standing on the riverside covered with snow, he looked back at the motherland groaning under the Japanese military colonial rule.
Singing the Song of the Amnok River, he made a grim resolve not to return before Korea would have become independent.
… …
Blue waters of Amnok, my homeland,
Wait the day I return to you.
I crossed to attain our dearest wish
I’ll return when we have won.
True to his resolve made that day, Kim Il Sung waged a bloody struggle against the Japanese imperialists and finally accomplished the historic cause of Korea’s liberation in August 1945.
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