People take as their teacher a man who has taught them a word and a principle of the world.

President Kim Il Sung , recognized worldwide as the “most prominent leader of the 20th century” and a “great statesman of the 20th century”, had teachers in his life.

Among them were parents who led him along the road of revolution and teachers who introduced him to Marx’s “Capital” and Gorky’s “Mother” and Cao Xueqin’s “A Dream of Red Mansions”. But it was none other than people who he regarded as his great mentor and heaven.

A story tells how he treated people. In the summer of 1994, when former US president Jimmy Carter visited the DPRK, Kim Il Sung together with him was touring along the Taedong River on a pleasure boat.

It was when the boat was passing a place on the outskirts of Pyongyang.

While talking with Carter, Kim Il Sung suddenly stopped and called an aide to ask him to slow down the ship.

Carter asked him why. With a smile on his face, pointing at a place of the riverside, he said: Look over there. Some people are fishing at the riverside. If we ripple the water, we would disturb them. So we had better go a little slower lest we cause disturbance to those anglers.

They were not merely anglers to him, but the people he regarded as heaven.

Since he embarked on the road of revolutionary struggle, he took people as his great mentor and heaven and went among them to conduct revolutionary activities.

In the days of the arduous anti-Japanese war, he always found himself among the people, saying that the commander is also a son of the people. After the liberation of the country, he refused to keep people at a distance, saying that the General is a son of the people.

When world progressives sincerely wished him long life and good health, he humbly said that he was a son of working people and their servant, and hardened his determination to work harder for them all his life.

On his visit to a factory, he unceremoniously took the oil-stained hands of workers, and at a rural village he did not mind to sit down with farmers in the yard that smelled of cattle fodder to discuss farming.

Once, referring to when he was particularly pleased and happy, he said it was when he goes among the people, finds out among them excellent people who could be put forward as role models for the whole country, and discusses state affairs, life and the future with them.

He visited people even on days off, holidays and birthdays, the sum of which amount to as long as seven years.

He had spent over 8 650 days, equivalent to nearly 24 years, mixing with the people for about 50 years—since he returned home after the country’s liberation till the last moment of his life.

When presiding over a consultative meeting of senior officials in the economic field in July Juche 83 (1994), the last month of his life, he reiterated his ennobling idea of believing in the people as in heaven. He earnestly said that he had so far believed in the people, fought for them and mingled with them, adding that his life had been devoted to the country and the nation and he would continue to be with them.

His life was indeed a life of a benevolent father of the people and a great leader who found himself among the people, shared weal and woe with them and devoted his all to them, regarding it as his motto to believe in them as in heaven.

Kim Ye Ryong