Recorded in the annals of the revolutionary career of President Kim Il Sung (April 15, 1912-July 8, 1994) is the 1 000-ri journey he made in his teens.

When he was eight, he went to Northeast China following his father Kim Hyong Jik, an outstanding leader of Korea’s anti-Japanese national liberation movement, and entered a Chinese primary school. One day in early 1923 when he was about to graduate from the school, his father told him to go back to Korea and continue his study there.

On hearing his father, Kim Il Sung realized that a man born in Korea must have a good knowledge of his country and work for it.

He left Badaogou on March 16, 1923 for his native home at Mangyongdae with a map his father had drawn in his pocketbook. The trip is called the 1 000-ri journey for learning in history.

During the journey he had to pass through primeval forests and cross deep ravines in howling wind and raging snowstorm, all alone. What broke his heart bitterly on this trek was not his own physical exhaustion but the miserable plight of his fellow countrymen suffering from ordeals and difficulties under the Japanese imperialists’ military occupation.

What he saw and heard everywhere was the deep sigh and rancour of the fellow countrymen over their distress: heartbreaking stories coming from the slash-and-burn farmers’ dugouts scattered in deep mountains and innocent people taken away with their wrists bound in rope.

It was around sunset on March 29, 1923 when he arrived at his destination. Back home, he studied at Changdok School where he experienced more keenly the miserable fate of a ruined nation and hardened his resolve to win back the country occupied by the Japanese imperialists.

Meanwhile, he came to have a better understanding of his fellow countrymen and found the truth that he could surely win back the lost country if he organized and mobilized them well. And he became clearly aware that the Japanese imperialists were the Korean people’s sworn enemy who inflicted unbearable agony and suffering upon them.

In his reminiscences With the Century he wrote that the journey was, for him, a journey of learning about his homeland and his fellow countrymen.

The journey helped him cultivate the ardent love of and boundless devotion to his country and people, the spirit of independence by which he solved all problems by believing in the people and enlisting their strength, as well as iron will and noble popular traits. His life-long traits were developed during the journey.

As he learned about his homeland and his fellow countrymen during the journey, he created the great Juche idea and led the arduous anti-Japanese revolutionary war and the Fatherland Liberation War to victory. And he established a socialist country, independent in politics, self-supporting in the economy and self-reliant in national defence and worked devotedly for its prosperity.

Although a century has passed since he set out on the journey, the Korean people strive hard to hasten the comprehensive development of socialism, true to the patriotic intention associated with his long journey.

Kim Hyok