Communist and Guerrilla Activities
Much controversy surrounds the details of Kim's political career before the founding of North Korea, with some sources labelling him an imposter. Several sources indicate that the name "Kim Il-sung" had previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean resistance, Kim Kyung-cheon (김경천). Grigory Mekler, who allegedly prepared Kim to lead North Korea, says that Kim assumed this name while in the Soviet Union in the early 1940s from a former commander who had died. According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially "created from zero". For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he had only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech (which the MVD prepared for him) at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived.
Bookmarks