Kim Il-sung

Kim Il-sung (born Kim Song Ju, 15 April 1912 to 8 July 1994) was a North Korean communist revolutionary, military officer and politician who founded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in 1948 and led it until his death in 1994. Born in Japanese-ruled Korea and raised in northeast China, he joined anti-Japanese guerrilla groups and the Chinese Communist Party in 1931, then served with the Soviet Red Army, which helped put him in power in the north after Korea was divided in 1945. He authorized the 1950 invasion of South Korea that began the Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire in 1953. He built a totalitarian, socialist and personalist state with a centrally planned economy, and developed the ideology of Juche, meaning independence, self-sustenance and self-defence, and fostered a personality cult that gave him the title Great Leader. His son Kim Jong Il succeeded him and he was declared Eternal President.