The Triumphal Return

The Triumphal Return

From Volume 8 of President Kim Il Sung’s

Reminiscences “With the Century”

 

On the day I entered Pyongyang, together with my comrades-in- arms, I set about carrying out the tasks of building the Party, state and army. That was one of the busiest days after liberation.

In the homeland, too, I worked mainly among the people, among the masses. While visiting factories, rural communities and streets to meet people on the one hand, on the other I met various visitors from at home and abroad in my office and lodgings, sharing bed and board with my comrades as I had done on Mt. Paektu.

Whenever they saw me, my comrades advised me to visit my grandparents at home saying that it was my moral obligation to do so, As they were unable to persuade me, Rim Chun Chu visited Mangyongdae in secret, acting as if he had dropped in by chance, and inquired after my family members. I later heard from him about my family in detail.

I did not know how the secret leaked out, but towards the end of September a rumour spread all over the city that I was in Pyongyang. Hearing it, Uncle Hyong Rok went to the South Phyongan Provincial Party Committee and asked them to help him to see me.

Rim Chun Chu asked my uncle to tell him all that he knew about me.

Hyong Rok replied, “The real name of my nephew is Kim Song Ju. In his boyhood in Mangyongdae he was also called Jung Son. His face dimples when he smiles.”

That evening Rim brought Uncle Hyong Rok to my lodgings.

When he met me, he said, “How much hardship you’ve gone through!” and then he was choked with tears. Apparently he felt a lump in his throat remembering the days when he was pining for his blood relatives who had been left in an alien land as dead souls, experiencing all kinds of bitterness for 20 years. It is hard to describe the trouble he suffered.

“Until you liberated the country and came back, I looked after our home, so I failed to visit the grave of my brother and his wife. Why did they have to die so young?”

He gazed into my face. “Your handsome face has become weather-beaten. The wind must be very rough on Mt. Paektu.” He looked sad.

But my uncle’s face was more ravaged than mine. While looking at him, who was twice as old as he had been 20 years before, tears formed in my eyes. His face was full of wrinkles, and I thought of how many trials every wrinkle represented.

“If Mt. Paektu were near, I would have made even straw sandals to support your army, but I couldn’t give you any help.”

“You looked after our home, Uncle,” I replied, moved by his humble words.

Uncle Hyong Rok and I shared our experiences all through the night. The next day I sent him back to Mangyongdae. I asked him to keep our meeting to himself, and he agreed. However, he told my grandfather secretly that Song Ju was in Pyongyang.

My grandfather said with joy: “That’s what ought to be. Our Song Ju cannot change even if Mt. Paektu changes. Some people say that Kim Il Sung is from Jolla Province and others say that he is from Ham-gyong Province. Can there be so many Kim Il Sungs in Korea?”

After visiting the Kangson Steel Works on October 9 and founding the Communist Party of North Korea, I gave my first address to the people in the homeland at the Pyongyang City mass rally to welcome me.

The fact is that I had never intended to meet the people at a grand welcoming rally. But the important persons in the homeland and my comrades-in-arms insisted on holding such a grand ceremony.

On the day when I first revealed my real name to the public at a meeting, instead of my assumed name, Kim Yong Hwan, someone pro­posed to hold a national mass rally to welcome my triumphal return. The whole meeting hailed the proposal.

Preparations for the welcoming ceremony had been under way behind the scenes, under the sponsorship of the South Phyongan Provincial Party Committee and People’s Political Committee. On the eve of the ceremony, a pine arch and makeshift stage were erected in the public playground at the foot of Moran Hill.

I had told Kim Yong born not to arrange a grand ceremony. But the people of the South Phyongan Provincial Party Committee were so stubborn, that they put up posters in every street and lane announcing that we had entered Pyongyang and I would meet the people in the pub­lic stadium on October 14.

About noon on October 14, 1945 I went by car to the Pyongyang public playground, the venue of the ceremony. I was amazed at the sight of the surging crowds filling the squares and streets. The play­ground, too, was already full of people. There were even people in the trees around the playground, and the Choesung Pavilion and the Ulmil Pavilion were covered with people. Going through the waves of wel­come I raised my hand in acknowledgement of the cheering crowds.

General Chistyakov, commander of the Soviet 25th Army, and Major General Rebezev were present at the mass rally.

Many people made speeches that day.

Jo Man Sik took the floor. I still remember a passage of his speech which triggered laughter among the audience. He said in a merry voice that at the news of liberation he pinched himself to see if he was not dreaming and he felt pain. He even showed how he had pinched his arm.

When I mounted the platform the shout “Long live the independence of Korea!” and the cheers of the crowd reached a climax.

As I listened to their cheers, I felt the fatigue that had accumulated for 20 years melting away. The cheers of the people became a hot wind and warmed my body and mind.

Standing on the platform amidst the enthusiastic cheers of more than 100,000 people, I felt happiness that defied description by any flowery language. If anyone asked me about the happiest moment in my life, I would reply that it was that moment. It was happiness emanating from the pride that I had fought for the people as a son of the people, from the feeling that the people loved and trusted me and from the fact that I was in the embrace of the people.

It may be said that the cheers of the people resounding in the Pyong­yang public playground on October 14, 1945 were the acknowledge­ment of and reward for the arduous struggle we had waged for the first half of our lifetimes for our country and fellow countrymen. I accepted this reward as the people’s love for and trust in me. As I always say, no pleasure can be greater than that of enjoying the love and support of the people.

I have regarded the love and support of the people as the absolute standard that measures the value of existence of a revolutionary and the happiness he can enjoy. Apart from the love and support of the people, a revolutionary has nothing.

Bourgeois politicians try to lure the people with money, but we obtained trust from the people at the cost of our blood and sweat. I was moved by the people’s trust in me and I considered it the greatest plea­sure I could enjoy in my life.

The gist of my speech that day was great national unity. I appealed to the whole nation to build a prosperous independent state in Korea, united as one—those with strength dedicating strength, those with knowledge devoting knowledge and those with money offering money.

The crowd expressed their support with thunderous applause and cheers.

The Pyongyang Minbo, a newspaper of those days, wrote about the sight of the Pyongyang public playground on that day under the title Cheers of 400,000 People Shake Korea, A Lovely Land.

“Pyongyang has a long history of 4,000 years and a large population of 400,000. Has it ever had such a large meeting as this? Has it ever held such an important meet­ing? ...

“What gave historic significance to this meeting and turned it into a storm of emo­tion, was that General Kim Il Sung, the great patriot of Korea and a hero whom Pyong­yang produced, was present in person there, and extended joyful and warm greetings and words of encouragement to the people.... as soon as General Kim Il Sung appeared on the platform, the hero whom the Korean people hold in high respect and have been looking forward to seeing, a storm of enthusiastic cheers arose, and most of the audi­ence were deeply moved to silent tears.... as he touched the hearts of the masses with steely force their thunderous cheers seemed to voice their determination to fight to the death together with this man.”

We can say that the mass rally was the start of a great march of our people towards building a new country.

That day at the meeting place I met my aunt, Hyon Yang Sin, and my maternal uncle, Kang Yong Sok, when the ceremony was over.

When I look back upon the moment when I met my aunt after descending from the platform, tears still well up in my eyes.

I did not know how the old woman forced her way through the jostling crowds, but she was in my car shedding tears. I was told later that Ju To Il had seen her squeezing her way with gritted teeth towards the platform and brought her to the car.

She grasped my hands and said with deep emotion: “Nephew, how many years has it been?”

“Aunt, you have had so much trouble looking after a large family alone!” I said in greeting.

“You suffered more in the mountains. Living in a comfortable room in all seasons, as I do, is no suffering. I was anxious while coming to the playground. Though your uncle said you had come, what if you had turned out to be Kim Il Sung from Jolla Province? How glad I was to find you, my nephew, on the platform!” She said in excitement and in tears at the same time.

Watching our reunion, my comrades-in-arms were also moved to tears.

“Aunt, why are you crying when the whole city is laughing and dancing with delight?”

“You remind me of your father and mother. If they were alive and could have heard your speech today, how happy they would be!”

“Auntie, from today you shall take the place of my mother.”

When I said this, she threw herself into my arms and burst into tears. I knew well that she was crying at the thought of my mother. My mother and aunt were more intimate than real sisters. My aunt married into my family at the age of 15. She did not feel at home in so poor a family at first, but she became fond of our family through basking in my mother’s love.

My mother had loved my aunt very much. They had worked togeth­er in the fields, too. At break times my mother would often let her snatch a wink of sleep with her head on her own lap because my aunt always felt tired from want of sleep. And when she fell asleep, my mother combed her hair calmly. Since she began her life in our family enjoying such affection, my aunt could not forget my mother. She regretted very much that she had failed to go to Antu to pray for the soul of my mother when she died.

“Even a hundred aunts cannot replace your mother. It seems that her soul has come flying to this playground and is staying with us.” She dried her tears with the sleeves of her jacket. Laughing and crying by turns she told about her quarrel with her husband: “That tricky old man came to the city and met you, nephew, without my knowledge. He kept it to himself until yesterday.

So I protested, ‘Old man, is Kim Il Sung only your nephew, and not mine?’ He replied absurdly that an arm bends inwardly, not outwardly.”

In the afternoon, I went to Mangyongdae with my uncle and aunt. We did not take the road which we use nowadays, but drove to the ferry on the Sunhwa River and went to Mangyongdae by boat. Along the muddy lane to the landing place were stepping stones to be used when getting on board. This was where I used to catch crabs with my trousers rolled up to my knees in my childhood.

The sound of a washerwoman’s club and the smell of young pine trees on Mangyong Hill which greeted me that day are still fresh in my memory. That sound was so melodious and that smell was so fragrant. When a cow mooed on the Kalmaeji Plain, I felt a lump in my throat at the sight of my native place, something which I experienced for the first time in many years.

I was now 33 years old, though it seemed only yesterday that in my boyhood I used to remain awake all night thinking of my father in prison. It was just like the people in the old days said: Pitiless time was flying by.

The 40 years it took to win back the lost country and the 20 years it took me to regain my native home seemed too long.

That the sovereignty of a nation lost in a moment could only be recovered in a thousand years was an important lesson I had learned during the 20 years of the revolution against the Japanese. I mean that it is easy to lose a country, but difficult to win it back. It is a grim reality of the world that it takes decades or even centuries to restore a country which was lost in an instant.

It is well known that India won its independence from England after 200 years of colonial enslavement. The Philippines and Indonesia won their independence after 300 years, Algeria after 130 years, Sri Lanka after 150 years and Vietnam after nearly 100 years. How expensive the cost of national ruin is! That is why I frequently tell the young people that a ruined nation is as good as dead, that if they do not want to be a stateless people, they must go all out to defend the country, and that in order not to end up as slaves they must make the country more prosperous and collect even one more piece of rubble to build the defence higher.

Of the scenes of the day when I was visiting my old home one is particularly fresh in my memory. A child of only two or three years old waved to our group. There was nothing special about this scene, but it had an impact on my heart. I felt as if I were seeing the symbol of a new Korea in the appearance of the child, who was waving his hands free from care in his cosy native village, in the centre of a peaceful world.

When I was entering the yard of my old home behind my aunt, my heart beat wildly. The yard which had looked as wide as a city square 20 years before seemed no bigger than the palm of my hand at that time. However, as I thought that it was the terminus of 20 years of an arduous, long-drawn-out march, I felt as if I had landed after crossing a great ocean.

As I caught sight of the familiar eaves of my old home, I had hallu­cinations that my father and mother who used to sing Lullaby to me and breathe upon my frozen hands, my parents who were buried in their graves like fallen blossoms, revived in old images, were running towards me shouting “Song Ju” and embracing me in their broad arms. I could not step inside easily.

My grandfather came out into the courtyard barefoot and hugged me. “My eldest grandson has come home.... let me look! ... let me look....” He kept repeating these words in tears. My grandmother, too, burst into tears, saying, “Why have you come alone? Where have you left your father and mother?”

I offered to my grandfather and grandmother some wine I had brought from Pyongyang, saying, “Grandfather, grandmother, I am so sorry that I neglected my filial duty until I passed the age of 30.”

“Not at all. You accomplished the cause of independence which your father left unfinished. Nothing could be a greater filial service than that. If you take good care of the country and people, you will be fulfill­ing your duty to your parents,” my grandfather replied and emptied his cup light-heartedly. With a smile on his face he said that the wine tasted good that day. But his hands trembled a little. Grandmother, too, emp­tied her cup without difficulty.

However, I was sorry for not having fulfilled my duty to the grand­parents. The thought that I had troubled them too much sank deep into my mind. I was grateful to my grandfather when he said that taking care of the country and people was the greatest filial service.

That day all the people of Nam-ri gathered in my house. At the news of my return home, the people came in groups from Tudan-ri and Chuja Island. My childhood friends, too, called on me one after another with bundles of food.

A simple family party turned into a grand banquet. Many people sang and danced in honour of my return. Old man Choe who had owed much to our family from the days of my great-grandfather Kim Ung U danced to the tune of Kkungniri. Aunt, too, sang Lullaby my father had composed.

That night I slept in my home for the first time in 20 years.

At that time the under-floor heating was under repair and the door was not yet fitted. We covered the half-dry floor with wheat and rice straw and spread a straw-mat over it to sleep on.

My grandfather urged me to sleep in the house of a neighbour. But I said, “We did not enjoy any comforts in the mountains. We slept in the open, regarding the sky as our roof and the grass and trees as our cover­let. Why should I sleep at the neighbour’s now that I have come to my own home? I will sleep in my house.”

My grandfather agreed, and with a beaming smile said that it would indeed be awkward if I slept at a neighbour’s house instead of in my own home, after 20 years’ absence.

Grandmother spread a cotton quilt on the straw-mat, a quilt that had been made of the cotton yam she herself had spun so long ago.

At midnight, she put her arm under my pillow and asked calmly, “Did you get married in the mountains? Did your wife, too, fight in the mountains?”

“Yes, she was a guerrilla.”

“Does your son take after you?”

“People say so.”

“That’s good.”

She asked many other things. Afraid that the weight of my head would hurt her arm, I asked her if my head was heavy. She replied that it was not heavy, and thrust her arm further under my neck. When she did this for her grandson of over thirty, as she had done in my boyhood, her love warmed my heart.

“You had better move the graves of your father and mother from Manchuria to the liberated homeland,” she said.

That was the last topic she brought up that night. It was her natural concern. I fully understood how much she wanted to bring home the remains of her children who were buried in an alien land.

“Grandmother,” I said, “moving the graves of my parents is impor­tant, but I would like first to seek out some people to whom I owe much. Mr. Hwang and old man Kim on the Kaduk Pass from Jonju who helped my father escape at the Yonphori Inn. Also an old man called Jo who saved me from the jaws of death when I had a bad chill. I must find them first and then transfer the graves of my parents.”

“That’s a good idea. If you do that, your father buried in Yangdicun will be delighted.”

I told my grandmother through the night about my benefactors, comrades-in-arms and friends who helped me in the days in Jilin and Jian-dao, and on Mt. Paektu. I shed silent tears recalling my father and moth­er, Uncle Hyong Gwon and my younger brother Chol Ju, who were lying in graves far away from home. Grandmother, too, sobbed quietly. Then she stopped crying and comforted me, caressing my arms. “Your father and mother are gone, but Jong Suk has come into our family. And Jong Il was born to carry on the family line.”

Looking back upon our traces on Mt. Paektu and the snow-covered plains of Manchuria, I imagined the faces of my comrades-in-arms who were not able to come back with me. I thought about the people to whom I owed much, recalled my childhood and planned the future of the country.

That night at Mangyongdae, which I spent in the liberated homeland after 20 years’ absence, was a peaceful night indeed. Two months after the end of the Second World War and the liberation of the country, the 30 million Korean people were still intoxicated with the joy of libera­tion.

None of these people, however, imagined that the liberation of the country would end in a territorial division and national split, resulting in a great national disaster lasting over half a century.