On October 14, 1945, over 100,000 people gathered in downtown Pyongyang to celebrate Korea's liberation from Japan by the Soviet army. 'Now is the moment to introduce you to the new leader of your country, comrade Kim Il-sung,' said the Russian general on the podium.
A ripple of excitement spread through the crowd, delighted to be rid of 35 years of Japanese secret police, rationing and wartime controls. For the first time, they would see the legendary guerilla leader who had fought the Japanese army for more than 20 years in Korea and Manchuria.
Up to the podium stepped a handsome man in his 30s, with a plump face and a full head of hair. People in the crowd looked in disbelief at one another: this young man could not be the real Kim, who would be in his 50s, with fading hair and skin hardened by years of living in the mountains and caves of northeastern China.
This is the extraordinary story of how Josef Stalin picked an obscure officer in the Red Army to be the ruler of the new country his army had occupied and grafted onto him the life of its most famous guerilla leader, to give him an authority and credibility he did not possess.
This story only came to light after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, when the Russians involved in establishing the new state of North Korea could speak to foreign scholars and journalists. A detailed history of Kim and his government was also written in My Struggle with Kim Il-sung, published in Japan by Park Gab-dong, the secretary general of a government-in-exile, the Korean Democratic Unity Salvation Front, that was established in Moscow in January 1992. This government was formed by 20 former top civil and military officials who had been purged but managed to escape to Russia, China and Japan. They included ex-generals in the armed forces, deputy ministers and the man who represented the North during the armistice negotiations in 1953.
All were members of the Korean Communist Party, who had fought, in Korea or abroad, against the Japanese and then South Korean and US-led forces and had an intimate knowledge of the Kim family. Many had a better claim to head the government than a man who had spent 25 years away from his homeland and played only a marginal role in the war. They are the principal source for the version of history in this article.