FAMILY OF KIM IL SUNG

Lee Wha Ran notes: Kim Il Sung's birth name was Kim Sung Ju, he adopted Kim Il Sung as his nom de

guerre. Kim Yong Woo's father, an impoverished farmer, moved to North Korea from South Korea in mid-

1800. Kim Yong Woo caretaker of a rich landowner's ancestral burial ground near Mangyong-dae. Kim

Bo Hyon was a farmer. Kim Hyong Jik was a school-teacher and became a medical doctor when Kim Il

Sung was about 7.

Mangyng-dae is a beautiful village with clean air and green mountains around it. Mount Namsan rises

left to my home and one gets breathtaking panoramic views of Taedong River from its summit. For this

reason, many rich people from far away places and high government officials competed to buy up the

mountains in this region for their ancestral graves. A mighty Pyong-ahn governor was supposedly buried

there.

My family eked out living farming a tiny patch of land. To make the matter worse, after three generations

of one-man-child, my grandfather, Kim Bo Hyon, and grandmother gave birth to six children, raising the

family size to about ten mouths to feed. Grandpa worked day and night to put bread on the table for us.

He got up early in the morn when others were still in bed, and collected wastes from neighboring villages.

Late into the night, when other had gone to bed, he stayed up making straw ropes, sandals and sacks

under a dim kerosene lamp.

My grandmother, Lee Bo Ik, ported water every night. My mother, Kang Ban Suk, my uncle's wife,

Hyong Yang Sin, and my aunts, Kim Gu Il, Kim Hyong Sil and Kim Hyonf Book, worked the fields

 during the day and ran errands during the night. Because of our abject poverty, my uncle, Kim Hyong

Rok, never set foot in a classroom, the closest to formal education he had received was the one-thousand

character prose. He worked the field for grandpa since his childhood.

In spite of our hard work, we had barely enough to eat; there were days when we could not afford even a

small bowl of thin rice gruel. Unprocessed grains were often served; I still recall how much trouble I had

swallowing those course hard-to-digest grains, which were normally fed to domestic animals. Fruits or

meats were beyond our reach. Once I had a growth on my neck and Grandma somehow brought home a

tiny bit of pork. The pork in my stomach made the growth to go away. Since that time on, I often wished

that the growth would come back, so that I could taste pork once again.

Lee Wha Rang notes: Kim Il Sung's family - from left to righ, Kim Sung Ju (aka Kim Il Sung), his father

Kim Hyong Jik (holding Kim Young Ju, was tortured to death by the Japanese), Kim Chul Ju (killed by

the Japanese in battle) and his mother, Kang Bang Suk, circa 1920. Only Kim Il Sung and Kin Young Ju

survived World War II. Courtesy: North Korean government archives.

When I was a child growing up in Mangyong-dae, Grandma often lamented over the fact that our family

owned no clock. Grandma was not keen on material wealth, but she did envy the wall clock of our

neighbor next door, the sole household with a clock in our village. Grandma's clock obsession began with

my father's schooling. She was dead afraid that my father might be late for school and used to wake up

several times during the night to check the time. She had no clock and so, she had to guess the time by

looking at the sky and other natural time pieces. Many times, she got up and, misreading her natural

clocks, got the breakfast ready hours prior to the actual breakfast time.

My father's school, Sung-sil Middle School, was about 30 ri from our house and Grandma would not

think of sending her son to school on empty stomach. Many days, Grandma would get up hours before

the time and hanged around the kitchen; she would send my mother to the next door to get the time