From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960

by Andrei Lankov

To understand how North Korea has survived as the worlds last Stalinist regime despite international isolationand at enormous human costs to its peopleone must look at how its political system was created. The countrys foundations were laid in the late 1940s and 1950s as a result of interaction between the Soviet Stalinist model, imposed from outside, and local traditions. Andrei Lankov traces the formation of the North Korean state and the early years of Kim Il Sungs rule, when the future "Great Leader" and his entourage were consolidating their power base. Surveying the situation in North Korea after 1945, Lankov explores the internal composition of the ruling elite, the role of the Soviets, and the uneasy relations between various political groups. He also focuses on how in 1956 Kim Il Sung defeated the only known attempt to oust him and thereby established absolute personal rule beyond either Soviet or Chinese control. The book is based on previously secret Soviet documents from Russian archives, as well as interviews with Russian and Korean participants.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 20, 2002

About the author

Andrei Lankov is a North Korea expert and professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul. He graduated from Leningrad State University and has been an exchange student at Pyongyang Kim Il-sung University.

Reviews

[Robert Jeens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the internal development of the North Korean government from the beginning in 1945 until 1960. The author argues that from 1945 to 1950 the government was wholly under the control of the occupying Soviet army. Then from 1950 to 1960 there was factional struggle as Kim Il Sung both sought more independence from the Soviets and the Chinese and consolidated his absolute power in the state. Unlike what is portrayed in official North Korean propaganda, Kim Il Sung did not have a lot of power from the beginning. He was “a lucky survivor” who “was also able to use his luck in a sensible way.”
I trust this book because of the author. Andrei Lankov is a Russian who went to university in North Korea in the 1980s, when the two countries were allies. After that, he combed the archives in Moscow for information during the relatively open 1990s. Further, he interviewed many of the key Russian players who were still alive in the 1980s and 1990s. The limitations of his research are that he had no access to Chinese or North Korean archives, which are still closed, and that he could not look at all the Russian documents; for example, the KGB files of the time have never been opened. Now he is a professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul. Nobody in the West knows more about this than him.
The author sets up the situation as the Soviet armies occupied North Korea in 1945, and names the key players in the military who took charge. When the Soviets arrived, they did not have a plan to immediately set up a Soviet-style Communist regime, but as events matured by the beginning of 1946 that is what they had decided to do. As the Japanese left, the vacuum had been filled by “People’s Committees” of indigenous Koreans. Unlike the Americans, who disastrously suppressed them, the Soviets decided to work through the People's Committees and manipulate them to their advantage, a far wiser and more successful plan.
So in 1946, the Soviets decided to follow the same pattern as they had in Eastern Europe. First, make a “people’s democracy” which could have other socialist parties in it, but then the other parties would be subordinated to the communists, as were all civic organizations. The final stage would be mass nationalizations, the collectivization of agriculture, and only the communists in power. To that end the Soviets first established a military administration for the country. Then they oversaw the establishment of the North Korean Worker’s Party, and named the executive members of it. They oversaw the formation of the North Korean army and navy, and the higher education system. They oversaw the “elections” that legitimized the North Korean regime, and in fact dictated what the results would be. Industry was nationalized and land redistributed. A Soviet advisor wrote the speech that Kim Il Sung gave proclaiming the new state. This had all been accomplished by 1948.
As for Korean personnel, the Soviets dictated that too. Cho Man-sik was a nationalist and anti-Communist. He was the head of the Pyongyang People’s Committee when the Soviets arrived. They tried to co-opt him, but he was ultimately arrested in 1946 for opposing their plans. He was shot in 1950.
Other than that, Lankov finds that the Korean communists themselves were made up of four factions based upon their places of origin. Firstly, and most importantly under the Soviets were the “Soviet” communists. These were ethnic Koreans who had been born and raised in the Soviet Union. They were first brought over mostly as translators and teachers, but because of their rare language skills and experience in the Soviet system, they soon became crucial go-betweens. Their most prominent member was Ho Ka-I, who rose to become First Deputy Chairman of the NKWP, the third most prominent position in the state. Secondly, there were the “Domestic” communists. These were communists who had managed to survive the Japanese occupation, and after the Americans took over the South and tightened the screws on them they fled north. Pak Hon-yong was their leader. Thirdly were the “Yanan” communists, ethnic Koreans who fought with the communists in China against the Japanese or in the Civil War there. They came to North Korea after the Chinese communists won in 1949. Finally, Kim Il Sung led the “Guerrilla” faction made up of former guerilla fighters who had been active against the Japanese in North Korea and Manchuria.
When Kim Il Sung was brought to Pyongyang by the Soviets, he was a Soviet army major. He gave speeches and was present at rallies, but Cho Man-sik was the star at first. Next, the Soviet and Yanan factions rose to prominence as they were better educated and knew more about communism. Going forward, while Kim Il Sung was always prominent, other leaders such as Pak Hon-yong and Kim Tu-bong were his seniors. Eventually, by 1947, he was the head of the party, but he was really only a “first among equals.” The Soviets balanced the factions and kept the peace.
After Stalin authorized the invasion of South Korea and the war began, the calculations began to change. As the Chinese army occupied the North, Russian influence waned. Ho Ka-I was (probably) assassinated in 1953. But the big changes came after the war. The domestic faction was eliminated first. This made sense because they did not have any foreign backers. They were variously fired, arrested and/or shot and virtually destroyed by 1955. Influenced by the de-Stalinization movement in the USSR and the “Let one hundred flowers bloom” campaign in China, prominent Yanan faction leaders challenged Kim Il Sung at a party congress in 1956. Their unsuccessful attempt led to their downfall. By 1960, the Yanan and Soviet factions had been thoroughly purged: they fled or were fired, arrested and shot.
The result was an idiosyncratic communist regime in North Korea. It was more Stalinist than Stalin, with a cult of personality and adulation of the leader far more intense than had ever existed in the Soviet Union. Juche philosophy emphasized the independence of the North, even from its socialist allies, and a kind of xenophobia took over. The North Korean people were isolated, controlled and faced more hardship than in any other socialist country ever. As Lankov points out, that is probably one of the reasons it has survived.
There are three outstanding points in this book. Firstly, the author freely discusses the limitations of his sources and controversies over positions he takes. He does not suffer from overconfidence. Secondly, he compares and contrasts the developments in North Korea with those in the Soviet Union and in the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe. Lastly, as he interviewed former officials, he understands the humanity of people we frequently regard as inhuman. The people responsible for setting up the Soviet system of government in North Korea were not monsters. While guided to a certain extent by personal ambition, rather, they were for the most part sincere communists who believed that they were setting up a system of government that was destined to be more successful and humane than others that were available at the time, including “bourgeois democracy”. Events have proven them to be grievously mistaken, but it is a point well made.

[Benemint · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the few very reliable histories of North Korea in the 1940s and 1950s. I expected it to be dry and boring but I was wrong! While there is a lot of factual information and the analysis is academic, it is totally fascinating and I could not stop reading it. Chapter four on Soviet-born Koreans going (back) to North Korea is particularly interesting.

[Dora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tremendously helpful for my research paper about Soviet Koreans- exactly what I wanted it to be

[Pär Lundqvist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genom att mycket noggrant gå igenom historien bakom hur Kim Il-sung blev Nordkoreas ledare försöker Lankov skapa förståelse för Nordkoreas situation idag.