opinion

Kim Il Sung made two rounds of 1 000-ri (250-mile) journeys in his teens all alone.

The first journey was the one he made from Badaogou in China to Mangyongdae, his birthplace in Pyongyang, when he was not yet 12, as his father, the outstanding leader of the anti-Japanese national liberation movement in Korea, had said that a man born in Korea should know well about it. For more than half the journey he had to cross steep, craggy mountains which were almost uninhabited. And he spent merely two years in his birthplace. But the journey and the period enabled him to fully understand what kind of people the Koreans were and to have the most precious experience. 

In this sense, the journey is called the 1 000-ri Journey for Learning.

He spent two years in Korea. One day, several months before his graduation from Changdok School, he received the unexpected news that his father was arrested by the Japanese police again.

He made up his mind to go back to Badaogou and left Mangyongdae on January 22 1925 to make the second 1 000-ri journey.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the journey.

President Kim Il Sung wrote in his reminiscences With the Century what he felt crossing the Amnok River (the river bordering China) as follows:

“I looked back at the mountains and rivers in the motherland over and again with sorrow and indignation. I thought: My dear Korea, I am leaving you. I know I cannot live even for a moment away from you, but I am crossing the Amnok to win you back. Across this river is a foreign land, but I will not forget you, even in there. Wait for me, my Korea. Then I sang the song (Song of the River Amnok) again. As I sang this song, I wondered when I would be able to tread this land again, when I would return to this land where I grew up and where my forefathers’ graves lay. Young as I was, I could not repress my sorrow at this thought. Picturing in my mind the miserable reality of the motherland, I made a grim resolve not to return before Korea had become independent.”

True to his patriotic oath that he made as he looked back at the groaning motherland at the border, he carried out the historic cause of national liberation by fighting bloody battles against the Japanese imperialists and braving endless blizzards.

That is why the Korean people call the second 1 000-ri journey the 1 000-ri Journey for National Liberation.

In commemoration of the historic day, schoolchildren from across the country formed an expedition of the 1 000-ri Journey for National Liberation to march along the course of the journey made by Kim Il Sung, getting a deep understanding of his indomitable revolutionary spirit and noble patriotic will.