North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Fyodor Tertitskiy: Researching the life of ‘accidental tyrant’ Kim Il Sung

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Fyodor Tertitskiy, a longtime Seoul-based scholar of North Korean history and author of “Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung,” a new biography of Kim Il Sung. Drawing on sources in Korean, Russian, Chinese and Japanese, Tertitskiy offers a fresh and deeply researched account of the man […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NK News website at nknews.org slash private dash feed. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko Zwetslut, and this episode is recorded in the NK News studio on Wednesday the 26th of February 2025. And I'm sitting here with a returnee he hasn't been on for a few years, but this is Fyodor Tertitsky, who is now Dr. Tertitsky. Welcome back on the show. It's good to be here, Jacko.

Thank you. So to introduce you to our listeners, Fyodor Tertitsky has been residing in South Korea since 2011. That's a very long time, although to me, he seems like a newcomer. He earned his PhD from Seoul National University in 2017, and he's currently a lecturer at Korea University. His works, his

academic works can be found on the website at ResearchGate. You can look up his profile there. You'll find his name in the show notes. He has recently published a book called Accidental Tyrant, a new biography of Kim Il-sung, which I have just received from him. So full confession, I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I have read previous biographies of Kim Il-sung. So I've got lots of questions for you. Are you ready, Fyodor? I am ready.

Can I still call you Fyodor or shall I call you Dr. Tatitsky? No, please call me Fyodor. Okay, Fyodor, I guess the first thing I should ask you is there are many, well, there are a handful of non-Korean, non-North Korean biographies of Kim Il-sung between 1982 and 2006 for example just to name a few we've got Lim Un, the pseudonym of a defector, Saadeh Suk, Wada Haruki, Bradley Martin have all written influential works. What does your

book contribute that is new or different? Well, my book comes after the opening of archives in Russia. My book comes after a substantial liberalization of the regime in China after the Chinese reforms, especially if we compare to the biography which has been considered a classic, Dr. Seuss like Kim Il-sung, a North Korean leader. So you would have quite a substantial revision of the information about his early years. I don't think much has been written about his service in the Soviet army and about like that crucial part of his life when he was propelled from a mere battalion commander to a leader of an incoming nation. I'd say I have lots of new information about the Korean War, about how it was started,

how it was waged, which I could imagine for many people would be the most important part of the book. And also, like some of the biographies you mentioned were written before Kim Il-sung died. So obviously, like the final years of his life and his lasting legacy on North Korea. Okay, now it's a hefty book. It is 366 pages including the index. So it's a lot of content to read. And you've titled it, you've given a very interesting title, Accidental Tyrant. It's a striking choice of words. In what sense was Kim Il-sung's rise to power accidental? Are you suggesting that his dictatorship was more the product of circumstance than deliberate ambition? Yes, that's basically the main idea of the book is this. The idea is that his rise to

power was not predestined by any means and he became the North Korean leader only by a series of extremely unlikely circumstances and then by partially personal luck, partially by his own skills in manipulation. So I think his rise to power was very accidental. The fact that he stayed in power, which so many others didn't manage, is, I guess, primarily attributed to his political skills but secondary also to a certain degree to personal luck. Okay so you would say that even the so not just becoming a tyrant was accidental but also the ability to stay a tyrant until his death was also to some extent a factor of external circumstances that

he had no control over. Yeah to do less less extent, but yes. Okay. So you could say the staying of Tyrant was less accidental? Yes. Yeah, okay. So let's talk about his rise and his political strategy. So Kim Il-sung's early years as a guerrilla fighter have been widely mythologized in North Korea. Based on your research, how much of this myth is true and how much is Soviet or later North Korean propaganda?

Well, Kim Il-sung was actually a partisan commander in Manchuria, in the Japanese public state of Manchukuo, and he was one of the notable people there. That's where the truth ends, because the North Korean exaggeration is so unbelievably ridiculous. It's one of the most over-the-top falsification one can find, I guess, across world history. Is it true that there were at one stage multiple people using the non-degear Kim Il Sung? Not at the same stage. So there were some, he had some predecessors. So there were, like I managed to identify at least two people who use this name. They were probably more I think the initial like the original Kim Il-sung

that was probably his real name. He was a guerrilla commander under before the annexation of Korea by Japan so in the... Oh very early then? Yeah so between 1905 and 1910. Oh before Kim Il-, the more famous one, is even born. Exactly, before our main character is even born. The second guy had quite an interest in biography, so he was a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Officer Academy. By the time he was commissioned, he already lost any faith in Tokyo, so he became an independence fighter, later moved to Soviet Union, participated in the civil war on the side of the Bolsheviks and ultimately

fell victim to Stalin's great purge. I actually managed to find the record of his death in Kazakhstan archives of all places. Was this second fellow, was his real name Kim Il-sung or was he modeling himself after the first one you mentioned? The latter is correct. So his original name was Kim Hyun-choon. He used several nomadic air. Actually Kim Il-sung wasn't like the most popular but at a certain point he did call himself Kim Il-sung. Okay. Yeah and it seems like the reason why our Kim chose this... Who was born Kim Song-ju. Who was born born Kim Songju actually like but okay if you go into his name so his original name was Kim Songju as like the foundation of the holy ones.

Son as like the holy ones and then after he becomes a communist he changes the Han Cha, the Han Cha, the Chinese characters for his name to become the foundation. When he joins the guerrilla movement, he changes his name, he adopts the pseudonym of Kim Il-sung, probably in honor of the original Kim Il-sung, of whom reportedly his dad told his sons, including himself. And it seems that the name Kim Il-sung originally was spelled as one and star until finally it became the form

We all are familiar with becoming the son becoming the son, right? I think which is quite ironically because he's called the son of a nation occasionally. So he did become a son. That's right. That's right How care how accurate are North Korean biographies when talking about his early life as a child? including stories of the founding the down with imperialism union, his rejection of bourgeois independence fighters, and his moving back and forth between China and Korea. So I managed to find absolutely no records about the down with imperialism union. I could imagine that being real, perhaps it was like a small school group, or maybe it was invented. I don't know. As I say, it's the first chapter, I prefer not to speculate. What we know, definitely,

his dad was an independent fighter. That's very much confirmed by the Japanese records. They moved to Manchuria in 1919 after the collapse of the first of the March movement after massive anti-colonial apprisal in colonial Korea to avoid reprisals contrary to especially early North Korean records that family was reasonably wealthy because they owned their own home didn't they? Yeah and also like they also have quite substantial savings also you can find them in Japanese records all there in the book. And Kim Il-sung, the first school we definitely know he studied is called Heungven Middle. It's still there in China. They have

within a memorial called Kim Il-sung. So that's all very much documented. He was a member of the communist organization in the late 1920s and he did even serve prison term at least once, although I think North Korea claims he did it three times. I doubt that... So who imprisoned him? The local authorities. Okay. For his communist activities? For his communist activities, yes. It was before the conquest of Manchuria by the Japanese. So then that can be found in his personal file here The Soviets compiled when he crossed the border in 1941. My dad and I were founded in Russian archives a few years ago. Wow

Yeah, it's it was quite something. Yeah, that is a find. Yeah, so yeah going back to that Then he goes into some emigre organizations with questionable values, so they try to do something, but as many political migrants it's usually just sitting in various committees, but when everything changes because the Kwantunami of Japan invades Manchuria, conquers it, creates a puppet state which reinvigorates the local anti-Japanese movement, and Kim Il-sung ultimately decides to join both the Communist Party of China and the guerrilla movement. By the end of Korea, only I think acknowledged once he was a member of the Communist Party

of China in 1945, now they don't. That's the rewriting of history. Yeah, it's actually like the funny thing is like if you read a state narrative They would mention like the existence of party organization in the guerrilla units But they themselves say the party was only founded in 1945. So I always am curious what party are you talking about? Yes, interesting now, of course He did a lot of his his guerrilla activities in Northeast China or Manchukuo at the time. One thing that is not, one period that is certainly not talked about in the North Korean

state narrative is that period of almost four years from 41 to 45 when he was in the Soviet Union disarmed and not active. What was he doing during that time? Curious to hear the rest? Become an NK News subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information. If you're already a subscriber to NK News, you can listen to full episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the Private Podcast Feed.

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