Anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter on Mt. Paektu, posthumously revered as one of the 'Three Generals'
One day while the unit marched, five or six enemies rose from the reeds and aimed at the General. Comrade Kim Jong-suk shielded him with her own body and shot down an enemy with her revolver.
Kim Jong-suk was a women's guerrilla commander in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army who fought in the anti-Japanese armed struggle under Kim Il Sung, but she is remembered less for her wartime deeds than for her posthumous veneration as the 'Woman General of Mt. Paektu,' the maternal anchor of the 'Three Generals' Paektu bloodline mythology. As Kim Il Sung's wife and Kim Jong Il's mother, she helped found the Korean Democratic Women's Union after liberation and died in childbirth in 1949.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1935Joined the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army
- 1936Personal guard to Kim Il Sung; women's unit commander, Singalpa unit
- 1937Fought in the Battle of Pochonbo; joined the Chinese Communist Party
- 1937–1938Expanded revolutionary organizations in Sinpa, Pungsan, and Tanchon areas
- 1940Married Kim Il Sung; relocated to the Soviet Union
- 1945Returned to Pyongyang after liberation
- 1946–1949Co-founded the Korean Democratic Women's Union; women's movement work
Children’s Corps work and peasant harvest struggle in the guerrilla zone
In the early 1930s, in the guerrilla zones of eastern Manchuria, Kim Jong-suk joined the Young Communist League and was elected to its District No. 8 committee, where she was assigned responsibility for Children’s Corps work. At a meeting in Shangcun in the Fuyan guerrilla zone on November 5, she reported on the Japanese blockade and shortcomings in the organization, and set tasks to improve the Children’s Corps school and the instructors’ work. Many members were orphans whose parents had been killed in Japanese punitive operations, or children of revolutionary activists. They carried supplies in their packs and helped defend the guerrilla zone; at times they carried ammunition to trenches and rolled rocks down on punitive troops climbing the hills. This was part of an organization that involved children in support and defense of armed struggle. [As recounted in a Pyongyang publication issued in 2002]
Kim Jong-suk also connected organizational work with peasants’ struggle over their livelihood. During the harvest in Fuyandong, the landlord refused a three-to-seven division of the crop in favor of the sharecroppers, and villagers marched in protest. Kim explained the landlord’s exploitation to the peasants and encouraged those who were wavering; the sharecroppers ultimately won the condition that they receive 70 percent of the harvest. Alongside her role in the armed movement, she worked politically by organizing Children’s Corps activity and mobilizing villagers to enforce an economic demand.