Kim Il-sung

1912 – 1994

Kim Il Sung was the founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, ruling the country from its 1948 establishment until his death in 1994 and constructing the dynastic regime now in its third generation. His 1950 invasion of South Korea triggered the Korean War, which killed an estimated three million Koreans and Chinese and ended in the still-armistice-only division of the peninsula. The Juche personality cult he built around himself, his late wife, and his son Kim Jong Il became the foundational political ideology of North Korean life, enforced through prison camps in which an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people remain incarcerated.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM