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Choe In-su, Kim Jong-il the People's Leader Vol.1, Pyongyang, 1983, pp.261-262, 301-306

          "The dear leader Comrade Kim Jong-iI is, indeed, 

a great and intelligent teacher of us teachers and scholars." 

(Dean of the College of Political and Economic Sciences, 

the Kim Il-sung University, Pyongyang, 1976)

 

The evils of dogmatism and regarding Marxist-Leninist classics as absolute were so deep-rooted that they were not wiped out in a day or two. 

It was the dear leader Comrade Kim Jong-il who regarded it as a serious question that these evils still had effect on the students of the university whose basic mission it was to equip the students firmly with the great leader's revolutionary thought, the Juche idea, and train them to be the revolutionaries of a Juche type.

One day he keenly felt the need to renovate their study attitude promptly.

That day his classmates were arguing about the origin of the Korean nation. They were arguing against one another, each parroting the classical proposition of Marxism-Leninism that nations were formed only in the age of capitalism. They went so far as  to bring forth preposterous arguments. 

One of them argued that a nation was the product of capitalist age according to the classics and that the Korean nation, therefore, should be considered to have been formed during the years of Japanese imperialist rule.

Another student refuted: "The socio-economic structure of our country under Japanese imperialist rule was not capitalistic in the true sense of the word. So the Korean nation should be viewed as having been formed after the liberation."

A third questioned sarcastically: "If so, does it mean that a capitalist system was established in our liberated country?"

The argument dragged on without any solution. The lengthy argument came to an end only when Kim Jong-il had explained the great leader's teaching that ours was a homogeneous nation who had lived in the same land, speaking the same language, from the ancient times.

Their commonplace argument over the national question shocked him greatly...

* * *

Kim Jong-il not only rejected the servile and dogmatic habit of scientific pursuit but also opposed the attitude of scientific research which was divorced from revolutionary practice. Having been deeply concerned about the research attitude which was out of contact with revolutionary practice, he got a particularly strong impression, at a seminar on the history of the Workers' Party of Korea, that this question must not be let unsettled any longer.

At the seminar a student asked a question about the emergence of various factions which had existed in the Korean communist movement such as the "Shanghai group'', ''Irkutsk group'', ''Tuesday group'', "Seoul group'' and about the origin of these names. In other words, he wanted the details of the history of factions. Silence reigned in the room...

None of the students were able to give an answer to this question, for they had only common knowledge of the factions. Moreover, they were not much interested in the question itself. The supervisor, too, felt the same. He tactfully brushed aside the question by saying that it would be unworthy of scientific discourse to go into the origin of the factions, as if it were disgusting work to handle the history of factionalism.

Kim Jong-il became pretty much doubtful. He was surprised at the fact that the question of exposing the origin of factions, the question that concerned the unity and solidarity of the Workers' Party of Korea, had been left away from academic attention. He stared through the open window with stern eyes as he usually did when he was meditating. His eyes reached the Choesung Pavilion standing high on the top of Moran Hill over which a patch of white cloud was drifting slowly away.

Various crimes committed by the factionalists flashed across the mind of Kim Jong-il who was looking at the pavilion which had stood as a witness to the tragic history of the country. First the tragic scene of the ''Heihe Incident'' came upon his memory. The tragic event which was so called historically, took place in 1921. It had involved the soldiers of the Korean Independence Army who had fought the Japanese to win back independence after ''Japan's annexation of Korea'' but fled to the far eastern region of Russia. They had fought among themselves on the river which had gone by the name of Heihe and dyed the blue water with the bloodshed in the fratricide.

The prime movers of this fratricide were none other than the factionalists in the communist movement in its incipient period. These factionalists had thought nothing of the revolution but of increasing their own factions. Their frantic efforts to extend their own influence had kept the soldiers at feud with each other and at last they instigated the soldiers to kill each other. The bloody waves of the foreign river had seemed to speak of the wrongs done to the victims. Every Korean had mourned over the tragedy.

Now he looked back upon the dirty fight among the factionalists in the main street of Seoul around the time of the founding of the Communist Party of Korea in 1925. A long-haired central figure of the ''Seoul group" was walking, avoiding the malignant eyes of sabre-wearing Japanese police. A boss of the ''Tuesday group" happened to see him when he was coming out of a Chinese restaurant after lunch, with a felt hat on his head and a stick in his hand.

The ''Tuesday group" boss fell upon the "Seoul group'' man and gripped him by the throat with his eyes glaring furiously.

-"Well met, you bastard," roared the attacker. "It was your Seoul group's hooligans who broke in and threw a wooden pillow at my head when we 'Tuesday' and 'North Wind' were having a meeting at the Ragyang restaurant." And then he struck the "Seoul group'' man a hard blow on the head with his stick. He shouted at a passing-by Japanese policeman, pointing at the man who had fallen out of his senses. ''This is a Communist Party cadre. Take him away! Arrest him and keep him in prison as long as you wish!''

In 1928 the Communist Party of Korea ceased to exist as a result of the split and conflicts within the Party which had reached a critical point, and of ideological confusion and indiscipline which had got out of hand, on account of the worst strife, in addition to harsh repression by the Japanese imperialists.

Kim Jong-il also recollected the factionalist manoeuvres in the post-war period. One day immediately after the war President Kim Il-sung had been giving on-the-spot guidance to the reconstruction of the devastated economy at a district. Seeing the President, the people who were concerned about his health, said to him that he had grown much older during the war. With a smile in his face the President answered that the war was not so much the cause of him becoming old as the factionalists were. As he remembered these words, Kim Jong-il felt irresistible resentment and clenched his fists in spite of himself.

History long ago showed that the factions posed a vital question that affected the existence of the Party, victory or defeat of the revolution, and the life and death of the Korean people. And why don't they grapple with this fundamental question? Such a bad attitude must not continue. The science of the Workers' Party of Korea must give primary attention to the burning question which concerns the destiny of the revolution and construction.

With this thought he told his fellow students to stay in the classroom when the teacher went out after the seminar. He gave a brief account of the origin of factions:

After the Japanese imperialists' occupation of Korea, some of the nationalist independence campaigners fled to the far eastern region of Russia, where they formed an organization which advocated socialism. But, before long, the organization split; one removed to Shanghai in China and formed what they called a "communist party", the other put up the signboard of "communist party" of their own fashion at Irkutsk in the far eastern district. These were the first factions known as "Shanghai group'' end ''Irkutsk group''.

Around this time various factions appeared in the homeland too. The "Seoul group'' came from the split Seoul Youth Association which was organized in 1921. The "Tuesday group" based itself on the force of the League of the Proletariat organized about the same time, and adopted its name from the birthday of Marx who was born on Tuesday. The "Pukp'ung group'' was formed in Korea by some of the students who had been to Japan where they had organized what they called Puksong Association. The "Seoul-Shanghai group'' was the alliance and variety of the aforesaid ''Seoul group" and "Shanghai group''. The ''M-L group'' was a conglomeration of the riffraff who had broken away from various groups.

Having dwelt on the origin of factions, Kim Jong-i1 said that factionalism, in view of its social class character, was the manifestation of bourgeois ideology which had infiltrated into the working-class movement and that, from the historical point of view, it was the continuation of the strife among the four factions ?Namin, Pugin, Noron, and Soron�a strife which had persisted among the feudal ruling circles in Korea in the past.

He gave a summary of the struggle of the Workers' Party of Korea to overcome the factions and then emphatically said:

-"What do these historical facts show us? These give us a valuable lesson that factional manoeuvres should be sledgehammered promptly because all factionalists, without exception, are wreckers of the Party and traitors to the revolution.... In order to preserve the unity of the Party we must first, second, and third defend and safeguard the great leader who is the highest brains of our revolution, the supreme leader of the Party and the centre of unity and solidarity among the revolutionary ranks."

His words were felt deeply by the students. But his words were not meant for his fellow students alone. These also expressed his own firm determination. Having worked against the dogmatic and servile study attitude towards science, he now put forward for himself a new task of solving urgent problems of revolutionary practice and vigorously continued with is scientific pursuit. ...