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"This book comprises the biographies of the North Korean politicians whose actions played a pivotal role in shaping the formation of the country during the late 1940s, the Korean War of 1950-53 and the power struggles of the mid-1950s. Drawing from a rich array of archival material in both Korean, Russian and oral testimonies, this book gives insight into the life stories of key figures such as Pang Hak-se, the founder of North Korea's secret police; Lee Sang-jo, a rebellious and idealistic North Korean ambassador; and Mun Il, the secretary of North Korea's first leader, Kim Il-sung. The biographies offer fresh perspectives into significant events in North Korean history such as the rise of Kim Il-sung and the reasons behind his selection as the nation's leader, The book also reveals how crucial events during the Korean War, such as the Inchon Landing Operation and China's entry into the war, shed new light on North Korean history. Unveiling the lives and impact of influential politicians in a notoriously secretive nation, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers including students and scholars of North Korea, the Korean War, the Cold War era, Asian history and those interested in the biographies of significant historical figures"--

This paper studies North Korea's official narrative on the Second World War. The country is extremely autocratic, meaning that the only allowed vision is the one prescribed by the state. This vision was initially imprinted by the Soviet Union in the late 1940s. However, the official narrative on the Soviet-Japanese War, which led to the establishment of the North Korean state, has been rewritten: today Pyongyang credits Japan's defeat to Kim Il-sung and his "Korean People's Revolutionary Army"—an organization which never existed in reality. This article traces the evolution of the North Korean false narrative and concludes that each of its pages was farther away from historical truth than the previous one.

Abstract
This article traces the origins of North Korea's militarized, repressive political system. It shows that the policies of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung, were heavily influenced by his personal experience in the USSR, or, more precisely, in the Soviet armed forces in the early 1940s. This factor has been largely overlooked by the academic community up to now. Drawing on a wealth of new sources in Chinese, Korean, and Russian, the article discusses how Kim's service as a Soviet military officer shaped his worldview and approach to governing North Korea. Through a multifaceted analysis of the North Korean military, the article reveals how its size, doctrine, economic role, and political education system were all influenced by Kim's experiences and those of his fellow soldiers in the USSR's Red Army. This insight has broader implications for understanding North Korean civilian society. By shedding light on the formative experiences that shaped Kim's approach to governance, the article offers a new lens through which to view the country's political and social structures.