Kim Il Sung for North Korea is the permanent leader and the only president; the Juche calendar is counted from the day of his birth, and in other countries he is considered one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. The life of this man, who bore different names, is richly saturated with events, sometimes mysterious. How did a boy from a Korean village turn into a famous commander of a partisan detachment that crushed the Japanese in Manchuria? Why did he put on the uniform of a Red Army soldier and for what services did he receive the Order of the Red Banner in the USSR? What helped Kim Il Sung lead the Land of Morning Freshness for almost 50 years and, even after passing away, remain forever alive for his people? The book by Andrei Balkansky is the first original biography of the leader of the DPRK in Russian, describing a long journey and shedding light on many mysteries . Particular attention is paid to Kim's difficult relations with Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and his reaction to the events that led to the collapse of the USSR and the socialist camp is told.