What is Juche, and who was Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founder?

Juche is North Korea's official ideology, an idea built around self-reliance. According to official descriptions, it means that people are the masters of everything and decide everything. It holds that a country will prosper once it becomes independent through political, economic and military self-reliance.

The man behind it is Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, who ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994. He was born in Japanese-ruled Korea, grew up in northeast China, became a communist as a teenager and joined anti-Japanese guerrilla groups. In 1942 he was assigned to the Soviet Red Army and stayed in the Soviet Union until 1945. After the division of Korea, the Soviet Union installed him in power over North Korea.

The history of Juche is debated. Its first documented appearance as an ideology is a 1955 speech by Kim Il Sung. At first it was regarded as a variant of Marxism–Leninism, until his son Kim Jong Il declared it a distinct ideology in the 1970s. Critics have variously described it as a quasi-religion, a nationalist or fascistic ideology, and a deviation from Marxism–Leninism. As Kim Jong Il emerged as likely successor, loyalty to the leader became part of the creed, in the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System.

There is an irony at its heart. Despite the official policy of self-reliance, North Korea received funds, subsidies and aid from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. After Kim Il Sung's death, a 1998 amendment wrote the presidency out of the constitution, and he was named the country's Eternal President.