In September 1945, the name “Kim Il-Sung” didn’t mean much—not even to the Soviet authorities determining who would rule the half-nation they were carving out in northern Korea.
He wasn’t on their list of recommended leaders. He wasn’t a general, nor a widely known figure in Korean resistance circles. He was a battalion commander in the Red Army who had been living in exile for most of his adult life. And yet by early 1946, Kim Il-Sung was effectively in charge of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
How did that happen?
That’s the question Fyodor Tertitskiy sets out to answer in his new book, The Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-Sung. Drawing on Soviet archives and decades of scholarship from inside South Korea, Tertitskiy shows how a man with modest ambitions—at one point, he aimed only to be vice-mayor of Pyongyang—used opportunism, factional politics, and external crises to rise further than anyone expected.
In our conversation, we discuss:
The triple-problem of sources for this biography
How Soviet authorities made early leadership decisions in North Korea
Kim’s use of catastrophe to eliminate rivals
How Kim created a dynasty that was beyond reform
For listeners interested in Cold War history, authoritarianism, or the accidents of history, this is an essential episode.
🎧 Listen now on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4nict0T
📚 Learn more: The Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-Sung
Share this post